Beeville: Irish Ranchers and a Naval Air Station

Bee County's first settlers were Irish Catholic immigrants who arrived by ship to the Texas coastal plains in the eighteen thirties, drawn by land grants and the promise of cattle country. The county seat, Beeville, was platted in eighteen fifty-nine on land donated by Ann Burke Carroll and Patrick Carroll. A century later the town had a second identity.

In nineteen forty-two, Beeville offered its municipal airport to the Navy for wartime pilot training, and Naval Auxiliary Air Station Chase Field opened in nineteen forty-three, named for Lieutenant Commander Nathan Brown Chase, killed in a training accident at Pearl Harbor in nineteen twenty-five. The base closed after World War Two, reopened for the Korean War, and remained active for another forty years before its final closure in nineteen ninety-two, leaving behind an industrial complex that still drives the local economy.