History
by WPA workers, 1941Calhoun County, with Port Lavaca its county seat, is a Gulf Coast county between the two fast growing Texas ports, Houston and Corpus Christi. The county is situated on the coast prairies between San Antonio and Matagorda Bays. It is bounded on the north by Victoria and Jackson Counties, on the east by Matagorda County and Matagorda Bay, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico, and on the west by Aransas and Refugio Counties. Part of the county, Matagorda Island, is separated from the mainland by San Antonio and Espiritu Santo Bays. Lavaca Bay divides the two peninsulas of the mainland.
Green Lake, a 10,000-acre body of fresh water, situated about 5 miles from San Antonio Bay, is the largest natural body of fresh water in the State, and in spite of its nearness to salt water, it is never reached by even the highest of tides. It is marked by a high bluff on the south side, much higher than that on the northern shore.
The surface of the county is almost dead level, sloping gradually to the coast. The altitude varies from 50 feet to sea level. Mesquite, cypress, post oak, and live oak trees are found near the streams, with some huisache on the prairies. The county is drained by the Guadalupe River, and Big Chocolate, Little Chocolate, Six Mile, Cox, Keller's, and Caloma Creeks.
The waters which indent and enclose most of the land surface of Calhoun County were among the first of the Texas coast to be visited during the era of exploration and discovery. In 1519, little more than a quarter of a century after the landing of Columbus In the Antilles, Alonso Alvarez de Pineda, a lieutenant of Francisco Garay, Governor of Jamaica, sailed along these shores with a fleet of four vessels. He was the first European to explore and map the Gulf coast line from Florida to Vera Cruz.
Almost on the heels of Pineda, Cabeza de Vaca and his shipwrecked companions landed on the Texas coast, November 6, 1528. During 8 years of toil and hardship they made their way westward until they came to a frontier of civilization at Culiacan, Mexico. Many of their most interesting experiences occurred around Matagorda Bay. Of Caballo Pass, Cabeza de Vaca remarked that this inlet was a league wide and uniformly deep, and reminded him of Espiritu Santo Bay, as the mouth of the Mississippi was named on Pineda's map of 1519.
Years afterward, early in 1685, Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, far astray in his search for the Mississippi River, was forced ashore on the Texas coast on account of a shortage of supplies. On February 15, La Salle's expedition discovered a beautiful river, about one-eighth of a mile wide, which emptied into a large sheltered bay, now known as Matagorda Bay. Part of the men landed, and the pilots of the Joly, the Aimable, and the Belle carefully staked the channel to facilitate bringing in the vessels. La Salle had to rescue some of his men from the hostile Karankawa Indians, and while, he was thus employed, the Aimable was wrecked in the attempt to cross the bar. A little later a treacherous captain took the Joly back to France, and La Salle was left practically stranded. He built a temporary fort, which he called St. Louis, on Matagorda Bay. It was situated slightly south of the mouth of the river they had discovered, which has now been identified as Garcitas Creek. The Indians were unfriendly; the location was unhealthful; and the water was unfit for a permanent settlement. Therefore the French colonists moved further inland. La Salle continued to explore carefully in every direction, with conditions in his colony going, from bad to worse, until he was murdered by some of his own men on March 20, 1687. Indians and disease wiped out the settlement.
The Spaniards, having heard of La Salle's colony, sent out both land and sea expeditions toward the Matagorda Bay region. Alonso de Leon first located the ruins of the French colony in 1689, and visited the site again the following year.
After La Salle's settlement, this particular part of the Texas coast was neglected until 1824, when Martin de Leon, Mexican empresario, founded Guadalupe Victoria and obtained permission to settle a colony with general boundaries as follows: The Coleto on the west, Mission Valley on the north, the Lavaca River on the east, and Matagorda Bay on the south.
Linnville, the site of which is approximately 3.5 miles northeast of present Port Lavaca, was the first town established in what is now Calhoun County., John Joseph Linn, a pioneer merchant of Victoria, unable to dispose of a cargo he had imported to Corpus Christi, ordered the captain to sail for Matagorda Bay, and made arrangements to meet him at the mouth of Garcitas Creek. On the bay shore, in 1831, he constructed a warehouse, vhich he and his brother used as a base for a large wholesale trade with the Mexican market. Around this warehouse, the settlement of Linnville grew up.
