Cotulla is a city in and the county seat of La Salle County, Texas, United States. The population was 3,614 at the 2000 census. The whole of La Salle County had 6,886 persons in the 2010 census. In June 2014, Cotulla "self-declared" its population at 7,000, based on utility connections alone.HistoryPolish immigrant Joseph Cotulla, who was reared in Silesia, then a part of Prussia, migrated to the United States in the 1850s. He joined the Union Army in Brownsville, Texas. He lived in Atascosa County but arrived in La Salle County in 1868 to establish what became a large ranching operation. After learning that the International-Great Northern Railroad intended to lay tracks in La Salle County, he worked to establish the town which bears his name. In 1881, Cotulla donated 120 acres of his land to the railroad, and in 1882, a depot was constructed there. In 1883, the town was granted a post office. The same year, Cotulla became the county seat by special election.Joseph Cotulla's great-grandson, William Lawrence Cotulla (born c. 1936), a former storekeeper in Cotulla, is a rancher in La Salle, Dimmit, and Webb counties. In a 2013 interview with the Laredo Morning Times, William Cotulla noted the community of his birth has changed completely in less than eighty years, having gone through several phases, beginning with emphasis on farming, then ranching, thereafter hunting leases, and now petroleum and natural gas through the Eagle Ford Shale boom. However, with declining gasoline prices, the Eagle Ford boom took a sharp downturn by the fall of 2015.
