USA > Texas > A Twentieth century history of southwest Texas, Volume II > Part 18
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Standards of Comparison.
The growth of Southwest Texas outside of the city centers entered the stage of remarkable and in some respects phenomenal rapidity shortly after the recovery of prosperity following the hard times of the 'gos ; ten years' time would, therefore, measure this period. When, on every hand, one can see evidences of such development, and hear still greater stories of its progress, one who sees the country and knows what it was a few years ago needs no additional proof of fruitful results of this era of prosperity. But to one unacquainted with the proper stand- ards by which to measure this progress, or to the reader who in later decades refers to these pages for an accurate description of the country as it is in 1907, it is necessary to indicate some sort of standard of judgment.
Though immigration has been pouring into Southwest Texas during the past ten years, and though the great ranches are being cut up into stock and crop farms, yet it is not to be understood that this region has been developed to any such stage as an Illinois farming community. The country is not cut into a checkerboard by roads intersecting at every mile or less, nor do neat and comfortable farm houses, with nicely kept grounds and commodious outbuildings adorn the roadside at every half mile or less. One who anticipates such a scene as this in Southwest Texas, except in a few restricted spots, will be disappointed.
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In the first place the country is too expansive. Great as has been the immigration of the past few years, it has been distributed over an area so great that it hardly makes a showing except in the aggregate. And then, although much is heard about making farms out of ranches, as a general proposition it may be stated that these farms, except near the cities or where devoted to trucking by means of irrigation, seldom consist of less than a section of land. Despite the movement of the farm- ing class into this section and the gradual disappearance of the large cattle ranges, the region south and west of San Antonio is still in large tracts. Within forty miles of San Antonio one may ride several miles without seeing a house. So it is that Southwest Texas is still a country with greater possibilities for the future than anything it has accomplished in the past ; in other words, it is "a coming country."
The various lines along which this region has developed during the past quarter of a century are frequently mentioned in the course of the following pages, either in a special manner or incidental to the sketches of the citizens representing this vast extent of territory, and whose occupa- tions and careers quite faithfully epitomize the progress of their respec- tive communities. In general, it should be said that, outside of the rail- roads, artificial irrigation has probably done more to produce wealth in this country and make it permanently profitable than any other cause.
Irrigation.
Irrigation in this country is, of course, as old as the missions them- selves. But dependence on underground waters, forced to the surface through pipes, and thence distributed over considerable area of land, is a development of the past thirty years. Along in the seventies, the news- papers, stirred by certain very successful experiments in this direction. took up the subject of artesian wells, and the agitation has been constant from that time. Practically all the country from the San Antonio to the Nueces river is subject to artesian development, and a large part of the region south of the latter river.
Irrigated land means wealth. Its value runs from fifty to two or three hundred dollars per acre, and it soon pays for itself at that in the profusion of crops that it will produce. A tract of land without irrigation facilities may sell for ten dollars an acre, while across the road a farm covered with ditches to water. every foot of its soil is worth ten or twenty times that much.
So, at this writing, irrigation is probably the greatest factor in add- ing value to Southwest Texas. There is no question that it will be rapidly extended to every possible part of the country, and the results, after another quarter century's development in this direction, can hardly be foretold.
Of the development in the southwest country, a San Antonio news- paper recently said :
That the twelve months which will end with the opening of the fall excur- sions for homeseekers will have proved the most successful in extent of immi- gration induced to Southwest Texas is the belief of practically all who have been for the last year or two interested in the settlement of this section.
Statistics respecting the extent of immigration and comparative figures in con-
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nection with the semi-monthly homeseekers' excursions are most difficult of com- pilation, hence nothing definite can be secured in the way of an arithmetical dem- onstration of the progress of the work now being conducted. The semi-monthly excursions seldom bring less than 1000 farmers of the Middle Western States to San Antonio as a distributing point for the Southwestern territory. It is asserted that Houston is likewise a distributing center for an equally large number of monthly prospectors. It is generally believed that as many if not more home- seekers continue to the farming lands further to the south without stopping at San Antonio, and proceed to the Brownsville territory without spending any time in Houston. Considering these assumed facts, the assumption of which is based upon approximately accurate information, it is then declared that between 3000 and 4000 homeseekers are brought into Southwest Texas alone, twice a month.
