Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company

The plaque lists Tom Coleman among the partners; his story shows the money troubles behind it. Born at Liberty in 1833, he left his Star Cattle Company's drive to Chicago in 1859 to marry Margaret Atlee, and the couple spent their honeymoon in New York selling barreled beef after more than 1,300 cattle were slaughtered. He later sold most of his stock to Sinton and Charles Taft, and a $150,000 mansion on Chiltipin Creek ruined him. As county judge he had a heart attack as he was about to open court at Sinton and died in February 1896.

What the plaque says

Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company The Coleman, Mathis, Fulton cattle company was formed in 1871 by partners George Ware Fulton, youngs Coleman, Tom Coleman, Thomas Henry Mathis, and J.M. Mathis, with headquarters in Rockport. The The Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company, with 167,000 acres of land, was organized in 1879 after the Mathis cousins left the partnership. Fulton was a pioneer in fencing of the open south Texas range and in shipping cattle by boat from company wharves. Continuing financial problems led Fulton to borrow funds for the company from David Sinton of Ohio. Eventually Sinton gained control of the company and at his death willed his interest to his daughter, Anna, wife of Charles P. Taft. The company became known locally as the Taft Ranch. Joseph F. Green became manager in 1900 and built the ranch into one of the largest and most innovative in the state, introducing new crops and cattle breeds. The city of Taft was formed in 1904 as a company town and was sold at auction in 1921. Constructed in 1923, this building was the last headquarters for the Taft Ranch. By 1928 all ranch enterprises had been sold. The company's charter expired in 1930, leaving the town of Taft as its legacy. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 11 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.
• Texas State Aquarium — 11 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 — 12 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.
• Mirador de la Flor — 13 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.

More markers nearby

• First United Methodist Church of Taft — steps away
• President William Howard Taft Visits Taft — steps away
• Taft Agricultural Industrial Complex — 0.3 mi
• Gregory — 7.3 mi