MIDWAY, TEXAS (San Patricio County). Midway is a scattered farming community between Taft and Gregory in eastern San Patricio County. It was largely settled by midwesterners who arrived on "homeseeker trains" belonging to the George H. Paul Land Company between 1908 and 1910. So many of these families settled along one road that it was known as Kansas Avenue, and most of the land purchased by early settlers is still being farmed by their descendants. Cotton farming, introduced to the area in 1903 by Taft Ranch manager Joseph F. Green, is a major source of local income, and the center of the community is the Midway Gin and Co-op, one of the largest cooperatives in the county. The gin was one of two built at Midway in the 1920s by Ben Ivey and eventually sold to local farmers; the other gin was destroyed by Hurricane Celia in 1970. Most of the officers of the co-op are descendants of the original settlers on Kansas Avenue, now known as Midway Road.
The community is no longer identified on county maps, and no population figures are available. Its area is encompassed by the Midway oilfield, developed by Phillips Petroleum Company in 1937 after a successful test well the year before. By 1938 the field had nine producing wells. An oil well behind the Midway Gin blew out and caught fire on July 28, 1938, then burned for several weeks before it could be extinguished. The explosion formed a crater that is still a local landmark. Deep production developed at Midway during the 1970s; fifty-two wells were producing in 1984.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Keith Guthrie, History of San Patricio County (Austin: Nortex, 1986).
