This story was produced by Grist and co-published with the Texas Observer.

On an unseasonably warm January day, Duff Hallman’s goats and sheep wandered unhurried through the rocky hills of his ranch 30 miles south of San Angelo, Texas, unbothered by the long shadows that swept over the ground. The shadows fell from wind turbines towering 250 feet above, their blades spinning like clock hands over land that has been in Hallman’s family for four generations. From a shady spot in his backyard, Hallman can almost nod off watching them turn. “It slows your pace down a bit,” he said. 

At 74, Hallman still feels honored to work the 9,200-acre ranch he owns with his brother and sister, sometimes putting in as much as 15 hours a day. The labor starts at dawn — mending fences, clearing pastures, tending horses and livestock — and is far from lucrative. He doesn’t do it for the money, but out of gratitude to those who kept the ranch going before him. “Somebody worked their tail off to make it happen,” he said. “And I have worked my tail off, too.”

Duff Hallman stands on his family ranch, which he owns with his siblings. In 2007, they signed a lease with a clean energy company to bring new revenue. (Laura Mallonee / Grist)

Standing beneath a live oak, his ballcap shielding tired eyes, Hallman spoke of bluebonnets that carpet the pastures each spring and moonrises that “knock your socks off” — one so bright he thought it was a spaceship. His great-grandfather Sam Henderson, a Texas Ranger, bought the land in 1916; it straddles Tom Green, Schleicher, and Irion counties about four hours west of Austin. Hallman spent his childhood summers there, learning his way around.  

He took over after his grandparents died in 1975 and set to work — rebuilding pens and corrals, cutting cedar and mesquite, tending livestock. In the early 1980s, an oil company drilled 15 wells, and the Hallman siblings prospered. “That was a good time,” he said. “They were trying to get it out of the ground as fast as they could.”

But within a decade, the oil began drying up and federal wool subsidies vanished. Suddenly the ranch felt fragile. They needed a new revenue stream — something that might soften the hard years and help keep their children on the land after them — and in 2007, they signed a lease with a clean energy company. They hadn’t even heard of wind rights when the landman called. “We just thought the wind blew across the surface,” Hallman said.

For roughly six months, workers uprooted stones, bushes, and trees; carved 53 miles of road through the hills; and poured concrete slabs for 33 steel towers. The land thrummed with constant motion and dust choked the air. As Hallman watched his ranch transform, he worried that he’d made a mistake.

Little did he know, he had glimpsed the future. 

Goats wander across a caliche road on Duff Hallman’s property, which hosts 33 windmills that form part of the 160 MW Langford Wind farm. The facility began operations in 2009. (Laura Mallonee / Grist)

Hallman’s doubts reflect a larger reckoning underway in West Texas. Over the past two decades, rural counties that helped meet the nation’s demand for oil have become unexpected linchpins of its clean-energy buildout. Pumpjacks now stand alongside wind and solar farms drawn in part by open range and generous federal incentives. For Schleicher County, where oil production has waned and the tax base dwindled, “renewables” have taken on a double meaning, offering the promise of fiscal stability in a place desperate for economic renewal. But that promise is now complicated by the Trump administration’s rollback of clean energy policy and many of the incentives that fueled the boom. 

Texas has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. During the three years after the legislation passed in 2022, developers invested some $62 billion in clean energy ventures statewide and announced billions more in planned construction. Projects already constructed or proposed in Schleicher County — including a hydrogen facility once estimated to bring $1.2 billion in tax revenue — were forecast to generate tens of millions for schools, hospitals, and other services.

But those projections rested on one key assumption: The federal tax credits at the heart of the IRA would remain in place. The law extended earlier incentives through 2024 and established a new system of credits to begin in 2025. This federal support — including additional incentives for installations built in low-income communities and regions with a history of fossil fuel extraction — could cover up to 70 percent of a facility’s cost.

Before the cuts, governments and landowners across Texas stood to collect nearly $50 billion in lease payments and tax revenue from current and planned projects, according to one report, with roughly three-quarters of counties positioned to benefit. Now, many of these developments — and their hoped-for revenue — face a precarious future. More than $4 billion in investment has already been threatened or cancelled. All told, the about-face could eliminate thousands of jobs and shave $20 billion from the state’s gross domestic product by 2035. The climate consequences are equally stark, adding roughly 83 million metric tons of carbon emissions to the atmosphere by some estimates. 

One county illustrates what has been gained by the boom — and what could be lost with its passing. Scurry County, about two hours northwest of Hallman’s ranch, is one of the largest producers of renewable power in West Texas. Companies have built roughly a dozen wind and solar farms, with a total capacity of about 2,300 megawatts of power; they are projected to generate nearly $1 billion for the county and local landowners over the facilities’ lifetimes.

County Judge Dan Hicks said clean energy helped stabilize a budget long whipsawed by volatile oil and gas revenues. Some years, without a steady income stream, local officials faced the prospect of closing the library, the youth center, and the golf course. Renewables helped change that. Abatement agreements with developers created reliable, long-term payments that don’t fluctuate with the market or vanish when a manufacturer leaves town, Hicks said. Jobs have been slower to follow, but a support industry is beginning to take shape around the installations. “When your population is 17,000, every job counts,” he said. Eventually, he said, “I’d love to see us become the energy capital of Texas.”

