Fulton Mansion State Historic Site

The house was built on hides and tallow. George W. Fulton, an East Coast engineer, married Harriet Smith in 1840, daughter of Henry Smith, the Republic-era politician. After her father's death Fulton turned her inherited land on Aransas Bay into a ranching and meatpacking business, part of the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company, and through the 1870s the family shipped cattle tallow and hides from Rockport to New Orleans.

The Fultons built their house over three years, from 1874 to 1877, and called it Oakhurst for the windswept oaks around it. It is French Second Empire, mansard roof and all, and its engineering was its point: gas lighting, central heating and indoor plumbing with hot and cold running water, systems the Texas Historical Commission says no other house in the area had. Fulton, who also worked as an inventor, built it with unusual construction methods, and the family lived in it for eighteen years. The town around it took his name.

Afterward it was a private house, a restaurant, the backdrop to a trailer park and a recreation center, until Texas Parks and Wildlife bought it in 1976; it passed to the Historical Commission in 2008. The public tour is self-guided, starting with an introduction to the family in the Education Center; walk-ins only, no reservations. The gardens are open to wander.