Rancho grew up around Paul Murray’s country store on land he purchased in 1849 at the intersection of roads leading to San Antonio, Gonzales, Seguin, Cuero, Goliad, and Indianola. Murray came to Texas from Mississippi, and many of his Mississippi neighbors soon followed in search of farmland, but they soon abandoned farming for the area’s cowboy culture because unbranded range cattle were everywhere and free for the taking. As a ranching culture developed, the settlement took the name Rancho. In 1866, some of the earliest open range branding codes in Texas originated here as local stockmen gathered cattle herds for drives to northern markets by Rancho cowboys, and these codes helped mark and track cattle that mingled on open, unfenced ranges. A post office was established in 1855, and Rancho grew to include several businesses, a school, and two churches. The town began a rapid population decline after the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railroad bypassed it in 1906, prompting many residents to move two miles south to the new railroad town of Nixon. The post office closed in 1911, and by then many buildings had been moved to Nixon and most residents had relocated. Almost no visible evidence of Rancho remains, but its brief existence reflects the fate of many similar Texas towns that declined when railroads passed them by in the late 19th century.