He doesn’t think new wind and solar will come without federal incentives. Yet Joshua Rhodes, an energy researcher at the University of Texas who has studied the IRA’s impact in Texas, anticipates development continuing — albeit more slowly, and at greater cost. That likely means pricier electricity and slimmer returns for rural counties hoping to share in the growth. How much of it will materialize now is uncertain.

Schleicher County Judge Charlie Bradley looks out the window of his cluttered second-floor office in Eldorado, the sand-colored farming town he’s known all his life. The old filling station on the corner, where he pumped gas in high school, has closed. So has the wool warehouse a few blocks south, where he helped process yarn in middle school. 

Just north of the courthouse, the yellow-brick elementary school shows its age. Water pools in the basement and leaks through the ceiling, and, as one teacher said, “a lot of the rooms stink.” At lunchtime, kids from the high school next door spill into the surrounding neighborhood, a mix of small houses and mobile homes. A washing machine rusts on one porch. Yards collect trailers, cars, and piles of brush, though many assert pride with Texas stars, decorative windmills, and Christmas lights still twinkling in January.

Bradley grew up here in the 1960s and ’70s, when Eldorado was prosperous enough to support several family-owned groceries, stores, and restaurants. He set out for Texas Tech University and dabbled in six subjects before settling on photography. (“Best seven years of my life,” he said.) After returning home, he ran a portrait studio for a decade, then spent another 10 years chasing storms as an insurance adjuster. He was in the middle of one in 2007 when the retiring county judge called to suggest he run for the job. Bradley said he didn’t know a thing about governing. “Well hell, Bradley,” the judge replied, “Nobody does. If they did, they wouldn’t run.’” 

Schleicher County Judge Charlie Bradley sits at his desk in what he calls “the messiest office” on the second floor of the courthouse in Eldorado, Texas. Bradley has held the job since 2009 and is running for reelection unopposed. (Laura Mallonee / Grist)

By the time Bradley took office in 2009, the county was reeling from the decline of the fossil fuel and sheep industries. Then came fresh blows. A fundamentalist Mormon sect that was the county’s fourth-largest taxpayer was prosecuted for child marriage and lost its property in 2014, putting a sizeable dent in revenue. The next year, the Baker Hughes oilfield services yard — which employed about 80 people — shut down. With property taxes already near the legal ceiling, Bradley had to trim about $300,000 from the budget, hitting roads, bridges, and a meals program for the elderly. Much of what remained of the fossil fuel economy eventually left, too, though a Kinder Morgan gas pipeline announced in 2019 has boosted the tax base. The population has fallen from roughly 3,500 in 2010 to about 2,300 in 2024.

Today, the county runs on $9.3 million. Things are so tight there are just two workers to cut all of its grass, and Bradley has been known to climb on a mower to help out. “It’s real relaxing,” he said. “You can’t hear the phones.”

Renewable energy has provided a modest lift. The 160-megawatt Langford wind farm, which stretches into Schleicher County from an adjoining county, came online the same year Bradley took office, offering a bit of relief amid the losses; it now pays the county about $35,000 annually. The 100-megawatt Live Oak wind farm was built in 2018; in just the past six years, it has contributed nearly $16 million in taxes to local governments, including $7.2 million to Bradley’s budget. A 430-megawatt solar farm rising nearby could add about $225,000 to his budget each year.

An operations building for Langford Wind in southern Tom Greene County. The project’s turbines spread across Tom Green, Schleicher, and Irion counties. (Laura Mallonee / Grist)

Still, Bradley remains clear-eyed about green energy’s limits. Several companies have signed agreements without ever breaking ground, and those that did haven’t replaced what oil and gas once provided. The projects employ only a handful of workers — nothing like the number the oilfield service yards and gas plants once did.

The modest financial gains have come with friction. Some ranchers, tired of what Bradley called “scraping out a living on six inches of topsoil and rock,” want the money clean energy developers pay to lease their land. They also hope the revenue might help Schleicher County avoid the fate of neighboring Menard County, one of the state’s poorest. Others resent having their tax dollars spent on federal incentives for what they call “alternative energy.” Bradley said he has been asked, “Why in the hell do we want all that stuff? This is ranching land, and it’s always been ranching land.”

The flashpoint came in 2023, when ETFuels began leasing rights for a 500-megawatt wind, solar, and battery complex that would also produce hydrogen to make methanol for shipping — a larger and more complex industrial endeavor than anything Schleicher County had seen before. For many residents, the problem wasn’t the size, but the water. The plant would draw from the Edwards-Trinity Aquifer, the county’s only source, and no one could say how much could be spared. The first exploratory wells came up dry; later ones struck water. The question filled the civic center with tense, packed meetings. But under state law, Bradley had no ability to intervene in the landowner’s drilling. “I can’t tell him what to do with his land,” he said.

ETFuels never broke ground, but something even bigger emerged. In December of 2024, Apex Clean Energy pitched a wind, sun, battery, and “green” hydrogen facility that would produce enough energy to power 700,000 homes and create 90 full-time jobs. This time, the water would come from another county. A presentation outlining the benefits left school board members speechless: The operation would provide as much as $1.2 billion in property tax revenue over 25 years, including $20 million a year for the school district, enough for a new elementary school. In November, the board put a bond package to voters, hoping the Apex project would pay for it. (The measure ultimately failed.)

Apex appears to have scuttled plans to produce hydrogen in Schleicher County, though it’s not clear why. The company, which declined to comment, last promoted the project in June, just before President Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” into law. Among other things, that legislation rolled back the production tax credit of up to $3 per kilogram for green hydrogen. Experts like Rhodes at the University of Texas doubt many such projects can be viable without it. 

