Alice
Alice, Jim Wells County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In the 1880s, when the lines of the Corpus Christi, San Diego, & Rio Grande and the San Antonio & Aransas Pass railroads intersected, a new townsite was platted at the junction in what was then Nueces County. First called Bandana and then Kleberg, the town was finally named Alice (for Alice King Kleberg) when a post office was granted in 1888. Homes, business, schools, and churches were soon established. Texas Rangers serving in south Texas were headquartered in Alice. P. A. Presnall was elected the first mayor in 1904. Alice became the county seat of newly created Jim Wells County in 1911. (1988)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the 1880s two rail lines crossed in what was then Nueces County, and a townsite sprang up at the junction. Known first as Bandana and then Kleberg, it settled on the name Alice when a post office was granted in 1888, and homes, schools, and churches followed. Texas Rangers based their south Texas operations here, and in 1911 Alice became the seat of the newly created Jim Wells County.
Why it matters
Alice is a classic railroad-junction town, showing how the rail network conjured entire communities out of open country across late-nineteenth-century Texas.
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Related people
- · Alice King Kleberg
- · P. A. Presnall
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Alice Cemetery
Alice, TX
When two railroads crossed three miles from the old Collins community in the 1890s, a new town called Alice sprang up at the junction, and Frederic B. Nayer—who had helped sell its lots—donated ground for a burial place in 1903. First called the Alice Fraternal Cemetery, it was renamed after a cemetery association formed in 1925 under its first president, Martha Fawcus, who led the planting of a hundred oaks that still shade the grounds. Prominent citizens, veterans, and Texas Rangers rest among generations of South Texas families.
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In 1831, while Texas was still part of Mexico, Marcelino Lopez of Camargo secured a land grant from the state of Tamaulipas and founded Los Preseños on San Fernando Creek. The little settlement thrived on a trade route linking Corpus Christi with Laredo, San Diego, and Eagle Pass, and appeared on maps for nearly half a century. When N.G. Collins bought out the Lopez family in 1877 and platted the town of Collins, Los Preseños faded into memory.
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By 1840 tens of thousands of wild longhorns roamed the brush country between the Rio Grande and the Gulf, so plentiful they were nearly worthless to the Texans who owned them. Ranchers began trailing small herds toward distant markets — New Orleans, Missouri, Ohio, even California and Chicago — but the real boom came after the Civil War, when hungry Northern cities and advancing railroads finally made the long drives pay. Feeder trails near here fed the great Chisholm and Dodge City routes to the Kansas railheads, and by 1880 some four million head had gone up the trail.
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