Atascosa County

The 1860 census, the county's first, counted 1,578 residents, including 84 enslaved Black people. Tax rolls show 33 slaveholders, most owning only one or two. The war barely reached Atascosa: the Handbook of Texas says taxable property rose between 1860 and 1865, from about $478,000 to $498,000, unlike most of the state. Cattle carried the economy. The harder squeeze came later. As land prices climbed from 1910 to 1929, more than half the county's farmers, 1,087 of 1,809 in 1930, worked someone else's land as tenants or sharecroppers, nearly all of them white.

What the plaque says

Atascosa County As early as 1722 El Camino Real (The King's Highway) from the Rio Grande to San Antonio was well established in this area. The Spanish word "Atascosa," denoting boggy ground that hindered travel, gave region its name. The county was created in 1856 from land formerly in Bexar County. Jose Antonio Navarro, whose 1831 claim was the first grant recorded in area, gave land in 1857 for first county seat, Navatasco. County seat moved to Pleasanton in 1858, to Jourdanton in 1911. Livestock, oil, gas and strawberries are well-known products of the county.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Atascosa County Courthouse — steps away
  The only surviving Mission Revival courthouse in Texas, built in 1912-13 on Jourdanton's town circle after a county seat vote that some residents still call a theft.
• Longhorn Museum — 6.2 mi
  Atascosa County in one roadside museum: longhorn-and-mustang ranching, a moved railroad depot and caboose, a horse-drawn hearse and the town that calls itself the birthplace of the cowboy.

More markers nearby

• Jourdanton I.S.D — 0.7 mi
• Jourdan Campbell — 0.7 mi
• Jourdanton — 0.7 mi
• Ralph Roy Smith — 0.7 mi