The earliest known residents along Aransas Creek were Karankawa Indians, who named the creek. One of the most famous ranches in early Texas stood on this stream and was occupied in 1805 by Don Martin de Leon, who founded Victoria in 1824. In the 1830s Irish colonists came by way of Copano Bay and settled downcreek, while Anglo-Americans from older settlements came by road and trail and stopped mainly upcreek. In the rich new prairie land, stockraising, trucking, and freighting provided livelihoods. In 1850 Patrick Fadden sold corn and vegetables to Fort Merrill from his uncle Father John Thomas Malloy's 1835 land grant, and Fadden and W.R. Hayes freighted supplies to settlers in the 1860s. Hayes kept an early post office in his home in 1870 and served as county judge from 1876 to 1892. John Wilson, an upcreek settler of the 1850s, brought the first Durham cattle to the area and built one of the first wooden fences, enclosing 600 acres of homesite with rough heart pine plank. On the creek's north bank stood the ranch of Frank O. Skidmore, founder of Skidmore, who became known for building the first barbed wire fence and windmill in the county, promoted the breeding of registered Herefords, and in 1886 gave much of the right-of-way to the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad.