President William Howard Taft Visits Taft

The plaque names Charles P. Taft as the president's host; at home in Cincinnati he was a publisher and collector. Born there in 1843, he bought control of the Cincinnati Times in 1879 and merged it with the Daily Star into the Times-Star. He served one term in Congress, 1895-97, and later owned the Chicago Cubs. His wife, Anna Sinton Taft, inherited about $20 million when her father died in 1900. The couple filled their house with paintings, Chinese ceramics and watches, and in 1927 left house and collection to the city, now the Taft Museum of Art.

What the plaque says

President William Howard Taft Visits Taft In 1908, Charles P. Taft, director of the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company (also known as Taft Ranch) extended an invitation to his half-brother, newly-elected President William Howard Taft, to visit the 165,000-acre Taft Ranch and the Taft community. The President agreed to come in October 1909. Charles Taft and ranch manager Joseph F. Green immediately began preparations for the event. Green had a nine-hole golf course built at La Quinta, his estate near Gregory where the President would stay during his visit. He also built the 22-room Green Hotel in Gregory to house the press corps and additional visitors. President Taft's special railroad car arrived in Gregory on October 20, 1909. An automobile procession took the presidential party to La Quinta, where they were greeted by Texas Governor Thomas M. Campbell. The following day the President visited Taft, where he spoke to citizens assembled at the local school and enjoyed ice cream at the company creamery. A barbeque and rodeo were held at the Rincon Ranch in the President's honor, and he later visited Corpus Christi, where he spoke to a crowd of 15,000 people. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 11 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.
• Texas State Aquarium — 11 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 — 12 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.
• Mirador de la Flor — 13 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.

More markers nearby

• Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company — steps away
• Taft Agricultural Industrial Complex — steps away
• First United Methodist Church of Taft — steps away
• Gregory — 7.4 mi