South Texas, Alice

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The land of the town itself dates back to the 1750's, having been a part of the Spanish land grants administered by a Jose Escandon. Jose de Escondon introduced ranching into present day South Texas in the Mid-1700s when he began settlements along the Rio Grande and the Nueces River. These settlements were being founded on land grants issued by the King of Spain. Three land grants were made directly by the King in the Alice area; the Casa Blanca Grant in 1807, the Santa Gertrudis Grant, 1808 and the San Antonio de Aqua Dulce Grant, 1809.

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Jose Escandon's job was to create missions back in the mid-1700s in the area to keep the French from colonizing, but there was already a Spanish presence in the area as in 1734 the Spaniards had established a fort at the Indian village of Lipantitlan which was considered the best crossing of the Nueces River in the area. Fort Lipantitlan was located across the Nueces from present San Patricio.

Another fort was built on a high bank near the mouth of Penitas Creek close to where it joined the Nueces River. Twenty-foot walls protected its settlers from the cannibalistic Karankawas, an Indian tribe hated by both the Spaniards and other Indians tribes in the area. Additionally aside from the wild herds of Long Horn cattle and Mustang horses the area also During the Texas Revolution with Mexico the area heard the steps of the Mexican army and heard shots of war as in 1836 General Urrea and his army was on the way to meet up with General Santa Anna's army and its showdown with Sam Houston at San Jacinto.

It was a fatal showdown for the Mexicans as Urrea's original victory route became the retreat route of a defeated Mexican army. Skipping ahead a bit to the late 1800's it became time for the railroads to make an appearance in the area. Specifically, in the late 1880's the company San Antonio and Aransas pass Railroad Co. decided to extend their railroad lines further down south, from the location of Skidmore. They chose the area near Alice to extend the lines, however before they chose that location they had wanted to run the line through the town of Collins as earlier in 1877 the Texas-Mexican Railroad had come through the town of Collins.

Collins was forty miles west of Corpus Christi at a site that was in Nueces County and now is in Jim Wells County. The settlement was established in 1878 on the Los Presetos grant, a Mexican grant that was subdivided in 1878. bought the northwest portion and platted the Collins townsite across San Fernando Creek from the town of Los Presetos. The Corpus Christi, San Diego, and Rio Grande Narrow Gauge Railroad laid track through the townsite en route to San Diego, Texas, in late 1878. That year the post office at Los Presetos was closed. Collins began to grow and soon replaced Los Presetos on maps. The post office occupied one of the rooms in Phil Hobbs's store, and Hobbs himself was the postmaster. Residents of Los Presetos migrated and followed the post office to Collins. Early settlers included Oscar Staples, who had taught school in town of Collins; Mrs. E. D. Sidbury, who owned a lumber yard near the house of Becham, which had served as the meeting place for the church of the Methodist Episcopal, South, until 1889; and Father Bard, who had famously almost singlehandedly built the town's only Catholic church. By 1880 Collins had a population of 500, a railroad station, a two-story hotel, several stores and eating places, and a few houses and small barns. N.G. Collins had developed this little town, also named after him, and he donated land for the townsite and sold acerage from his own property, purchased from the Marcelino Lopez Los Presence grant. The town of Collins itself was a popular shipping and mailing center for ranches between Aqua Dulce and San Diego before the creation of Alice due to a failed deal between the citizens and a railroad company. The railroad Co. of San Antonio and Aransas pass failed to finalize a deal between the townspeople and their company about selling their lands to the Railroad Company in order for them to build a line through the town due to the townspeople being quite unwilling to sell their land. Having been denied but not discouraged the Railroad Company decided to build a new town and to have the railroad moved westward about three miles along the Tex-Mex and F.B. Nayer and Frank W. Ellis were chosen to handle the sale of some 2,300 acres set aside for the new townsite and SAAP railroad facilities. The acreage was divided into a townsite and farm blocks, in laying on both sides of the Tex-Mex tracks."

With this line having been built, it extended to the town of Laredo from Corpus Christi in 1877, with San Antonio being the biggest town in between. In 1883 a depot called bandana was built on the railroads junction with Corpus Christi, San Diego and Rio Grande Railway.

Bandana soon became a thriving cattle-shipping point, and application for a post office was made under the name Kleberg in honor of Robert Justus Kleberg. The petition was denied because a town named Kleberg already appeared on the post office list, so residents then chose the name Alice, in honor of Alice Gertrudis King Kleberg, Kleberg's wife and the daughter of Richard King."

