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PAPALOTE,
TEXAS Bee County,
South Texas
Highway 181
18 miles S of Beeville
3 miles N of the San Patricio County Line
Population:
70 (est) 1990 Papalote
Area Hotels - Book Here & Save
Beeville Hotels |
A
closed gas station
Photo courtesy Ken
Rudine, August 2007 |
History
in a Pecan Shell
Papalote is regarded as one of Bee County's oldest
communities. Settled on Papalote Creek, the name is believed to either be a Karankawa
word for "kite" or a colloquial Mexican-Spanish term for windmill.
Like settlers in neighboring San Patricio County, early Papalotians were immigrants
from Ireland settling on Spanish grants.
Prior to 1857 the town was
actually three separate settlements:
Lower Papalote, a.k.a. Steenville
was named after local storekeeper R. W. Steen. This settlement had the advantage
of having the post office.
Central Papalote, a.k.a. Cravensville
developed around a lumberyard run by Felix Hart and named to honor a local family
with the surname Craven.
Upper Papalote, a.k.a. Murdock Place
had another store run by a man named Luke Hart. This settlement was on the south
side of the creek.
By the mid-1880s the three Papalote communities united.
Merging benefited all and by 1872 Papalote had a doctor, grist mill, butcher,
sadler, and several saloons.
The railroad (the San Antonio and Aransas
Pass) arrived in 1886 and laid tracks on land donated by a local named Hatch.
He also sold land to the German-American Land Company who resold it to settlers
from Iowa and Hawaii (!) in five acre tracts. Intended to be orange groves, hopes
were dashed when a freeze devastated the crop.
1910 brought a small land
boom and a few more businesses, but the hurricane of 1919 was another discouragement.
From a population of 52 in 1890, Papalote blossomed to 134 residents in 1904 which
declined in the thirties. It has since risen to 70 residents - a number it has
used since the late 1960s.
The detailed TxDoT County map for Bee County
shows a cemetery on the south side of Papalote Creek (Upper Papalote). |
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Papalote
Creek Historical Marker
Photo courtesy Ken
Rudine, August 2007 | |
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