Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Yoakum, TX

Yoakum is a city that straddles the Lavaca-DeWitt county line in South Central Texas.

Yoakum was built on a league of land granted to John May by the government of Coahuila and Texas in 1835, and the site was used as a gathering ground for cattle driven up the Chisholm Trail.

The townsite was laid out in 1887 when the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway arrived, and it was named after Benjamin F. Yoakum, the railroad's vice president and general manager.

Yoakum was incorporated on May 13, 1889, and grew so fast that by 1896 it had a cotton mill, three cotton gins, a bank, an ice factory and a school system with 700 pupils.

Yoakum's population reached about 7,500 by 1914, making the railroad town far larger then than it is today.

In 1919 Carl Welhausen took over a small tanning company in Yoakum that became Tex-Tan, a maker of saddles, bridles, belts and billfolds that later became part of the Tandy Corporation.

Thanks to the cluster of leather-goods factories that followed Tex-Tan, Yoakum promotes itself as the "Leather Capital of the World" and the "Land of Leather."

The first commercial tomatoes in the Yoakum area were grown in 1926, and by the 1940s fifteen packing sheds shipped tomatoes north, earning Yoakum the title of tomato capital of south central Texas.

Yoakum's Tom-Tom Festival began in 1928 to publicize the tomato business and is still held today, now celebrating the local leather industry.

The Yoakum Heritage Museum, opened in 1982 in a former private home, preserves the history of the self-styled "Hub City of South Texas."