Thomaston

Thomaston was a shipping point as much as a town. The Handbook of Texas says cattle went out from the Julia Pens, a mile and a half south and named for former landowner Julia Rose, from 1887 until the pens were abandoned in 1946. In 1895 the Cuero Star called it the county's most important railroad stop between Cuero and Victoria. The 1896 count of sixteen businesses included a hotel with a dentist's office and four mills. By 1906 four mail trains stopped daily, and passenger service ended in November 1950.

What the plaque says

Thomaston (Founded 1872) De Witt County's first railroad town. Absorbed Price's Creek, 1848 settlement of Republic of Texas patriot, Judge David Murphree (1811-66). Thomaston was named for State Legislator Nathan Thomas (1809-91), who sold south part of townsite (in Refugio Amador survey) to Gulf, Western Texas and Pacific Railroad. North part of plat was donated (from Charles Lockhart Survey) by John P. and Mary (Lockhart) Wright. Schoolteacher J. H. Moore and wife Lou (Thomas) built first house and owned cotton gin and grist mill. James Pridgen was first railroad agent, postmaster, and merchant. At peak, town had 500 people. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum — 11 mi
  A cattle-country museum in Cuero's 1903 Knights of Pythias Hall, telling the Guadalupe Valley's 1866 drive north and the Sutton-Taylor feud that bloodied DeWitt County.
• De León Plaza — 16 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 16 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.
• Fannin Battleground State Historic Site — 22 mi
  The open prairie east of Goliad where Fannin's retreating column formed a square short of the Coleto Creek timber on March 19, 1836, and surrendered the next day.

More markers nearby

• Thomaston Cemetery — 0.2 mi
• Burns Station Cemetery — 4.4 mi
• Arneckeville — 6.8 mi
• Hephzibeth Looker Taylor — 7.2 mi