Bishop

Before it was Bishop, this stop on the new railroad on Driscoll land was Julia Siding. The first lots went on sale on May 30, 1910, and the first school opened that September in a three-room frame building with sixteen students. Cotton made the town's early name. In 1923 farmers marketed 30,000 bales worth more than four million dollars, and Bishop billed itself the Cotton Capital of the Coast. By 1941 the label had shifted to grain, when it called itself the Grain Mart of the Coastal Bend. The model town ran on whatever the surrounding fields were growing.

What the plaque says

Bishop The town of Bishop was established in 1910 by F.Z. Bishop on land he had purchased from the Driscoll Ranch. The townsite was staked on both sides of the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico railroad line. F.Z. Bishop, who dreamed of building a model town on the prairie, managed construction of the town. Bishop planned the townsite and designed the business district to have a uniform appearance with brick facades. He began construction of an electric plant and water system, planted 600 palm trees along the streets, and laid three miles of sidewalks in town. A 40-acre city park with a lake, band pavilion and deer park were underway. A frame schoolhouse was built, and opened in September 1910. The town grew quickly and within two years the population had grown to 1,000. The town was incorporated in April 1912; R.R. Hall, business manager for F.Z. Bishop, was elected first mayor. Churches were built. A two story brick school with a raised basement replaced the first school. Although F.Z. Bishop declared bankruptcy in 1916, the town continued to grow and prosper. Oil and gas discoveries in the 1940's caused petroleum-related industries to supplant agriculture as the chief economic base. F.Z. Bishop was buried in Bishop in 1950. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• King Ranch Visitor Center — 7.4 mi
  The bus-tour gate to a working ranch of about 825,000 acres, founded on Santa Gertrudis Creek in 1853 and worked from the start by the Kineños, families from Cruillas in Tamaulipas.
• Mirador de la Flor — 29 mi
  Corpus Christi's bayfront memorial to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, the Tejano singer from this city, killed in 1995 at twenty-three, visited by about thirty thousand people a year.
• Duval County Courthouse — 29 mi
  A red-brick Classical Revival courthouse of 1916 in San Diego, the seat of a county governed for decades by the Parr family machine.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 29 mi
  Philip Johnson's 1972 museum on the Corpus Christi bayfront, joined in 2006 by Ricardo Legorreta's Miller Wing, holding more than 2,000 works mostly from Texas and the Americas.

More markers nearby

• St. John Lutheran Church — 0.2 mi
• St. Paul Lutheran Church and School — 0.6 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Bishop — 0.7 mi
• Kingsville Cotton Mill — 5.8 mi