Natalia: Named for a Girl, Spelled Wrong

Natalia, Texas carries the name of a child and a spelling error. The town was founded in nineteen twelve by the Medina Irrigation Company, built on the main line of the Missouri Pacific Railroad in Medina County, twenty-eight miles southwest of San Antonio. It was named for Natalie Pearson, daughter of Frederick Stark Pearson, the American engineer who designed and built the Medina Dam, at that time the fourth-largest dam in the United States, and established more than thirty-four thousand acres of irrigated farmland in three counties.

When the post office opened in nineteen thirteen, a clerk recorded the name as Natalia, dropping the final e. The spelling stuck. Pearson himself did not live to see much of it.

He and his wife sailed to England on the Lusitania in May of nineteen fifteen to shore up British financing for his projects and died when a German submarine sank the ship. A town with a misspelled name is all that remains of his Texas work.