Papalote

Papalote, one of the oldest communities in Bee County, is on State Highway 181 and a Southern Pacific line eighteen miles south of Beeville and three miles north of the San Patricio county line. It was settled on Papalote Creek, and the name came either from the Karankawa Indian word for "kite" or from the Mexican-Spanish word meaning "windmill" or "powered by air". Early settlers, among them Robert Carlisle, Brigida Quinn Black, and Patrick and William Quinn, immigrated from Ireland in 1828 and obtained Mexican land grants in the area. Before 1857 three settlements developed in the vicinity. Lower Papalote or Steenville had the area's first store (operated by R. W. Steen), as well as a church, a school, a post office, and a predominantly Protestant population. Central Papalote or Cravensville developed around a lumber business built by Felix Hart; the name Cravensville was in honor of the prominent Craven family. Catholics predominated in this community, and its first church, built in 1871, was Catholic. By 1900 Chattam Hall, a community center, had been built on a Cravensville site donated by W. B. Hatch. The third community, Upper Papalote, also known as Murdock Place or Spangle Field, was the site of a store run by Luke Hart on the opposite or south side of the creek from the other two developments. Either Upper or Central Papalote may also have been known as Harts. In 1881 Lower Papalote lost residents to Mineral City, and by the mid-1880s the three Papalote communities had joined together. A Lower Papalote school, which registered eighty-one pupils in 1876, was replaced in 1888 by a central school, which registered thirty-four pupils by 1898.