Calallen

The name is a contraction of Calvin Allen, and the Handbook of Texas credits him with donating land for the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico line. A post office opened in 1908 with Ira D. Magee as postmaster, two years before the townsite company the plaque describes. The Handbook's counts swing hard: about 150 residents and nine businesses in 1914, only 25 listed in 1925, about 270 by 1965. A dam on the Nueces River nearby also carries the Calallen name. Sources disagree on when Corpus Christi annexed the community, 1966 or 1970.

What the plaque says

Calallen The rural Nueces County settlement of Calallen was established by the Calvin Townsite Company on August 18, 1910. The president of the firm was the prominent local cattlemen Calvin J. Allen (1859-1922), for whom the town was named. The area's abundant water supply and the settlement's location on the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railline resulted in Calallen's development as an important agricultural center of the region. Calallen's greatest period of growth occurred from the 1920's to the 1940's. During that time it was the site of a hotel, funeral home, lumberyard, post office, doctor's office, bank, churches, a variety of stores and a school district, formed in 1914. Major employers here included a Corpus Christi water plant and the vegetable packing firm of C.E. Coleman. Residents of the community included some of the prominent cattlemen and business leaders of south Texas. Calallen's decline began as new roads resulted in dramatic growth for Corpus Christi. Although the Calallen school remained in operation, the rural town was annexed by Corpus Christi in 1970. Today the area serves as a reminder of the early residents who were vital to the growth of Nueces County. (1982)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lipantitlán State Historic Site — 14 mi
  Five undeveloped acres on the Nueces named for the Lipan Apaches who camped here, where Mexico built an earth-and-rail fort that Texans took early in the Revolution.
• Texas State Aquarium — 15 mi
  A nonprofit aquarium on the tip of Corpus Christi Beach built around the Gulf and the Caribbean, with the largest coastal wildlife rescue center in Texas behind the exhibits.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 15 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.
• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 15 mi
  An Essex-class carrier of 1943 moored off North Beach, the Blue Ghost that Tokyo Rose kept reporting sunk, and the Navy's training carrier for nearly three decades after.

More markers nearby

• Nuecestown Raid — 2.2 mi
• Nuecestown Cemetery — 2.6 mi
• Hilltop Tuberculosis Sanitorium — 2.6 mi
• Bethel Baptist Church of Christ and Cemetery — 4.7 mi