Oakville Post Office
Oakville, Live Oak County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Irish immigrants settled this area as part of the John McMullen and James McGloin Mexican land grant. Located on the sulphur tributary of the Nueces River, this site was known as "on the sulphur". Live Oak County was organized in 1856 and "Oakville" was named county seat. Thomas Wilson gave 640 acres for the townsite stipulating that separate square be marked as public, graveyard, church, and school squares. Oakville grew as stores, two hotels, a livery stable, a school, and two churches were established. The Oakville post office was established May 11, 1857, with Joshua Hinton as the first postmaster. The mail came four times a week on stagecoaches traveling from San Antonio to Corpus Christi and on to Brownsville. By 1879 the San Antonio-Corpus Christi stage left both ends of the line six days a week. Stage travel became less popular with the arrival of the railroad. When the San Antonio, Uvalde & Gulf railroad bypassed Oakville in 1913, the town began to decline. The county seat was relocated in 1919 at George West. In 1966 the Oakville Post Office was designated as a rural branch of the Three Rivers Post Office and continues to serve the community.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Oakville grew up on land granted to Irish immigrants under the McMullen-McGloin Mexican colony, at a spot along the Nueces watershed once simply called "on the sulphur." When Live Oak County organized in 1856, Oakville became county seat, and its post office opened in 1857 with mail arriving by stagecoach on the San Antonio–Corpus Christi–Brownsville run. The town thrived until the railroad bypassed it in 1913 and the county seat moved away, though the post office still serves the community today.
Why it matters
Oakville's rise on stagecoach mail and its decline when the railroad passed it by tells the classic American story of how transportation routes made — and unmade — frontier towns.
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Related people
- · Thomas Wilson
- · Joshua Hinton
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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Crossing of Old Ox-Cart Roads
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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.
Live Oak County Courthouse
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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.