Bradley won’t speculate about lost or future revenue. “That egg is not in my basket,” he said. What is in his basket lies just beyond his office window: an elementary school with a leaky basement, two men mowing all of the county’s grass, and a community that’s spent decades waiting for something to take root.

If Bradley can see the changes that have come to Schleicher County in recent years, Sandra Pfeuffer can hear them. The sound carries across ranchland where her family once expected only the lowing of cattle.

Her father-in-law leased wind rights on his ranch in Eden, a town in neighboring Concho County, to a renewable energy company in 2008. He did so, Pfeuffer said, because he was dying, and paying estate taxes would have required selling off part of the ranch. Nothing came of the deal, but a decade later, her husband Ray signed a lease with Maverick Creek Wind Farm, which was built in 2020. “It was the worst decision we ever made,” Sandra said.

The four turbines hummed so loudly, and the transmission line buzzed so persistently, that she couldn’t sleep during visits. “I’m not going to lie — mailbox money is great,” she said. “But the mailbox money will never cover the loss of the enjoyment we had in that ranch.”

Pfeuffer is now fighting the rising tide of clean energy developments in eastern Schleicher County, where she lives. She isn’t blind to the irony of her stance. Ranches are dividing all around, she concedes, and times are changing. But she has come to see such projects not as progress but as a threat to the only life she’s wanted. “As a rancher, I feel kind of like a quail,” she said. “Everything’s after you, and it’s only a matter of time ’til you die.” 

When ETFuels began drilling wells on her neighbor’s land in 2023, she led the charge against it. She worried about what might be lost beneath the surface. “My fence doesn’t go underground and separate your water from my water,” she said. “It’s wrong for my neighbors to pump half a million gallons a day and cut my water away from underneath me.” (A representative of ETFuels told the county’s water board it could use about 220,000 gallons per day.) 

The next year, the Pfeuffers gathered fellow ranchers around their dining table and formed the Edwards Plateau Alliance to “counteract misleading narratives” about renewable energy. Sandra organized meetings, brought in outside critics, and pressed lawmakers to protect groundwater from hydrogen development. “[Companies] go into communities that need a lifeline and they promise the world,” she said. “The money is not worth the peace and beauty that they take away from your property.”

A visit to their 3,300-acre ranch shows what she believes is at stake. A few miles from the turnoff from the main road, a sign reads: “Wind Turbines Destroy Land Value.” Beyond the stately, white farmhouse and its web of gates, rocky pastures stretch wide and still, dotted with live oaks and a few oil pumpjacks. Sandra cut the engine of her all-terrain vehicle in front of one and listened. There is no whoosh or hum, only the rustle of breeze through the grass.

A water windmill turns on a January evening in Mason County, on the eastern edge of the West Texas region. ( Laura Mallonee / Grist)

The quiet helps explain why the Pfeuffers are so committed to their ranch. They have spent years clearing mesquite and cedar so grass can take hold — not just for profit, she said, but to benefit the land. The work has taught her to pay attention. “Out here, you’re so connected to everything,” Sandra said. “If there’s a rock out of place, you notice.”

She doesn’t see that kind of attentiveness in the push for renewables. To her, it’s just another extractive industry — one that will leave West Texas depleted, its water drained, and its land scarred with concrete, rebar, and fiberglass. Above all, she resents what she sees as urban priorities imposed on rural communities by people who will not live with the consequences. “I don’t come into town and knock down your buildings so I can run my cows,” she said. 

The Pfeuffers’ activism has riled other ranchers. Sandra said that her neighbor no longer speaks to her. She’s heard rumors of vague threats, of people at the coffee shop saying things like, “These people who are fighting this, we know where they live.”

While the fight in West Texas plays out in sidelong glances and veiled warnings, in Austin it is reduced to charts, forecasts, and models. State planners say Texas simply doesn’t produce enough energy: Rising electricity use, driven in part by population growth and a boom in data centers across the state, are pushing demand sharply upward even as extreme weather strains the grid. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the nonprofit that manages power for about 90 percent of the state’s electric load, expects peak demand to climb from 85 gigawatts to 150 by 2030. To move that juice, the state is building a $33 billion transmission “superhighway” with 2,500 miles of high-voltage lines linking the power plants of West Texas to cities like Dallas.

Discussing the state’s plans, Pfeuffer’s voice hardens. “Texas is so unique,” she said. “Do we really want to destroy it with power lines, wind turbines, solar panels? One day we’re going to wish we hadn’t.”

The future she fears is coming quickly. A 200-mile stretch of high-voltage transmission lines could bisect eastern Schleicher County, not far from her land. More might follow. The buildout seems relentless. “I have to wonder,” Pfeuffer said, “if I’m ever going to sleep again.” 

The din and dust that roiled Duff Hallman’s ranch in 2009 have long since faded. What replaced them were steady payments that helped offset the rising cost of ranching. The expense of maintaining the place has crept as high as $217,000 a year. Lease payments — Hallman wouldn’t be specific, but suggested roughly $200,000 annually, split between him and his two siblings — helped cushion them during the droughts of 2011 and 2021, which stripped the fields and forced them to sell their cattle. Not that Hallman has any illusions about its limits. “Is it like having oil?” he asked. “No. Not anywhere close.”

