Name: Pearsall, Texas
Address: Pearsall, TX

The Day an F4 Crossed Interstate 35 RoadyGoat

On April 15, 1973, one of the most violent tornadoes in South Texas history tore a 23-mile gash across Frio County and passed just three miles south of where you're standing. The funnel touched down about eight miles west of the Frio airport, crossed the airfield, and rolled through the Melon community at F4 strength, with witnesses describing it as up to three-quarters of a mile wide. The damage at the airport alone was staggering: hangars flattened, roughly eight to ten airplanes destroyed outright, more than a hundred others damaged, and inch-thick asphalt peeled off a runway. Eight homes were leveled, dozens of cattle killed, and thousands of acres of crops shredded. The deadliest moment came on Interstate 35. The tornado crossed the highway and caught two cars in the open, lifting and mangling them so badly they were barely recognizable; all five people who died that day were in those vehicles, and twelve more were hurt. For a county that has weathered fires, floods, and boom-bust whiplash, the 1973 tornado remains the single most lethal day the weather ever handed Pearsall. (Source: Tornado Talk; National Weather Service Storm Data.)

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The 1884 Jail With the Town's Oldest Walls RoadyGoat

At 410 East Pecan Street stands the oldest building in Pearsall: the Old Frio County Jail, built in 1884 by the noted jail-builders P.J. Pauly & Bro. and now home to the Frio Pioneer Jail Museum. It's a two-story Victorian lockup of elaborately molded brickwork and thick plastered walls, an excellent and unusually well-preserved example of public Victorian architecture in rural Texas, good enough to land on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and to earn a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark medallion. Downstairs was the five-room sheriff's residence; upstairs were four cells for men and two for women, one of which did double duty during Prohibition storing confiscated bootleg liquor. The jail held prisoners clear into the 1960s before retiring. When the county finally dedicated it as a museum on July 3, 1976, the ceremony was addressed by U.S. Representative Henry B. Gonzalez and by Ollie Taylor, who served as Frio County's woman sheriff, a striking detail for a small South Texas county. Step inside and the brick, the bars, and the cramped cells still tell you exactly how frontier justice worked here. (Source: National Register of Historic Places; Frio Pioneer Jail Museum.)

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The Well, the Railroad, and the Man Who Never Lived Here RoadyGoat

Before there was a Pearsall, there was a well. In the 1870s, wagon trains running the road from Frio Town to Pleasanton stopped to water at Waggoner's Well, a dependable spring on a big sheep ranch right about where you are now. When the International-Great Northern Railroad pushed south, the first passenger train steamed in on July 4, 1881, and on February 15, 1882, the New York and Texas Land Company platted a townsite around the depot. They named it for Thomas W. Pearsall, a vice president of the railroad back East who, as far as the record shows, never set foot in the place that carries his name. The town the railroad built quickly swallowed the town it replaced. Frio Town, the original county seat fifteen miles west on the Frio River, watched its people and businesses pack up and move to the tracks. By 1884 Pearsall had won a county-seat election 227 to 81, claiming 700 residents, twenty businesses, three hotels, and three churches almost overnight. A railroad executive's name stuck to a South Texas watering hole, and a county seat was born. (Source: Handbook of Texas; City of Pearsall history.)

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Frio Town, TX

1871

Frio Town, originally known as Frio City, was a frontier community off Farm Road 140 immediately south of the Presidio Crossing of the Frio River, sixteen miles northwest of Pearsall in northwest Frio County. The Presidio Crossing, on the Old San Antonio Road , was so named because numerous cannonballs, swords, and sabers were found there. Juan de Ugalde in the eighteenth century, Antonio López de Santa Anna in 1836, and Adrián Woll in 1842 are thought to have used the crossing. The town was laid out by A. L. Odin in 1871. The first mail was delivered to the community on horseback from Benton City; later it arrived from San Antonio by stage. Frio City became the first county seat of Frio County in 1871. Builder L. J. W. Edwards used cypress shingles carted from Leakey to complete the first courthouse in January 1872. The same year a stone jail was constructed; in time it housed such famous personages as Sam Bass , Jesse and Frank James, and William Sydney Porter . The high cost of obtaining building materials from outside led to the establishment of a cypress-shingle mill, brick factory, and limekiln in the community. A Frio City post office was established in 1872 with James McClain Elledge as the first postmaster. Levi J. W. Edwards was the first merchant. The county's first school was in a private home. A local Masonic lodge was established during the 1870s. The courthouse burned in 1877, and a new two-story native stone building was constructed with the financial assistance of local resident W. J. Slaughter; it reportedly had an ornate walnut staircase. Comanche Indian raids in the mid-1870s triggered a call for the Texas Rangers and caused many frightened settlers to seek refuge in town. The last Indian foray in the area occurred during the spring of 1877. Frio City was a "cowboy capital" and outpost cultural center during the 1870s. Estimates of its population in the early 1880s reach as high as 1,500. Evangelists John Wesley DeVilbiss and Andrew Jackson Potter preached in the area; the Rio Grande Baptist Association was organized at the courthouse in 1880. That year the International-Great Northern Railroad was extended through Frio County and missed Frio City. In the summer of 1881 Pearsall was established on the route, after which a general exodus from Frio City to Pearsall ensued. In 1883 Pearsall became the county seat, and in 1886 the name Frio City was changed to Frio Town. The courthouse was purchased in 1884 by W. Yancey Kilgore. It subsequently housed a general store, the post office, and in 1884 Frio Academy. By 1890 the population was estimated at 100. In 1906 seventeen pupils attended the two-teacher Frio Academy. By 1914 Frio Town had telephone connections, a general store, and six cattle breeders. In 1929 the community comprised the school and five dwellings. The old courthouse was the site of the Rio Grande Baptist Association's fiftieth anniversary celebration in June 1930. By 1953 Mrs. A. C. Roberts owned most of the structures of the generally abandoned townsite, including the courthouse and roofless jailhouse. The population of Frio Town remained constant at an estimated twenty throughout the 1960s and increased to forty-nine in 1969. By 1990 all that remained was the Frio Town Cemetery on Farm Road 140 and the largely intact remains of the original courthouse and jail on the Roberts Ranch.

