DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, every good scheme needs three things: a dream, a deadline, and somebody who doesn't read the fine print. The Great Land Lottery of Aransas Pass had all three, and then some.
Pull up a chair. In 1909, two real estate developers by the names of E.O. Burton and A.H.
Danforth set their eyes on the available land around Aransas Pass and decided the world needed to know about it — all of it, preferably at a hundred dollars a pop. They hired a journalist named W.H. Vernor to produce a publication called the Aransas Pass Progress, and that paper went out across the country by U.S.
Mail, singing the praises of Aransas Pass and the land sale to come. Now, here's where it gets delicate. They also brought in a promoter named A.D.
Powers, and his job — his very careful, very specific job — was to make sure the whole operation did not look like a lottery to the postal department. Six thousand tickets were printed, each one representing a town lot. Six thousand tickets, sold at a hundred dollars each.
Ticket holders would then travel to Aransas Pass, where they'd bid on the lots — but here was the elegant part — they were not permitted to bid more than a hundred dollars. Which meant, neat as you please, a ticket could be exchanged directly for a lot. Nearly all six thousand lots sold during the auction in December of 1909.
For a while there, it looked like Burton and Danforth and Powers had pulled off something genuinely smooth. And then the postal inspectors showed up. See, those inspectors had secured tickets of their own — on purpose — and when the bidding started, they overbid.
Deliberately. That muddled the sale something fierce, and what followed were several legal battles that nobody was putting in the promotional literature. But here's the thing about Aransas Pass — despite all of it, the town did see substantial growth as a result of the great land lottery of 1909.
And the money that had been collected in those overbids? It didn't vanish into some lawyer's pocket. It went into a trust, and that trust eventually served to fund public and school libraries — including the very one standing at this site.
A scheme designed to skirt the law ended up building a place where the law, and everything else worth knowing, sits quietly on a shelf. Not bad for a hundred dollars a ticket.
What the marker says
In 1909, real estate developers E.O. Burton and A.H. Danforth embarked upon a land promotion scheme to take advantage of available land in Aransas Pass. They hired journalist W.H. Vernor to produce the "Aransas Pass Progress", which promoted Aransas Pass and the pending land sale across the country by U.S. Mail. Promoter A.D. Powers was hired to carefully handle the sale to avoid its being seen as a lottery by the postal department. Six thousand tickets, each representing a town lot, were sold for $100 each. Ticket holders were then to come to Aransas Pass to bid on lots; they were not to bid more than $100, and thus the tickets could be exchanged directly for lots. Nearly all 6,000 lots were sold during the auction sales in December 1909. All went well until postal inspectors who had secured tickets purposefully overbid, which muddled the sale and led to several legal battles. As a result of the great land lottery of 1909, Aransas Pass did see substantial growth. The money collected in overbids went into a trust that eventually served to fund public and school libraries, including the one at this site.