Medio Creek
Beeville, Bee County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Named by the Spaniards about 1800 because of its midway position between the San Antonio and Nueces Rivers. Rises in Karnes County; empties into Mission River. Crossed by explorers, padres, soldiers, settlers who traveled on three early ox-cart roads that led from Mexico to Mission La Bahia at Goliad. The Cart War of 1857, between Texas and Mexican teamsters on the freight route between San Antonio and Gulf ports, originated along San Patricio Road, southernmost of the three roads. The Mexican cart drivers used mesquite beans as feed for their teams, starting the mesquite brush which thrives along creek. Settlers were attracted here by the tall grass, and many veterans of the Texas Revolution were given bounty lands in the area. First post office in Bee County was established in 1857 at Medio Hill pioneer community, once a down-creek settlement. In 1909, the town of Candlish was founded within 50 feet of here, with a hotel, general store, school. The store closed; Candlish became a ghost town. In 1938-39 on Medio and Blanco creeks, fossil beds yielded 1,000,000-year-old fossils of a new mastodon species (named Buckner's Mastodon), rhinoceros, elephants, alligators, camels and three-toed horses. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1967 Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1967
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Spaniards named this creek 'Medio'—middle—around 1800 for its position midway between the San Antonio and Nueces Rivers, and explorers, padres, soldiers, and settlers crossed it on three ox-cart roads running from Mexico to Mission La Bahía at Goliad. The freight route sparked the 1857 Cart War between Texan and Mexican teamsters, and Mexican drivers' mesquite-bean feed helped seed the brush that lines the banks today. A downstream community rose and fell here—the town of Candlish, founded in 1909, became a ghost town—while nearby fossil beds later yielded a new species of mastodon.
Why it matters
The creek gathers the whole layered story of the region: Spanish naming, cart-road commerce, ethnic conflict, boom-and-bust settlement, and deep prehistory in one place.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related events
- · Cart War of 1857
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Railroad in Bee County
Beeville, TX
On June 14, 1886, the first San Antonio and Aransas Pass train steamed into Beeville to a cheering crowd — the payoff of a campaign by rail promoter Uriah Lott, cattleman Captain A.C. Jones, and rancher Frank Skidmore, who donated land and money to bend the line through Bee County. When a second line arrived in 1889, Beeville became a rail center shipping cattle and cotton far and wide, with passenger service peaking around 1918 at eighteen trains a day on one line. Highways eventually undid it all: passenger service ended in 1952, the depot fell in 1958, and the last train left the county in 1994.
Bee County
Pettus, TX
Carved largely from San Patricio County in 1857 and organized in 1858, Bee County took its name from Barnard E. Bee, who served the Republic of Texas as secretary of war, secretary of state, and minister to the United States. A cattle region since Spanish colonial times, it became an important beef producer after 1865 and gained its first railroad, the San Antonio and Aransas Pass, in 1886. Oil was discovered here in 1929, and the county seat has been at Beeville since 1860.
Cabeza Creek Crossing on the La Bahia-Bexar Road
Goliad, TX
For nearly a century this ford on a San Antonio River tributary carried travelers along the La Bahía–Bexar road, a branch of the Spanish Camino Real linking the Gulf presidios to Bexar and, ultimately, to Mexico City. After the Presidio La Bahía and Mission Espíritu Santo resettled nearby in 1749, the crossing became a working artery for soldiers, ranchers, and traders, charted by Spanish captains and later mapped by Stephen F. Austin and the naturalist Berlandier. German immigrants of the 1840s followed the same ruts to new homes, until the railroads finally rendered the old road obsolete.
Campbellton
Campbellton, TX
Atascosa County was carved from Bexar County in 1856, and this community took its name from John Campbell, an Irish immigrant who came to Texas as a boy and began ranching here around 1857. After Confederate service in the Civil War, Campbell returned to open a store, run a mail relay, and in 1874 establish the first post office; by 1880 he donated land for a school that doubled as a church. Rail service arrived in 1913 and oil in the 1950s, but ranching endured even after Interstate 37 rerouted travelers away.