Hallman tells other ranchers who are considering windmills on their own property that he barely notices them anymore. His only complaint is the giant icicles they sometimes sling during freezing rain. Still, he’s happy. Clearway Energy, which owns Langford, maintains the towers; after construction, it paid for the lost trees and reseeded the land — things Hallman said the oil and gas companies never did. The roads it built double as firebreaks. Driving down one in his truck, he gestured toward the scenery rolling by. “These hills are rough and rocky,” he said. “I haven’t lost that much.” 

Still, his enthusiasm isn’t always enough to overcome skepticism and deeply held convictions, including the idea that turbines lower property values. He chuckled at that. “I bet you we could get top dollar for our ranch,” he said. 

Hallman admitted that the solar farm rising up the road gives him pause. He could earn a little money grazing sheep beneath the panels, but he worries how the facility might impact wildlife and the ecosystem he has worked with a biologist to maintain. He’s as wary of transmission lines and data centers as anyone, and was among those who declined to let ETFuels draw water from his land, choosing instead to safeguard it for the future. 

Renewables have helped the ranch, but he knows the land may not stay in the family forever. Every generation brings more heirs, each holding a smaller parcel with a looser grasp of its history. Change is inevitable. One day, the steel columns may vanish, made obsolete by something he can’t yet picture. Hallman shrugged at the thought and smiled. “I don’t know what that’s going to be, but it’s going to be something pretty ‘wow,’” he said. “We’re only limited by our imaginations.”

The post Texas Saw a $50 Billion Future in Clean Energy. Then the Political Winds Shifted. appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The town of Castroville lies west of San Antonio, beyond rolling farmland, bounded on three sides by a cypress-shaded horseshoe of the Medina River—dry now from long drought—and on the fourth by a brushy escarpment. A single hill advances into the city, crowned with a cross, sheltering the regional park on one side and the church cemetery on the other.

If you mention Castroville to someone who’s driven through, they’ll likely bring up Haby’s Alsatian Bakery, founded in 1940 by Stanley Haby. It stands on the highway opposite Sammy’s Restaurant, named for its first owner, Sammy Tschirhart, who also purchased the bakery in the ’70s. They’re local landmarks.

My parents knew little more than that when they moved us to Castroville from San Antonio in 1989. My mother had a memory of looking down on it from the hills and thinking, What a lovely place to live. They built our house on a lot that had once held horses. A rusty shoe we found still hangs over the front door.

Castroville, “the Little Alsace of Texas,” was founded in 1844 by colonists from that region of France. It still bears their stamp. Even as a fourth grader, I learned quickly that those of this descent, the “native sons” as I’ve heard them called, occupied a caste to which I, a Puerto Rican and Greek autistic boy from the city, would never belong.

The streets are laid out in a simple grid, cut by the slash of U.S. Highway 90 and named for the cities of Europe. I took to exploring them on my bicycle. The westernmost blocks, away from the river, were yet unpaved and home to the Mexican population. I rode through them and wandered the segregated cemetery.

The spire of Saint Louis Catholic Church, built in 1870, can be seen for miles ’round. We went to Mass there, sitting before Our Lady of Guadalupe, where, someone later told us, the Mexican folk had sat for generations. Perhaps we found it natural to sit among those who looked most like us.

A cherry-red pickup drives along Paris Street as the sun sets.

Internal segregation made the school almost two within one. I got remarks like, “We forget you’re Hispanic because you’re smart,” and heard anti-Latino jokes and slurs. Friends on ranches outside town showed me the shacks where the “wetbacks” used to live.

Still, I did find companions. Two boys, “native sons” both, quickly became my best friends. One, who lived on a ranch west of town, could point to the graves of ancestors buried on a knoll in the park. His grandmother lived on our block, and once, we went into a dark back room where old photos stared down at us; we saw the shirt an ancestor had died in, perforated by arrows.

Despite my difficulty fitting in, I threw myself into volunteer work and Scouting. For my Eagle Scout project, I planned and oversaw the construction of a trail at that park, the first of its kind. It climbed from the river over a wild shoulder of land and back down again across a bridge. Within a year, park management changed hands, and the trail, though approved by the city council, had been demolished.

When chamber of commerce President Estella Kierce encouraged me to apply for Junior Citizen of the Year, I wrote an indictment of the town that had rejected both me as a person and my work on its behalf. Reflecting on how this would make her look, however, I tore it up and instead submitted something more positive. The chamber named me Male Junior Citizen of the Year. Given that I’m trans, perhaps I should apologize for having used my biological advantage to steal the title from some deserving cisgender boy.

Despite this small triumph, terrified of a future in which I could not see myself, I left Castroville, vowing never to live there again. I kept that promise until last year, when I moved back after almost three decades.

I left as a boy and returned a woman. My old trail has been rebuilt alongside many more, with an interpretive sign about my project. True, vandals have defaced my photo, but perhaps that’s fitting. My father, a former city councilman and American Legion commander, and my mother, an indefatigable volunteer, are well known, and when people ask who I am by asking who my parents are, I see recognition and then puzzlement. I’ve been taken for both my own sister and my own daughter.

At Halloween, my family went trick-or-treating with friends. Afterward, we had an impromptu party at our house, and my two old friends came over. In such moments, I forget ever having been a boy, and I seem to slip into an alternate, somehow truer reality where I have always been outwardly as I am now. I find myself wishing well for this place, my home.