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Frio County

1519

(Created 1858, Organized 1871) Home of Pachal Indians before Spaniards arrived in Mexico (1519). First area explorer was Alonso de Leon, 1690, searching for Fort St. Louis founded by La Salle. Upper Presidio Road--artery of travel from Saltillo, Mexico, to East Texas--crossed Frio River and became a King's Highway , 1720. Frio Town, first county seat, was located on the road, over which Santa Anna marched to destroy defenders of the Alamo in 1836. County took name from Frio (a Spanish word which means "cold") River. The county seat moved to Pearsall, 1883. Jail, built 1884, is the oldest building in town. (1968)

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Camp Lawson

1859

Camp Lawson was a military camp located on the Leona Crossing of the Lower Presidio Road ( Old San Antonio -Presidio de San Juan Baptista Road) below the junction of the Leona and Frio rivers in modern-day Frio County. Due to its location, the site was a well-known and used camping ground. Camp Lawson was most likely named for Bvt. Brig. Gen. Thomas Lawson, who became surgeon general after the unexpected death of his predecessor, Joseph Lovell, in 1836. Lawson was senior surgeon of the U.S. Army for fifteen years and surgeon general from 1836 to 1861. Camp Lawson was officially established as a military post on October 27, 1859, when Capt. Arthur Tracy Lee , Lt. Edwin W. H. Read, and forty-five enlisted men of Company C, Eighth U. S. Infantry , marched from Camp Hudson on the Devils River (Val Verde County) to the site. Post returns state that the nearest post office was in San Antonio, approximately seventy miles from Presidio Road. Camp Lawson was accessible by a new road connecting the camp to the nearest military post, Fort Inge , seventy-five miles northwest. A local doctor, William H. Morrow , was assigned to Camp Lawson as a citizen physician and acting assistant surgeon. While at the camp, the quartermaster department employed a conductor of camels , three camel herders, and three teamsters, which suggests that Camp Lawson served as the winter pasturelands of the U.S. Camel Corps, which was attached to the Second U. S. Cavalry , stationed at Camp Verde . Captain Lee and Company C marched to a camp near Laredo the following month, where they were stationed through early February 1860. On December 20, 1859, Lt. William Bedford Royall and seventy-nine enlisted men of Companies C and G, Second U.S. Cavalry, reported to Camp Lawson. Royall had commanded the company since January 1859. He and his troopers were transferred from Camp Colorado (Coleman County). From Camp Lawson, on January 27, 1860, Royall dispatched Sgt. Alexander McK. Craig and some fourteen men of Company C to pursue a party of American Indians that had committed depredations on the Leona River. Ultimately the troops along with seven citizens overtook and attacked them, killed four, wounded two others, and captured twenty-one horses. Two soldiers were wounded, and Sergeant Craig and his party were credited "for their energy and bravery" in the pursuit and fight. In February 1860 Company G was ordered to Brownsville, and most members of Company C (Capt. James B. Oakes, Lt. James B. Witherell, and forty-two privates) were transferred up the Leona River to Fort Inge on February 7, 1860. Lieutenant Royall remained at Camp Lawson through May 25, 1860, when he and a twenty-man detachment joined the rest of Company C at Fort Inge. Camp Lawson was a temporary military camp with no known permanent structures. The location of the camp today would be in the floodplain of the Frio River, where the Leona River converges, just northwest of Interstate 35 at the Frio River Crossing, between Derby and Dilley.

