- Title: Map of Frio County Texas
- Author: New York and Texas Land Company, Limited
- Date: 1880
- Condition: Very Good - age toning, separations along issued folds, paper reinstated in a few areas of loss within image, creasing and minor paper loss in margins
- Inches: 21 x 21 1/2 [Paper]
- Centimeters: 53.34 x 54.61 [Paper]
- Product ID: 100201
Issued in 1883 by the New York and Texas Land Company, Limited, this detailed cadastral map of Frio County documents landownership, surveys, watercourses, roads, communities, and surrounding counties during a formative period in South Texas development. The company’s extensive holdings are highlighted in yellow, underscoring the map’s dual role as both a geographical record and a land-sales promotional instrument. Published as Pearsall emerged as the county’s railroad-centered commercial center, the map offers a vivid record of the transition from large ranching estates to a more subdivided and market-oriented agricultural landscape.
Background on Creator
The New York and Texas Land Company, Limited, was among the largest privately financed land companies active in post–Civil War Texas. Organized in 1879 following the transfer of the consolidated International–Great Northern Railroad’s land holdings to New York investors John S. Kennedy, Samuel Thorne, and William Walter Phelps, the company controlled approximately 5.5 million acres spread across fifty-one Texas counties.
Its holdings included former railroad-grant lands extending from South Texas to the Panhandle, which the company systematically surveyed, improved, advertised, and sold to encourage settlement and agricultural development. Through the construction of fences, wells, windmills, and water impoundments, the company helped convert large tracts of open range into marketable ranch and farm land. By the early twentieth century, much of its Panhandle acreage had been developed and sold; the company was formally dissolved in 1918.