Pleasanton Security, From Longhorn Trails to Oilfield Trucks

Pleasanton was established in 1858 as the seat of Atascosa County, according to a Texas House resolution, and it sits along the Atascosa River and Bonita Creek. The town became a gathering point for herds headed north to Kansas. A historical marker records that 43,000 head of Longhorn cattle passed through in the first three months of 1873 alone, which is a great deal of beef for a town to keep an eye on.

The county seat moved to Jourdanton in 1910, and Pleasanton incorporated in 1917. The city still promotes itself as the Birthplace of the Cowboy, and it has a museum and a marker to say so. A local historian has gently noted that proving the first Texas cowpoke saddled up here would be a bit of a stretch. The town keeps the title anyway, which seems about right.

In recent years Pleasanton picked up a second nickname. As oil and gas companies set up shop to work the Eagle Ford Shale, the town became a home base for many of those businesses, and the Pleasanton Express reports it began calling itself the Gateway to the Eagle Ford Shale. Energy work brought jobs, traffic, and a great many pickups loaded with expensive equipment.

That equipment is attractive to thieves. Generators, welders, toolboxes, and trailers are portable, resellable, and often parked overnight in a driveway or a yard. A camera aimed at where the truck sits, with motion alerts that reach your phone, is the most direct answer. For service companies with a yard full of gear, commercial video surveillance and monitored gate and building sensors turn an unattended lot into a watched one.

The truck itself is a target, too. High-clearance pickups make it easy for someone to slide underneath, and a cab left unlocked with a laptop on the seat needs no tools at all. Lock it, empty it, and park it under a light and a lens. Our guide to vehicle burglary and catalytic converter theft walks through the habits that make a driveway less rewarding to visit.

The 2020 Census counted 4,314 housing units in Pleasanton and found 12 percent of them vacant. Some of that is ordinary turnover, houses between owners or tenants. Still, an empty house on a street is a reminder that not every neighbor is home to notice something unusual, and that a dark property can make an occupied one next to it easier to approach unseen.

Lighting on a schedule, a video doorbell that lets you answer the door from anywhere, and motion-activated exterior lights all help a lived-in house look lived-in. For owners who travel for work, smart home automation handles the lamps and blinds so the house keeps its routine while you are away.

The Census Bureau puts Pleasanton’s owner-occupancy rate at 63.3 percent. That leaves a meaningful number of rental homes, and with them the usual question of who holds which key. Texas law requires landlords to provide certain security devices, including keyed deadbolts, and to rekey between tenants. We explain the details in our guide to the Texas rental security device law.

Smart locks make that rekeying a matter of changing a code. Owners, meanwhile, are guarding a home the Census Bureau values at a median well into six figures, and a monitored system that reports to a central station protects it around the clock, whether the household is at home, at work, or on a rig two counties away.

Our company holds Texas DPS Private Security Bureau license B16898, has operated since 2010, and is owned here in Bexar County, and Pleasanton is a straight drive south of San Antonio for our technicians. On the visit we walk the house, the yard, and wherever the trucks park, and we test any equipment you already have.

You receive a written plan with options and nobody pressing for a signature. If you go ahead, we install the system, show the household how to use it, and connect it to 24/7 alarm monitoring. It all begins with a free security assessment.