John Dunn, Jr. Homesite

Herding sheep was real work in the Nueces country where John Dunn Jr. grew up. The county's flocks numbered about 35,000 in 1860, 363,835 in 1871 and more than 650,000 by 1876, and in 1875 and 1876 sheep were worth more on the tax rolls than cattle. Corpus Christi was a wool market from 1870 to 1880. Then wool prices fell and fences closed the open range, and the industry shrank. By the time Dunn built his house in 1889, the boom that employed him as a boy was ending.

What the plaque says

John Dunn, Jr. Homesite John Dunn, Sr., (1803-1889) immigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1851. He began acquiring large amounts of property in Nueces County, including this site which he purchased in 1868 from Jonas Pickles. This section of his landholdings was inherited by his youngest son, John Dunn, Jr. (1853-1941). Dunn, Jr., began working as a young boy herding sheep for his father. He received most of his schooling in Father Gonnard's School for Boys in Corpus Christi. As a young man, Dunn participated in posses that captured Mexican raiders and horse rustlers. He eventually acquired nearly 12,000 acres of ranchland and was known throughout the Corpus Christi area for his philanthropic land donations, particularly to the Roman Catholic Church. The one story section of this home was built by Dunn in 1889 in anticipation of his marriage to Mary Tom (1856-1937). The home served as headquarters for Dunn's ranching operations and was enlarged as his family grew. Located on land that has been in the Dunn family since 1868, the homesite stands as a reminder of early Nueces County settlement. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Art Museum of South Texas — 4.9 mi
  Philip Johnson's 1972 museum on the Corpus Christi bayfront, joined in 2006 by Ricardo Legorreta's Miller Wing, holding more than 2,000 works mostly from Texas and the Americas.
• Texas State Aquarium — 4.9 mi
  A nonprofit aquarium on the tip of Corpus Christi Beach built around the Gulf and the Caribbean, with the largest coastal wildlife rescue center in Texas behind the exhibits.
• Mirador de la Flor — 5.1 mi
  Corpus Christi's bayfront memorial to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, the Tejano singer from this city, killed in 1995 at twenty-three, visited by about thirty thousand people a year.
• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 5.1 mi
  An Essex-class carrier of 1943 moored off North Beach, the Blue Ghost that Tokyo Rose kept reporting sunk, and the Navy's training carrier for nearly three decades after.

More markers nearby

• Corpus Christi College-Academy — 0.3 mi
• Kelsey Memorial Methodist Church (Iglesia Metodista Kelsey Memorial) — 4.2 mi
• Galvan Ballroom — 4.3 mi
• Hebrew Rest Cemetery — 4.3 mi