Three Rivers
Three Rivers, Live Oak County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded March 1913 by Charles R. Tips. An investor chartered June 12, 1913, as Hamiltonburg--named for local family. Town lot sale began July 4, 1913. Townsite renamed by U.S. Postal Department May 1, 1914, to mark fork of three rivers--Nueces, Atascosa and Frio. Present interests are ranching, farming, gas, oil and recreation.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
Three Rivers reflects the early-20th-century founding of planned Texas towns and their shift from ranching to the oil-and-gas economy.
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Related people
- · Charles R. Tips
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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.
Live Oak County Jail
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Oakville rose beside a Nueces River crossing and served as the seat of Live Oak County from 1856 to 1919, a supply hub for freight wagons and the cattle ranchers who thrived after the Civil War. Joseph Bartlett's 1857 stone courthouse and log jail marked the town as a center of frontier authority, and by 1887 a two-story sandstone Italianate jail—designed by the Diebold Lock and Safe Company of Ohio—held everyone from bar fighters to horse thieves. When the town lost its railroad bid in 1919, the county seat moved to George West, and the jail became one of the last landmarks of the old town.
Calliham
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This McMullen County community started as Guffeyola, a 1918 post office in H. H. McGuffey's store, then exploded after oil and gas strikes between 1917 and 1922 — first a tent city, then a town of shotgun houses. It piped the first natural gas to San Antonio and was renamed in 1923 to honor rancher and townsite owner J. T. Calliham. It still produces oil and ships fine rocks and petrified wood.
Site of Old Crowther Ranch
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Platted across 1,600 acres by 1902 and named for landowner Samuel Crowther, this townsite was heavily promoted as a future oil-and-farming center despite early oil discoveries nearby. The boosterism never paid off, and by 1921 the place was a ghost town. It later passed through further owners in the 1930s.