City Council OKs name change for Manchaca Road

The Austin City Council has approved the renaming of Manchaca Road to Menchaca Road. Council says its to correct a misspelling. 

Back in the early 1980's while reading the Handbook of Texas, Bob Perkins, a retired judge, first noticed a mistake that's apparently lasted for generations.

“I read in there about how the town of Manchaca is named for Jose Antonio Menchaca from San Antonio and kind of thought, well if it's named for him how come they don't spell his name right?” Perkins said.

Perkins doesn't believe the name mistake was malicious, just a mistake. But over the years, the spelling error became a pronunciation error.

“In 1849 the stage coach company starts publishing ads about going from Austin to San Antonio and they change the name...they take Manchaca and they cut off the last ‘A’ and they say Manchac Springs,” Perkins said.

Perkins reached out to some of his descendants and they too wondered why the road and town were spelled that way, so he formed a 501c non-profit called Justice for Menchaca.

He doesn't believe taxpayers should bear the cost of the change.

“The city told us it would cost $24,000 to change all the street signs along Manchaca Road. We raised the money and we deposited a cashiers check with them January of 2016,” he said.

The council approved the name change on Thursday afternoon. It will take effect Nov. 15, 2018.