In 2022, as I researched Texas civil rights history to write about Uvalde, where I lived at the time, I came across a startling reference to a 1970s “sawed-off shotgun killing of Richard Morales by Frank Hayes, the police chief in Castroville.” This appears in a chapter by Joel Zapata in Civil Rights in Black and Brown: Histories of Resistance and Struggle in Texas.

In a town so committed to reciting its history, I found it strange that I’d never heard of this event, which people must surely have remembered. They did remember, I later discovered. They just didn’t talk about it.

In 1994, I participated in Castroville’s sesquicentennial celebration. A commemorative play starred my friend’s father as the founder, Henri Castro, under the six flags on the town’s Houston Square. It’s what sparked my own interest in Castroville’s history.

Unlike the colonists, Castro was not Alsatian but born in Landes, France, in 1786 of a Portuguese-Jewish family who had fled the Inquisition. After serving under Napoleon, he immigrated to the United States, where he became a citizen, in 1827. He later returned to France for a time and worked for Jacques Laffitte and Company, a banking house.

The depression that afflicted the United States following the Panic of 1837 also stalled the prosperity expected in the newly formed Republic of Texas. Its congress authorized the president to negotiate a loan for $5 million. Europe proved more favorable than the destabilized United States, and a loan commissioner representing the Texas government contracted with Laffitte in 1841, with Castro appointed to handle the deal.

The French Minister of Finance opposed the loan, leading to the contract’s cancellation, but Castro traveled to Texas in 1842, still hoping to see it through. Sam Houston had just become president for the second time. A bill authorized him to make empresario contracts in another bid for financial solvency and as a buffer against aggressors. Castro managed to become consul general to France, and he received tracts of land both along the Rio Grande and just west of San Antonio.

He returned to Paris to recruit. Finding his character impugned by political enemies, he sought colonists far from the capital. He found them in Alsace.

Castro’s contracts granted him half the hundreds of acres promised to the colonists. The Alsatians set sail for Texas. After a miserable sojourn in San Antonio while they waited for him to make arrangements, they received their due, or something approaching that. Many traded their wild estates for lots in the new city of Castroville and nearby acreage suitable for farming.

Castro’s motivations have been interpreted variously. A 1978 state historical marker for his homestead on Fiorella Street claims that, “Using his own personal wealth, he cared for the colonists as though they were his children.” Bobby Weaver’s 1985 book, Castro’s Colony: Empresario Development in Texas, 1842-1865, is more objective: “[Castro] envisioned a sort of personal kingdom in Texas where he would be the great landholder and all the colonists would be beholden to him for bringing them to their new landholder position. To accomplish his ends the man relied upon an easy conscience and a glib tongue to carry him to success.” By all accounts, the venture ended in a disastrous lawsuit and impoverished Castro. He died in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1865.

The colonists occupied land that others considered home. Tejanos and Freedmen lived along the Medina River. A mill had existed there, destroyed in the flood of 1843. Lipan Apache and Comanche traveled throughout the region. The former used the land where the park now lies for a permanent encampment. Hostilities increased as the colonists settled in. Raids took place at Quihi, a Castro colony northwest of Castroville, leaving settlers dead. Texas Rangers enforced order.

One story, reported by Julia Nott Waugh in her 1934 book, Castro-ville and Henry Castro, Empresario, and told to her by Ralph Tschirhart, recounts how, in 1870, Nicolas Haby—a common Alsatian surname—laid in wait for Comanche come to steal his hogs at night. He shot one man in the face, killing him. A crowd assembled to look at the man the next day, and a boy named Frank Haby scalped the corpse. “Nic” Haby fed the body to his hogs but refrained from eating the animals for several years.

Over the next century and a half, the colonists and their heirs built their community, preserving the Alsatian dialect and traditional folk dancing. In 2025, I enjoyed watching my own friends dance at the annual Saint Louis Day celebration. My house lies around the corner from the Living History Center, and as I write this, I hear them building their new museum.

Truly, there’s something timeless about Castroville—though time comes for every town. It is a storied place, too, though not all stories are equally remembered.

At twilight, the road where Castroville Police Chief Frank Hayes shot and killed Richard Morales

In 1975, Castroville Police Chief Frank Hayes directed an officer to serve misdemeanor arrest warrants on Richard Morales, a 28-year-old construction worker, whom he suspected of having stolen a television and stereo, although they had been acquired from a rental agency. Hayes arrived on the scene and, after calling Morales “a thieving son of a bitch,” drove him to a lonely country road, made him exit the vehicle, and shot him. Claiming the killing to have been an accident, Hayes obtained his family’s help in burying the body in a shallow grave in East Texas.

After Hayes was initially found guilty only of aggravated assault, civil rights leaders protested in nearby Hondo and San Antonio. Governor Dolph Briscoe of Uvalde called for an investigation. The New York Times reported on the story, and Los Huracanes del Norte recorded a corrido about it. In 1977, Hayes was convicted of having deprived Morales of liberty without due process and was sentenced to life in prison.

Helped by a 1976 NBC newscast about the story, which includes an interview in front of the city hall building in which I once attended Scout meetings, I located where the killing occurred, between Quihi Road and Highway 90. It’s a lonely place. Nothing marks the spot.

In 1844, San Antonio must have seemed a long way from Castroville. Now, it’s all too near. Housing developments seem to spring up along Highway 90 overnight. Medina Valley ISD enrollment has exploded. A shopping center called Alsatian Oaks being built just east of town is slated to host chains like Ulta Beauty and TJ Maxx.

