Del Valle

Location: Del Valle, TX (~7 miles southeast of Austin on the Colorado River, southeastern Travis County)
Anchor Site: Circuit of the Americas / former Del Valle Army Air Base (now Austin-Bergstrom International Airport)

The Hook

A Mexican nobleman who never once set foot on his own land grant gave his name to a community that later became a WWII bomber base, then Austin’s international airport, and now a Formula 1 racetrack that hosts one of the largest annual sporting events in Texas — all sitting on the same 44,000 acres a man named Santiago del Valle received almost 200 years ago and never bothered to visit.

Key Facts

In 1832, Santiago del Valle — a Mexican nobleman — was granted roughly 44,000 acres (ten leagues) in southeast Travis County; he never lived on or visited the land
The grant traces to an earlier, canceled 1825 empresario grant purchased by Benjamin Milam for a mining colony; Mexico revoked it in 1830 for insufficient colonization, and the land was reissued to del Valle in 1832
Del Valle sold nine leagues of the grant in 1835 to Michel Menard, who went on to help found Galveston in 1838
Thomas F. McKinney bought the remaining Del Valle grant land in 1839; by his death in 1873 he had sold off all but roughly 2,800 acres
The community of Del Valle was established in the mid-1870s, named directly for the original land grant; a post office opened in 1878
By the mid-1880s Del Valle had three churches, a school, a gristmill, a general store, two cotton gins, and about fifty residents
A 1907 school census recorded a one-teacher school for nine White students and a separate one-teacher school for 108 Black students — a stark record of the area’s segregated Black farming population
The Great Depression hit hard: population fell from an estimated 150 in 1927 to around 25 in the early 1930s
The U.S. Army activated Del Valle Army Air Base on the site in 1942; it became Bergstrom Air Force Base, closed in 1993, and reopened in 1999 as Austin-Bergstrom International Airport
Circuit of the Americas — home of the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix since 2012 — sits on former Del Valle land grant acreage just outside the airport

Story / History

Santiago del Valle is one of Texas history’s stranger footnotes: a man who gave his name to tens of thousands of acres of what is now southeast Travis County without ever once visiting it. The land’s actual history starts earlier, with Benjamin Milam’s 1825 empresario grant for a mining colony — an ambitious plan that collapsed when Mexico, unhappy with how few colonists Milam had actually recruited, revoked the grant in 1830 under a new colonization law. The land was reissued in 1832 to del Valle, a Mexican nobleman with no evident intention of settling it himself. He held it briefly and, in 1835, sold nine of his ten leagues to Michel Menard — who three years later used his own resources to help found the city of Galveston. The remaining Del Valle grant acreage passed to Thomas F. McKinney in 1839, and McKinney spent the following decades selling it off piecemeal, down to about 2,800 acres by the time he died in 1873.

The community that eventually took the land grant’s name didn’t organize until the mid-1870s — a modest farming settlement on the Colorado River southeast of Austin, with a post office by 1878 and, within a decade, the ordinary infrastructure of a small Texas farm town: churches, a school, a gristmill, cotton gins. The 1907 school census is worth sitting with: Del Valle’s common school district ran a single-teacher school for nine White students alongside a separate single-teacher school for 108 Black students — a numeric snapshot of a substantial Black farming community in southeastern Travis County, segregated into a school more than ten times as crowded as its White counterpart. That imbalance is a piece of the area’s history worth naming directly rather than glossing over.

Del Valle, like most small Central Texas farm towns, was hit hard by the Great Depression — its population dropped from around 150 in 1927 to roughly 25 in the early 1930s, effectively hollowing the community out. What brought Del Valle back onto the map wasn’t agricultural recovery; it was the U.S. Army. In 1942, the military activated Del Valle Army Air Base on land carved from the old grant, training bomber crews for the Pacific and European theaters. The base was renamed Bergstrom Air Force Base after the war and remained an active military installation — a defining Cold War presence in southeast Travis County — until it closed in the post-Cold-War drawdown of 1993.

The land didn’t stay quiet for long. In 1999, the former Air Force base reopened as Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, converting a military legacy into the front door for one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. And in 2012, adjacent land — still, functionally, part of the same historic footprint — became Circuit of the Americas, the first purpose-built Formula 1 track in the United States. COTA now hosts the F1 United States Grand Prix, MotoGP’s Grand Prix of the Americas, and NASCAR events, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors a year to acreage that traces back, in an unbroken chain of ownership, to a Mexican nobleman who never set foot on it.

Insider Tips

The through-line — land grant → farm town → bomber base → international airport → F1 track — is the single strongest narrative asset here; it’s a genuinely rare case of one place cycling through that many distinct identities on the same footprint
The 1907 segregated-school detail is worth including for anyone doing a serious history tour rather than just the highlight-reel version
Circuit of the Americas offers public tours and events outside race weekends — worth checking current schedule if the tour timing allows a stop
Del Valle today is a mix of airport-adjacent industry, the county correctional complex, and lower-income residential areas — worth noting honestly rather than romanticizing the area

Annual & Seasonal Events

Spring (Mar–May)

COTA hosts various racing and music events depending on year’s calendar — check current schedule

Summer (Jun–Aug)

Quieter season at COTA; airport traffic remains steady year-round

Fall (Sep–Nov)

Formula 1 United States Grand Prix (typically October) — one of the largest annual sporting events in Texas, drawing 400,000+ attendees over a race weekend

Winter (Dec–Feb)

No major recurring events specific to Del Valle in winter

Logistics

Tour stop duration: 20–30 minutes (drive-by/overlook of COTA and airport area); longer if timed to a race event
Parking: COTA has dedicated event parking; otherwise limited public parking in the area
Nearby stops: Webberville (15–20 min east), Austin (15 min northwest)

Sources

Texas State Historical Association — Del Valle, Texas: tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/del-valle-tx
Wikipedia — Santiago del Valle: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_del_Valle
Wikipedia — Bergstrom Air Force Base: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergstrom_Air_Force_Base
Austin Monitor — “Defining Del Valle”: austinmonitor.com/stories/2021/08/defining-del-valle/
Del Valle Army Air Base Historical Marker: hmdb.org/m.asp?m=25631
Texas Almanac — Del Valle: texasalmanac.com/places/del-valle

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