Historian traces San Angelo’s rise in the 1880s and 1890s to horse racing and boosterism

Unidentified Speaker, a presenter at the Tom Green County Historical Society meeting at Fort Concho, told an audience that horse racing helped put San Angelo on the map in the late 19th century. "I always like the things that are obscure about history," the presenter said, and then turned to how racing, promoters and new communications linked the Concho Valley to the nation.

The talk laid out three conditions the town needed to succeed: rail access, telegraph communications and successful horsemen who could represent the community. The speaker noted the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad reached San Angelo on 08/07/1888, and that Western Union later absorbed a local telegraph line, broadening the town’s news reach.

Local boosters and promoters were central to that strategy, the presenter said. He named early boosters and newspapermen including J. G. Pat Murphy of the San Angelo Standard and land agent Frank Lerch, who organized exhibits for the Dallas fairs and helped found the Concho Valley Fair Association. The association built a racetrack about 1.5 miles east of town for the 1889 fair; the speaker described exhibition tents, a later three‑story exhibition hall and races promoted with excursion trains and purses he said amounted to about $5,000 (quoted by the speaker as roughly $175,000 in today’s dollars).

Major local horsemen included Alexander Gardner, Stephen E. Starrett and John R. Nasworthy, the presenter said. They founded the San Angelo Jockey Club and raised—and raced—horses that competed beyond Texas. The lecture summarized records for several notable horses: Starrett’s Bell P and Henry Owsley, and Nasworthy’s Mamie B, Get There and Honest Dollar, showing frequent travel to fairs and tracks in cities including Dallas, Denver, St. Louis and New Orleans.

The speaker devoted special attention to Charlie Wilson, calling him "the horse with lightning in its heels." He described Charlie Wilson as unusually large with an exceptional stride that Nasworthy measured at 27 feet. Charlie Wilson raced in local spring meetings, then on a national circuit; the presenter highlighted two victories over the well‑known thoroughbred Geraldine in Denver in June 1892. Less than a week after those wins, John R. Nasworthy sold Charlie Wilson to a New York buyer, J. V. Evers, for $2,500—an action the presenter said disappointed many local backers and marked the high point of the local racing era.

The lecture also addressed the sport’s decline in the region. The presenter attributed the end of organized racing in Tom Green County to a combination of prolonged droughts, the national Panic of 1893 and shifting public opinion about gambling and drinking. He said organized racing lasted only about a decade locally but credited that decade with national publicity that helped attract investors and settlers.

The presenter closed with personal anecdotes about research for his master’s degree and an artifact: a walking cane made from railroad luggage‑cart iron that Nasworthy’s grandson gave him. He invited questions and noted that the precise locations of two smaller historic tracks remain uncertain based on available records.

The talk combined published newspaper accounts, racing records and family reminiscence to show how a short‑lived racing boom factored into San Angelo’s late‑19th‑century growth. The presenter opened the floor to questions after the lecture.