Immigration men differ widely on the percentage of settlements and pur- chases as compared to the prospectors, the estimates ranging from 40 to 60 per cent. There is none, however, who has studied the situation and watched its de- velopment for the last few years, who places an estimate at less than the smaller figure. The majority, possibly, incline to the larger.
It is pointed out that the homeseekers are as a rule as true to the instincts of shrewd commercialism as the average business man. In other words, they know how to "drive a bargain" and are rarely deceived on inferior land. It is also noted that they usually take ample time to consider a deal in all its phases be- fore they sign the deeds. They are necessarily cautious because a step wrongly taken would mean, possibly, disaster to their families as the moving of a home hundreds of miles is a most expensive undertaking. Therefore, the better equipped, financially, usually are those who purchase with seemingly little consideration of the deal in question. The vast majority, however, make the trip, size up the country, investigate its productiveness, familiarize themselves with its climatic qualifications and report to their families on their findings. For this reason a mul- titude of purchases are made months after the prospector made his trip to the South. If the bulk of the sales were made during the stay of an excursion party in a particular section an approximately accurate estimate of the proportion of the sales to the number of visitors could be made. As it is no definite figures can be advanced.
The physical aspect of the country tributary to San Antonio, however, is the best guide to the success of the current movements to develop the Southwest. A railroad man engaged in directing the immigration department of his company de- clared after a recent trip through the territory involved in the great enterprise, that the visitor who passed through it a year ago would hardly recognize it today. The large ranches have been cut into small farming tracts and are being settled by hosts of thrifty farmers of all the Middle Western States and other parts of Texas. Small farm houses are noted as far the eve can reach. The country is fast assuming a physical aspect similar to that of Indiana and Illinois. Edging railroads the farm houses are located in rows that are constantly getting deeper. Truck farming, the raising of corn and cotton, cattle and hogs are the chief occu- pations and they are proving most renumerative to him who undertakes them. It is predicted that the era of the Southwest's supremacv is but beginning and that this section is destined to advance farther in the realm of successful agriculture than any other portion of the United States.
A letter from a Texas minister, published in "The Outlook" in October, 1906, contained some points on this immigration movement :
According to the census of 1900, there were about three million people in this State. There were ten counties with an average of thirty persons, four with an average of twenty, two with only fifteen and one-half persons each.
But when we read that twenty-five thousand homeseekeers left the vicinity of Chicago recently on one of those bi-monthly homeseekers' excursions, we can readily see how rapidly Texas is filling up.
The writer, on one of his trips through that rich country below San An- tonio (1898), went thirty-five miles without meeting a person or coming to a field or house. He was lost, but all he had to do was to turn about and follow
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his wagon track back to the starting-point. I was told by an officer of the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway recently that "they could not locate the im- migrants fast enough." I was mostly attracted by the forming of a colony of truck and garden farmers on the new Southern Pacific Railway near San Antonio. One of them told me that they were not after foreigners or colored people. They wanted the best class of Eastern and Middle Western truck farmers and garden- ers, fruit and poultry raisers ; that they were buying up all the cheap ($10) land to hold for the colony, and that the Southern Pacific Railway had promised to help make the movement a success. One man in that vicinity has discarded the most of his 440-acre farm, and, with a little gasoline engine and pump, waters and culti- vates nine acres with a garden plow (hand), and, with only his son to help him, makes about $450 an acre on his crops of ribbon cane, onions (at 11/2 cents a pound), and cabbages.
