Origin of ‘Redland’ name remains a mystery

Why is Redland Road named Redland Road? I am doing some research regarding the history of my subdivision, Redland Estates, on Redland Road along Loop 1604 on the north side of the city. I believe my subdivision was once part of the Classen ranch, and that this pioneering family owned property once referred to as Classen’s Redland Ranch. Yet that is the only reference I have found to “Redland.” There are quite a few subdivisions on Redland Road; all but one begin with the Redland name. Can you enlighten me further regarding the source?

—Billy Perryman

While the Classen family raised cattle and sheep on their ranch in what’s now north-central and northeast San Antonio, there’s a chicken-andegg conundrum associated with your neighborhood’s name.

You are right about the size of the Classen holdings. When Johann and Maria Classen migrated in 1856 as a young couple from Prussia, Germany, to far northern Bexar County, there were only 14,454 settlers outside the city of San Antonio. The Classens started acquiring property across those sparsely populated reaches, at first by buying modest parcels and later through land grants.

“The Classen lands north of what is now Loop 1604 extended as far west as Blanco Road toward Camp Bullis and east over to Evans and Bulverde roads,” wrote Pat Ezell in “The Classen Family and Canyon Springs Golf Club,” a 2017 summary found on the Farm and Ranch Complexes website of the San Antonio Conservation Society, farmandranch.omeka.net. With their adult children, the Classens eventually “amassed vast amounts of acreage,” as much as 40,000 acres.

Extending south, Classen land took in what’s now Encino Park, Hollywood Park, Stone Oak “and much of the land south of 1604 toward the east,” Ezell continued. “All of Redland Road was originally Classen property as well as portions of east Evans Road.”

Classen Road and Classen Ranch Road commemorate this pioneer family. But what about Redland Road, which already was known as such when nearby subdivisions were platted and named in the 1980s and ’90s? It doesn’t appear in “Place Names of San Antonio and Bexar County” because David P. Green, author of the reference book, has yet to find a definitive origin story.

“I believe that all of those places and streets named Redland are related to the Redland-Worth Company,” Green said, but that’s just a theory.

Green, a local hand surgeon who came to San Antonio in 1970, recalls there was a gravel quarry next to Interstate 10 called McDonough Bros.

“I used to see their workers as patients,” Green said. “When G.W. “Bill” Worth graduated from Texas A&M, he joined his three uncles — John, Jim, and Dan — in the business as plant manager and later took over the business.

The company was renamed Redland-Worth. “I have tried to find out where the Redland name came from but never found a solid answer,” Green said. The quarry was sold and the Fiesta Texas amusement park, which opened in 1992, was carved out of the quarry. Bill Worth died in 2004 at age 64.

Anyone who knows more about the derivation of Redland Road’s name may contact this column. All replies will be forwarded and may appear in a future column.

BAR BRANDING: The recently released documentary “Hap Veltman’s San Antonio Country” (discussed here Aug.11) doesn’t claim the 1970s nightclub was the city’s first gay bar — just the first to attract a sizable straight following for its disco-era dance scene — but it may have been upstaged in another way.

Reader Mike Lawrence wrote to note that entrepreneur Veltman “probably didn’t pull the name ‘The Country’ out of thin air. Back around 1968, there was a gay bar in the outskirts of town, in the country on one of the old highways — not sure which one, because I have only driven past it once.

“My friend had stopped one night because he saw a huge number of cars and trucks parked along the highway in the dark near a long wooden building. He went in and was amazed to discover a bar filled with rancher-looking types, and it was called ‘The Country’ because of where it was located. I imagine Mr. Veltman had been there.”

If so, Veltman, a lawyer by training, may have been careful to add “San Antonio” to his urban club’s name to establish a scrupulous distinction.

CULTURAL CONFLUENCE: Short film “US” (covered here July 6), which represented our country in the U.S. Pavilion at HemisFair ’68, has an even more illustrious pedigree than reported here July 6. Besides Academy Award-winning producer Francis Thompson and director Alexander Hammid, there were other top talents involved in the film that played the fair’s Confluence Theater.

“I, too, wondered about the existence of the film and discovered it was stored in the National Archives,” wrote Nancy Avellar. “In May 2018, KPAC radio ran an interview with American composer and conductor David Amram, who composed the musical score. Amram mentioned that W. H. Auden wrote the script. I would love to see it again.”

At the time the U.S. Department of Commerce commissioned the film, Amram was known for his versatile blending of jazz, folk and other influences and had won a Pulitzer Prize for his score for “J.B.,” the play by Archibald MacLeish’s play. Auden, a prolific British-born poet and playwright who had chosen to become an American citizen, was a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

When the multiscreen, proto-IMAX-style film is reissued in a friendlier format, it will be worth checking the credits for theirs and other illustrious names.