| |
| | The
Post Office at Chapman Ranch
Photo by John Troesser |
History
in a Cotton Boll
In 1919, The King Ranch sold off over 34,000 acres to Mr. Phillip Chapman. Chapman
was already a landholder in Oklahoma and East Texas. His son J.O. Chapman managed
"Nueces Farms" as the tract was then called.
After
dividing the land into 160 acre parcels, the land was leased to tenant farmers.
In 1924 Nueces Farms became Chapman Ranch.
With
20,000 acres in cultivation, the Ranch was billed as the world's largest mechanized
farm. Experiments were conducted
with both crops and machinery. Implements were introduced for improved cotton
production and even a specific strain of cotton
was developed on the ranch.
The
schools were consolidated with those in nearby Corpus
Christi. The heirs of the Chapman family continue to run the ranch and cotton
is still the main crop. As Corpus
Christi continues to expand closer to the ranch, it remains a distinct and
separate town, however a very sparsely populated town. The idea behind Chapman
Ranch as a stand-alone co-operative operation - would've perhaps worked well in
other cotton producing parts of the state.
|
| | The
only remaining business in the huge "Commissary" building |
| |
A comically large building that once held an automobile agency, grocery, post
office, barber shop, hardware and other stores, today contains only the post office.
The date 1925 can still
be seen in the decorative details of the two schools that stand solidly today.
Photo
by John Troesser |
Cotton
Production in Nueces County |
| | Picker
transferring cotton to hopper |
| | Hopper
unloading cotton into compactor |
| | The
compressed bale after being compacted
Photos by John Troesser | |
Chapman
Ranch, Texas ForumSubject:
Chapman Ranch History
I was doing some casual web browsing around Corpus Christi when I came across
Chapman Ranch. One of the first photos I saw on your site was the old Post Office.
My mother’s older sister, Eunice Brown, was the post master and I remember
as a child and teenager going out to visit her many times in that building. Her
husband and son, Arthur Brown and Arthur “Red” Brown Jr. use to farm land there
for several years. Some of my earliest memories of Chapman Ranch were that my
father and mother wanted me to have a sense of the value or hard work; so they
sent me out to my cousin’s, Arthur Brown Jr., to do some work on the farm. After
hand-picking some cotton, scraping and repainting cotton trailers, storing hay
bales in the barn and finally cleaning off cotton fibers that accumulated around
the spindles on the cotton pickers, I soon realized that this much hard work wasn’t
for me. It was a lesson well learned for a teenager who wasn’t so fond of school.
Thank you for preserving our small town histories. I’m going to forward
this link to my cousin, who now lives in Boerne, Tx. I’m sure he it will bring
back lots of memories. - Rodger Olson, Sugar Land, Texas, October 07, 2011
Subject:
Chapman Ranch
My father Wayne Carroll and mother Geneva Carroll,
origionally from Waxahachie, TX,
moved to the Ranch in November 1949. My father was a farmer farming Mrs. Berta
C Cunningham's land. Many of the farmers came from the north Texas areas where
the Chapman's already owned land. E. H. Kirkpatrick was one of the earliest farmers
to the ranch, along with the Rackley's. More from the north Texas area were Roland
Barns and Winston Johnston, Euel Prince, Max Gattling, and the Flyin' Dutchman
Dutch Kirkpatrick. One of the Post Masters for the Ranch was Mrs. Brown back in
the 50's. Mrs. Cunningham was the daughter of Mr. Chapman. Mrs. Cunningham had
one child Leita May Hight which in turn had two children Roger Hight and Roxanna
Hight. Most of the old timers are now gone. We lost Mr. Kirkpatrick is December
2004 and Harry Lee White in February 2005.
The ranch has changed forever
but it's still home even I don't live there any longer. For more history on the
ranch, please visit the Ranch Post Office where many newspaper articles are posted
on the walls of its history and residents. Also contact John Chapman, one of the
heirs of the ranch. - Martha Sue Carroll, February 16, 2005
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