Poteet
Poteet, Atascosa County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The town of Poteet traces its history to the 1880s, when Francis Marion Poteet (1833-1907) established a mercantile store northeast of this area. A blacksmith and farmer as well as a merchant, Poteet began providing mail service to his customers. Poteet sold his business to Henry T. Mumme (1870-1947) before 1900. Mumme continued to offer postal service at the store, and in 1910 he and his wife Ida (1869-1942) donated 400 acres of land for a new townsite. Since the area had been referred to as Poteet as a result of the early mail service, the new town was named in honor of Francis Marion Poteet. Mumme moved his store to the new townsite in 1911. Mumme drilled the town's first artesian water well and is credited with introducing the cultivation of strawberries here. The artesian water, together with the sandy soil of the region, proved ideal for growing the berries. Known statewide for its superior quality strawberries, Poteet has been nicknamed the "Strawberry Capital of Texas." The town grew steadily after 1910, with the establishment of schools, churches, homes, and businesses. It was incorporated in 1926. (1989)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Poteet grew from an 1880s mercantile store run by Francis Marion Poteet, a merchant, blacksmith, and farmer who also carried the mail—so that the area took on his name. Henry T. Mumme bought the business, kept the post office, and in 1910 he and his wife Ida donated 400 acres for a new townsite; Mumme drilled the first artesian well and introduced strawberry farming. The sandy soil and artesian water proved ideal, earning Poteet its title as the "Strawberry Capital of Texas."
Why it matters
Poteet's rise from a country store to an agricultural boomtown captures how a single crop and a good water source could define a community's identity across South Texas.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Francis Marion Poteet
- · Henry T. Mumme
- · Ida Mumme
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Jose Antonio Navarro Ranch Headquarters
Poteet, TX
This land along the Atascosa River was first set aside in the 1700s for a San Antonio mission, then lay unsettled until José Antonio Navarro secured it as a Mexican land grant in 1831. Navarro was no ordinary rancher—in 1836 he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence—but by the 1850s he had made this his working ranch, running hundreds of cattle and summering in a log house above the river. He passed the ranch to his sons after the Civil War, and it stayed in the family until 1894.
Jourdanton
Jourdanton, TX
In 1909 two entrepreneurs—merchant Jourdan Campbell and Danish wool-and-mohair man Theodore Zanderson—laid out a town on their ranch and persuaded a land speculator to bring the railroad through; the first train arrived that September. Jourdanton quickly gained utilities, a bank, a newspaper and churches, and in 1910 wrested the county seat from Pleasanton. Oil and gas discoveries in the 1940s and later lignite mining kept the town growing well after the railroads stopped running.
Fairview
Floresville, TX
Fairview sprang up after the Civil War when Henry Hudson opened a store on the Old Oakville Road, gaining a post office in 1868 and growing into a cotton town with churches, a school, a gin, and a Masonic lodge. The boll weevil and other pests ravaged the cotton crop, and the community faded after World War I. Fairview's proudest legacy was its lawmen — twenty-seven peace officers including twenty Texas Rangers, among them Frank Hamer, who pursued and helped bring down Depression-era outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.
Camp Ranch Community
Floresville, TX
West of present Floresville lay some of the richest cattle country of the great trail-driving era, where small herds were gathered into large ones bound north. The land traced back to Mission Espada's 1731 Rancho de Las Cabras before John F. Camp bought and built it up in 1874; by 1904 developers had carved his 10,000-acre spread into farm tracts, and twenty families formed the Camp Ranch community with a school, cemetery, shooting club, and Charley Boening's store. Most traces are gone, but Evergreen Cemetery still marks where the community stood.