| |
| "An
oil painting of the 1885 Atascosa County courthouse that stood in Pleasanton.
The legend says that when the county seat was moved to Jourdanton
in 1910, this building was lifted from its foundation and moved there. It has
since been demolished. This painting hangs in the Longhorn Museum in Pleasanton,
Texas." - Terry Jeanson, October 30, 2006 |
Pleasanton
History in a Pecan ShellIndian
troubles in the late 1850s prompted the establishment of Pleasanton. The town
of Amphion (not 100% confirmed to have been the
Atascosa county seat) had been formed 9 miles from present-day Pleasanton. Amphion
was bypassed by the railroad and is today considered to be a ghost
town. John Bowen is credited with naming the community after another settler
named John Pleasant. Bowen generously donated five square miles of land to form
the new town.
In 1861 the population consisted only of a dozen families
and the couthouse was a simple log structure. Nine years later a new courthouse
was built and the log courthouse then served as a school. In 1875 the log school
was replaced by a stone building. As county seat, Pleasanton had a bright future.
At least it was bright up until 1910 when Jourdanton
became the county seat.
The Missouri Pacific Railroad connected Pleasanton
to San Antonio in 1912 and two
years later the town had service to Corpus
Christi.
Pleasanton was thriving with a sizeable population of 1,500
and became a collection point for cattle herds traveling north to Kansas.
In the mid 1960s the "Cowboy Homecoming" became an annual event since town
promoters considered the city to be "the birthplace of the cowboy." The festival
is held each August.
The population of Pleasanton reached over 6,000 in
1980 and over 8,000 in the mid 1990s.
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Pleasanton Hotels |
Pleasanton
Chronicles:Cowboy
Tree by Mike Cox
( "Texas
Tales" Column)
Many a Texas town had its hanging tree, an old
oak bearing its ugly legends as well as leaves. But on a more pleasant note, Pleasanton
may be the only place in the state – and the world for that matter – that had
a cowboy tree.
In a way, it’s natural enough that Pleasanton would have
such a tree, unnatural as the combination of the words “cowboy” and “tree” seems
to be. The Atascosa County community south of San Antonio has long claimed to
be the birthplace of the cowboy.
While proving that the very first Texas
cowpoke swung into the saddle in or near Pleasanton would be a bit of a stretch,
no one can question that the cattle business and the men who made it happen played
an important role in Pleasanton’s past.
An historical marker on the city
hall square notes that 43,000 head of Longhorn cattle passed through Pleasanton
during the first three months of 1873.
Located on the old El Camino Real
at an easy crossing of the Atascosa River, Pleasanton had long been a transportation
crossroads. When profit-minded Texans began pushing Longhorns up from the South
Texas brush country to the railhead in Kansas in the early 1870s, Pleasanton made
a convenient stopping place on what became known as the Chisholm Trail.
The
Stock Raiser Association of Western Texas frequently gathered in Pleasanton for
its yearly convention, and the Western Stock Journal listed Pleasanton as its
place of publication. next
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