Rincon Ranch

The plaque lists a main house and worker housing; the Handbook fills in daily life at the headquarters. After George W. Fulton Jr. became manager in 1884, a German gardener, Fred Zimmerman, turned the grounds into a scenic spot with a pond used for swimming. The settlement had a blacksmith shop, butcher shop, saddlery, windmill shop and a place for dances, and single cowboys lived in a two-story bunkhouse. A telephone line ran here from the Rockport office in 1878. Many buildings were later moved to Taft, and by 1990 nothing original was left. The site is private land.

What the plaque says

Rincon Ranch Youngs Coleman and his son, Thomas, established a south Texas ranching empire in the 1850's. The headquarters of their operation was here at Rincon where there was a fresh water depression. In 1871 the Colemans joined with George W. Fulton and T.H. and J.M. Mathis to form what became the Coleman-Fulton pasture company. The headquarters remained at Rincon and the ranch included a main house, worker housing, a school, commissary, and numerous other outbuildings. President William Howard Taft visited Rincon in 1909. The company was dissolved in the 1920's. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fulton Mansion State Historic Site — 14 mi
  A French Second Empire house of 1874-77 on Aransas Bay, paid for with hides and tallow, with gas lights, central heat and hot running water no other house nearby had.
• 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.
• Texas State Aquarium — 16 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.
• Port Aransas — 16 mi
  The fishing town at the north end of Mustang Island, reached by a free state ferry that crosses the ship channel day and night, with a university marine lab begun in a one-room shack.

More markers nearby

• Joseph French Green and La Quinta Mansion — 5.9 mi
• Gregory — 5.9 mi
• Site of the Town of Copano — 6.8 mi
• Birthplace of Clara Driscoll — 6.8 mi