Concerning the development of the southwest country, the San Antonio Express said, in March, 1907 :
It would be impossible to pick another group of eleven contiguous counties in the State of Texas that are more fertile and productive in every respect than is the group composed of Kinney, Zavala, Dimmit, LaSalle, Frio, Atascosa, Live Oak, Mc- Mullen, Uvalde, Webb and Bee.
Until recent years these counties have been known only as grazing lands, but of late farms have sprung up, colonies been formed and towns founded, un- til now they are dotted with some of the richest farming communities in the State.
In the history of the early days of Texas one reads and hears stories of how the Indians chose that section of the State of which these counties form a large part, for their hunting and camping grounds. The thinly wooded lands produced grass in abundance upon which their prey fed, and their wild cattle and horses wandered. The thickly wooded parts abounded in game, such as bear, panther, wild cats, turkey and squirrel. All of these lands were rich and when the In- dians scratched the soil and planted seed they raised their small patches of corn without cultivation.
When the early American white settler came he wandered to the West and found these counties to compose a sort of earthly Paradise. The lands were productive enough to yield any kind of crop and the woods abounded in game which kept him supplied in meat. Later a few men who had sensible foresight took for themselves large tracts of these fertile lands as ranches and stocked them with cattle. For years they ruled as kings in their domain. Those were the real days of the "cattle kings" of the West, whose reign lasted through the most interesting years of Texas history.
While they held these large possessions en masse, East and North Texas began to produce towns which gradually grew into small cities and established a commerce between themselves and the outside world. But the West had only one metropolis, the ancient and historical city of San Antonio. It was the West's log- ical trading center. and, as is the days of old, when Rome was in her glory and the commerce of all Italy passed through her gates, so it was with San Antonio. She was the capital of West Texas, the metropolis of what might have been termed a vast Nation in itself, cut off from the remainder of the world. The people came to San Antonio and bought their supplies and transacted their neces- sary business. They were the brave, the bold and free spirits who made a his- tory all for themselves, and of whom Texas is proud. San Antonio is also proud that she is the center and metropolis of this historical West.
While the North and East grew in population, the cattle kings of the West lived contentedly in the west, surrounded by as productive a soil as any on earth, but did not seek to increase the population. They were devoted to the cattle in- dustry and it was their pride to wander over their large ranges thickly dotted with their wild herds of cattle and an occasional band of wandering Indians, which afforded them both pleasure and annoyance. They were happy in chasing the Indians and getting into an occasional battle, but the-red men annoyed them by stealing their cattle.
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Now this great West has opened. San Antonio has awakened and has wel- comed settlers within her walls. The spirit of civilization has grown over the cattle lands and the ranchmen find that they have a ready-made city that will equal any in the State. They have found that while they were making a glorious history for the West, at the same time they were building up the ancient city of San Antonio, which is now one of the most interesting dots on the map of the world.
The ranchmen sold off small strips of their lands to pioneer farmers who ven - tured into the West, and found there a soil unexcelled by any-a soil that would grow for them almost any crop that they could plant. They spread the news through the East and more settlers came, and now where the vast grazing lands stretched unbroken, and the wild cattle wandered, and the Indian roamed, there are numerous thriving villages which are growing daily and pouring commerce into San Antonio.
These settlers found fertile lands with artesian water in many places with which to irrigate, and where the artesian belt ceases the Leona, the Nueces, the Frio and the Rio Grande, flow, so that the water can be pumped from their chan- nels and spread over the lands. Furthermore, experts have found that the valley lying between the Rio Grande and the Nueces is underlined with coal, and now large mines are in operation, and are bringing thousands of dollars into the hands of their owners each year.
These small and rapidly growing towns are only the seed that will some day grow into trees of commerce. The capitalists of the United States have turned their eyes toward Texas and are buying the big ranches, in order that they may build more towns.
There are thousands and thousands of acres yet untouched by the plow, and the world is beginning to realize it, and is coming to the West. The thrilling history of early days has just closed, and now it is the book of commercial his- tory which has begun to be written about West Texas.
