Nopal

NOPAL, TEXAS (La Salle County). Nopal, also known as Peru, was a small settlement on the Frio River twenty-one miles northwest of the site of present Cotulla in north central La Salle County. A post office opened there in 1879, when Nopal had an estimated fifty inhabitants. Perhaps as many as seventy-five people lived in Nopal by 1882, when its name was changed to Peru; in 1883 the town was designated one of only four polling places in La Salle County. When the International and Great Northern line extended its tracks into La Salle County in the early 1880s, however, many of the town residents moved to places closer to the railroad. The town lost its post office in 1883, and soon thereafter it faded out of existence. State school records indicate that Nopal had an elementary school as late as 1896, but by 1907 it had been closed.