Jim Wells County

The namesake built his power in Brownsville. James B. Wells Jr. was born in 1850 on St. Joseph Island, took a University of Virginia law degree in 1875, and in 1880 married the niece of Democratic boss Stephen Powers. After Powers died in 1882, Wells led the Cameron County Democratic organization for nearly forty years, trading patronage and ranchers' votes for low taxes and railroads, and he worked closely with Archie Parr of Duval County. During the 1915 raids he and his circle ignored Ranger abuses that killed at least 200 people of Mexican descent, one historian says.

What the plaque says

Jim Wells County Formed from Nueces County, created March 11, 1911, organized May 6, 1911. Named for Judge James B. Wells, an able lawyer. Born near Aransas Pass, Texas, July 12, 1854; died at Brownsville, December 21, 1923. Alice, the county seat.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Duval County Courthouse — 9.3 mi
  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 — 19 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 — 22 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 — 26 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

• Alice — 0.9 mi
• Jim Wells County Courthouse — 1.0 mi
• Archelaus Bynum Dodson — 2.4 mi
• Alonso S. Perales — 2.4 mi