The West needs railroads and will get them. The proposed line from Spof- ford in Kinney County, on the Sunset, to Aransas Pass, on the Sap, will be a line which will open the far West within a few years, pay its owners hundreds of times over what they invest, and will be the road that will serve as a pioneer in the commercial history of the early West.
The Laredo District.
The vicinity of Laredo is being exploited now as never before in its history, and some of the results have been sufficient to attract attention from all quarters to a country that a few years ago was waste except as utilized by range cattlemen.
The Express has been keeping in close touch at all times with the development . of the agricultural interests of all Southwest Texas and presenting the advan- tages possessed by different localities to invite homeseekers who desire to till the soil. The Express correspondent took a trip over the Texas Mexican Road last Sunday as far as Realitos, in Duval County, seventy-two miles, to look at the country in the very midst of one of the driest spring seasons known in this sec- tion for years.
This road runs through a rough and hilly country covered with brush for twenty-five miles leaving Laredo. Then the country becomes more open and the soil much richer on for twenty miles further, where it reaches the famous arte- sian belt that extends back northward for hundreds of miles from the Lakuna Madre on the coast. The belt is from thirty to forty miles wide and its possibil- ities as an agricultural country are beyond computation. That is to sav, when capital and enterprise combine to sink wells and irrigate the hundreds of thous- ands of acres that await the man with the hoe.
But outside of the question of irrigating from these artesian wells, the corre- spondent witnessed a few miles from the town of Aguilares, a station thirty miles east of Laredo, what mav be considered a practical demonstration of what can be done in the way of utilizing the rain waters for irrigation purposes when im-
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pounded in tanks in suitable localities. At this point, near the railroad track, Ar. Villegas, one of the most prominent merchants in Laredo, has an experimen- tal farm of five acres planted in onions and pepper, irrigated from a tank filled with rain water. When it is considered that these tanks can be built where a suitable location can be had at a moderate' expense and the land they are capa- ble of irrigating will, when planted in onions and other truck crops, net over $300 to the acre one year with another, the lesson is impressive.
Forty-eight miles from Laredo, at Bruneville Station, nearly in the middle of this artesian belt, are to be seen three fine artesian wells not a hundred feet apart. This being a large stock ranch, but little attention has yet been paid to using this water for irrigation, but the fact that these permanent wells are there is an index finger to point out to homeseekers an opportunity to secure homes where they will not have to depend entirely upon the rainfall to insure paying crops.
On either side of the road thousands of acres of fine land was plowed and put in readiness to plant crops.
While the range was in bad condition and the cattle falling off, it is possible for most of the pastures to keep them going for some time yet, as there is a great deal of prickly pear growing in this district which it is well known will keep cattle from starving if the owners will take the trouble and small expense of burning off the thorns before feeding it to them.
The people settling in this country have good railroad facilities, as the Texas Mexican Road connects with the Aransas Pass & San Antonio at Alice, the Brownsville & St. Louis at Robestown and the International at Laredo .- San An- tonio Express, March, 1907.
The Onion Industry of Southwest Texas and Its Founder.
A recent issue of the San Antonio Express contained the following :
Capt. T. C. Nye of Laredo, the "Onion King of the Rio Grande," was in the city on business yesterday, and reports that the Laredo onion district is in a prosperous condition and that all bids fair for a successful year.
"We have had two bad years with our onions," said Mr. Nye, "but I believe this year will pay. I estimate that my yield per acre will be at east 20,000 pounds. There are some who will make a better yield than I will, while some will make less."
Mr. Nye says there are 1200 acres in onions in the Laredo district. On an av- erage of 20,000 pounds an acre this will be 24,000,000 pounds. The onions should be sold at two cents a pound profit, which means that $480,000 clear profit will be paid to the onion farmers of Laredo. Mr. Nye says that nearly all of the growers will sell their onions through the Onion Growers' Association and that with the experience which they had last year they expect to be successful.
