Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company
Taft, San Patricio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Coleman, Mathis, Fulton cattle company was formed in 1871 by partners George Ware Fulton, youngs Coleman, Tom Coleman, Thomas Henry Mathis, and J.M. Mathis, with headquarters in Rockport. The The Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company, with 167,000 acres of land, was organized in 1879 after the Mathis cousins left the partnership. Fulton was a pioneer in fencing of the open south Texas range and in shipping cattle by boat from company wharves. Continuing financial problems led Fulton to borrow funds for the company from David Sinton of Ohio. Eventually Sinton gained control of the company and at his death willed his interest to his daughter, Anna, wife of Charles P. Taft. The company became known locally as the Taft Ranch. Joseph F. Green became manager in 1900 and built the ranch into one of the largest and most innovative in the state, introducing new crops and cattle breeds. The city of Taft was formed in 1904 as a company town and was sold at auction in 1921. Constructed in 1923, this building was the last headquarters for the Taft Ranch. By 1928 all ranch enterprises had been sold. The company's charter expired in 1930, leaving the town of Taft as its legacy.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in 1879 from an earlier cattle partnership, the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company ran 167,000 acres of South Texas range and pioneered fencing the open range and shipping cattle by boat from its own wharves. Financial troubles passed control to Ohio investor David Sinton, whose son-in-law Charles P. Taft lent the ranch its name; under manager Joseph F. Green it became one of the state's largest and most innovative operations. The company town of Taft, platted in 1904, outlived the ranch, whose enterprises were sold off by 1928.
Why it matters
The Taft Ranch shows how large corporate cattle companies reshaped the South Texas frontier into a modern agribusiness landscape—leaving whole towns as their legacy.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
After the Civil War, South Texas was cattle country on a huge scale. Herds grazed open, unfenced range. Much of the business was about getting cattle from the coastal plains to markets far away, whether by long overland drives or by other routes.
The 1870s and 1880s brought change. Barbed wire became widely available, and investors from the East and from Europe began pouring money into Western ranching. The open range started to close. Ranching was turning from a frontier venture into a corporate business with partners, charters and outside capital.
On the Texas coast near Rockport, that shift took a particular form. The Gulf offered a way to ship cattle by water. Land that had been grazed in common was being bought, surveyed and fenced into huge private holdings. The Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company grew up inside all of that.
People & events
The story starts in 1871 with a partnership of five men: George Ware Fulton, Youngs Coleman, Tom Coleman, Thomas Henry Mathis and J.M. Mathis. They ran cattle out of Rockport. In 1879, after the Mathis cousins left, the rest of the partnership reorganized as the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company, with about 167,000 acres.
Fulton was the innovator. He was among the first to fence the open South Texas range, and he shipped cattle by boat from the company's own wharves. The ideas were bold, but money was always short. To keep going, Fulton borrowed from David Sinton, a wealthy Ohio investor, and Sinton eventually took control. When Sinton died, his interest passed to his daughter Anna and her husband, Charles P. Taft. Locals started calling the whole operation the Taft Ranch.
The ranch's biggest years came under Joseph F. Green, who became manager in 1900. Green brought in new crops and new cattle breeds and turned the ranch into one of the largest and most forward-looking in Texas. In 1904 the company founded the town of Taft as a company town, then sold it at auction in 1921. This building, put up in 1923, was the ranch's last headquarters. By 1928 all the ranch businesses had been sold, and in 1930 the company's charter ran out.
Its place in the American story
The Taft Ranch captures a turning point in the American West. It shows the change from cowboys on open range to corporations with fences and investors. Money from Ohio, managers on the ground, experimental crops and livestock breeding all point toward the modern agribusiness that followed.
It also shows how closely Texas ranching was tied to national wealth and power. Charles P. Taft, whose name the ranch carried, was the older brother of William Howard Taft, later President of the United States. Money and influence from the industrial Midwest shaped land thousands of miles away on the Texas coast.
The ranch's most lasting legacy is its towns. Across this part of South Texas the map carries the names of the people in this story: Taft, Sinton, Fulton and Mathis. Few ranches left such a clear mark. The company is long gone, but the communities it created are still here.
If you visit
The 1923 headquarters building is the thing to see. It's the last physical anchor of a business that once covered an enormous stretch of the coastal plain. Stand in front of it and picture it as the busy office of a ranch whose land reached far past the edge of town.
Then look around Taft itself. It was laid out as a company town, which helps explain its orderly shape. The flat, open farmland around it is part of what Joseph Green's experiments helped create.
For a road trip, follow the names. Drive between Taft, Sinton and the coast near Rockport and Fulton, where the partnership started and where cattle once went out by boat. The coastal bend is an easy, scenic drive, and the whole route tells one connected story.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · George Ware Fulton
- · Thomas Henry Mathis
- · David Sinton
- · Charles P. Taft
- · Joseph F. Green
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sodville Community
Sinton, TX
In 1907–08 an Iowa land developer partnered with the vast Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company to market 56,000 acres of South Texas brushland to Midwestern buyers, and Mexican migrant laborers cleared mesquite so thick that prospects had to blaze their own trails. The settlement that grew here took the promotional name Sodville for its fertile soil, sprouting a school, stores, cotton gins, and churches through the 1910s and 1920s. As rural Texans drifted toward cities after mid-century, its school consolidated, its stores closed, and by 2000 only a corner and a few homes remained.
Rincon Ranch
Gregory, TX
In the 1850s Youngs Coleman and his son Thomas built a sprawling south Texas cattle operation centered on this spot, chosen for its freshwater depression. In 1871 the Colemans partnered with George W. Fulton and the Mathis brothers to create the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company, whose Rincon headquarters grew into a small settlement with a main house, worker housing, a school, and a commissary. The ranch was prominent enough that President William Howard Taft visited in 1909 before the company dissolved in the 1920s.
St. Paul
St. Paul, TX
St. Paul was born of a 1910 land promotion, when developer George H. Paul bought 70,000 acres and, with the Shary Land Company, platted a townsite and advertised it across the Midwest. Excursion trains carried prospective settlers from Kansas City twice a month, and the town boomed with homes, a three-story hotel, stores, schools, and a company farm employing up to 300 workers. By the 1920s cotton gins hummed and eight trains a day passed through, though the town declined after World War II as residents left for the cities.
John Howland Wood and Nancy Clark Wood House
Bayside, TX
A New Yorker trained in trade and painting, John Howland Wood crossed to Texas in 1836 in time to fight at San Jacinto, then settled as a quartermaster, merchant, and cattleman. With his wife Nancy he built a mercantile empire and vast landholdings on the coast, naming their ranch 'Bonnie View.' After lightning destroyed their first house, they raised this 1875 mansion on its foundations — a Greek Revival plan dressed in exuberant Italianate detail, complete with a widow's walk recalling Wood's native New York.