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, April 26, 2000
White Point: a short trip in history
Driving over to White Point, on the north shore of Nueces Bay across from Corpus Christi, was like taking a journey in history.
I don't know how White Point got its name. There are two schools of thought. One holds that it was named for the white clay bluffs along the shore. The other holds that it was named for brothers Frank and Edward White, who settled there in 1856. But the place probably should be called Rachal's Point.
In 1857, the Whites hired a young man from East Texas to help drive their stock to their new ranch. He was 18-year-old Darius Cyriaque Rachal, whose family came to Texas from Louisiana. Rachal liked the Whites' place on Nueces Bay and decided that's where he wanted to start his own ranch.
But the Civil War intervened and D.C. Rachal found himself wearing a gray uniform in Hood's Texas Brigade. He fought at Chickamauga, the Wilderness, and was with Robert E. Lee at Appomattox.
Like other veterans, Rachal came home to begin cattle ranching. Darius (pronunced "Di-reece'' by some and "Druce'' by others) married Julia Byran and bought a tract of land at White Point.
Two years later, a yellow fever epidemic decimated Corpus Christi. A pall of smoke hung over the stricken town as those who survived burned the clothes and belongings of the dead. The fever hit White Point, killing Edward and Frank White, along with many in their families. Rachal tore off boards of a new house to make coffins.
By 1875, Rachal was one of the largest ranchers in Texas. He and his brother, E.R. "Nute" Rachal, trailed huge herds to Kansas. Rachal's holdings stretched from White Point to Odem. In 1884, he and a partner bought the huge Rabb ranch in Nueces County, which was later sold to Jerry and Robert Driscoll.
One picture of life at White Point comes from the description of a dance held at the Rachal home in January, 1893, described in Keith Guthrie's "History of San Patricio County":
People arrived on Friday afternoon and, after a big supper, Favella's band struck up a tune and the fun commenced - old and young joined in the dance. The guests danced the night away and morning found them dancing and balancing "All around." An 8 o'clock breakfast was served, after which the music was renewed and the prompter sang out: "Salute Your Partner.'' They danced until dinner, stopping just long enough to consume an old-fashioned dinner, and started again. The musicians played until they dropped; Rachal sent for another band. When it arrived they "swung out" and stayed at it Saturday, Saturday night, and when Sunday light broke they were still dancing. It broke up at noon Sunday. It was the out-dancingest dance ever held and those who participated in it remembered it to their dying days.
Darius Cyriaque Rachal died on August 27, 1918 and was buried in the family cemetery. He left four sons and two daughters. Many of his descendants live in the Corpus Christi area today.
?
???It was at White Point where the first stirrings of oil interest in this area came in 1902 when Randolph Robinson drilled a test well. This was the year after the Spindletop gusher at Beaumont ushered in the Texas oil boom.
Robinson abandoned his well at 4,000 feet, after hitting a slight gas show. At that time, gas wasn't worth a dime because there was no market for it.
It would take another decade before drilling resumed in the White Point area. But on Sept. 6, 1913, a test well blew out and drill pipe was blasted up like a missile, so great was the gas pressure below. This started a stampede of drilling activity. In 1915, the Gulf Coast Oil and Gas Co. brought in a "gasser" that shot a geyser of gas into the sky. It caught fire and burned, spectacularly, for two months. Another well ran wild and soon a second fire was shooting high into the air. At night, the flames could be seen for 40 miles.
?
???I walked down to the sandy point jutting into the bay. You get an eerie feeling there. It's like standing in a place of great tragedy, which is exactly what it is. This is where the dead and the half-dead, coated with oil and naked as worms, washed ashore after the hurricane of 1919. They had been swept across the violent tempests of Nueces Bay to the Rachal ranch at White Point, stacking up with the other debris of the killer storm.
On Monday morning after the storm, Sept. 15, one man "came to" hanging in a tree crawling with rattlesnakes. They had taken refuge in the mesquite. The man dropped out of the branches; the snakes were too stunned to strike.
Chris Rachal, grandson of D. C. Rachal, who later became a detective in the Corpus Christi Police Department, was 15 years old. He and his younger brother spent that Monday helping survivors and burying the dead. They buried 50 bodies in one grave. In all, 75 survivors and 108 bodies washed ashore at White Point.
"We found one woman dead on a roof,'' Chris Rachal said later. "Her hair was tangled in nails so we cut it off to get her off the roof and buried. Her husband came to see us several weeks later and asked about her hair. I told him I knew where it was and went down to get it. My sister washed it in kerosene and combed it out. The oil had preserved it all those weeks.''
On my cursory visit, as I walked down by the shore, I saw old timbers and wondered if they were left from that terrible storm. Could be. There is plenty of visual evidence in the White Point area of the gas blowouts that helped to bring the oil era to South Texas. There are deep craters caused by the explosions and, here and there, old drilling equipment dots the landscape, detritus of the past.
(Sources: Caller-Times archives; The Handbook of Texas; "Hood's Texas Brigade'' by Harold B. Simpson; "The History of Nueces County''; "The History of San Patricio County'' by Keith Guthrie; Manuscript for Nueces County History by Sister M. Xavier; and a family history, "The Rachals of White Point,'' by Rachel B. Hebert, furnished by Janice C. Phillips, a great great granddaughter of D.C. Rachal.)