In 1832, Philip Dimmit, another trader, built a pier on the coast of present Calhoun County; and a second settlement, Dimmit's Landing, sprang up there. Another early landing place was Cox's Point, where a town was established in 1836. In that year, Mary Austin Holley wrote:
The new town at Cox's Point will eventually rival Matamoras, inasmuch as it has a better harbor ... it is preferred as a. market by almost., all the interior traders .... It is situated at the mouth of the La Baca, and contains about 200 inhabitants.
Soon afterward, the Congress of the Republic took steps for the establishment of another town in this region. A joint resolution on November 18, 1839, postponed "the sale of lots in the city of Calhoun," pending the completion of naval survey of the pass of Matagorda Bay. On January 20, 1841, the Congress voted that "the sale of lots in the town of Calhoun shall commence in said town on the first Monday in June." No further record of this projected town is available, but Col. Alexander Somervell, veteran of San Jacinto and a senator of the Republic, did found a town on Matagorda Island, opposite Caballo Pass, sometime before 1839, and a special legislative act designated its town site. A customs station was placed there in 1842. This town was known as Saluria.
Dimmit's Landing passed from the map with the death of its founder; and Indian raids, meanwhile, had reduced two of the other settlements to ashes. From the first, the Karankawa Indians had been hostile to the white men in this territory. In 1834 a small band of this tribe "who had been guilty of killing several citizens of the colony and perpetrating various thefts" menaced Maj. James Kerr and a surveying party at present Long Mott, a short distance below Green Lake; but the Indians were tricked into believing that the Kerr party had a cannon, and, with the gift of a little tobacco, they were easily persuaded to cross to the other side of San Antonio Bay and remain there. But 6 years later, when the militant and highly organized Comanches descended upon this country, the story was very different. Early in August 1840, 600 of these Indians from the northern plains swept into present Calhoun County, collecting horses by the herd and killing all who came their way. They burned Cox's Point, and then, on August 8, surrounded Linnville. At least four persons were killed in the town and on its outskirts, and the remainder of the residents fled to a schooner in the bay. From there they watched the Indians burn and pillage the town. A grostesque note was given the proceedings by an incident which John Joseph Linn, founder of the little town, later described:
In my warehouse were several cases of hats and umbrellas belonging to Mr. James Robinson, a merchant of San Antonio. These the Indians made free with, and went dashing about the blazing village, amid their screeching squaws and "little Injuns," like demons in a drunken saturnalia, with Robinson's hats on their heads and Robinson's umbrellas bobbing about on every side like tipsy balloons.
In the afternoon the Comanches began to retire across the bayou. The white men quickly gathered from all directions, pursued the Indians to Plum Creek (Caldwell County), there attacked them and finally defeated them in a running battle which ended in present Hays County.
Some of the raid refugees must have found sanctuary in the scattered houses on the site of present Port Lavaca, for a town soon developed there, and Northern commission men selected it as the port for the shipment of raw materials to New York, and the landing of manufactured goods for the coast country. A map of Lavaca, as it was first called, made by H. L, Upshur in 1842, shows the town running 8 blocks along the waterfront, and extending back 10 blocks. Commerce Street, near the water, was very wide. Two and a half blocks were set aside for a market; one block was allowed for a public square; one for a cemetery; and another for a church.
That this plan was somewhat visionary is indicated in a realistic description of the settlement in January 1844:
At first sight this place was not very attractive, the wharf, about 100 yards long, ending in a medium-sized warehouse. From there, gaining the bluff of about 20 feet rise, we came up to the town, which was composed of seven frame and log houses, the principal one being conducted as a boarding house. Another was occupied by Captain Smith, an old Texas veteran, who kept a general store. , . . The other log houses were unoccupied.
In 1842 another settlement began 12 miles below Lavaca on grants of land in the vicinity of Indian Point.31 This point was on the northern end of a low, sandy strip of land along Lavaca and Matagorda Bays, virtually islanded by the bays, lakes, bayous, and marshes. Here, late in 1844, Prince Carl zu Solms-Braunfels, representing the Mainzer Adelsverein, otherwise known as the Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas, established Carlshafen, a tent colony for the thousands of Germans who were soon to arrive in Texas under the auspices of the society.33 Meanwhile, a customs station had been established on Powder Horn Bayou, on the southern tip of the "island," and nearby a small 'cluster of cabins had been built, one of which was that of Prince Solms.
