City of Hitchcock

Before it was Hitchcock the town was Highland, named for the high banks of Highland Bayou. Jonas Butler took a league of land there on May 31, 1848, and built a house part of which still stood in the 1940s. French settlers followed him along the bayou, and travelers used the stream to reach Galveston until the railroad arrived in the 1870s. By 1907 the town ran two schools: one with eighty-nine White pupils and two teachers, the other with thirty-seven Black pupils and a single teacher.

What the plaque says

City of Hitchcock In region held before 1820s by Karankawa Indians, and afterwards by cattle raisers. The Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway built through the area in 1870s, naming station for Galveston civic leader and late landowner, Lent Munson Hitchcock (1810-1869). On the railway, George Henckel in 1880s opened a produce commission house. Leaders among fruit and vegetable growers included Emil and Hypolite Perthius, H. M. Stringfellow, and Jacques Tacquard. Stores, a butcher shop, bakery, hotel, and saloons were established. The townsite was platted and public school opened 1894. Churches were active. St. Mary's (later Our Lady of Lourdes) Catholic parish had first house of worship. A building for Protestants, soon a Methodist church, was erected 1894. Other faiths arrived later. After 1920, truck farming declined; packing houses closed. In 1930s, local men found work in Texas City. A Coast Auxiliary Army Replacement Center opened here in 1940; it later became Camp Wallace, an anti-aircraft training center. A blimp base was operated 1941-45, for surveillance against enemy submarines. Hitchcock remains a center of small business and industry, with modern homes on garden acreage owned and occupied by urban and industrial workers. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Galveston Island State Park — 11 mi
  A cattle ranch willed to the state that now runs the full width of Galveston Island, from two miles of Gulf beach across dunes and prairie to the marshes of West Galveston Bay.
• Space Center Houston — 14 mi
  The visitor center of NASA's Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake, with flown capsules, a shuttle replica riding a 747, and tram tours to Mission Control and a Saturn V.
• Galveston Seawall and the 1900 Storm — 14 mi
  The concrete wall along the Gulf that Galveston built after the hurricane of September 8, 1900, which killed between 6,000 and 8,000 people in a city of 38,000.
• Moody Mansion — 15 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.

More markers nearby

• U. S. Naval Air Station (Blimp Base) — 0.8 mi
• Hitchcock Depot — 2.3 mi
• Original Site of First Baptist Church of Alta Loma — 3.1 mi
• Frank Bell, Jr. — 3.8 mi