Kingsville Railroad Depot
Kingsville, Kleberg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Styled by standard plans of the builder, the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railroad Company; erected in 1904 of locally made adobe brick, this structure is one of oldest in Kingsville. It has seen interesting events involving traffic during border troubles and world wars I and II. The Missouri pacific system, in control of this road since 1925, phased out passenger traffic in 1966, but maintains a dispatcher's office in the building. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1974
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1904 of locally made adobe brick to the standard plans of the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railroad, this depot is among the oldest structures in Kingsville. Its platforms saw the traffic of border unrest and the mobilizations of both world wars before the Missouri Pacific system, which took over the line in 1925, ended passenger service in 1966. The building carried on as a dispatcher's office, a working relic of South Texas railroading.
Why it matters
The depot anchors Kingsville's identity as a railroad town on the ranching frontier of the King Ranch country, its adobe walls a reminder of how the rails knit the Texas borderlands to the wider nation.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Uriah Lott
Kingsville, TX
Albany, New York native Uriah Lott came to South Texas in 1868 and devoted his life to binding the region together with railroads. He chartered the line that became the Texas-Mexican Railroad, built the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway to 688 miles of track, and finally pushed rails to the southern tip of Texas, reaching Brownsville by 1904. The new town of Kingsville marked that arrival with a Fourth of July celebration.
Chamberlain Cemetery
Kingsville, TX
At the turn of the 20th century, King Ranch owner Henrietta King and neighboring ranchers backed the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway to move cattle to market, and the new railroad town of Kingsville rose around its headquarters. In 1908 a cemetery association bought forty acres and opened Chamberlain Cemetery the next year, naming it for Henrietta's father, pioneer minister Hiram Chamberlain. It became the resting place of Henrietta and Captain King, railroad visionary Uriah Lott, and other builders of South Texas.
Bishop
Bishop, TX
F. Z. Bishop founded this town in 1910 on land bought from the Driscoll Ranch, staking it on both sides of the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico railroad and dreaming of a model city on the prairie. He designed a uniform brick business district, planted 600 palm trees, laid miles of sidewalks, and planned a park with a lake and band pavilion; the town reached 1,000 residents within two years and incorporated in 1912. Though Bishop went bankrupt in 1916, the community endured, and mid-century oil and gas discoveries pushed petroleum past agriculture as its economic base.
Cattle Drives from South Texas
Corpus Christi, TX
By 1840 tens of thousands of wild longhorns roamed the brush country between the Rio Grande and the Gulf, so plentiful they were nearly worthless to the Texans who owned them. Ranchers began trailing small herds toward distant markets — New Orleans, Missouri, Ohio, even California and Chicago — but the real boom came after the Civil War, when hungry Northern cities and advancing railroads finally made the long drives pay. Feeder trails near here fed the great Chisholm and Dodge City routes to the Kansas railheads, and by 1880 some four million head had gone up the trail.