Nixon

The poultry the plaque credits with Nixon's postwar economy grew into the county's leading industry. The Handbook credits Lloyd Bell of nearby Smiley with founding the county's broiler business, and by 1945 Gonzales County's estimated 16 million broilers ranked it among the state's top producers. By 1982 it was first in Texas for hens, pullets, eggs and turkeys. In Nixon itself, Holmes Foods traces its start to a 1925 ice plant that did backyard processing; by 2010 it was slaughtering about 700,000 broilers a week and generating about half the town's wastewater.

What the plaque says

Nixon IN 1901, PLANS WERE MADE TO EXTEND THE ROUTE OF THE GALVESTON, HARRISBURG AND SAN ANTONIO (GH&SA) RALROAD TO CONNECT THE SOUTH TEXAS TOWNS OF CUERO AND STOCKDALE. AFTER THE 1904 DEATH OF RANCHER JOHN T. NIXON, HIS WIDOW, LUCINDA, AND THEIR DAUGHTER, ZEDDIE, APPROACHED ATTORNEY AND NEPHEW, ROBERT F. NIXON, TO BROKER A DEAL WITH THE RAILROAD THAT WOULD BENEFIT THE NIXON FAMILY. THE NIXONS PROVIDED LAND FOR A TOWNSITE THAT INCLUDED RIGHT-OF-WAY FOR THE RAILROAD TRACKS AND PROPERTY FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF SHIPPING FACILITIES AND A DEPOT, AND IN ADDITION, EVERY ODD-NUMBERED BLOCK WOULD BE GIVEN TO THE RAILROAD TO SELL FOR PROFIT. IN RETURN, THE RAILROAD PROMISED TO ADVERTISE THE TOWNSITE ACROSS THE UNITED STATES, ENCOURAGING ITS SUCCESS. THE ORIGINAL TOWN SURVEY WAS COMPLETED ON MARCH 2, 1906, AND THE FIRST TOWN LOTS WERE SOLD LATER THAT MONTH. SOON SETTLERS FROM NEARBY COMMUNITIES BEGAN TO MIGRATE TO THE NEW TOWN, AND THEY WERE QUICKLY FOLLOWED BY "OUTSIDERS" WHO POURED IN FROM OTHER TEXAS TOWNS AND FROM LOCATIONS AS FAR AWAY AS ALABAMA AND OHIO. BECAUSE COTTON WAS THE CASH CROP OF THE DAY, MUCH OF THE AREA GRASSLAND WAS PLOWED UNDER SO THAT COTTON COULD BE PLANTED. SOON, THREE COTTON GINS DOTTED THE TOWNSITE OF NIXON. COTTON REMAINED AS THE AREA'S MAIN ECONOMIC EXPORT UNTIL WORLD WAR II, WHEN THE POULTRY INDUSTRY BECAME THE ECONOMIC DRIVER FOR THE AREA. ALTHOUGH THE RAILROAD TRACKS THAT SYMBOLIZE THE CREATION OF NIXON HAVE BEEN REMOVED AND THE COTTON GINS NO LONGER REMAIN, NIXON CONTINUES AS AN IMPORTANT CENTER OF COMMERCE IN GONZALES COUNTY. (2010)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Panna Maria — 23 mi
  The Silesian village on a plateau above the San Antonio River that claims the oldest permanent Polish settlement in America, with a church of 1878 and a ceiling found again in 2000.
• Palmetto State Park — 25 mi
  Dwarf palmettos, bogs and a spring-fed oxbow on the San Marcos River, with CCC stonework from the 1930s, a swamp an hour from Austin and San Antonio.
• Gonzales Memorial Museum — 25 mi
  A 1937 Centennial museum for the Immortal Thirty-two who died at the Alamo, holding the small iron cannon Gonzales calls its Come and Take It gun and the Handbook calls a second one.

More markers nearby

• First Baptist Church of Nixon — 0.2 mi
• Rancho — 1.9 mi
• Albuquerque — 5.9 mi
• Smiley United Methodist Church — 7.5 mi