Matagorda Island

Calhoun County, Texas
Ownership Map

This Toddie L. Wynne - clint Murchison (American Liberty

Oil Company) land was not condemned and taken.  The owners were afforded a limited lease (1942) and continued full use and enjoyment of their property, which sold in the 1980's through The Nature Conservancy to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for $13,600.000, near $1,200.00 per acre.

The visit of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Wynne-Murchison complex on Matagorda Island could may have been a factor in the taking of all 28 miles for the Air Force Range right up to the Wynne-Murchison fence.

Long time owners wer given 10 days to remove

Texas Permanent School Funds lands now put

all livestock and personal belongings.  Three to four years later, the owners were paid a court award of some $7.00 per acre - improvements and all.  They were not compensated at all for the loss of livelihood or for mineral leases in effect, or for being deprived access to mineral estate for some 26½ years.

Condemned and taken on November 8, 1940 in Civil Action 55.

into the fuederal refuge system for 100 years.  This state school land surrounding Matagorda Island includes all the public gulf beach in Calhoun County, as well as 1,000 feet off-shore in the Gulf of Mexico.