The first shipload of German immigrants arrived at Carlshafen in December 1844, and soon there were 1,000 of them there, held back from going into the interior by rainy weather and a temporary lack of society funds. Stores were opened, and, despite an epidemic, the place prospered.
But, for the permanent settlers, Lavaca was still the center of most activity when, on April 3, 1846, the first legislature of the new State of Texas constituted Addison White, Henry Kitchens, H. Beck, James Cummins, and Thos. Duke a commission to "locate the seat of justice1of the county of Calhoun," and on the following day created the county out of Victoria, Jackson, and Matagorda Counties. The first county government meeting was held on September 22, 1846, at the home of H. C. Kitchens in the town of Lavaca. Present were Theodore Miller, who had a commission from the Governor as chief justice; Sylvanus Hatch, and Hermann Thelapapa, county commissioners; Isaac Brugh, county clerk; Joshua H. Davis, district clerk; Richard West, sheriff; A. Hamilton Cook, justice of the peace; and Hiram G' H. Davis, constable. Saml. T. Watts became assessor and collector on November 15, 1846, and Timothy R. Threlkeld was chosen treasurer on January 12, 1847.
In March 1847 there were four places in the county at which public notices were posted: Lavaca, Indian Point, Public Ferry, and Sylvanus Hatch's. In the same month, Colonel Somervell and associates extended their holdings at Saluria, and then began to subdivide and sell them on a scale that quickly brought that little port to the fore. But the new county seat was the dominant town. The important Morgan steamship lines had centered their activities there, and shipping was brisk, Products, from a large part of South And West Texas were loaded on boats at Lavaca, and supplies from the North and East borne inland from there in wagon trains drawn by mules and oxen. Real estate commanded a high price. In 1850, Lavaca citizens pledged a land bonus to the new San Antonio & Mexican Gulf Railroad, and began to look forward to the coming of the iron horse.
Meanwhile, returning German colonists had joined in the upbuilding of Carlshafen, which was first renamed Indian Point, and then Indianola. This busy port was beginning to rival Lavaca, when a precipitate series of events subordinated both of them to a new city. In the process, Lavaca lost the county seat, and Indianola lost its name, as business and populace streamed from both to the newly-born metropolis.
The population shift began in 1849, when an increase in channel and dockage fees by the Lavaca town council led to the removal of the Morgan interests to the vicinity of Powder Horn Bayou. The customs station was there, and some little distance away were a few houses, the nucleus of the new city. These identified themselves with the tiny settlement about the wharf and customs station, and this divided hamlet was known for a short time as Powder Horn. Then came the stream of homebuilders and tradesmen from Lavaca and Indianola, and the burgeoning city of the bayou appropriated the name Indianola, which, however, the residents of the dwindling settlement up the coast still clung to. After an election on August 2, 1852, the county seat was moved to Indianola, the county commissioners in those days distinguishing between the two claimants to that name by referring to the upper one as "Indianola proper." In 1853 most of its citizens and many of its houses having departed in the exodus, down shore, the upper town resigned itself to its third change in name, and thereafter was known as Old Town.
Gradually, Old Town itself became considered merely the upper section of Indianola,6l which was incorporated as a city on February 7, 1853, and which swiftly became one of the leading ports on the Texas coast.
In the spring of 1856 workmen at Indianola constructed a 10-acre enclosure in anticipation of a singular cargo, and on May 13 the first lot of that cargo came up to the wharf at Powder Horn - camels, purchased by the United States for use on the Government Camel Trail between Camp Kerr (Kerr County) and California. This experiment, conceived by Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, to provide transportation of supplies over trails where the vegetation would not sustain other pack-bearing animals, was doomed to failure; but meanwhile it provided free circuses and free publicity for the new city. Camels continued coming to Indianola until late in April 1857.
In 1857 the first Calhoun County courthouse was erected. This structure and a number of other buildings in Indianola were built of concrete blocks.
Lavaca, meanwhile, was sturdily challenging the city which had usurped its place. Jacob De Cordova, writing in 1858, could not decide whether Indianola, its adjoining port of Powder Horn, or Lavaca should be rated as the Texas commercial port second in importance to Galveston, and remarked in favor of Lavaca that "teamsters save 12 miles of bad road in rainy weather by stopping there," Lavaca had already moved to improve upon this advantage when, in 1856, construction was begun on the San Antonio & Mexican Gulf Railroad, 5 miles of which had been built toward Victoria by 1858. The State Engineer's report said:
The remarkable fact may be stated that this five miles of road, terminating in the open prairie at a point remote from any settlement or public highway, has not only been of vast service to the people of Texas, but has actually overpaid running expenses. I ... witnessed myself the tremendous business it was doing; the noise and bustle; the hundreds of wagons and teams and teamster. drawn to its present terminus or station in the prairie.
