Pat Higgins Grass Farms

Pat's father was the man called the "prophet of Spindletop." Born at Sabine Pass in 1863, Pattillo Higgins was converted at a Baptist revival in 1885 and went into real estate and brickmaking in Beaumont. Convinced oil lay beneath Spindletop Hill, he organized the Gladys City Oil, Gas and Manufacturing Company in 1892, naming it for a Sunday school student. His advertisements brought Anthony Lucas, but Higgins was cut out before the gusher of January 10, 1901. He later sold his shares in Higgins Oil and Fuel to John Henry Kirby for $3 million.

What the plaque says

Pat Higgins Grass Farms Pattillo "Pat" Higgins was born in 1910 in Houston to Pattillo "bud" Higgins, sr. And Annie Jahn Higgins. Bud owned oil properties in Chambers and Bexar Counties and, in 1925, began to purchase land in Sutherland Springs. After a short time at the University of Texas, Pat joined his dad on the Higgins Oil Leases. Continuing his father's quest for oil, Pat began to drill in Sutherland Springs but, by 1937, he decided to try ranching instead. He purchased land and began to experiment with new forage grasses. In 1941, he consulted with the Wilson County Soil Conservation (C.S.C.) District and worked hard to grow grasses but was unsuccessful. Following six years of failure, in 1949, Pat and the C.S.C. learned to compact the soil and were finally successful. By late August 1949, all the grasses were dead except for one row of buffelgrass. Word began to spread about buffelgrass and, in the next eleven years, over 12,000 visitors were registered at the farm. Pat built a small runway for planes to accommodate visitors from Hawaii, France, Africa and Australia. A variety of native grasses were put into commercial production. Pat employed around 200 men and women to harvest grass seeds by hand prior to inventing a mechanical harvester he named the "bug catcher." In 1957, Higgins earned the soil conservation award for irrigation water management. By 1958, Pat had 50 varieties and strains under observation. Before his death in 1961, Pat discovered the parent plant to buffelgrass and named it Higgins buffelgrass which produced higher yields and was more persistent. Buffelgrass became a mainstay on the famous King Ranch in Texas and the Parker Ranch in Hawaii. Higgins became known as the "Grass King of the Southwest." (2013)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mission Espada and the Espada Aqueduct — 24 mi
  The southernmost San Antonio mission and the oldest Spanish aqueduct in the United States, still carrying river water over Sixmile Creek to the fields after nearly three centuries.
• Mission San Juan — 25 mi
  The mission near the river bend where the San Antonio got its name in 1691, with an unfinished church foundation and farm fields still watered by an eighteenth-century acequia.
• San Antonio Missions National Historical Park — 26 mi
  Four working parish churches on the Mission Trail south of downtown, with the visitor center at Mission San Jose, the Queen of the Missions, and the descendants who still worship there.
• Mission Concepción — 27 mi
  A stone church dedicated in 1755 that has never fallen into ruin, its convento ceilings still painted, and the ground where the Texas Revolution's fight for San Antonio began.

More markers nearby

• Sutherland Springs School Site — 0.8 mi
• Sutherland Springs — 1.0 mi
• Immanuel Lutheran Church — 6.1 mi
• La Vernia — 6.1 mi