Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens
Corpus Christi History is published Wednesdays. Murphy Givens also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at givensm@caller.com
Wednesday, July 7, 1999
Did You Know...
That Farm to Market Road 666 was once a stretch of the Camino Real, the King's Highway? When Texas was part of Mexico, it was the main route from the Lower Rio Grande to the missions at Refugio and Goliad. The first record of the road in this area is in the land grant from the King of Spain to Jose de la Garza Montemayor in 1805. Montemayor's Casa Blanca grant ran along the Camino Real. Part of San Anna's army came up the Camino Real in 1836. Those troops retreated back over the same route after the battle of San Jacinto. Zachary Taylor's army followed the same route to Mexico in 1846 and, during the Civil War, it the route of cotton shipments bound to Mexican Ports, part of the Cotton Road.
That the shepherd, like the cowboy and vaquero, was once a familiar sight in South Texas? Great flocks of sheep once grazed the prairies from Corpus Christi to Laredo, making this one of the great wool-producing areas in the country. Many of the early immigrants from England came here with dreams of making South Texas a sheep man's paradise. Huge, two-wheeled carts, loaded with wool, rumbled into Corpus Christi, where the cargoes were loaded onto sailing vessels for shipment to the mills of New England. The sheep heyday was short-lived. The humid climate was conducive to internal parasites that decimated the flocks and a sharp drop in wool prices led to the decline of sheep-raising in South Texas.
That Padre Island was the center of a thriving feather business in the 1870s? There was a great demand for feather plumes from roseate spoonbills to decorate women's hats. There was also a great demand for stuffed birds, including spoonbills, gulls, terns, and pelicans, to decorate home mantels. Henry W. Palmer, a taxidermist, entered a partnership with Capt. Will Anderson and they took over an old cannery on the island for their business. During one year, Palmer sent more than 2,000 bird skins to New York. The collapse of business for these feather merchants came when the editor of the Ladies Home Journal, Edward Bok, led a crusade to prevent the extermination of the birds.
That Cole Park was named for real-estate agent E.B. Cole, who donated the land to the city? Cole came to Corpus Christi in 1890 from Kansas City, Mo., after he had seen advertisements promoting the Ropes Boom in Corpus Christi. Cole died in 1951.
That Czech family names have been prominent in Nueces County since 1906? That's when S. L. Kostoryz, of Wilbur, Neb. , opened the Bohemian Colony lands on the city's southwest side for development and settlement. The tract bought by Kostoryz was called the Grim Ranch. Kostoryz advertised his farms for sale in Czech-language papers throughout the country.
That the Second Texas Infantry, stationed at Camp Scurry in Corpus Christi during World War I, had one of the great football teams of all time? The Second Texas team met, and trounced, teams throughout the country. The team ran up a combined total of 432 points to the opposition's 6, with representative scores like these: It defeated Wisconsin Infantry 60-0; Virginia Artillery, 53-0; Nebraska Infantry, 68-0; New York Infantry, 102-0. The Second Texas average 200 pounds from tackle to tackle (small by today's standards) and had 220-pound backs. The team usually played 60 minutes without a substitution.
That concrete ships were built in the area? In 1918, the France and Canada Steamship Co. of New York selected Port Aransas as a site to build two experimental concrete tankers. The concrete ships were cast in the shape of a cigar and were designed to carry 50,000 barrels of oil. They were equipped with Swedish-built engines. The shipyard suffered a setback in the storm of 1919, but eventually two ships were launched in the 1920s. One sank enroute to Galveston and the other had to be escorted all the way with a tug; it didn't navigate well. It was left a derelict in the Sabine River for several years.
That there was once a plan to build Corpus Christi's airport in the bay? Gutzon Borglum, the master sculptor who carved Mount Rushmore, submitted a proposal to the City Council to locate the city's first municipal airport in the bay. Borglum's plan called for building a bulkhead around an area just beyond the breakwater, adjacent to the ship channel, and filling it with dredged material from the bay bottom. The plan fell through (along with his other plan for a statue of Christi in the bay) and Borglum departed for South Dakota's Black Hills. A similar plan resurfaced in 1944. A Detroit engineering firm proposed building a new commercial airport on filled land in Nueces Bay. It met the same fate as Borglum's plan.
That there was another storm-protection project in 1939 besides the seawall? It was a levee that reached from the west side of the bluff to the high ground on the east side of the port's main turning basin. The levee was intended to keep stormwaters from flooding the door after stacking up in Nueces Bay, which happened in the 1919 storm. Like the seawall, the levee was built slightly more than 14 feet above sea level. In the middle of the levee was an opening for the railroad lines to the port. When a storm threatened, city workers would plug the gap with sand bags. Part of that old levee is still there.
(Sources include the Caller-Times archives.)
© 1999 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a
Scripps Howard newspaper.
All rights reserved.
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