Santiago Del Valle

Santiago del Valle was a Mexican hacendado and government official for Coahuila y Tejas (Coahuila and Texas) during the Texas Revolution. Del Valle obtained a land grant from the Mexican government, which led to the founding of Galveston, Texas and several towns in Travis County, including Del Valle, which is named in his honor. In 1825, he served as president of the Congreso Constituyente of the state of Coahuila y Tejas, counselor to governor Victor Blanco, and as the arbitrator in a feud between the Sánchez Navarro and Elizondo families.

Land grant The del Valle land grant was originally an empresario grant purchased by Benjamin Milam in 1825, in hopes of establishing a mining colony. In 1832, the Mexican government canceled Milam's grant due to an insufficient supply of new citizens for their colony in Texas, following a new law passed in 1830. Menard, in turn, sold nine leagues (about ) of land in Travis County, Texas to Thomas F. McKinney in 1839. Del Valle sold the remaining league of the grant, a swath of land south of Bastrop, Texas, to Bartlett Sims. In Southeast Austin, much of McKinney's portion of the Del Valle grant was sold to plantation owners such as Albert Clinton Horton and Judge Sebron G. Sneed; both homesteads still remain. Some of the land grant was sold to the City of Austin, who leased 3,000 acres to the United States Army to create the Del Valle Army Air Base, later known as "Bergstrom Air Force Base" and currently the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.