Snakeville: The Wild Kingdom That Once Thrived on Alice Road
In January of 1914, crowds at the Brownsville Mid-Winter Fair gathered around a wooden platform to watch something they had never seen before.
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Five live rattlesnakes were dumped onto the boards.
A man stepped forward with a forked stick. His wife held open a flour sack.
The clock started ticking.
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This was not a carnival trick. This was a competition — a rattlesnake catching contest — and it would make Brownsville briefly famous across Texas.
The man at the center of it all was W.A. “Snake” King.
But his story began long before that day.
From Lieberman to “Snake” King
W.A. King was born William Abraham Lieberman, the son of Polish immigrants who came to America in the 1870s. After time in New York, the family relocated to California. Young William didn’t stay in school long. Like many restless teenagers of the era, he drifted toward traveling shows and carnivals.
Some boys ran away to join the circus.
William joined a snake exhibit.
He quickly realized something practical: snakes in carnival shows didn’t last long. They were over-handled, mistreated, or poorly housed. Showmen constantly needed replacements.
So instead of simply displaying snakes, he envisioned supplying them.
By the mid-1890s he was already providing snakes to contacts he’d met through carnival circuits. What he needed was a permanent base of operations — somewhere warm, somewhere close to Mexico, somewhere where rattlesnakes were plentiful.
By 1903, he chose Brownsville.
Not Corpus Christi.
Not San Antonio.
Brownsville.
The climate was ideal. The border made importing animals easier. South Texas ranchlands were thick with diamondbacks.
Around 1907 he established what would become known as Snakeville, just outside the city limits near what we now know as Alice Road. (The Palm Village Shopping Center sits roughly where cages once stood.)
He legally changed his name to W.A. “Snake” King.
And the legend began.
Building Snakeville
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Snakeville started as a practical operation — a mail-order snake farm supplying carnivals, circuses, collectors, and eventually zoos.
But it grew.
Mexican laborers were hired to catch rattlesnakes across South Texas and northern Mexico. Ranchers began delivering live specimens instead of killing them outright. Other animals were added: bobcats, badgers, armadillos, javelinas.
It became a family business.
King married Manuela Cortez Lambert, and together they raised children among cages, hooks, burlap sacks, and rattles.
Visitors described rows of shallow wooden trays stacked high — thousands upon thousands of rattlesnakes kept in darkened enclosures. At its height, accounts claim Snakeville housed tens of thousands of snakes.
The business letterhead famously boasted:
“Just watch me grow — not in size, but my business.”
And grow it did.
The Snake Catching Contest of 1914
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If Snakeville made King prosperous, the Mid-Winter Fair made him famous.
In January 1914, Brownsville hosted what newspapers described as the first rattlesnake catching contest ever held.
There were “singles” and “doubles.”
In doubles, two people worked together. One pinned the snake’s head with a forked stick, grabbed it firmly behind the neck, and handed it off to a partner holding open a sack. Twist. Tie. Next snake.
Five rattlesnakes were dumped onto the platform at once.
No ceremony. No warming up.
Just writhing bodies scattering across wooden boards.
The Brownsville Herald reported it with dramatic flair. Spectators were equal parts fascinated and horrified. One contestant, “Rattlesnake Bill” Rosette, was bitten during competition and calmly walked off to have his wound treated while the contest continued.
W.A. “Snake” King and his wife competed as a team.
Their time: 6 minutes and 24 seconds.
Later contests escalated. Thirty rattlesnakes were caught and bagged in under sixteen minutes. The Kings were awarded silver trophies and officially declared champions.
The event drew statewide attention. Pathé news cameras reportedly filmed the spectacle, meaning audiences across the country may have seen Brownsville’s snake-catching champions flicker across early cinema screens.
It was daring. It was theatrical. It was dangerous.
And it cemented the Snake King’s reputation.
Life Inside the Compound
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Snakeville wasn’t just a snake farm.
It was a full menagerie.
Exotic birds imported across the border. Monkeys with reputations. Carnivores and constrictors. Venom extraction demonstrations. Snake skull souvenirs mounted on plaques. Belts, hatbands, handbags fashioned from rattlesnake skin — nothing went to waste.
There were close calls.
Workers were bitten. Children learned early that caution wasn’t optional. Visitors sometimes panicked. Stories circulated about enormous rattlesnakes from Tamaulipas kept in underground cells because their fury rattled day and night.
One visiting reporter in the 1920s described tray after tray of snakes, Mexican handlers tossing new arrivals into cages, and King deftly maneuvering a massive specimen with a handmade hook attached to a six-foot pole.
It was part farm.
Part laboratory.
Part showground.
And entirely South Texas.
A Changing Landscape
As years passed, land was cleared. Mesquite and cactus disappeared. Snakes became less abundant. The wild frontier that had made Snakeville possible slowly receded.
But by then the name was known.
“Snake” King was more than a businessman — he was a character. A promoter. A man who understood spectacle long before public relations firms existed.
He turned rattlesnakes into trophies.
Snake bites into headlines.
And a dusty patch of land off Alice Road into something people still talk about more than a century later.
The Boy Who Grew Up Among Rattles
In 1923, the youngest child of W.A. and Manuela was born.
His name was Manuel.
By the time he could walk, he was walking among cages.
By the time he could talk, he understood hooks and sacks.
Snakeville was not a story to him.
It was home.
And in the decades to come, Manuel King would trade rattlesnakes for lions — carrying the family name from snake pits to steel cages and onto highways beyond Texas.
But that is another chapter.
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