DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about St. Paul, down in San Patricio County. Now, some towns grow up slow, the way a mesquite root works its way through caliche — patient, stubborn, quiet.
And then there are towns that arrive all at once, practically gift-wrapped and dropped on the South Texas plain. St. Paul was one of the second kind.
It started in 1910, and the man at the center of it was a developer named George H. Paul. He had an eye for land and, it seems, a fondness for scale.
George Paul purchased seventy thousand acres from a local rancher by the name of J. J. Welder.
Seventy thousand acres. That is not a small number. That is ambition you can ride across on horseback and still not reach the fence by sundown.
Paul took all that acreage and divided it into farm lots. Then in December of 1910, the townsite of St. Paul was platted — drawn up on paper, given shape and streets and a name.
And to get the word out, Adolph, Robert, and John Shary formed the Shary Land Company, dedicated to promoting this brand-new community to anyone who'd listen. Now here's where it gets interesting. The agents working for this development team didn't just wait for word to spread.
They went looking for settlers — all the way up into the Midwest. Excursion trains departed Kansas City twice a month, carrying prospective settlers down to Texas to see what all the fuss was about. Twice a month.
Like clockwork. Like a promise on a schedule. And the town didn't waste any time proving the pitch was worth the train ride.
Homes went up. Retail stores opened. Schools and churches followed.
And standing right in the middle of it all was the three-story Shary Hotel — three stories, in a brand-new South Texas town — which tells you something about how seriously these folks intended to be taken. Then there was the George H. Paul company farm — described as huge, which is saying something in a place where everything already ran big.
It employed as many as three hundred workers. And the George H. Paul farm store was the largest store in town, which also happened to house a post office — established in 1910 — along with a telephone exchange and a bank.
One building. Post office, telephone exchange, bank, and the biggest store around. That's not a store, that's a small civilization under one roof.
By the nineteen-twenties, prosperous cotton gins were running to process the farmers' crops. And if you were standing at the St. Paul Depot on a busy day, you'd count eight trains coming through.
Eight trains a day. The place was humming. But the marker doesn't let you linger there too long.
After World War II, St. Paul began to decline. Many people moved to larger cities — the way people do when a town has given them everything it can and the road calls louder than the roots.
Seventy thousand acres, twice-monthly trains out of Kansas City, eight trains a day at the depot, three hundred workers on a company farm, a three-story hotel in a brand-new town — and in the end, the same quiet that comes for so many places that burned bright and fast. St. Paul still has its story.
You're driving through it right now.
What the marker says
The town of St. Paul began in 1910, the result of a land promotion operation by developer George H. Paul and the Shary Land Company. George Paul purchased 70,000 acres of land from local rancher J.J. Welder and divided the acreage into farm lots. The townsite of St. Paul was platted in December 1910, and Adolph, Robert, and John Shary formed the Shary Land Company to promote the new town. Agents representing the development team worked throughout the midwest to publicize the new community and excursion trains departed Kansas City twice a month bringing prospective settlers to Texas. The town grew quickly, with the construction of homes, the three story shary hotel, retail stores, schools, and churches. The George H. Paul company operated a huge company farm that employed as many as 300 workers, as well as the largest store in town, the George H. Paul farm store, which also housed a post office (established in 1910), telephone exchange, and a bank. By the 1920's prosperous cotton gins were in operation to process farmers crops, and eight trains a day came through the busy St. Paul Depot. The town declined after World War II as many people moved to larger cities. 1994