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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 14, 1999

The Forts of Corpus Christi

We never had any forts like you saw in the old Westerns, those rough-hewn wooden palaces surrounded by log palisades, designed by John Ford. Perhaps the only one that came close to the movie image was Fort Merrill. Most of the forts in this area of South Texas were enclosed by dirt embankments and, as one writer said of one, "looked more like a hog pen than a fort.''
   The forts were built originally as protection against Indians (Lipan Apaches and Comanches, mainly) and some of them served as military outposts and supply depots during the Civil War. But as defensive bulwarks against Indian raids, they were completely ineffective. Indians went around them, attacked where they pleased, and were long gone before pursuit could be organized.
   Some of the forts (Merrill was one) were garrisoned with mounted infantry, which usually meant soldiers who had barely learned to sit a horse. And these outposts of regular Army soldiers set in the middle of vast emptiness were supposed to stop the "depredations'' of the hard-riding, fast-moving Comanches, the best horsemen since Genghis Khan's Mongol warriors. The forts were as useless, one writer of the time noted, "as sawmills in the middle of the ocean.''
   All the forts and fortified places in this region of South Texas have been claimed by the laws of historical gravity. They have crumbled back into the ground from which they came and are now covered by pastureland or city asphalt. But where were they?
   3 Fort Lipantitlan is one of the oldest. It was one of five forts established by the Mexican government in 1830. The reason for its establishment, at least ostensibly, was to protect settlers from Indian attacks, but historians have long suspected that the real reason was to stop the flow of illegal Anglo immigration into Texas. It was 20 miles northwest of Corpus Christi, near the line between Nueces and Jim Wells counties, off Farm to Market Road 70. The fort guarded the Santa Margarita crossing on the Nueces River.
   The name, we are told, is Aztec, meaning "Land of the Lipans,'' because the Lipan-Apaches had a camp in the vicinity. Some records suggest there was a fort there long before the Mexican government garrisoned the place in 1830, dating back a century.
   Fort Lipantitlan consisted of a few adobe huts surrounded by an earthen embankment lined with fence rails to hold the dirt in. It was described as dirty, grubby looking place.
   The "Battle of Lipantitlan'' was fought there in 1835 during the Texas Revolution. The attack on the fort, held by Mexican troops, was made on Nov. 3 and 4, 1835, by 40 volunteers from Goliad. It was abandoned after the revolution but then, in 1839, part of the Mexican Federalist army, in an insurrection against Centralist government forces, camped at the old fort. They left shortly afterwards for the campaign in Mexico, but after disastrous defeats retreated to the old camp.
   There is a state park there now, if you stretch the definition of the word "park,'' but nothing of the walls or buildings remain.
   3 Kinney's fort was not a real fort. It was called Kinney's rancho, but it was a kind of a combination fort and trading post. It was set up so Kinney could sell goods to the Federalist Mexican army occupying Fort Lipantitlan. Kinney's "fort'' consisted of several buildings made of shellcrete (concrete made of broken oyster shells) surrounded by a wooden stockade. Kinney had his own garrison of armed men and three cannons - a 12-pounder and two smaller pieces - for protection.
   It was located in the 400 block of N. Broadway, where the Southwestern Bell building is now.
   3 Casa Blanca was up the Nueces River, 2.5 miles north of Sandia near the present town of Mathis. This old fort was manned for a time during the Republic. On Feb. 21, 1839, President Mirabeau Lamar issued his proclamation inviting trade with Mexico. He specified in that proclamation that all Mexican traders "desiring to enter Texas'' would have to seek clearance at the military post of Casa Blanca on the Nueces.
   3 Fort Marcy was a "paper'' fort. When Zachary Taylor's "Army of Observation'' landed in Corpus Christi in August, 1845, the tents of the army regiments spread from North Beach to the present Artesian Park. This encampment was enclosed with crude earthworks. During an especially cold winter in December of 1845 (temperatures dropped to 23 degrees and fish froze in the bay), the troops surrounded the camp with chaparral bushes to blunt the piercing norther.
   "Fort Marcy'' was not a fort in our understanding of the word. Gen. Taylor named it Fort Marcy to flatter the politically powerful Secretary of War, William L. Marcy. Most of the references to Fort Marcy were in Taylor's own dispatches. (Taylor also set up a garrison at San Patricio, where the 2nd Dragoons (they were called "Drags'' for short) were located. He had another outpost, Fort Washington, on Matagorda Island.
   During the Civil War, the "Fort Marcy'' embankment on North Beach was used by Confederates as a site for a battery of guns during the Battle of Corpus Christi. Fort Washington served as a Confederate base to guard the Pass Cavallo.
   (This is the first of two parts on South Texas forts and fortified places. Part two will appear next Wednesday.)