Early Texas Bandstands

Cuero's Turkey Trot began in 1912 because traveling salesmen from the North wanted to see turkeys driven on foot to market each November. J. C. Howerton, publisher of the Cuero Record, is credited with the idea, and the Cuero Fair and Turkey Trot Association staged the first drive down the main streets. A dressing house had opened in 1908, and a single drive could carry as many as 20,000 live birds. By the thirteenth Trot, in 1967, many heavy feedlot turkeys collapsed on the pavement and a livestock show replaced it. A 1972 revival led to Turkeyfest in 1973.

What the plaque says

Early Texas Bandstands This bandstand, successor to earlier ones in Cuero, is a replica of the first one erected in this park -- used for concerts, patriotic meetings, bazaars, ice cream socials, political rallies, street dances. Cuero musicians won renown as official band for the internationally famed "Turkey Trot," founded 1912 and opened that year with a parade led by Governor Oscar B. Colquitt. The trot, a showing of Thanksgiving birds prior to shipment, used music on its programs. Before Anglo-American colonization, Spanish troops at various presidios had marching bands. But on the frontier, most music was for dancing, and was played on violins, guitars, or some improvised instrument such as a plow point. Settlers loved their "tunes." When the Texan Army went into battle at San Jacinto, April 21, 1836, it moved to the music of "Will You Come to the Bower?" -- played on a drum and fife. In the 1840s when instruments arrived with the household goods of hundreds of European settlers, excellent bands were organized, and bandstands were erected for their performances. More than 200 local bands originated in Texas in the 19th century. At dedication of the new state Capitol in Austin, 1888, many city bands played for the celebration. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum — 0.2 mi
  A cattle-country museum in Cuero's 1903 Knights of Pythias Hall, telling the Guadalupe Valley's 1866 drive north and the Sutton-Taylor feud that bloodied DeWitt County.
• Spoetzl Brewery — 25 mi
  The brewery a Czech and German railroad town started in a tin shed in 1909, run through Prohibition by a Bavarian who had brewed in Cairo, and then by his daughter.
• De León Plaza — 26 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 27 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.

More markers nearby

• Cuero Land and Immigration Company — steps away
• World War II Air Training School Brayton Flying Field — steps away
• St. Michael's Catholic Church — steps away
• Buchel Bank — steps away