The west side remains mostly undeveloped. But not long ago, I was surprised to find a large tract cleared and flattened. It neighbors the ranch where I went on my first Scout campout. The creek I swam in growing up runs alongside it. A vast, level foundation has taken shape on it, obliterating the land. Soon, I discovered the cause: Microsoft is constructing a new data center there, one of many to be built in Medina County. An August 30 MySA article even refers to Castroville as a new Silicon Valley of Texas. 

The city of Castroville itself still has quiet streets with no sidewalks, and even a few empty lots remain among its settler homes built of limestone and cypress. Residents want to keep it that way. A 2021 Texas Public Radio article quotes Bradford Boehme, “a seventh generation Alsatian descendent who still farms the same land his ancestors tilled” (and a former classmate of mine); meat market owner, Marvin Dziuk; and the mayor at the time, Darrin Schroeder, about attempts to negotiate with developers and keep the town’s character intact. Indeed, under Schroeder’s leadership, the city contracted with Simplecity to create a downtown master plan, a separate comprehensive plan, and a unified development ordinance (UDO) to guide future growth, a project that cost half a million dollars by the end.

Panicked by the proliferation of developments that lie outside city limits but that use the same resources, as well as proposals for high-density housing within the city itself, many citizens turned their ire anyway on Schroeder, who works for Microsoft, accusing him of selling the city out. As Schroeder campaigned for reelection in spring 2024, signs appeared all over town for a challenging candidate, Bruce Alexander, soon outnumbering Schroeder’s. Schroeder proposed a public debate moderated by the high school debate club at the American Legion hall. I attended, but Alexander didn’t show, citing a conflict, and Schroeder “debated” alone. As it turned out, Alexander won by a landslide, with 74 percent of the vote.

After Alexander took office, I attended the July 22 city council meeting for a friend who was out of town but wanted me to read her statement in support of the UDO. Residents in favor of the UDO spoke of wanting to preserve the town’s character, but they expressed a desire for downtown revitalization; improved residential options, including multifamily housing; and a path into the future. Those against spoke also of preservation while voicing fear of unbridled change and anger at the loss of control, claiming that the UDO meant the destruction of Castroville’s unique character, an inexcusable compromise with modern development. Palpable in all was the tense question of whether to meet the future head-on and treat with it, or draw up the bridges to prepare for a siege.

In his defense of the UDO, Councilman David Merz invoked the vision of Henri Castro, but to no avail. The council voted against adopting the plans developed under Schroeder—leaving the future uncertain.

April Maria Ortiz, with the Scout Trail she designed behind her, is pictured at Castroville Regional Park on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026 in Castroville, Texas.

I later met with Merz at a coffee shop in an old gas station on Fiorella Street. He spoke of how, like me, he wasn’t a “native son.” He grew up in Illinois and moved to Castroville upon marrying a Tschirhart, living in an apartment before buying a house. We compared Scouting stories, though I had to correct him when he congratulated me for having belonged to such an excellent organization as the Girl Scouts.

In discussing the mayoral election and its impact on city planning, Merz pointed to low voter turnout. He bristled at the attitude I’d encountered: that some community members are of less value than others. But he wasn’t surprised by the stories I told. Toward the end of our conversation, he joked about forming a political party called Fremde, after an Alsatian term that means “outsider,” used by some for newcomers who supposedly should prove themselves before participating fully in public life—in this colony that was formed as a financial venture displacing others.

As we prepared to part ways, Merz told me that, in English, the pronoun “we” can be used exclusively or inclusively and that he included me in the “we” of Castroville. He encouraged me to play my own active role, and I’m still thinking about that.

In November, I went for a walk to read the historic markers in my neighborhood. The streets hummed with activity for a citywide yard sale. A boy rode by on a bicycle as I crossed Houston Square. The church bells pealed for All Saints’ Day, while the boy had a speaker in his backpack, playing the Judds’ song “Grandpa (Tell Me ’Bout the Good Old Days).”

Whatever its leaders and residents may wish, time is coming for Castroville. The drive for capital that brought Alsatian colonists in 1844 is bringing another kind of colonist down on their heirs. Castroville embodies both heritage and exclusion—what town doesn’t?—but unless it finds a way to preserve its soul, Texas will lose something irreplaceable.

The post Time Comes for Castroville appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Editor’s Note: This story was originally reported by Candice Norwood of The 19th and is republished with permission. Read more of her reporting here on gender, politics, and policy.

Every survivor of sexual assault is forced to make a calculation: What are the repercussions if they speak out?

Dolores Huerta felt the weight of the entire labor rights movement, which she feared would crumble if she accused civil rights leader Cesar Chavez of sexual abuse.

“The weight of that calculation is the same weight for every single survivor in the farm worker industry,” attorney Karla Altmayer told The 19th. “They’re not thinking about the movement, but they’re thinking about: ‘Will my family be able to work next year?’ ‘Will I be abandoned in the field?’ ‘Will I be killed?’”

Huerta’s experience with sexual violence, and her reason for keeping it secret—first reported in a New York Times investigation—echoes a current of fear running through the farmworkers she spent her life advocating for. An estimated 26 percent of U.S. farmworkers are women, and they face disproportionate risk of sexual harassment and assault in their workplaces. A majority of women farmworkers are Latina and foreign-born. Data capturing the full scope of sexual violence they experience is scarce. 

