Victoria County

Victoria County's best-known title is Cradle of the Texas Cattle Industry, and the numbers back it. The county counted 8,783 cattle in 1850, 39,287 in 1860 and 61,651 in 1870, when it ranked seventh in Texas. By 1930 it held 93,997 head, more than any other county. Meatpacking followed the herds. One of the state's first packing plants opened here in 1869, and the Texas Continental Meat Company's plant of 1883 was the largest in Texas. Oil came late, with the first commercial wells drilled at McFaddin in 1930.

What the plaque says

Victoria County In this county the first European settlement in Texas, Fort St. Louis, was built by the French explorer La Salle in 1685. Between 1722 and 1726 a Spanish presidio and the Mission of Espiritu Santo were established. Settled by colonists under Martin De Leon in 1824 who named his capital later the county seat, Victoria. From it the county, created March 17, 1836, took its name.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• De León Plaza — steps away
  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 — 1.8 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 — 16 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.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 25 mi
  The 1938 pink granite memorial over the common grave of Fannin's men, shot on the roads out of Goliad on Palm Sunday 1836, the grave itself found again only in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• Victoria County, C.S.A. — steps away
• Victor M. Rose — steps away
• Victoria County Honor Roll — steps away
• Home County of William Pinckney McLean — steps away