"Last year," said Mr. Nye, "the association was new and met with commercial reverses, but this year they are wiser."
Speaking of the dry growers, Mr. Nye said :
"Away from the river where there is no irrigation the onion growers will have little success. In fact they will raise practically no crop because of the shortage in rain. On the irrigated farms there are already onions three inches in diameter, while the dry farmers say that what onions they have raised are of a small size."
THOMAS C. NYE is truthfully styled the pioneer in the industry of onion growing in the vicinity of Laredo, and his example has been fol- lowed by many others in this vicinity, thus developing an industry which is of incalculable importance and value to Webb county.
He was born in Matagorda county, where he was also reared, his parents being old settlers of that portion of Texas. When only eight years of age he earned his first wages, 50 cents per day, driving cattle, and from that time, through a long number of years, he was identified
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with the cattle industry of Texas, first in the vicinity of his home in Matagorda county, and later making his headquarters in LaSalle county, where he had a fine ranch six miles northeast of Cotulla, and here he became known as one of the leading cattlemen of Southwest Texas.
At the beginning of the Civil war he enlisted in the Confederate army, at Matagorda, in Company D, Sixth Texas Infantry, and was first engaged in service in the Trans-Mississippi Department, but was among those captured at Arkansas Post. Upon being exchanged, he was placed in service in Bragg's Army in Tennessee and was engaged at the battle of Chickamauga and other battles in Tennessee and northern Georgia, but was again captured and at the close of the war was a prisoner at Rock Island, Ill.
While living in LaSalle county, Mr. Nye took a leading part in local and state political affairs and he was county commissioner of LaSalle county. In 1898, having disposed of his cattle interests, and having made successful experiments in growing Bermuda onions in LaSalle county, with the aid of irrigation, he purchased some land along the Rio Grande river, four miles north of Laredo, in Webb county, deciding to make a permanent business here of onion growing for commercial purposes. This location seemed more promising for the purpose than LaSalle county, on account of the large and never-failing supply of water in the Rio Grande at this point. He was the first to establish and make a success of an onion farm in this vicinity. With one of his sons, Grover Nye, he has 225 acres of irrigable land, a portion of which is devoted to onion growing, which is the most profitable crop in this vicinity, although it is possible also to raise fine corn with two crops per year. They also have about 400 acres of pasture land, but handle only sufficient stock for their own purposes.
The Nye farm is a model of its kind and it has achieved such fame for its success and money-making capacity that a good deal of time has of necessity to be devoted to visitors and to inquiries by mail. The place is an object lesson in what may be accomplished by thoughtful planning and industrious application of scientific principles, combined with prac- tical methods, to the business of farming. The water for irrigating the Nye farm is pumped from the Rio Grande to a tank and is then con- ducted by the gravity method through a series of flumes and pipes.
As a result of Mr. Nye's demonstration of what may be accom- plished in the onion business, with Laredo's soil and climate, added to modern irrigation methods, there has grown up adjoining his place on the south, north and east, a number of other successful irrigated onion farms, which have made Laredo a noted center of Bermuda onion growing. In 1906, 534 carloads of Bermuda onions were shipped from this station. This has brought a great deal of "new" money to Laredo, and, on the principle of making one blade of grass grow where none grew before, Mr. Nye's pioneer efforts have been the means of adding much material and permanent wealth to the community, and given a start toward a new development of resource. Mr. Nye himself, although expending more than $20,000 in establishing his part of the industry, has profited greatly thereby, making a great deal of money, besides now possessing a place which ranks well in value with the far-famed lands of
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California. As a single example of the money-making capacity of the business, he set aside five acres of his land with which to keep strict account, and during the past four years this small tract has earned an average of $1.700 per year, above all expenses, the crop being Bermuda onions. As high as 456,000 pounds of onions per year have been raised on thirteen acres.
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