President William Howard Taft Visits Taft
Taft, San Patricio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1908, Charles P. Taft, director of the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company (also known as Taft Ranch) extended an invitation to his half-brother, newly-elected President William Howard Taft, to visit the 165,000-acre Taft Ranch and the Taft community. The President agreed to come in October 1909. Charles Taft and ranch manager Joseph F. Green immediately began preparations for the event. Green had a nine-hole golf course built at La Quinta, his estate near Gregory where the President would stay during his visit. He also built the 22-room Green Hotel in Gregory to house the press corps and additional visitors. President Taft's special railroad car arrived in Gregory on October 20, 1909. An automobile procession took the presidential party to La Quinta, where they were greeted by Texas Governor Thomas M. Campbell. The following day the President visited Taft, where he spoke to citizens assembled at the local school and enjoyed ice cream at the company creamery. A barbeque and rodeo were held at the Rincon Ranch in the President's honor, and he later visited Corpus Christi, where he spoke to a crowd of 15,000 people. (1991)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1908 Charles P. Taft, a director of the sprawling 165,000-acre Taft Ranch, invited his half-brother, President-elect William Howard Taft, to visit the Gulf Coast community that bore the family name. Elaborate preparations followed—a nine-hole golf course and a 22-room hotel for the press—and in October 1909 the President's railroad car arrived, met by the Texas governor. Taft toured the town, spoke at the school, ate ice cream at the company creamery, and enjoyed a barbecue and rodeo held in his honor before addressing a crowd of 15,000 in Corpus Christi.
Why it matters
The visit shows how a sitting president's tour could put a company-owned ranch town on the national map, blending Gulf Coast ranching with Gilded Age family power.
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Related people
- · William Howard Taft
- · Charles P. Taft
- · Joseph F. Green
- · Thomas M. Campbell
Related events
- · President Taft's 1909 visit to Taft
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company
Taft, TX
Organized in 1879 from an earlier cattle partnership, the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company ran 167,000 acres of South Texas range and pioneered fencing the open range and shipping cattle by boat from its own wharves. Financial troubles passed control to Ohio investor David Sinton, whose son-in-law Charles P. Taft lent the ranch its name; under manager Joseph F. Green it became one of the state's largest and most innovative operations. The company town of Taft, platted in 1904, outlived the ranch, whose enterprises were sold off by 1928.
First United Methodist Church of Taft
Taft, TX
Organized in December 1910 as part of a circuit spanning Taft, Gregory, Portland and Ingleside, this Methodist congregation shared halls and school buildings with local Presbyterians before erecting the first permanent church in Taft in 1921 on land given by the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company. The two denominations parted in 1923, and a new Methodist building followed in 1924, with a fresh sanctuary opening on Easter Sunday, 1949. Its members even pooled scarce funds to help launch Southern Methodist University in 1911.
Sodville Community
Sinton, TX
In 1907–08 an Iowa land developer partnered with the vast Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company to market 56,000 acres of South Texas brushland to Midwestern buyers, and Mexican migrant laborers cleared mesquite so thick that prospects had to blaze their own trails. The settlement that grew here took the promotional name Sodville for its fertile soil, sprouting a school, stores, cotton gins, and churches through the 1910s and 1920s. As rural Texans drifted toward cities after mid-century, its school consolidated, its stores closed, and by 2000 only a corner and a few homes remained.
Site of West Portland
Portland, TX
After the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad reached this area in the 1880s, a 1908 land deal handed 14,000 acres to an Iowa promoter who mounted a huge advertising campaign, drawing trainloads of prospective buyers—mostly from Kansas—to settle West Portland. Mexican migrant workers cleared the mesquite and farmers worked the rich black soil, building a school that doubled as a community center and, in 1922, a cooperative cotton gin that became the heart of the district. The school consolidated with Taft in 1939, but descendants of the original settlers still own much of the land.