There was considerable delay, but the road was finally, opened for traffic to Victoria in April 1861. In the meantime another road had been built from Indianola to connect with the San Antonio & Mexican Gulf, and had been put into operation.
Calhoun County's great coast line and many inlets, which had brought it so large a share of the early shipping trade, proved a hazard to the county's fortunes during the Civil War. In July 1861 the county commissioners appropriated $1,500 exclusively for ammunition "for the general defence of this County," but in May 1862 this store of powder, lead, and caps was believed "useless for County defences," and was ordered sold to the highest bidder. At the same term, the court:
Ordered, that the Clerks of the District and County Courts of this County, be required to move the records in their Offices, to Victoria, for safe keeping, retaining such books and papers as are in daily use; and that the books and papers retained be kept in a state to be removed immediately on the approach of the enemy.
Confederate forces, with slave labor, erected Fort Esperanza, 200 yards long, and with walls 20 feet thick, overlooking Caballo Pass from Matagorda Island. Troops were stationed there, in Indianola, and elsewhere in the county. Late in 1863 came the long-expected attack by Federal gunboats. Fort Esperanza, and then Indianola were taken; Lavaca was ineffectually bombarded from boats which could not cross the bar of Galnipper Point; and the Federals moved overland to attack Lavaca, an important railhead.
The retreating forces were under orders to burn the town of Saluria, blow up the Caballo Pass lighthouse, sink private watercraft, dismantle all wharves, and destroy all bridges. There is no information at hand as to how thoroughly these orders were executed, but it is certain that San Antonio & Mexican Gulf railroad tracks were torn up and much railroad equipment destroyed by the Confederates. The defending troops made a stand at Norris Bridge, but were defeated, and Lavaca fell into the hands of the Federal soldiery. Calhoun County remained under Union control until the occupation force was recalled to New Orleans in one of the war's reverses.
On April 23, 1864, the first entry in many months was set down in the county ccmmissioners book of minutes:
County ElectionWhen the county seat returned to Indianola in September 1865, H. B. Cleveland, who had taken-the Union oath "during the occupancy of Indianola by the public enemy," was again the county clerk. The county, impoverished by the war, and with its bridges, wharves, and railroad in disrepair, did not enter upon the Reconstruction Era with much heart. Indianola alone voted for delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1866, as "there hath been no returns made by the precincts of Lavaca, Saluria and Longpiott.
At an election begun and held on the 11th day of April, A D. 1864, in accordance with the order of the Chief Justice of Calhoun County, to fill the vacancies by the acts of the following persons, who took the oath of allegiance to the United States of America during the occupancy of Indianola by the public enemy, viz: James Nolan Sheriff George W. Woodman District Clerk H. B. Cleveland County Clerk the following persons were elected to the offices attached to their names, and gave bond and took the oath prescribed by law viz 1 James H. Duncan Sheriff J. K. McCrearey District Clerk Jn W Burke County Clerk This election was held at Lavaca, "no polls having been opened in Precincts Nos. 2, 3 & 4 of said County," and from then until after the war ended, Lavaca was again the county seat.
Although the railroads were restored, and the pastures were overstocked with cattle, Representative T. Phelps found little promise in 1867 conditions: The soil is unproductive ... Nothing but corn, and garden vegetables raised, and of them not enough for consumption. ... Wood for fencing and fuel is transported to the county. Coal is brought by the steamers in small quantities. Price of land, nominal; no sale; no inquiry. Negroes hardly do a quarter work, and their behavior is not good generally ... there are few white laborers. Planters or farmers will not depend upon negro labor, if necessity does not drive them to it. But little fruit is raised.
