Great Land Lottery of Aransas Pass
Aransas Pass, San Patricio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1909, real estate developers E.O. Burton and A.H. Danforth embarked upon a land promotion scheme to take advantage of available land in Aransas Pass. They hired journalist W.H. Vernor to produce the "Aransas Pass Progress", which promoted Aransas Pass and the pending land sale across the country by U.S. Mail. Promoter A.D. Powers was hired to carefully handle the sale to avoid its being seen as a lottery by the postal department. Six thousand tickets, each representing a town lot, were sold for $100 each. Ticket holders were then to come to Aransas Pass to bid on lots; they were not to bid more than $100, and thus the tickets could be exchanged directly for lots. Nearly all 6,000 lots were sold during the auction sales in December 1909. All went well until postal inspectors who had secured tickets purposefully overbid, which muddled the sale and led to several legal battles. As a result of the great land lottery of 1909, Aransas Pass did see substantial growth. The money collected in overbids went into a trust that eventually served to fund public and school libraries, including the one at this site.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1909 developers E.O. Burton and A.H. Danforth hatched an audacious scheme to sell off Aransas Pass, hiring a journalist to promote the town by mail and a promoter to disguise the sale as an auction rather than an illegal lottery. Six thousand tickets sold for $100 each, one per lot, and buyers gathered that December to 'bid' — until postal inspectors deliberately overbid, muddling the sale and spawning lawsuits. The town still grew substantially, and the overbid money went into a trust that funded public and school libraries, including the one on this spot.
Why it matters
It's a vivid slice of the boosterism and land-promotion mania that built the American West, where a shady sales gimmick could brush up against federal mail-fraud law and still leave a town its libraries.
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Related people
- · E.O. Burton
- · A.H. Danforth
Themes & tags
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