Palo Alto College

San Antonio, Texas

SMALL TOWN HISTORY: Beeville, Texas

This picture of main street of Beeville, Texas was probably a postcard from around 1902. There's a cowboy on horseback in the middle of the unpaved street and it looks like a guy in his union suit standing on the hotel front porch...with his hat on! The card has a nice April 27, 1909 Beeville cancellation tied to a green one-cent Franklin stamp, and is addressed to Mrs. L C Mahaffey, Ben Avon, PA, from E. Offutt. The card was published by R. Hammond, Beeville, Texas (No. D-3361).

Beeville only had about 300 people in 1880, but when the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad came through in 1886, the population rose to 1,000. Beeville got a water works and electricity in 1903 and the sewer was built in 1910.  There was a small oil boom in 1929, but it wasn't enough for Beeville to escape the Great Depression.

From the historical marker on the side of the building. Joe Barnhart Bee County Library building was originally built in 1906 by businessman Albert Praeger. The building originally housed a hardware store and tin shop, which included buggies and wagons in addition to barbed wire and tools. The second floor was used for storage. In 1925, the store manager was Sam Mitchell and the second floor was converted into apartments. The building was declared a Texas Historic Landmark in 1981.

 

           

The Esther Barnhart House was never actually occupied by the Barnhart family, but purchased by the Joe Barnhart Foundation for use as an art museum. The house was built for a rancher/banker named R. L. Hodges in 1910. Two or three families lived in the house before its eventual purchase by Doctor Joe Barnhart(orthopedic surgeon) in 1982.

The picture is of Joe Barnhart (1819-1888) for whom the Joe Barnhart Foundation is named, came to Texas some 150 years ago from Pennsylvania at the age of seventeen. Following his discharge from the Army of the Republic of Texas in 1839, Joe married the daughter of John William Smith of San Antonio and lived in a fort he built with the crossing of Double File Trail with Brushy Creek, now north Travis County. The museum is named after one of his children whose sons, John, graduated from high school in Beeville and became a doctor; and Joe, who I spoke to through the Barnhart Q5 Ranch website. His daughter, Claire, who resides at the ranch, is the one who keeps it going now.

 

"The third and present Bee County courthouse, with sculptor W. C. Stephensons's Lady, Miss Justice, atop the clock dome and four Corinthian columns to grace its north entrance, stands much the same as it did July 18, 1912, when first occupied by the departments of county government. Contractor Whitney's death delayed completion by Fritz W. Heldenfels until 1913, although the county officers had used the unfinished building for several months. Sidewalks and a pergola, which C. A. Betts took up collections for, shrubbery, which W. P. A. Chairman Mrs. A. C. Jones worked to obtain, and removal of the iron fence beautified the lawn. The courthouse plaza was paved in 1926. The south annex was added in 1942 and the structure was completely remodeled in 1949-1950, when an elevator, air-conditioning, and eleven rooms were added, with Robert Beasley as the architect." -from Bee County Centennial, by Grace Bauer. copyright 1958. p. 15

On June 1, 1943, Chase Field was commissioned as an Naval Air Auxiliary Station to train naval aviators during World War II. The base was named for Lt. Cmdr. Nathan Brown Chase, who went down in the Pacific on a training flight in 1925. After the war, Chase Field was closed until 1953, when it was reopened during the Korean War to help with the overcrowding at NAS Corpus Christi. In July 1968, Chase Field was elevated in status to a full naval air station. With the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the number of armed forces was greatly reduced and on July 1, 1991, Chase Field was put on the list for closure. VT-26 was decommissioned May 22, 1992, with VT-24 and VT-25 decommissioned on September 18, 1992. Finally, on February 1, 1993, Chase Field was officially disestablished, bringing an end to fifty years of service in naval training.

Other famous people that visited Beeville on a regular basis include President George Bush and baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan. President Bush hunted each year at the Lazy F Ranch in Goliad Co. and Nolan Ryan worked summers at his uncle's dairy farm.