Echo Stagecoach Depot and Post Office

Echo was one stop on a road with a longer history. The San Patricio Trail ran from Corpus Christi toward San Antonio, and Henry L. Kinney used it for stagecoach service. Travelers could change teams at Sulphur Creek by 1846, at Fox's Nation, later Gussettville, by 1852, and at Echo by the late 1850s. By 1858 Oakville, Gussettville and Echo all had post offices. The Echo buildings are gone, and the site is on private land with no public route.

What the plaque says

Echo Stagecoach Depot and Post Office Known as "Mount Echo" or "The Point", this site once belonged to empresario James McGloin. His daughter and son-in-law, Elizabeth and Patrick Murphy, ran a general store at Echo. John Bernard Murphy (1822?-1884) and his wife Margaret Mary (Healy) (1833-1907), both born in Ireland, settled here in the 1850's and built a two story ranch house. J.B. Murphy, who was not related to Patrick Murphy, was later mayor of Corpus Christi. A one-story building near the J.B. Murphy ranch house served as a station for stagecoach lines from San Antonio to Corpus Christi and south Texas. It housed the Echo Post Office from 1858 until 1879. The stage road through echo was a dry weather route along the East Bank of the Nueces River. A higher caliche road that was passable in wet seasons served stage stops on the west side of the river. Until the arrival of the railroad in this area, the echo depot and post office provided a vital link with the outside world. In the 1880's, Margaret Mary Murphy moved to San Antonio and founded the Sisters of the Holy Ghost. She used the ranch as a retreat for nuns and converted the Echo depot into a chapel. R.F. Sellers bought the property in 1906 and used the building for storage. It was demolished by hurricane Celia in 1970. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Corpus Christi State Park — 7.0 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.
• Lipantitlán State Historic Site — 14 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.
• Choke Canyon State Park — 36 mi
  A reservoir state park on the Frio River in two units, built after a 1982 dam, with birds, alligators and fishing on land people have crossed for more than 10,000 years.

More markers nearby

• Lagarto Cemetery — 4.4 mi
• Thomas Henry Mathis Ranch — 4.8 mi
• Town of Dinero — 6.0 mi
• First Baptist Church of Mathis — 6.3 mi