A Texas Delicacy: The Pecos Cantaloupe(July 22, 2025)
by Scott Sosebee
Once again, it is late July in East Texas, and when that season rolls around each year to me it is a signal that we still have at least two more months—if not more—of infernal heat and humidity. For my Pecos, Texas native wife, though, late July always brings to her mind something else: that its time for her and many others to dive into a delicacy unique to the arid Trans-Pecos desert lands of far West Texas—the inimitable Pecos cantaloupe. That means, here in East Texas, we have to hunt them down, so we have embarked on that annual pilgrimage to find that sweet morsel that not only she loves but that is a part of her regional heritage. I know this may be Texas heresy, but I am not a fan of the orange melon that so many of my fellow citizens crave, but as they all tell me, many places grow cantaloupes, but no place produces a variety as sweet, as juicy, and as pleasing as the ones grown in the soil in Reeves and Pecos counties. It is a Texas heirloom.
The Pecos cantaloupe owes its sweetness to the rich potassium content of the soil in the areas around Pecos and Fort Stockton combined with the long growing season which bathes the melon in abundant sunshine. Long-time farmers also swore that much of the taste was due to the high magnesium and calcium in the waters they used to irrigate the fruit. The potassium allows the natural sugars to accumulate, and the salinity of those waters keeps away the absorption of moisture, which blunts the sweet taste. The result, according to aficionados, is the most delicious cantaloupe in the entire world, a meaty melon with small seeds and juice that runs down your chin when you bite into one.
The “father” of the Pecos cantaloupe industry has, surprisingly at least to me, East Texas roots. Madison Lafayette Todd, who went by the shorter appellation of M.L., was born in 1875 in Gladewater. He was raised on a farm in West Mountain in southwest Upshur County. M.L. married Julia Mackey in 1899, but within a year of their marriage M.L. was diagnosed with tuberculosis. The treatment for “consumption”—as it was often called in those day—was to move to a drier climate, so M.L. and Julia moved their young family to the New Mexico Territory (New Mexico did not become a state until 1912).
Doctors gave Todd very little chance of surviving more than five years, but they were a bit off since he lived to be ninety-two. I suppose the dry air agreed with him. He homesteaded a 160-acre farm in Ricardo, New Mexico, but the son of East Texas was disenchanted with the loneliness and isolation of eastern New Mexico, and worried that his children would not receive an adequate education. He got back to Texas when he traded his homestead in New Mexico for one four miles northwest of Pecos in the fall of 1916.
Todd made a good deal. The farm in Reeves County had good water from a deep artesian well. He discovered that a number of farmers there were growing small patches of cantaloupes, so he decided to do the same. After his first harvest he knew he had something special—a cantaloupe unlike anything he had ever eaten. He also saw the possibility of making a good profit on the melons, so he began to buy cantaloupes from his neighbors to take out of the region to sell. After a few years of selling his produce in Midland, Odessa, and San Angelo—and receiving rave reviews—he decided to try to hook a bigger market.
Pecos, like so many West Texas towns, lived and died with the success and viability of the Texas and Pacific Railroad, which connected the state from east-to-west as well as was the main conduit for Texas to the rest of the nation. The T&P was the primary business in Pecos, and their passenger cars were some of the busiest in the nation. Todd made a deal with the T&P to provide his cantaloupes to passengers. The T&P buyer was impressed with the look and shape of Todd’s melons, and they agreed to serve them with every breakfast in the dining car. When passengers got a taste of Todd’s fruit, they demanded to know how they could buy them even when they disembarked the train. The railroad began to give Todd’s address with each serving of cantaloupes and people wrote to the “Pecos Cantaloupe King,” as he became known, wanting to buy his produce. So, Todd made another deal: the T&P would become the exclusive shipper of Pecos cantaloupes throughout the nation.
By the 1920s, M.L. Todd was shipping Pecos cantaloupes all over. They even found their way to Paris (France, not Texas), where they were served as a “rare delicacy” at a premium price. The train only stopped in Pecos for twenty minutes, so Todd built his “shed” right by the tracks. When the train pulled in there was a mad rush to load the cantaloupes before the express car pulled out. They would fill train after train during the summer since customers all over the nation ordered Pecos cantaloupes by the case. M.L. Todd shipped more than 40,000 crates of Pecos Cantaloupes to customers each year by the end of the 1940s. He affixed each one with the “Famous Pecos Cantaloupes” stamp so his consumers knew what they were getting. Todd himself was growing cantaloupes on over 240 acres by the 1940s, and other growers had cultivated more than 2,000 acres in Reeves and nearby Pecos counties by the end of the 1950s.
M.L. Todd died in 1967, and by the 1970s there were five companies growing Pecos Cantaloupes, each with their own packing shed, and they had begun to ship their melons by truck instead of train. They also had switched distribution primarily to grocery stores, although all the companies still shipped cantaloupes to individuals who would call with their orders. The largest grower, by that time, was A.B. Foster, a man who had once worked as an accountant for the notorious Texas “wheeler-dealer” Billie Sol Estes. He had a full one thousand acres cultivated in cantaloupes in 1990, and he raised ten different varieties, although he said each one had “that taste” because of the soil. Every packer continued Todd’s tradition of the “Famous Pecos Cantaloupes” sticker.
Unfortunately, today, the Pecos Cantaloupe is a dying delicacy. It is an expensive crop to grow and harvest as each melon must be picked by hand. Climate change has also taken its toll as the region has become even more dry, and the soil is losing some of its uniqueness. But the biggest culprit in the decline today is the oil industry. Fracking technology has made the former growing fields in Reeves and Pecos counties more valuable as a place to place oil rigs instead of planting cantaloupes. Today only one farm, in Coyanosa in Pecos County and operated by the Mandujano Brothers, commercially grows Pecos Cantaloupes. The sheds in Pecos, including Todd’s original, are closed. Still, many Texans, like my wife, wait impatiently to get hold of one of those big fleshy melons each summer. I hope you can find one before it is too late!
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.