Nueces County
Corpus Christi, Nueces County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Created April 18, 1846, Organized July 13, 1846 Named for the river which, in 1689, Alonso de Leon called the Nueces because of the many Pecan trees on its banks. Corpus Christi county seat
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Nueces County was created and organized in 1846, in the first months of Texas statehood, with Corpus Christi as its seat. It takes its name from the Nueces River, which the Spanish explorer Alonso de León is said to have called "Nueces" — nuts — in 1689 for the many pecan trees along its banks. The county's name thus carries a Spanish colonial memory into the era of the young American state.
Why it matters
The county's founding marks the moment newly annexed Texas organized its southern reaches, while its name preserves a Spanish explorer's centuries-old encounter with the land.
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Related people
- · Alonso de León
Related events
- · Creation of Nueces County (1846)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Nueces County
Corpus Christi, TX
Nueces County takes its name from the 'River of Nuts' that forms its northern border, a country touched early by Spanish explorers and marked by the frontier post of Lipantitlan. The area passed into Anglo-American hands during the Texas Revolution, and in 1845 U.S. Army forces camped here on their way to the fighting of the Mexican-American War. The county itself was created in 1846 and organized the next year with Corpus Christi as its seat.
Nueces County Courthouse of 1914
Corpus Christi, TX
The first courthouse on this block went up in 1853, when Nueces County stretched from Corpus Christi to the Mexican border and lawlessness prompted a seat of order; the land was bought for $300 from city founder Henry Lawrence Kinney. A second courthouse followed in the 1870s, and in 1914 this neo-classical building was completed for $250,000 to designs by Washington architect Harvey L. Page. Its top two floors held the jail, set off by an air space to muffle noise, and during the great storms that battered Corpus Christi hundreds of refugees sheltered within its walls before county offices moved on in 1977.
John Dix
Corpus Christi, TX
Born in Massachusetts in 1796, John Dix packed several American lifetimes into one: a teenage privateer in the War of 1812, a shipwrecked sea captain, a Michigan town founder, and a private in the Texian army during the Texas Revolution. Settling at Corpus Christi, he prospered as a sheep rancher and federal revenue inspector before the Civil War split his family — Dix, a staunch Unionist, was indicted for treason against the Confederacy in 1864. After the war he served as chief justice of Nueces County until near his death in 1870.
George Owens
Corpus Christi, TX
Born into slavery in Kentucky in 1843, George Owens enlisted in the Union Army in 1864 and served with the 116th United States Colored Infantry through the Appomattox Campaign that ended the Civil War. He then joined the newly formed 9th Cavalry—one of the regiments Plains nations called Buffalo Soldiers—patrolling and guarding the west Texas frontier before settling in Corpus Christi, where he died in 1879.