Early Texas Wagon Yards

The freight that filled wagon yards along the San Antonio-Eagle Pass road was also fought over. The Handbook of Texas records the reported lynching of eleven Mexicans near the Nueces River in 1855, and in 1857 Uvalde County residents passed resolutions forbidding Mexicans to travel through the county, probably part of an effort to drive them out of the profitable freight business on that road. Border warfare and lawlessness lasted in the area into the late 1880s. Uvalde became a shipping point on the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway in 1881.

What the plaque says

Early Texas Wagon Yards Places of shelter for drivers, teams and wagons. Here travelers could cook bacon, eggs, beans, coffee; talk with friends and strangers. For people from the country, a wagon yard was both a hotel and a social center. Unusually it was an open area flanked by a shed, stalls and feed rooms. It might cover a city block, and charges were 25 (cents) to $1.00 a day. Drivers pulled into yards, cared for teams, found cooking and sleeping space. Men or families might stay for weeks, await kin or goods coming by train or stage. Amusements were practical jokes, gossip, games, music by fiddle, guitar, harmonica. Young boys overcame bashfulness, learned to dance, roller skate, whip bullies. The yard was center for trading goods and horses; obtaining advice on travel, work, weather. Some yards were stops for stages and freighters. A block west of this site was wagon yard of F. A. Piper Company (predecessor of Horner's Store). Like many Texas merchants, Piper built and ran the wagon yard to aid customers, who used it free of charge. Modern transportation has made the wagon yard a relic of the past, but it has a secure place in the history of pioneer days in Texas. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Uvalde Grand Opera House — steps away
  An 1891 Victorian opera house on the Uvalde square with a turret and a dragon weathervane, once owned by John Nance Garner and still staging volunteer theater upstairs.
• Briscoe-Garner Museum — 0.4 mi
  The Uvalde house of John Nance Garner, the vice president who made the office a power in Congress, now a free museum to him and to Governor Dolph Briscoe.
• Fort Inge Historical Site — 2.4 mi
  A county park on the Leona River below a 140-foot volcanic plug, where an army post guarded the new road to El Paso from 1849 to 1869 and Texas Rangers camped after.

More markers nearby

• Fort Inge, Camp Dix, C.S.A. — steps away
• Uvalde County — steps away
• Kincaid Hotel — steps away
• The Uvalde "Leader-News" — steps away