Cuero
Cuero, DeWitt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded 1873 with arrival of Gulf, Western, Texas and Pacific Railroad. County seat moved here from Clinton, 1876. Population grew after coastal storms of 1875 and 1886 destroyed Indianola and refugees from there made a new start here. Home of Turkey Trot, begun in 1912. Farming, ranching, oil and gas center.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Cuero sprang up in 1873 when the railroad arrived in the DeWitt County coastal plain, and it took the county seat from Clinton three years later. Its population swelled after the great coastal storms of 1875 and 1886 destroyed the port of Indianola, sending refugees inland to start over here. A farming, ranching, and later oil-and-gas center, Cuero also became famous for its Turkey Trot, begun in 1912.
Why it matters
Cuero's rise captures how the railroad, not the seacoast, decided which Texas towns would live and die in the late nineteenth century — Indianola's loss was Cuero's making.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Morgan Steamship Line
Cuero, TX
Charles Morgan launched the first mail and passenger steamship service between the United States and Texas, putting the Columbia on the New Orleans–to–Galveston run in 1835 and soon operating cargo and mail lines all along the coast and to Mexico. From his base at Indianola his ships carried cotton, sugar, army supplies for frontier forts, and even loads of Mexican gold and silver bound for the U.S. mints. After the Civil War he expanded into railroads and dug the Houston Ship Channel in 1875, before the line passed to Southern Pacific in 1883.
The Bates-Sheppard House
Cuero, TX
When a hurricane leveled the Gulf port of Indianola in 1886, the seafaring Sheppard family did not simply mourn a lost home — they salvaged its lumber, loaded it onto railcars, and rebuilt inland at Cuero. Reassembled that same fall, the Victorian house sheltered three generations of the Bates and Sheppard families, including a hardware merchant and city alderman and a Southern Pacific railroad agent. It stayed in the family until 1968 and was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1978.
Cuero Land and Immigration Company
Cuero, TX
Chartered in early 1872, the Cuero Land and Immigration Company set out to develop more than 4,000 acres carved from an 1833 Mexican land grant. Its founders were men of standing — among them civil engineer and congressman Gustav Schleicher and Fletcher S. Stockdale, who had briefly served as governor of Texas in 1865. By donating land to lure the Gulf, Western Texas and Pacific Railway, the company brought the first train in March 1873, touching off a land boom that made Cuero a thriving railroad terminus and civic center.
Old Chisholm Trail
Cuero, TX
On April 1, 1866, some 1,800 longhorns gathered by Crockett Cardwell moved out from near this DeWitt County site on the first great trail drive from the area to northern markets, with local man Thornton Chisholm as trail boss. The route joined the famous Chisholm Trail — marked in part by scout Jesse Chisholm — winding past Austin, Georgetown, and Red River Station into the Indian Territory. In the first postwar year alone, 260,000 Texas cattle went up the trail, and over three decades at least ten million followed, driven north by Texas cowboys in the greatest movement of livestock in history.