BANQUETE, TEXAS. Banquete is at the intersection of State Highway 44 and Farm Road 666, nine miles south of San Patricio and seven miles west of Robstown in northwestern Nueces County. It was named for a four-day feast commemorating the completion of a road linking the Nueces River with the Rio Grande and San Patricio, Texas, with Matamoros, Tamaulipas. Banquete was also on the Texas-Mexican Railway. A post office was established there in 1859 with Mary Madray as postmistress. A one-room school was built in the 1870s and used until 1917, when the Maria, Schroeder, and Leona schools were consolidated with the Banquete school. In 1884–85 the population of Banquete was fifteen; it rose to seventy-five by 1936. A 1946 county map indicates a number of businesses, residences, churches, and a school. That year the population was 300. It reached 450 in 1972, and in 1990 and 2000 it was 449.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: John J. Germann and Myron Janzen, Texas Post Offices by County (1986). Nueces County Historical Society, History of Nueces County (Austin: Jenkins, 1972).
