Catarina Hotel

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, friends, and this one's worth pullin' over for. Out in Dimmit County, in a stretch of South Texas that'll humble you with its flatness and its heat, sits a building that remembers a town at the very top of its game. The Catarina Hotel.

Let me set the scene. The whole town of Catarina grew up around the headquarters of something called the Sinton-Taft Ranch, later known as the Taft-Catarina Ranch. Big land.

Ranch country. And then, sometime in the nineteen twenties, three Kansas businessmen came riding in with money and ambition and plans. C.H.

Kearny, J.E. Jarrett, and H.V. Wheeler.

They bought the ranch for development, and they were good at attracting buyers; because by 1928, the town of Catarina had approximately twenty-five hundred residents and many businesses humming right along. Twenty-five hundred people. Out here.

Now that's a boom. And right in the middle of that boom, in 1925 and 1926, C.H. Kearny and a man named Lee Peters sat down and designed something worthy of the moment.

They built this hotel in the Spanish Eclectic style: tile roofs, mission elements, cast stone detailing, and a U-shaped plan wrapping around a courtyard with a fish pond sitting right in the middle of it all. A fish pond. In South Texas.

That tells you everything about the ambition of the age. The building didn't just house hotel guests either. At one time or another it held a bank, a café, shops, and offices, a whole little world under one roof.

And now here it stands, long after the boom has quieted, still wearing its tile roof and its courtyard and its cast stone details like a man who dressed for the occasion and never quite left the party. The marker calls it a reminder of the town's boom era. I'd say it's more than a reminder.

It's proof.

What the marker says

Catarina grew around headquarters of the Sinton-Taft Ranch, later called Taft-Catarina Ranch. Kansas businessmen C.H. Kearny, J.E. Jarrett and H.V. Wheeler bought the ranch in the 1920s for development, attracting many buyers. By 1928, the town had approximately 2,500 residents and many businesses, including this hotel. In 1925-26, C.H. Kearny and Lee Peters designed and built the hotel in the Spanish Eclectic style, with features including tile roofs and mission elements, cast stone detailing, and a U-shaped plan with courtyard and fish pond. The building, which once also housed a bank, café, shops and offices, is a reminder of the town's boom era. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark-2002