Taft Agricultural Industrial Complex
Taft, San Patricio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company laid out the town of Taft on the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad line in 1900. The intention of the company directors was to present Taft and surrounding farms as a model community to attract Northern investors. By 1904 a post office and a company commissary had opened near the rail line, and soon other businesses and homes were built nearby. To promote the area's economic possibilities and the ease with which potential farmers and ranchers could market their products, the company planned a large agricultural industrial complex in the center of town. By 1909 they had built a slaughter and packing house, a cold storage facility and ice plant, and a cottonseed oil mill. By 1921, the complex also included two cotton gins, a feed mill, cotton compress, creamery and ice cream factory, and machine shop. As the company plan came to fruition, settlement and land values increased and the company realized a profit as it began selling off all of its holdings. Once solely a company town, Taft soon became diversified as the company presence gradually disappeared. Some of the industrial complex facilities remained in operation under private ownership until the 1950s. (1991)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Laid out along the rail line in 1900 by the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company, Taft was designed from the start as a model community to lure Northern investors and farmers. At its heart the company built a sprawling agricultural-industrial complex—a slaughter and packing house, cold storage and ice plant, cottonseed oil mill, cotton gins, a creamery, and more. As land values rose and the company sold off its holdings, the once-tightly-controlled company town diversified into an independent community.
Why it matters
Taft illustrates the American company-town model of the early twentieth century, where a single corporation engineered an entire local economy to turn raw prairie into profit.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Joseph French Green and La Quinta Mansion
Gregory, TX
Ohio-born Joseph French Green arrived in South Texas with the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad and so impressed an opposing lawyer in an 1886 suit that he was hired to run a 224,000-acre ranch, later managing the vast Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company. In 1906–07 he built La Quinta, a twelve-bedroom mansion overlooking Corpus Christi Bay grand enough to host President William Howard Taft in 1909. Known as the "White House of the Taft Ranch," the great house burned in 1938.
Corpus Christi and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway
Corpus Christi, TX
When Pearl Harbor drew the United States into World War II, German U-boats made open-water shipping deadly, and the sheltered Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, "the Canal," became a vital protected route for Corpus Christi's oil. First envisioned in 1905 and finally secured through easements in 1930, the inland canal carried more than 900 oil-laden vessels toward the East Coast by 1944 and over a million tons of cargo by war's end. Its traffic and the growth it spurred helped transform Corpus Christi and the surrounding counties.
Early History of Port of Corpus Christi
Corpus Christi, TX
Sheltered by offshore islands, Corpus Christi Bay drew smugglers before the Texas Revolution and then legitimate commerce when Henry Kinney opened a trading post around 1838. The town became a launching point for the California Gold Rush and a key stop between San Antonio and the Rio Grande, but its shallow harbor demanded decades of dredging. From the collapsed "Ropes Boom" of the 1890s to the port's grand opening in 1926, persistent effort turned a smugglers' haven into one of the nation's largest seaports.
Theodore Merchant Lawrence (January 16, 1861-August 10, 1941)
Corpus Christi, TX
Grandson of one of Corpus Christi's first physicians, 'Buddy' Lawrence left home young to ride cattle drives on the King Ranch before turning to the soil. In 1894 he is credited with the first shipment of vegetables out of Corpus Christi, and as a partner in the Roark Produce Company he helped build the region's truck-farming industry. Elected county commissioner for much of the early twentieth century, he modernized the road system and saw the first causeway thrown across Nueces Bay.