Pleasanton

The plaque names Pleasanton's 1862 company as part of the 32nd Texas Cavalry, a number that has misled researchers for decades. Mary Maverick's memoir says her son Lewis, home from a six-month enlistment in Alabama, raised a company for the 32nd under Colonel Woods. Records show Woods's regiment was redesignated the 36th, and it was mustered into Confederate service in June 1862. The real 32nd served with the Army of Tennessee. A local historian traced the error to the memoir and a 1966 regimental history. Company E, Pleasanton men among them, still held a reunion in 1890.

What the plaque says

Pleasanton (Founded 1858) Named for early Texas settler John Pleasants, by John Bowen (d.1867), San Antonio's first Anglo-American postmaster. Bowen, assisted financially by associate Henry L. Radaz, in Sept. 1858 founded this town at the juncture of Atascosa River and Bonita Creek as the county seat of Atascosa County. The first courthouse in Pleasanton (second in county) stood on this site. Men from this and surrounding counties met here in Civil War (1862) to form Co. E, 32nd Texas Volunteer Cavalry, Confederate Army, under Captain Lewis Maverick. In an area thick with Longhorns since Spanish and Indian days, Pleasanton became a cattlemen's capital. Beginning in 1860s, the Stock Raisers' Association of Western Texas often convened here. This was place of publication of "Western Stock Journal," founded 1873. Here gathered the hardiest and most skillful cowboys, including those driving herds from Mexican border to shipping points in Kansas. In spring of 1873 they drove 43,000 Atascosa county cattle up the trail. Pleasanton was county seat until 1911, and still grows. In 1961 it absorbed North Pleasanton (founded 1912 as site for San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf Railroad shops). County's largest town, it is famous for liveoak trees, and commerce in beef, peanuts, and petroleum. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Longhorn Museum — 1.6 mi
  Atascosa County in one roadside museum: longhorn-and-mustang ranching, a moved railroad depot and caboose, a horse-drawn hearse and the town that calls itself the birthplace of the cowboy.
• Atascosa County Courthouse — 4.7 mi
  The only surviving Mission Revival courthouse in Texas, built in 1912-13 on Jourdanton's town circle after a county seat vote that some residents still call a theft.
• Mission Espada and the Espada Aqueduct — 25 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.

More markers nearby

• George Washington Marion Duck — steps away
• Old Rock Schoolhouse — steps away
• Pleasanton School Integration — 0.7 mi
• Capt. Peter F. Tumlinson — 0.7 mi