Echo

Echo (pronounced "Eeko"), also known as Mount Echo or the Point, was a stage depot and post office community a half mile north of Farm Road 888 and twenty-two miles southeast of the site of present Oakville in southeastern Live Oak County. The community was founded on land granted to Irish empresario James McGloin. McGloin himself never lived at the site, but a general store was established there by his daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband, Patrick J. Murphy. During the 1850s a house was built on the site by John Bernard Murphy and his wife, Margaret Mary Healy-Murphy. Perhaps as early as 1846, but certainly by the late 1850s, a one-room building near the Murphy's house became a stage stop on the road linking San Antonio with Corpus Christi and Mexico. In a building behind the stage stop, Patrick and Elizabeth Murphy ran an inn. A post office operated at the community from 1858 until 1879. In 1877 James G. Grover petitioned to establish a community school. Echo probably continued to serve as a stage stop until 1881. After Margaret Mary Murphy moved to San Antonio in the late 1880s and helped to found the Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Mary Immaculate, the Murphy Ranch at Echo was used as a retreat for nuns from 1893 to about 1906. The stagecoach depot building remained standing until 1970, when it was leveled by Hurricane Celia.