Cactus Jack: America's Thirty-Second Vice President

The house at three thirty-three North Park Street in Uvalde, Texas, was home to one of the most colorful figures in the history of American government. John Nance Garner, known as Cactus Jack, arrived in Uvalde in eighteen ninety-two from a small East Texas farm and built a career that took him to the pinnacle of power. He served thirty years in the United States House of Representatives, including a term as Speaker of the House, before being elected Vice President under Franklin Roosevelt in nineteen thirty-two.

He served two terms, until nineteen forty-one, and famously dismissed the vice presidency as not worth a warm bucket of spit. Garner returned to this Uvalde house for the last twenty-six years of his life, tending his pecan orchards and speaking his mind. He died here on November seventh, nineteen sixty-seven, just weeks short of his ninety-ninth birthday.

The house, built in nineteen twenty, is a National Historic Landmark.