Geronimo the longhorn stands watch over the Live Oak County Courthouse lawn in George West from his glass stall.
Having a stuffed longhorn displayed on the county courthouse grounds shouldn’t seem too odd when you consider that the courthouse in Eastland has a petrified horned lizard in a red velvet-lined box at its front door.
The roan longhorn in a glass box with horns that measure more than 6 feet from tip to tip was the favorite steer of George Washington West, founder and namesake of the county seat.
According to The Handbook of Texas, George West was born in Tennessee and moved to Texas with his family at the age of 3. West made his fortune as one of the first to drive longhorns to northern butcher shops after the Civil War.
In 1910, West began carving the town site out of his 140,000-acre ranch. He donated money for a school, roads, and utilities, and built a red-brick hotel that still stands. When he gave the railroad free right-of-way across his ranch he effectively killed nearby Oakville as county seat. To ensure the county government moved, he donated a new courthouse in George West.
West died in 1926. The next year Geronimo passed to greener pastures in the sky. West’s nephew had the 2,000-pound steer stuffed and mounted in the glass-walled building on the courthouse lawn as a tribute to the area’s ranching heritage. The courthouse display was described in Edna Ferber’s 1952 novel Giant. In 1976, Geronimo traveled to Moscow as the Texas representative in the bicentennial exhibition.
George West (the town) and Geronimo (the longhorn) are about 85 miles south of San Antonio off I-37.
1,522nd in a series. Follow “Day Trips & Beyond,” a travel blog, at austinchronicle.com/daily/travel.
This article appears in November 6 • 2020.
