Live Oak County
George West, Live Oak County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Created by legislature Feb. 2, 1856, and organized August 4 with Oakville as county seat. Formed from San Patricio and Nueces Counties. Named for its Live Oak trees. County seat moved, 1919, to George West on railroad. Center for ranching, farming, petroleum production and processing. Recreation areas include Tips State Park and Lake Corpus Christi. Historic sites are Fort Ramirez, first settlement; Fort Merrill, built 1850 to protect early settlers; Brownsville-San Antonio Oxcart Road, used by general Santa Anna on the way to the Alamo. Other sites marked.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Carved from San Patricio and Nueces Counties in 1856 and named for its live oaks, this South Texas county grew up around ranching along old roads that once carried Santa Anna's army toward the Alamo. Its first seat at Oakville gave way in 1919 to George West when the railroad reshaped the map. Ranching, farming, and petroleum have long defined its economy.
Why it matters
The county's story traces the layered history of South Texas—from Spanish-era oxcart roads and frontier forts to the railroads and oil that remade the region.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
City of George West
George West, TX
George West was quite literally willed into being by the rancher whose name it carries. In 1913, George Washington West secured a railroad route through Live Oak County and donated municipal buildings and lots to seed a new town along the line. Within six years it had wrested away the county seat, and it grew into a busy market and shipping point for the region's cattle and cotton.
Live Oak County Courthouse
George West, TX
Live Oak County was created in 1852 with its seat at Oakville, but the railroad era reshuffled the map: cattleman George Washington West, master of a 200,000-acre ranch, platted a new town and lured the county seat to it in 1919. He promptly deeded a full block, and the 1920 courthouse rose in dignified classical revival brick and cast stone—among the last works of noted San Antonio architect Alfred Giles, who died before it was finished. For more than a century it has hosted not only trials but weddings, rallies, and county celebrations.
Crossing of Old Ox-Cart Roads
George West, TX
From Spanish colonial days into statehood, travel across this part of Texas depended on rough dirt tracks, many simply called "ox-cart roads" for the wooden Mexican carts that lumbered along them. This site marked the junction of two such roads — one from Brownsville to San Antonio, the other from Laredo to Goliad and on to the coast at Indianola. Built entirely of wood and rawhide, the carts stood taller than a man, squealed so loudly that drivers greased their hubs with prickly pear, and for two centuries carried nearly all the freight in Texas.
Gussettville
Gussettville, TX
Gussettville began in the 1830s when Irish Catholic settlers of the McMullen and McGloin colony put down roots in South Texas, first calling the place "Fox Nation" before renaming it for storekeeper N. Gussett in the 1850s. The community built the first Catholic church in Live Oak County in 1874 on land donated by Thomas and Anne Shannon, and thrived as a stop on the San Antonio–Brownsville stagecoach line. Like hundreds of similar towns, it withered once the railroad passed it by, leaving the church as its chief surviving landmark.