San Leon

Before it was San Leon, the peninsula was sold as North Galveston. A promotional map of about 1895 and a pamphlet titled Nature's Choice pitched it as a fruit and truck-garden center, though the Rosenberg Library notes a post office, a church and a daily stage line there by 1886. The Handbook counts nearly 2,000 residents in the late 1800s and lists a wool factory, a cigar factory, a bank and a roundhouse. It adds that enslaved people were landed and sold at Eagle Point, on the peninsula's northern tip.

What the plaque says

San Leon Strategically located on a peninsula surrounded by Galveston, Trinity and Dickinson bays, San Leon has a rich and varied history. Amos Edwards and his family were the first to settle on the peninsula after the Mexican government opened the Texas tidelands to Anglo colonization in 1828. In 1837, William Gaines and Amos Edwards' son, Monroe, platted a townsite they named San Leon and invited investors to build and develop the town. Little is known of this Republic of Texas-era San Leon, which by the 1880s had reverted to open range. As part of their strategy to retain Galveston's status as Texas' major port and develop it as a major rail shipping point, Galveston businessmen joined with Minnesota investors to develop the town of North Galveston on the peninsula in 1892. They founded the North Galveston, Houston & Kansas City Railroad and laid out streets in a pattern much like the city of Galveston's. Excursion trains brought residents from the Midwest to settle in the burgeoning industrial town until the devastating 1900 storm wiped out North Galveston and ended dreams of Galveston's longevity as a major seaport. In 1910 Houston lawyer Joe Eagle purchased the townsite and returned the San Leon name to the community, advertising it as a bayside resort. Although the 1915 storm did additional damage to the town, Eagle worked to rebuild until the San Leon Hotel burned in 1921. In the decades between the two world wars, the San Leon area was known primarily for its fig and citrus orchards, and at the dawn of the 21st century its economy was based on the commercial seafood and sports fishing industry. (2001)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Space Center Houston — 8.9 mi
  The visitor center of NASA's Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake, with flown capsules, a shuttle replica riding a 747, and tram tours to Mission Control and a Saturn V.
• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — 17 mi
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.
• The Strand — 17 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• Moody Mansion — 17 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.

More markers nearby

• Kemah — 4.0 mi
• Ritson Morris and Elmwood Plantation — 5.7 mi
• Townsite of Dickinson — 6.3 mi
• Prehistoric Indian Campsite — 6.4 mi