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of the area had been designated part of San Patricio County since 1836,
but in 1855 a group of frontiersmen gathered under a huge live oak tree
at Gussettville and drew up a petition asking that a new jurisdiction
be instituted for their settlements. Acceding to their request, the
state legislature formed Live Oak County from San Patricio and Nueces
counties on February 2, 1856. Later that year county officials accepted
a donation of 640 acres for the townsite of Oakville, near the old
settlement on Sulfur Creek, and designated it the county seat. By 1858,
three settlements in the county—Oakville, Gussettville, and Echo—were
considered large enough to be granted post offices by the federal
government; in 1860 the census counted 593 people in Live Oak County,
most of them in the eastern part. In the early years of settlement,
residents usually lived on a subsistence level, raising only small
patches of crops, if any, and killing wild game for meat. For money to
buy necessary supplies, they relied on the large herds of wild cattle,
hogs, and mustangs that grazed in the area. The market for cattle and
mustangs was limited in the early years of the county, but some cattle
were driven to coastal towns, and mustangs, once broken, could be sold
in San Antonio and East Texas. There was greater demand for the meat,
hides, and tallow taken from the many wild hogs in the area. A single
family could capture and slaughter as many as a hundred hogs in a year
and sell the products in San Antonio, Tilden, or Oakville. Eighty-five
slaves were counted in Live Oak County in 1860, but since there was
virtually no commercial agriculture in the area at the time, it is not
clear how they were employed.George West, the county's largest town and
seat of government, is in south central Live Oak County at the
intersection of U.S. highways 59 and 281.
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| George
West is a city in Live Oak County, Texas, United States. The population
was 2,524 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Live Oak County.
George West was named the "storytelling capital of Texas" in 2005 by
the Texas Senate; and it hosts the George West Storyfest, a festival
that features storytelling, cowboy poetry, and music. Numerous ranches
surround George West.
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