One 2010 survey found that 80 percent of respondents—150 Mexican and Mexican-descent women working in the fields of California’s Central Valley—said they experienced some form of sexual harassment. A 2015 focus group with 49 Latina farmworkers in the Pacific Northwest found that a majority of participants experienced or witnessed sexual harassment or violence in the workplace.

Farms can hire workers directly for either permanent or seasonal work planting, tending, or harvesting crops. Other times, a crew leader or contractor, sometimes called a “foreman,” recruits and supervises workers who may travel together between farms for work. Another category of farmworkers are brought into the country under the H-2A program for seasonal work, and receive housing as part of their temporary work agreement.

“Migrant workers, specifically, are traveling throughout the seasons, following crops and harvest, and so [they’re dependent for] everything—from a glass of water to where their housing is, where they’re going to sleep at night, to eat, whether they have the equipment to cook, or whether they can even go to the bathroom in the field,” said Altmayer, who began her career representing Illinois farm workers and later co-founded the organization Healing to Action, which focused on addressing gender-based violence. “So, it’s just the conditions are so specific and so dependent on the employer in a way that many other industries don’t experience.”

The result is a power structure where their ability to secure and maintain job opportunities can depend on a pool of men who have the power to fire them, target their family members, report them to immigration officials, or harass and follow them beyond the workplace.

For more than 15 years, Elizabeth Torres has worked to document the experiences of farm workers facing sexual violence in the Yakima Valley of Washington state. Torres told The 19th that some warehouse facilities have a space known as “the cold room,” a designated place where young women and girls are taken and assaulted. Many of the women on farms are mothers who bring their children to work because of lack of child care or a need for more family income. 

What can happen next is often unexpected, such as comments from a male supervisor complimenting a child’s appearance, or coaxing a mother to leave her child alone, according to Torres, who is director of operations at the Spanish-language public radio station KDNA. 

If a woman is working in the fields with her husband or brother, for example, the foreman could assign the husband to one location and require the woman to work in a completely separate, more isolated spot where she can be assaulted.

Anali Cortez Bulosan and Josephine Weinberg, both attorneys with California Rural Legal Assistance, said that sexual harassment complaints from farmworkers are among the top three issues they handle in their work.

“The ones that come to us, generally, there’s been some shoddy investigation or attempt to resolve the matter, that basically didn’t resolve the matter. Or our client complained, and instead, the harassment continued or intensified until they couldn’t handle it anymore,” Weinberg said.

While some larger commercial farms have designated human resources teams that handle complaints, on other farms, the only person to complain to could be the abuser. Whether a large or small farm, workers have no guarantee that their complaints will lead to a remedy. 

Accumulating enough evidence to prove a case is one of the biggest challenges, according to Cortez Bulosan and Weinberg. Farms and supervisors also punish the workers.

“Most of the time there [is] what we call it under the law, ‘constructive discharge,’ where the conditions have become so hostile that the worker is quitting, but it’s a forced quit,” Weinberg said. “In effect, it’s like a termination because the conditions have gotten so bad. It’s considered a firing.”

While a worker can be blacklisted from other jobs for being a “problem employee,” a violent supervisor or foreman often continues to work, sometimes traveling to farms throughout the country. Going directly to the police also comes with a high cost, on top of being fired. Law enforcement dismiss assault claims because of personal bias or lack of evidence, advocates said. They may also check a worker’s immigration status and report to federal immigration agents.

In the documentary Rape in the Fields by PBS Frontline, a former Iowa sheriff stated that it was their job “to do both,” meaning address reports of assault and also work with immigration enforcement. “Puts the victim in an almost impossible situation,” he acknowledged.

“If you see law enforcement coming in to the plant and taking your co-workers,” immigration lawyer Sonia Parras said in the documentary, “you are not going to go to them the next day and say ‘By the way, can you help me?’”

Since the release of Rape in the Fields in 2013, and since the viral #MeToo movement in 2017 put a spotlight on sexual harassment and assault happening in Hollywood, politics, and beyond, some states and farming companies have made modest changes. In 2018, California enacted a law to require farm labor contractors to provide regular sexual harassment training and to document that training. The state also expanded its law requiring more employers to provide sexual harassment training. Before 2018, California employers with fewer than 50 employees were exempt from these state requirements. That threshold was then lowered to five employees.

In Washington state, Torres and Jody Early, a professor at the University of Washington-Bothell, co-created Basta, a community-driven initiative. Basta provides sexual harassment training and resources like videos, guides, and even a comic book aimed at informing farmworkers of their rights and helping to change the workplace culture that enables abuse.

Torres said that while some farms have improved their resources, for example, by establishing an anonymous hotline, there are others where “They haven’t even started talking about sexual harassment or harassment in the workplace,” she said. “And so there is a huge variety within our community.”

Cortez Bulosan and Weinberg said they don’t believe broader systemic change will come from new laws. 

“We have a lot of great laws,” Weinberg said. “It has more to do with how a woman or a man or whoever is received when they complain, how their complaints are treated.” That includes cultural competency training that meets the specific needs of individual workplaces. Basta is one community network pushing to change this culture.

“There are companies that want to do better. They want to do good by their employees, and we choose to work with them, and they can make a big difference in showing examples of creating that,” Early said. “Another thing to understand is that consumers have power. We’ve seen this happen even here: boycotts against certain growers that aren’t listening to the workers, that aren’t caring. That has a lot of power.”

