Alta Loma
Santa Fe, Galveston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Traveling west from the Gulf of Mexico the land rises gradually and becomes Alta Loma (Spanish for high land) in this area of Galveston County. In 1893 the Alta Loma Investment and Improvement Company platted a townsite here along a Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad line built in the late 1870s. The company developed water, electric, and telephone utility systems and helped establish churches, a depot, hotel, lumber company, general store, school, and a post office. Many of Alta Loma's new residents engaged in the farm production of pears, plums, figs, strawberries, grapes, and other fruits and vegetables. The school, depot, and businesses throughout Alta Loma were damaged in the 1900 storm. The town rebuilt and witnessed a period of rapid growth fueled by truck farming and a burgeoning dairy industry. Alta Loma and the nearby towns of Algoa and Arcadia formed the Santa Fe Consolidated School District in 1928. In the 1930s many Alta Lomans left farming for jobs in Texas City's burgeoning petroleum industry. the town continued to grow and in 1966 the Alta Loma Business Association was formed. Alta Loma and its neighboring community, Arcadia, officially merged in 1978 to form the incorporated city of Santa Fe.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Named with the Spanish for "high land," Alta Loma rose on the gently swelling ground of inland Galveston County. In 1893 an investment company platted a townsite along a Santa Fe rail line and installed water, electric, and telephone systems to draw settlers, many of whom planted orchards and truck farms. Battered by the great 1900 storm, the town rebuilt and thrived on farming and dairying before its residents drifted toward Texas City's oil jobs; in 1978 it merged with Arcadia to form the city of Santa Fe.
Why it matters
Alta Loma's rise, ruin, and rebirth capture how railroads, promotional land companies, and hurricanes shaped settlement along the Texas Gulf Coast.
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Related events
- · 1900 Galveston hurricane
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Hitchcock Depot
Hitchcock, TX
By local tradition, the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad won its right-of-way through Emily Hitchcock's land in 1875 by promising a depot bearing her late husband's name. The railroad platted the town of Hitchcock in 1891, and the depot that opened by 1893 became a hub where passengers, freight, and farm produce all passed through. The last surviving GCSF depot in the area, it was moved to this spot in 1975 and turned into a museum in 1982.
Dairy Industry in the Santa Fe Area
Santa Fe, TX
The railroad hamlets of Arcadia, Alta Loma, and Algoa sprang up in the 1890s, and by the turn of the century their economy ran on citrus, figs, truck farming, and a fast-growing dairy trade. Creameries shipped butter and milk to Galveston and Houston by rail, and by the 1920s dairying was so common that, as locals told it, nearly everyone kept a cow. Stock laws, consolidation, and the postwar drift of workers to city jobs slowly squeezed the small operators, and the last Santa Fe-area dairy closed in the 1970s.
City of Hitchcock
Hitchcock, TX
Once Karankawa country and later open cattle range, this stretch of Galveston County gained a town when the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway pushed through in the 1870s and named the station for civic leader Lent Munson Hitchcock. Truck farmers turned it into a fruit-and-vegetable center with stores, churches, and a school by the 1890s, until farming declined and men found work in nearby Texas City. World War II brought the biggest change of all: Camp Wallace trained anti-aircraft crews here, and a blimp base flew submarine patrols over the Gulf from 1941 to 1945.
Dickinson Station of the GH&H Railroad
Dickinson, TX
Chartered in 1853, the Galveston, Houston, and Henderson Railroad was the first line to reach the Texas coast, its early wood-burning engines "Perseverance" and "Brazos" rattling across a trestle spanning Galveston Bay by 1859. The "Old Reliable Short Line" carried real military weight during the Civil War, aiding the Confederate recapture of Galveston. This 1902 depot, designed by architect George B. Stowe, later served excursion crowds and shipped the region's fruit and vegetables to market before being moved here in 1967 and reborn as a museum.