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, September 22, 1999
Shared history
Corpus Christi has sister cities all over the map - Yokosuka in Japan, Agen in France, Keelung in Taiwan, Toledo in Spain, and Vera Cruz in Mexico. Sister cities, as I understand it, are selected to promote trade and cultural ties.
Thinking about sister cities, I pondered the question of which Texas city would we identify as our sister city on the basis of shared history. San Antonio? No, I think San Antonio's sister city would probably be Laredo. There's really only one candidate, as I see it - Brownsville.
We share an enormous amount of history with the queen city on the Rio Grande. Corpus Christi and Brownsville grew up, or came into existence, because of the Mexican War. Corpus Christi, founded in 1839, is a decade older than Brownsville, but both cities really got their start with the war. Corpus Christi was a trading post when Taylor's army arrived. It mushroomed into a town overnight. When the army of 4,000 marched south, in March of 1846, Corpus Christi was a ghost town.
Taylor's army set up camp on the opposite side of Matamoros. A fort built at that place was later named for Maj. Jacob Brown, killed during a bombardment of the fort. Brownsville grew up in its shadows.
Brownsville and Corpus Christi were established by those who came with the army - soldiers and civilians alike - and came back after the war with Mexico ended in 1848. Two of the most prominent were Mifflin Kenedy and Richard King, steamboat men who ferried supplies for the army between Reynosa, Camargo and Matamoros. After the war, they pooled their money and bought the Colonel Cross and began their own cargo business on the river.
Corpus Christi and Brownsville were fierce competitors in 1849 in efforts to attract gold miners on their way to California. Both cities advertised in eastern papers that they were the ideal jumping off place for the overland trip to California. Packet boats unloaded miners by the hundreds at Brownsville and Corpus Christi, but the traffic soon dried up. The overland trip across northern Mexico proved to be too hard.
The land between Corpus Christi and Brownsville, between the Rio Grande and the Nueces Rivers (El Desierto de los Muertos,'' the desert of the dead) was the cradle of the cattle industry. And Brownsville and Corpus Christi were the two largest cities that flanked this area. Both cities became headquarters for the great ranching empires of South Texas.
Richard King came first. He picked a tgract of land 40 miles southwest of Corpus Christi, on the Santa Gertrudis Creek, to begin ranching operations. Later, he would be joined by his steamboat partner, Mifflin Kenedy. King continued to live in Brownsville while he was establishing his ranch. After he moved to the ranch, in 1855, he kept his steamboat business on the Rio Grande, which would come in handy during the Civil War.
When the Union blockade shut off Southern ports, the Confederacy's life line was the Cotton Road down which cotton was hauled to Mexico for foreign buyers. Corpus Christi was an important link in that road. The road ended at Brownsville and Matamoros, where cotton was sold and loaded on foreign ships bound for the mills of Bremen and Manchester. King Ranch was a big depot on the Cotton Road and King was a driving force behind the entire operation. Brownsville was a boomtown during the Civil War, at least until it was occupied by Union forces in 1863.
Brownsville's decline from its status as a major city began after the war. In his book, legendary Texas 'Rip' Ford wrote about the decline of Brownsville. Charles Stillman, the banker and merchant prince who founded Brownsville, had gone to New York to become a world-famous financier. King and Kenedy had moved to their ranches and their steamboat firm was dissolved. In Brownsville, as Ford put it, "there had been apathy among men of business hard to account for. They looked on the business of Brownsville as there by nature. They sat idly by while Corpus Christi, San Antonio and other points were offering inducements to secure the trade Brownsville had enjoyed. And they got it.''
Corpus Christi and Brownsville share a lot of history as port cities on the Gulf, as tough Western border towns, as twin financial headquarters of the great cattle ranches of South Texas, of vaqueros and cowboys, of cattlemen and ship's captains. But the strongest historical tie comes from King and Kenedy who played such major roles in the growth and development of Brownsville and Corpus Christi and the El Desierto de los Muertos in between.