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Pearsall, TX

1882

Pearsall, the county seat of Frio County, is on Interstate Highway 35 and the Missouri Pacific Railroad fifty-five miles southwest of San Antonio in the central part of the county. In the 1870s wagon trains stopped at a well on a large sheep ranch when they traveled the road from Frio Town to Pleasanton; this well was known as Waggoner's (Wagner's) Well. On February 6, 1882, the International-Great Northern Railroad gained control of 2,000 acres of land around the well. An affiliate, the New York and Texas Land Company , allowed them to circumvent Texas laws limiting railroad ownership of land, and, on February 15, 1882, they platted the townsite of Pearsall, named after the vice president of the railroad, Thomas W. Pearsall, east of the newly laid railroad tracks opposite Waggoner's Well. A general exodus of people and businesses from Frio Town ensued, and a tent community grew up around the railroad depot. Prospective buyers of town lots arrived on advertised train tours from San Antonio. By 1884 Pearsall was the new county seat of Frio County and had 700 residents, twenty businesses, three hotels, three churches, a district school, and a weekly newspaper known as the Pearsall News . By 1890, despite a fire that devastated most of its downtown district, Pearsall had an estimated population of 1,000, Methodist, Baptist, and Christian churches, a college called Frio College headed by B. C. Hendricks, two newspapers (the Sun and the News ), a corn mill, and a cotton gin. In the early 1890s the mercantile block in downtown Pearsall, established by the partnership of C. H. Beever and George Hindes, became one of the largest general merchandise operations between San Antonio and Laredo. In 1907 Hindes helped organize the Frio Cotton Oil Company of Pearsall, and Beever helped organize the Pearsall Artesian Well Company, which provided the community with its first electric service. The Pearsall People's State Bank was organized in 1908. The city incorporated with a mayor-council form of city government in 1909, and the Pearsall Water, Ice, and Electric Company was organized in 1910. By 1914 Pearsall had an estimated population of 2,000, a variety of churches, telephone connections, ten large mercantile establishments, the Pearsall National Bank, two drugstores, four confectioneries, two barbershops, an automobile garage, a photographer, two newspapers, two millinery stores, three hotels, three cotton gins, a cottonseed oil mill, a wholesale grain store, an electric plant, the Laurel Opera House (with a seating capacity of 500 and more than seventy-five electric lights), a bakery and restaurant, two livery barns, a twenty-seven-piece concert band, and several social clubs. In 1936 Pearson had an estimated population of 2,536 and forty-one businesses. Oil was discovered in the 1930s, natural gas was introduced in 1945, and many of Pearsall's avenues were paved in 1947. The town had an estimated population of 4,500 and eighty businesses by 1949; in 1970 it had an estimated population of 5,109 and 128 businesses. The Frio Pioneer Jail Museum, housed in the original county jail built in 1884, was formally dedicated in ceremonies addressed by United States Representative Henry B. Gonzalez and Ollie Taylor, woman sheriff of Frio County, on July 3, 1976. In 1980 Pearsall had an estimated population of 6,453 and 192 business operations. In 1990 the estimated population was 9,355, and Pearsall had six public schools, a student enrollment of 2,400, thirteen churches representing ten denominations, and a public library housing over 23,000 volumes. The surrounding country is a prime hunting location, and Pearsall holds annual festivities including a Wild Game Dinner. In the early 1990s the town experienced an oil boom led by Oryx Energy, which began drilling in the Pearsall field in September 1989. Increased exploration contributed to the revitalization of Pearsall's economy. In 2000 the population was 7,157.

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Frio County Jail, Old

1884

Oldest building in town. Built in 1884 for $11,000. Style typical of era. Used as jail and jailer's residence until 1967. Second story and part of the first housed jail. Two separate cells were added in 1885 for female or juvenile prisoners or for the insane. For years a well on the premises supplied water. During prohibition in early 20th century, confiscated bootleg liquor was stored by law officers in one of cells. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark--1970.

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Frio Lodge No. 399, A.F. & A.M.

1873

The Frio Lodge was organized with seven members in 1873 in the town of Frio City (16 mi. NW) and was chartered the following year. The first Worshipful Master was John B. McMahon, a pioneer area settler who had served as head of the Grand Lodge of Texas in 1860-61. In 1883 the lodge relocated to the new railroad town of Pearsall. Over the years many prominent community leaders have been members of the Frio Masonic lodge, which is the oldest continuing organization in Frio County. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

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Pearsall, Texas

Music in Pearsall

Songs About Pearsall

Artists From Pearsall

Rivers & Roads in Song near Pearsall

History of Pearsall

The Day an F4 Crossed Interstate 35 RoadyGoat

The 1884 Jail With the Town's Oldest Walls RoadyGoat

The Well, the Railroad, and the Man Who Never Lived Here RoadyGoat

Frio Town, TX

Frio County

Camp Lawson

Pearsall, TX

Frio County Jail, Old

Frio Lodge No. 399, A.F. & A.M.

Everything Near Pearsall