Meansville and Kaleta

The plaque tells the feud; the Handbook of Texas adds what Meansville looked like and how it ended. Its two-story building of 1874 held school and church on the lower floor, where Methodists, Disciples of Christ and Baptists all worshiped, with a lodge hall upstairs; a Mr. Cherry kept a store nearby. In 1881 the commissioners' court allowed the abandoned schoolhouse to be sold for $300. Oral tradition says the Means family left in twenty-three wagons. Only the Meansville Cemetery remains, restored by the Odem Historical Society and the county historical commission.

What the plaque says

Meansville and Kaleta Col. William Marshall Means, a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto, came to San Patricio County with his family in the 1850s and settled southeast of present Odem. Means was county sheriff from 1862 to 1867. The center of the community was a two-story building erected by the Methodist congregation in 1874. It also served as a schoolhouse, ecumenical church and community center. By January 1876, the community was thriving and headed for a promising future when three of Col. Means' sons went on a shooting spree in Papalote in Bee County. A posse which included San Patricio County Sheriff Ed Garner tracked them to their father's ranch, where Col. Means was killed. In August, Ed Garner was shot as he attended church services. Alley Means was convicted of murder, but later pardoned by Gov. John Ireland. The townspeople lived in fear until the Texas Rangers ordered the Means families to leave the area. By the early 1880s they had sold their San Patricio County holdings. The school building was sold in 1881. Kaleta (5 miles SE) Several families settled in the area that became known as Kaleta in the late 1880s and shortly thereafter built a one-room school. The Kaleta school may have been established to fill a void left by the closing of the Meansville school. Frank S. Rachal served as first postmaster in 1894. The school closed in 1910 and the post office was discontinued in 1914, but the stagecoach line continued to deliver local mail to the home of former postmaster J. D. Willis and his family. By the time of the devastating 1919 storm, the stage line had closed and Kaleta had disappeared from the map. (2000)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 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.
• Texas State Aquarium — 15 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.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 15 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.
• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 15 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

• Odem First Baptist Church — 0.3 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Odem — 0.6 mi
• Bethel Baptist Church of Christ and Cemetery — 1.4 mi
• Calallen — 6.0 mi