Site Planned for a Regional Trade Center: Simmons, Texas
Three Rivers, Live Oak County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Originally ranch land, bought in 1900 by Dr. C.F. Simmons (Wealthy St. Louis manufacturer of "Liver Regulator"), who also built this all-faiths church, 1908. After Simmons' son and heir died of snake bite, he sold 60,000--acre ranch to 4,200 small farmers and provided buildings for this rural community. (1969)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1900 Dr. C. F. Simmons, a wealthy St. Louis patent-medicine manufacturer, bought this South Texas ranch land with grand ambitions, even building an all-faiths church here in 1908. When his son and heir died of a snakebite, Simmons changed course, breaking up the 60,000-acre ranch among some 4,200 small farmers and furnishing buildings for the rural community he hoped would rise.
Why it matters
The site captures the promotional land-colonization schemes that carved South Texas ranches into farm colonies in the early 1900s.
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Related people
- · Dr. C. F. Simmons
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Calliham
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Three Rivers
Three Rivers, TX
Founded in March 1913 by Charles R. Tips, this South Texas townsite was first chartered as Hamiltonburg for a local family, with lots going on sale that Fourth of July. The following year the Post Office renamed it Three Rivers to mark the nearby meeting of the Nueces, Atascosa, and Frio rivers. Ranching and farming gave way, over time, to an economy also built on gas, oil, and recreation.
First State Bank Building
Three Rivers, TX
This building housed the First State Bank and the office of C. R. Tips, who founded the city of Three Rivers in 1914. As the town's early financial and business center, it anchored the young community during its founding years in the South Texas brush country. It stands as a tangible link to the man and the moment that put Three Rivers on the map.
Cunningham Home
Three Rivers, TX
When newspaperman Jim Cunningham's town of Oakville was bypassed by the railroad, he moved his family and the Live Oak County Leader seven miles west to the raw new settlement that became Three Rivers, where in 1913 he contracted the town's first permanent home. The five-room frame house blended Prairie, Foursquare, and Victorian touches, its long central hall and twelve-foot ceilings channeling coastal breezes through the rooms. From here the Cunninghams shaped the young town — publishing its paper, sitting on its first school board, and founding its first Baptist church.