Sodville Community
Sinton, San Patricio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
George H. Paul, a land developer from Iowa, joined forces with the giant Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company in 1907 and 1908 to sell 56,000 acres of land for a development. Mexican migrant laborers cleared the area of brush, which was so thick that prospective buyers had to mark their paths. Sodville was probably named for its fertile soil when the real estate agency was creating promotional literature for prospective buyers in the midwest. Land sold at a steady pace, and in 1908 there were enough children in the area to prompt T. F. Harwood to donate land on which to build the Sodville school. By 1910 Mynier's store served the community. A Union church met in the schoolhouse, brush arbors and other locations. Hall Industries of Beeville bought Mynier's interest in the store and built two cotton gins in the area. The company later sold its interest in Sodville to W. A. Dunn, whose store and the corner on which it stood became community institutions. The Sodville Baptist Church organized in 1914 and the congregation met in its own building by 1916. In 1919-1920 T. F. Harwood donated more land to the school, and the Sodville Independent School District formed. By the 1930s Sodville had about 50 residents and three businesses; the roads were paved. A brick schoolhouse was erected in 1938. As people left farms and rural areas for cities in the second half of the 20th century, the population of communities such as Sodville declined. The school district was consolidated with Sinton schools in 1947; Dunn's store closed in the mid-1950s. The Sodville Baptist Church disbanded in 1961. Dunn's corner, near this site, and a few homes were all that remained of the Sodville community at the end of the 20th century. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
Sodville captures the boom-and-fade arc of hundreds of early-20th-century Texas farm towns conjured by real-estate promotion and immigrant labor, then hollowed out by the great rural-to-urban migration.
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Related people
- · George H. Paul
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.
St. Paul
St. Paul, TX
St. Paul was born of a 1910 land promotion, when developer George H. Paul bought 70,000 acres and, with the Shary Land Company, platted a townsite and advertised it across the Midwest. Excursion trains carried prospective settlers from Kansas City twice a month, and the town boomed with homes, a three-story hotel, stores, schools, and a company farm employing up to 300 workers. By the 1920s cotton gins hummed and eight trains a day passed through, though the town declined after World War II as residents left for the cities.
John Dunn, Jr. Homesite
Corpus Christi, TX
The Dunn homesite grew from the ambitions of an Irish immigrant family who built an empire of South Texas land. John Dunn, Sr., arrived from Ireland in 1851 and began buying up property in Nueces County, passing this parcel to his son, who started as a boy herding sheep and ended up owning nearly 12,000 acres. John Dunn, Jr., built the first section of this ranch house in 1889 as he prepared to marry, and it grew room by room as headquarters for his cattle operations and as his family expanded.
Matthew Dunn
Corpus Christi, TX
Matthew Dunn arrived from Ireland and hitched his fortunes to the American army, enlisting as a sutler — a civilian supplier — with Gen. Zachary Taylor's troops, who landed at Corpus Christi in 1845 on the eve of the Mexican War. There he met Col. Henry Kinney, the town's founding promoter, who urged Dunn to bring his four brothers over from Ireland; between 1849 and 1868 they did, and Kinney deeded Dunn some of his land. From this frontier foothold the Dunns became one of South Texas's prominent families.