Victoria County

Victoria County is located in southeastern Texas on the Coastal Plain about midway between the southern and eastern extremities of the Texas Gulf Coast. Victoria, the county's largest town, is the county seat. There roads converge 120 miles from Houston, 102 miles from San Antonio, 110 miles from Austin, and 75 miles from Corpus Christi; hence the town's nickname, the "crossroads of South Texas." The county's center lies at approximately 28°47' north latitude and 96°57' west longitude. Victoria County comprises 887 square miles of nearly level to gently rolling coastal prairie, surfaced primarily with dark clay loams and clays that support bluestems and tall grasses, oak forest, huisache, mesquite, prickly pear, and other vegetation. The northwestern part of the county lies in the Post Oak Belt and thus marks the southernmost extension of the East Texas timberlands. The soils there, primarily sandy loams and sands, support post oak, blackjack oak, elm, and pecan trees. The elevation ranges from sea level in the southeast to 300 feet near Mission Valley in the northwest. The climate is humid and subtropical, with a temperature range from an average high of 92° F in July to an average low of 46° in January; records of 110° and 9° were set in 1939 and 1930, respectively. The average annual length of the frost-free season is 290 days; the annual precipitation range is from thirty-two to forty inches. The northeastern half of the county drains into Lavaca Bay, principally through Garcitas, Arenosa, and Placedo creeks, and the southwestern area is drained by the Guadalupe and San Antonio rivers and Coleto Creek. Prehistoric fossils of mammoths, horses, camels, sloths, and bison of the Late Pleistocene era have been unearthed in the county, as well as artifacts from the Paleo-Indian period. Despite a variety of archeological excavations, however, little is known of the early hunting and gathering occupants except that they made the change from spear to bow and arrow after A.D. 1000. By the era of contact with the West at least four distinct groups were living in the county: the Karankawas, last seen at Kemper's Bluff before fleeing to Mexico in 1842; the Aranamas; the Tamiques; and the Tonkawas. Comanche, Lipan, and Tawakoni raids were common in the area by the early nineteenth century as well, the most infamous being the great Comanche raid of 1840, which destroyed the port of Linnville (see LINNVILLE RAID OF 1840).

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.