San Angelo

San Angelo is a city in West Texas, United States, where the North and South Concho rivers meet on the edge of the Edwards Plateau. Its name goes back to Carolina Angela, the wife of the town's founder Bart DeWitt.

The United States Army built Fort Concho on the frontier in 1867, and DeWitt founded the village of Santa Angela across the river from it, naming it after his late wife. The name later became San Angela, and in 1883 the postal service had it changed to San Angelo, because the earlier form was ungrammatical in Spanish. The railroad arrived in the 1880s, and ranchers of the surrounding plateau made the town a market for sheep, goats, wool and mohair. Fort Concho, with its stone barracks and officers' quarters, is now a museum and a National Historic Landmark.

Producers Livestock Auction sells sheep, lambs and cattle every week from its sale barns in the city. Ethicon, a company of Johnson & Johnson, makes surgical sutures at its plant in San Angelo. Concho pearls, rare purple and pink pearls found in freshwater mussels of the Concho River, are set into jewelry by local craftsmen.

Angelo State University, a public university of the Texas Tech system, has its campus in the city. The Concho River Walk follows the river through downtown past gardens, fountains and the stone buildings of the old town. The writer Elmer Kelton, known for his novels of West Texas ranch life such as The Time It Never Rained, lived and worked in San Angelo. The San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, by the river, collects American ceramics.