To know a city is also to know of its namesake. Alice Gertudis King Kleberg was born to Capt. Richard and Henrietta (Chamberlain) King on April 29, 1862, at Rancho Santa Gertrudis (popularly known as the King Ranch), where she spent her whole life. Alice grew up with four siblings: Henrietta Marie, born in 1856, Ella Morse, born in 1858, Richard the second, born in 1860, and Robert Lee, born in 1864. All children grew up speaking both English and Spanish very well and felt at home on the ranch, being able to ride horses easily, with Alice in particular giving off a very noble, elegant vibe as she rode in the saddle. Alice and her sisters were schooled by private tutors but later "attended school at Henderson Female Institute, a Presbyterian girls' school located in Danville, Kentucky. Alice and her sister Ella started school in 1871. By 1875 they were back on the ranch. She later married Robert Kleberg, a skilled lawyer that had bested her fathers legal team, later getting married and giving birth to his children. Alice Kleberg worked hard as mother, daughter, and wife on the ranch, helping her father to manage affairs as she had become a reliable pillar to help him after the death of his son Robert Lee in 1883, and after her father died of stomach cancer in 1885 the King Ranch was left to be in the care of Robert Kleberg. Additionally in the early 1900's Alice began raising money in order to built a hospital facility for Arthur Spohn, the doctor who helped her give birth to her first child.

Alice Kleberg worked hard as a mother, daughter, and wife and assumed many of her mother's duties, which included handling certain business matters and providing hospitality to the many people who came through the ranch gates. Friends lauded her warm-hearted gentility and sweet-natured grace. She was remembered as an unselfish woman who assumed the duties of motherhood with a deep happiness."

Alice King Kleberg died July 30th, 1944, joining her husband who had died October 10th, 1932. Alice was described by friends as a woman of both strong mind and strong character, yet at the same time had a gentle spirit and a caring, unselfish personality, never turning any away who came to her home for help. Additionally, in honor of her memory, Alice's children set up the Alice G.K. Kleberg Fund in 1944 and since then it has been providing help to religious, educational, medical, anti-poverty, and youth-centered programs and initiatives. This women of Texas was a caring selfless person who always thought of others first, and is a fine example of a shining Texan spirit of hospitality.

Before further development of the railroads around Alice progressed to a more advanced state(with the town being built around the Tex-Mex and SAAP tracks)the town was world-famous as a cattle shipping center. Due to earlier Mexican colonization there was a significant Long Horn cattle population along with wild Mustang horses in the area as they thrived in the environment. Additionally, what contributed to the large demand for cattle was the ending of the American civil war(1861-1865), before the war there wasn't any large demand for meat but after it ended the low supply of meat created a market as farmers realized that while a single head of cattle may be worth around three or four dollars in the area, people up north were willing to buy them for thirty or forty dollars a head. This was the beginning of the trail drives. Major trail drives started in 1866, with Long Horn cattle rounded up traveled overland to the Kansas railroad loading centers. Additionally, from that point they were shipped in box cars to markets in the east. Alice had become a huge gathering point as a cow-town for cattle buyers, seller, and the good old- fashioned stereotypical cowboys for hundreds of miles around the area. The town was very prosperous in its growth until visited by a disastrous fire in 1909 which wiped out practically all her business district. However, recovery in the town after the fire was rapid and rebuilding of the building bunred down swift. The trail drives however where destined to end with the expansion of the railroads and the changing of once open pastures being closed off by barbed wire fenced land by the mid 1880's, but that didn't mean an end to Alice's prosperity as following this the town became one of the largest inland cattle shipping site's in the world as the railroad expanded through town and beyond. This period of prosperity lasted from 1890 until 1895, where after that the railroad had extended further southward and by 1904 the line had been extended as far as Falfurrias. At this point agriculture became the popular job to be held in the county, with progression of the development of agriculture in the area swiftly taking root after the discovery of soil that held the promise of being very fertile and gave assurance to farmers that the crop yields would bring great benefit to the famers then leaving the land in its natural condition as a grazing area for the cattle. Additionally, the population increased from 1,880 citizens in 1920 to over 4000 in 1926. The reason behind the population increase can be attributed to the successful progress over the years in development of the fertile black soil of the Nucces Valley. Soon the area had over 500,000 acres of land being cultivated by 1944. However, that did not mean that the industry for Long Horn cattle had lost all promise and interest, still being one of the most important fundamental resources of the town, but by sharing its lands with agriculture its superiority had been supplemented by farming. Looking back at the town of Collins it had developed into a very sizable town by 1888, however, with the existence of the more popular town of Alice the allure of migration to the townsite for the Collins citizens and more business-oriented became to much to resist. The stores of Collins rapidly closed then reopened in Alice, even the Collins family, the family whom the town was named after, moved to Alice alongside many families who moved in from neighboring ranches of the county, adding a much welcome boost to the town population size.

