Ingleside
Ingleside, San Patricio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Ingleside community began in the 1850s when George C. Hatch purchased land on both sides of the bayou. He later acquired 3,800 acres of land and sold land to other settlers who built homes on the bayou and Ingleside Cove. John Vineyard is credited with naming Ingleside Cove for his Scottish ancestral home. In 1854 George and Marcellus Turner settle in the area, and in 1857 Marcellus obtained a grant for the area's first post office. The Turners established the star cattle company and organized several cattle drives to northern markets. A general store was operated by Youngs Coleman. George Hatch introduced grape culture to the area, and his son John G. Hatch developed a prosperous vineyard in the 1880s. The Massi and Mircovich families were prominent in the fishing industry established here. The railway bypassed Ingleside in the late 1880s. Residents set up a new town site on the railroad in 1893, and in the early 1890s a large hotel was built on the cove. In later years, the economic base of the community was assisted by the establishment of an oil refinery, industrial development and a U.S. navy home port. The population of Ingleside grew steadily after the 1970s. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Ingleside grew up along a Gulf Coast bayou in the 1850s after George C. Hatch bought land and sold parcels to incoming settlers, with John Vineyard naming the cove for his Scottish home. Cattle drives, a Hatch-family vineyard, and a thriving fishing trade sustained the community until the railroad bypassed it in the late 1880s, prompting residents to plat a new townsite on the tracks. In the 20th century an oil refinery and a U.S. Navy home port reshaped its economy.
Why it matters
Ingleside's story compresses the whole sweep of Texas coastal development—open-range ranching, immigrant enterprise, the railroad's power to make or break a town, and the oil-and-military economy that followed.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · George C. Hatch
- · John Vineyard
- · Marcellus Turner
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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.
Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company
Taft, TX
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.
Pat Dunn Ranch
Corpus Christi, TX
Patrick Francis Dunn, Corpus Christi-born son of Irish immigrants, became the great cattleman of Padre Island. From 1884 he grazed cattle down the long barrier island, using the Laguna Madre and the Gulf as natural fences and driving stock between corrals scattered along its 110 miles. In 1907 he built a two-story house from lumber and fine mahogany washed ashore from shipwrecks; a 1916 hurricane destroyed it, and after his death the Dunn family ranched the island until the last cattle were removed in 1970.
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.