McKinney Falls State Park lies in the center of an early Texas land grand that originally fell within the empresario contract of Texian hero Ben Milam.
Ten leagues of land were transferred in 1832 to Santiago Del Valle, who at the at time was secretary of the Mexican government of Coahuila Y Texas and had previously served as a member of the Mexican Congress.
In 1835 Del Valle sold nine leagues of his land to Michel Menard, who in 1838 helped found the town of Galveston.
Thomas F. McKinney, one of the Menard's business associates, purchased the Del Valle grant in 1839. His family probably was the first of the property owners to live on the land, which they began to occupy during the late 1840s. McKinney had sold all the but approximately 2,800 acres of the land by the time of his death in 1873.
The lands within the Santiago Del Valle grant remained primarily agricultural during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Communities such as Bluff Springs, Pilot Knob, Creedmoor, and Del Valle began to develop during this period. While the northern part of the Del Valle grant has become increasingly urbanized, the southern portion remains largely rural, and is preserved in this State Park.
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