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Juan Miguel Arredondo believes there’s a spirit of solidarity in San Marcos that sets his Central Texas college town apart, even as right-wing culture warriors seek to force a wedge between neighbors. 

“When there’s a crisis, Superman isn’t coming,” Arredondo, 34, told the Texas Observer during a phone interview late last year. “We have to save ourselves, and so that’s what we do.” 

A fifth-generation native of the region, Arredondo served on the San Marcos Consolidated Independent School District from 2015 to 2023, and he was again elected to the board in 2024 after a year spent working as the chief of staff for state Representative Erin Zweiner, an outspoken progressive legislator and member of the LGBTQ Caucus. In addition, he’s president and CEO of the United Way of Hays and Caldwell Counties.

Beyond those achievements, he’s also the only openly gay member of the San Marcos school board. Arredondo came out publicly in 2017 during Pride month, about two years into his first term. 

“I had one of my biggest supporters call me, compliment me on my bravery, and then immediately pivot to say, ‘It’s just so unfortunate that you’ll never get reelected,’” he recalled. “That was the first experience, right out of the gate, of folks’ perceptions of what it means to be queer or gay or LGBTQ in Texas.” 

Time has disproved that prediction. In 2024, his election was uncontested. Now, when Republican operatives arrive to propose book bans or attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the local schools, Arredondo’s firm but kind presence helps remind his fellow trustees what’s at stake for some of the most marginalized students. “It does not escape me that my colleagues have to have those conversations with an openly gay man next to them, and I think that’s incredibly important because we’re not talking about this in the abstract.” 

Meanwhile, San Marcos and its families face challenges that are more substantial, and more dire, than a trans student using their preferred pronouns or anything found between the covers of a hardback.

“Not once has a family been in crisis because of transgender bathrooms,” Arredondo told the Observer. “It’s families not being able to afford rent or put food on the table, issues with unemployment or lack of access to jobs that pay living wages.”

San Marcos, population around 70,000, is a community between Austin and San Antonio that’s anchored by Texas State University and home to a large working-class population. “I think I’m aware of two transgender students in San Marcos CISD, but I have 60 percent of my families who are at or below the poverty line.” 

“STUDENTS INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM DESERVE TO BE THEMSELVES.”

Arredondo believes that San Martians have a knack for coming together through their shared struggles. A close-knit community solidarity has made it possible to weather a series of crises, from natural ones like the COVID-19 pandemic to human-made disasters like the temporary loss of food stamps during the government shutdown in the fall of 2025. According to Arredondo’s figures, about one-third of the roughly 8,200 students in San Marcos CISD come from families who temporarily lost SNAP benefits. 

To make up the gaps, San Marcos CISD teamed up with the Hays County Food Bank to ensure that students and their families wouldn’t go hungry. Their experience during the pandemic taught Arredondo and the other school board members that any crisis like this one leaves lasting effects, from missed rent to increased stress on nonprofits and their workers—reverberations that don’t disappear overnight. “Even if the spigot, so to speak, is turned back on, we know there’s going to be delays. We know this is going to have residual effects.” 

Arredondo’s role as president of the local United Way made it easier to coordinate funding for aid. He said the board plans to enter into a long-term partnership with the food bank to keep students and families fed. 

Anne Halsey, in her 11th year as a trustee on the school board and the current board president, said Arredondo has always been a champion of inclusivity, especially for vulnerable students.

“Miguel, since I’ve known him, has always been committed to ensuring that our school district serves all of our students and that it is a … welcoming environment for everybody—for kids, for teachers, for staff,” Halsey told the Observer. “That has been consistent in the entire time I’ve known him.” 

Halsey is especially proud of improved support for students’ mental health since the two began their shared tenure. “We had one social worker that served the entire district,” she recalled. Now, every campus has counselors, and clinical psychologists are available to consult with students when needed. “Every kid needs mental health support,” Halsey said, but the board is very aware that LGBTQ+ students face higher rates of mental illness or mental health crises.

More recently, a slate of laws has come down from the Texas Legislature, such as last session’s so-called “parental rights” measure, Senate Bill 12, which mandates that schools reject diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and adds new restrictions on how schools support the mental health of their students, especially trans kids. Arredondo said the interference from the Capitol was unpopular even among the board’s more conservative members. “Time and time again, we’re having issues around funding to make sure our families have the basic necessities they need to survive, yet the Legislature is passing laws about what pronouns or what names [students] can use.” 

The Texas Education Agency still hasn’t provided clear instructions on how to implement the law; in the meantime, Arredondo and the rest of the school board are working with legal counsel to ensure they balance implementation of the new restrictions with still doing everything they can for their kids. 

“Our educators and staff continue to show up for students every day, supporting them as whole people and meeting them where they are based on their individual needs,” Arredondo said in a January email. “As a district, our focus continues to be on doing right by students and families while navigating an evolving and often unclear legal landscape.” 

Jacob Reyes, the news and rapid response coordinator for the national LGBTQ+ advocacy organization GLAAD, told the Observer that leaders like Arredondo help improve outcomes for “students and schools” by ensuring every child feels they belong. 

“Students inside and outside the classroom deserve to be themselves and be safe so they have every opportunity to learn,” Reyes wrote by email. “LGBTQ students in Texas should know that their elected officials will fight for them at every level of government.” 

For Arredondo, his time on the school board is an example of the power of local politics to get things done. “Your city council member, your school board trustee, your county commissioner, they can make some stuff happen. And I think people getting more involved at a local level is incredibly important.”

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