Duval County

Before Texas had a Duval County, Florida had a Duval. William Pope Duval, born in Virginia in 1784, studied law in Bardstown, Kentucky, sat in Congress from 1813 to 1815 and governed Florida Territory from 1822 to 1834, choosing Tallahassee as its capital for its central location. He moved to Texas in 1848, and three of his sons, Burr, Thomas and John, became prominent Texans. Washington Irving's character Ralph Ringwood was based on him. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1854, four years before the county named for his son Burr was created.

What the plaque says

Duval County Created February 1, 1858, organized November 7, 1876. Named in honor of Burr H. Duval, 1809-1836. Captain of a company of Fannin's command at Goliad. Murdered after the surrender March 27, 1836. San Diego, the county seat.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Duval County Courthouse — steps away
  A red-brick Classical Revival courthouse of 1916 in San Diego, the seat of a county governed for decades by the Parr family machine.
• King Ranch Visitor Center — 27 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.
• Lipantitlán State Historic Site — 29 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.
• Lake Corpus Christi State Park — 30 mi
  A lake park in the South Texas brush country above Mathis, on a reservoir of the Nueces, with a Civilian Conservation Corps refectory and more than 200 bird species.

More markers nearby

• El Plan de San Diego — 0.3 mi
• St. Francis de Paula Catholic Church — 0.3 mi
• Jim Wells County — 9.3 mi
• Alice — 10.0 mi