With the growth of the town came a growth of both industry and improvement of routes for transportation. Two railroads and four newly created hard-surfaced roads stretching out in all four cardinal directions had turned Alice into a hub for both railroad and motor activites to the Rio Grande Valley, to the entire south Texas gulf coast and even further down south to Mexico. Additionally, due to its strategic geographical positioning between Corpus Christi, Laredo and San Antonio it is usually referred to the Hub City.

Alice was chosen county seat of Jim Wells County shortly after the county's organization in 1911. The town also became the headquarters for Texas Rangers serving in South Texas during the 1912-16 border raids. By 1914 Alice had an estimated population of 3,500, two banks, a cottonseed oil mill, a cotton gin, an ice plant, and two weeklies, the Alice Echo and the News. The introduction of irrigation helped to continue Alice's importance as a shipping center, and a shift was made from transporting livestock to transporting fruits and vegetables. During the 1920s, as a result of the oil boom in Jim Wells County, Alice adopted the slogan "Hub City of South Texas." The town served as the distribution point for both supplies and construction to south Texas. Its population was estimated at 4,239 in 1931. In 1935 a public library opened. The town had an oil boom in 1938, when the Alice oilfield was discovered. By beginning with a man called Armano Marroquin and partner Paco Betancourt launched what was to be the first home-based recording company to record Tejano artists exclusivel.

Alice made national headlines during the 1948 primary election for state senator. Lyndon Baines Johnson and Governor Coke Stevenson both ran for the Democratic party nomination. It was alleged that Johnson won the primary because he had stolen the election with the help of George B. Parr, political boss, who controlled both Duval and Jim Wells counties. Alice became the focal point of a federal investigation when it was alleged that Alice's Precinct 13 ballot box had been stuffed. By 1949 violence erupted in Alice. W. H. (Bill) Mason, a local broadcaster, was shot by deputy sheriff Sam Smithwick after he had alleged on the air that Smithwick was the owner of a dime-a-dance palace.

During the 1940s and 1950s Alice had a strong economy based on the oil and gas industry, livestock production, cotton, flax, grain, and vegetables. Additionally, Alice is also known as The Birthplace of Tejano. This began when in the mid 1940's Armando Maroquin and partner Paco Betancourt started up one of the first home-grown recording company's that only recorded Tejano artists. Ideal Records, which was based in Alice, the heart of South Texas and under the direction of Marroquin became the perfect vehicle for Tejano groups and artists to get their music to the public. The economy also relied on factories producing manufactured oil-well chemicals and supplies, fiberglass, products, cottonseed oil products, and foods. Early census figures recorded had indicated a population of 16,414 in the 1950's then increased in the 1960's with the population increasing to 20,861. A count of the churches and schools in 1963 showed Alice had thirteen churches and seven schools and in 1966 the town reported 429 businesses, nineteen manufacturers, twenty churches, two libraries, two newspapers, three banks, a radio station, and a hospital. There was an uproar around 1966 when Mexican-American youths boycotted the Alice High School in protest against discrimination on the part of students, teachers, and administrators, with the issue later being settled peacefully. Alice increased further in both business and population, with an estimated population of 25,100 and 462 businesses in 1970. During the 1970s the city continued to be an important oil and agricultural center in South Texas. Agriculture Business in Alice amounted to nearly $34 million annually in the annual gross income of the Jim Wells County. Additionally, Alice trade territory welcomed a population of more than 150,000 in a forty-mile radius. In 1982 naphthalene and phenanthrene were found in the water supply and further traced to an oilfield drilling company working in the area which is not surprising considering there were over 250 oil and mineral industry companies in the area At the time Alice had eleven public schools(the number of schools having dropped) and two parochial schools, twenty-nine churches, a museum, a public library, a private hospital, 557 businesses, and ninety-four major employers. By 1990 Alice had altogether a population of 19,788 but in early 2000 the population dropped to 19,010.

Recreational facilities in Alice include city parks, golf courses, and swimming pools. Proximity to Lake Corpus Christi, Padre Island, and the Gulf of Mexico makes Alice an attractive haven for winter Texans. The Fiesta Bandana is held annually in May. A historical marker noting Alice's 100th anniversary was unveiled on August 28, 1993