Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Wednesday, July 19, 2000

Part 2 Sands of history

Padre Island is always one tropical storm away from being reclaimed by natural forces. Perhaps that explains why its history seems ephemeral and transitory.
   The island has always been a place of transit. John Hawkins, the privateer, and his nephew Francis Drake may have stopped at Padre Island, where their ships were refitted for a raid on the Spanish at Tampico. Pirate Jean Lafitte used the passes of Padre to hide his slave-running ships from British and U.S. warships. The middle of the island was used as a roadway by traders coming to Corpus Christi. Zachary Taylor sent officers to explore using the island for the army's route of march to Mexico in 1846. Rangers used the island to reach the border; they would ford the Laguna Madre, with waves splashing over their saddles, taking care to keep their guns out of the saltwater.
   The island has also had people who settled down to stay. Before the Civil War, a preacher named Carey Curry from Alabama brought his family and founded a settlement 20 miles below Corpus Christi Pass. It was said that the settlement had no machine-made tools, that Curry made his own implements and his own oxcarts.
   During the Civil War, federal troops burned the old Singer house and hunted to extinction what was left of the island's deer. (An early story tells of a unique hunting method used by Karankawas. Men would go down the island and work their way up, driving deer in front of them. When they reached the pass, they would run the deer into the water, where men waiting in dugouts killed them.)
   Longhorns left from the old Singer and Balli ranches grazed on dune grass and foraged for fish on the beach. Richard King, when he began his ranch at Santa Gertrudis in 1854, bought Padre Balli's old Santa Cruz Ranch and ran cattle on the island.
   After the war, two Corpus Christi men, W.N. Staples and John King, built a packery on the island. The packery dealt in hides, tallow and horns; the meat was dumped in the channel beside the plant, which would later be called Packery Channel. In those days, Padre Island was separated from Mustang Island by the mile-wide Corpus Christi Pass. Schooners would transport the hides and tallow to Rockport, where they were loaded onto freighters.
   A group of families headed by J. T. Lynn established a settlement above the Curry settlement. The place was called "Head of the Island." Lynn managed a packery owned by the Grace company. Cattle were bought from ranchers on the island and they were herded from the mainland across the laguna, walking and swimming a short distance. When the price of beef rose and the packing houses closed, the Lynn family moved to Gonzalez County, but the Curry settlement stayed for decades more.
   The old Staples packery was converted into a taxidermy place to skin and cure birds. The feathers were sold to fashion houses to decorate women's hats. Stuffed egrets and roseate spoonbills were sold for mantel decorations.
   Patrick F. Dunn settled on Padre in 1879 and developed the island into a unique ranch. At roundup time, his cowboys, like the Karankawas hunting deer, would form a dragnet across the island and work north, moving the cattle into corrals made of mahogany and driftwood of uncertain lineage. Trenches were dug in the sand, with the sides walled-in, to reach the sub-surface table of fresh water. The cattle would kneel to drink. Dunn patrolled his ranch in a buggy pulled by two white mules. He called himself the Duke of Padre. Why not? He was like a head of state on his own domain; no one could visit the island without his permission. People did get permission; they would cross the lagoon in wagons and collect the eggs of wild birds on the island.
   Dunn sold the island in 1926 to Sam Robertson of San Benito, who planned to develop it into a resort. Dunn retained the right to run his cattle on the island. Robertson built the wooden Don Patricio Causeway to the island and built the Surfside Hotel and cottages on the beach. The causeway, hotel and cottages were destroyed in the 1933 hurricane and Robertson sold his interests to two wealthy oilmen from Kansas City. They spent years trying to develop the island. During World War II, the island was used for bombing practice by the Navy. Today's causeway was opened in 1950.
   Dunn moved into the Nueces Hotel after he sold the island. He was not happy with the result. Before he died in 1937, the Duke of Padre said, "If the Lord would give me back the island, and wash a channel 30 feet wide and put devilfish and other monsters in it to keep the tourists out, I'd be happy."
   (Sources: Caller-Times articles by Dee Woods, David Allred, Jack Baughman; "Padre Island" by Writers' Roundtable; "Secrets of Padre Island" by Vernon Smylie; "Padre: Island of Romance" by Coleman McCampbell in Frontier Times. )
  

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