Adding to the difficulties at the county seat, fire, fanned by Gulf winds, swept through Indianola in January 1867, destroying downtown buildings. Recovery came swiftly. By 1871 Indianola and Lavaca were, the principal seaports west of Galveston, 86 and the Morgan Line advertised that "new iron, low pressure steamers, constructed expressly for this trade," left New Orleans for Indianola three and four times a week in winter, and twice weekly in summer. The county population was between 3,000 and 4,000, concentrated almost entirely in Indianola and Lavaca in the early seventies, Indianola passed Galveston to become the leading seaport in Texas. Of Indianola in these times one writer said: Indianola was once Texas's Dream City, her sea gate to the great Southwest ... There was a time when it promised fair to become the world's greatest cattle port. ... Its main Street and Bay street were jammed with carts ... and horses ... Rolling, square-rigged merchant brigs, rakish schooners, their sails stretching from stem to stern like the wings of giant birds, and dark pirate-looking sloops, made the wharfs. Sometimes a side-wheeler, puffing and panting, tied up to take on a cargo of cattle. Cowboys from along the Colorado, Guadalupe, the Nueces, and the San Antonio brought in their herds and enjoyed the pleasures of a gay city.
On, September 16 and 17, 1875, Indianola was destroyed, and all of the Matagorda Bay region was severely damaged in one of the most destructive tropical hurricanes ever to hit Texas. A thriving little city of 2,000 inhabitants,, with its handsome residences, its warehouses ... its costly churches, and splendid marts of business, streets, pavements and gar dens, all a shattered and unsightly ruin, while nearly 200 of its citizens had gone down amid raging waves and howling hurricane. The destruction of property at Old Town was great, although no lives were lost there. Saluria, which had never regained the importance it held in the 1850's, was also destroyed. The cement block courthouse was one of the few buildings in Indianola which withstood the storm. Indianola was rebuilt, but the Morgan Line reduced its trips to that port by half, and many of the storm's survivors apparently moved away, for the total county population in 1880 was only 1,739.
Then, on August 22, 1886, another hurricane struck Indianola, accompanied by a tidal wave, and followed by fire. Indianola had weathered at least three epidemics of fever, numerous storms, a severe freeze, and a major conflagration, but this last disaster left too little to build upon, and the place was abandoned. The county seat was moved back to Lavaca, which at about this time seems to have taken the name of Port Lavaca, and a new courthouse was built there in the following year. This town, which also had been a victim of the two hurricanes, was now perhaps Calhoun County's only port. But shipping had declined, not so much because of the storm as because intensive railroad building in the Texas interior was deflecting shipments to the overland route. The cattle business dropped off, too, and by 1890 the population for the entire county of Calhoun was only 815.
Calhoun County did not approximate its 1870 population again until 1910, when it had a census of 3,635. Railroad building, including the advent of the Missouri Pacific in 1910, an influx of farmers, development of the oyster-shipping industry, and the Port O'Connor project were principal factors in the regrowth. At the crest of this development, a $44,000 bond issue was voted to build a new courthouse, and on May 10, 1911, the building was accepted. In 1908, Thomas M. O'Connor's 70,000-acre Alligator Head Pasture passed into the hands of the Calhoun County Cattle Company, comprising citizens of Danville, Illinois, and Victoria, Texas. The company made proposals to the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico Railway, with the result that the railroad from Port O'Connor reached Seadrift in December 1909. Port O'Connor swiftly developed into a modern little city. The new faming populace turned to cotton as its principal crop, and a balanced agricultural program was not undertaken until 1933.
Meanwhile, Port Lavaca reared a seawall against Gulf storms in 1920, and became a large shipping center for fish, oysters, and shrimp, shipping more of these products in 1926 than any other place in the United States. Construction of a quick-freeze plant to facilitate the packing of seafood gave impetus to this industry at Port Lavaca. Natural gas was discovered north of port Lavaca in 1934 and in 1935 oil was found in paying quantities near the town. The new intracoastal canal was completed through Port O'Connor in 1939, forming the connecting link of an inland waterway from Corpus Christi to New Orleans.
At present, livestock interests control a large portion of the land. Perhaps half the acreage of the county is in prairie, the greater part of which runs from a black sand to hogwallow. Figs and citrus fruit do well, and most of the farmers and ranchers raise enough of these fruits for their home use. Irrigation is not needed, as the rainfall, which averages between 36 and 40 inches, is sufficient to meet every need. However, drainage is a problem, and many expensive projects have been attempted in seeking a solution. All of Calhoun County profits by the large and increasing amount of tourist trade. Port O'Connor, Magnolia Beach, and the site of Indianola have been made attractive for water, sports.