Camp Ranch Community
Floresville, Wilson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This area located west of Floresville was one of the largest ranches in the cattle-driving era. During the 1700s and 1800s, the area, being prime cattle ranch land, dominated the pre-Wilson County economy and served as a gathering point of small herds creating larger herds to trail up north. In 1731, the meadowland west of the San Antonio River was owned by Mission Espada with the ranch headquarters being the compound of Rancho de Las Cabras. In 1874, John F. Camp purchased and began developing the prairie ranch land. By 1904, Camp's ranch, having increased size to approximately 10,000 acres, was sold to S.V. Houston, H.S. Tom and William Green. The new owners were land developers and began dividing the ranch into smaller acreage tracts to settlers from surrounding counties. Then the small, prosperous Camp Ranch community, named after John F. Camp, began to develop as twenty families moved to the area. To encourage additional development, the new landowners built a one-room school house known as Green School. Later, a larger school was built named Camp Ranch School. Other additions were the Evergreen Cemetery, dance platform, Evergreen Shooting Club and baseball field. Around 1912, resident Charley Boening added a filling station, garage, general repair shop and grocery store. Although many of these tangible reminders of the town have been lost to time, the Evergreen Cemetery remains as a connection to the Camp Ranch community heritage. (2017)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
West of present Floresville lay some of the richest cattle country of the great trail-driving era, where small herds were gathered into large ones bound north. The land traced back to Mission Espada's 1731 Rancho de Las Cabras before John F. Camp bought and built it up in 1874; by 1904 developers had carved his 10,000-acre spread into farm tracts, and twenty families formed the Camp Ranch community with a school, cemetery, shooting club, and Charley Boening's store. Most traces are gone, but Evergreen Cemetery still marks where the community stood.
Why it matters
The site layers Spanish mission ranching, the golden age of the Texas cattle drive, and the settlement that followed—one landscape holding three chapters of how the ranching frontier was made and remade.
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Related people
- · John F. Camp
- · Charley Boening
Themes & tags
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