Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Part two "Our towns"

In the old days, South Texas was thought fit only for grazing longhorns and sheep, but the coming of the railroads opened up ranchlands for farming, which set off the land boom, which in turn created many of the towns and communities in Nueces County.
   In last week's column, I made a mistake by connecting Alfred, near Orange Grove, with Aberdeen. I'm not sure I how I messed up. I had a reference that Aberdeen at one time was called Alfred, but it was an error.
   Flour Bluff, the most famous of the commmunities that have become part of Corpus Christi, has a name that dates back to 1838. During the "Pastry War" between France and Mexico, French ships blockaded Mexico's ports, which led to smugglers landing supplies on the Texas coast. The Republic of Texas tried to stop the smuggling. In the incident that gave Flour Bluff its name, smugglers fled when Texas militiamen showed up, dumping 100 barrels of flour.
   The area originally was called "El Rincon del Grullo." It began to grow after ranchlands were subdivided and put up for sale after 1907. This was when homeseekers - sometimes called "homesuckers" - were brought in by the trainloads.
   Gardendale, a farming community in the vicinity of today's Rodd Field Road and Everhart, was founded in the early 1900s. It was annexed by the city of Corpus Christi in 1954.
   Kostoryz is another of those communities that was located in Corpus Christi's growth path. It was founded in 1904 when S.L. Kostoryz bought 7,000 acres of the old Grim Ranch west of Corpus Christi. Kostoryz came from Czechoslovakia. He published a Czech-language newspaper and taught school in Nebraska. He sold his paper and bought the ranchland tract, which he called the Bohemian Colony Lands. He advertised farms for sale in Czech newspapers around the country. The first Czech families moved into the area in 1906.
   Turning brushland prairie into farmland was a tough undertaking. Mammouth steam tractors were often used to turn the virgin sod, but in the Kostoryz area, the work was done by the Czech farmers using plows, grubbing hoes and axes.
   The Kostoryz community was swallowed by Corpus Christi, but S.L. Kostoryz wasn't around to see it. He moved back to Czechoslovakia in 1920, although his family stayed here.
   North Pole was located on Highway 9 between Calallen and Annaville. It was never incorporated, but it did have a post office and people would drive from all over to have letters postmarked "North Pole." No one knows how the name was derived; some think railroad surveyers called it that because it was the highest elevation between Brownsville and Houston.
   Nuecestown, called "The Motts" on the Nueces River, was the second oldest town in the county. It was founded in 1852 by H. L. Kinney, who also founded Corpus Christi. Kinney sent agents to England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales to attract settlers. He established Nuecestown as a farming community. A store was opened by Thomas Noakes and a post office was established in 1859. Bandits raided Nuecestown on Good Friday, 1875, and burned Noakes' store. He rebuilt the store a mile west, at a point where the river came closest to what is now UpRiver Road. The town followed Noakes. Cowboys got their mail at Noakes store and Rangers stopped there for supplies before heading into brush country.
   The Caller in 1885 reported that the teacher in the Nuecestown school that year, Mrs. Z.E. Green, would be paid $60 a month. The school's next biggest expense was firewood, $11.45 for a year's supply. Nuecestown disappeared after the railroad passed it by in favor of Calallen.
   Not far away was Riverside, a community on the Nueces. Riverside had a schoolhouse built in 1911. The last class of the Riverside school - in a one-room, red-brick schoolhouse - was 1941. The school district merged with Calallen's.
   Violet, between Robstown and Clarkwood, was settled in 1908 by German immigrants. It was originally called Land, or Land Siding, then the name was changed to Violet in 1913. It had a post office from 1913 to 1947.
   The history of West Point dates from 1906. A school was built for West Point in 1932 on the old Brownsville Road. The West Point and Oso districts were consolidated to become the West Oso School District. The Oso school dates back to 1884, when classes were held in a sheepherder's jacal on the old Henry Davis Allen ranch. The late Roy Terrell remembered attending school in the sheepherder's shack. Boys would ride their horses to school, stake them out on rawhide ropes, and coyotes would chew the ropes in two. After school was out, the boys would have to hunt for their strayed horses.
   (Sources include Caller-Times archives, Jim Stever's "Handling the Mails in Corpus Christi," "The History of Nueces County," and "Reminiscences of Roy Terrell," provided by Mrs. T. Frank Horner.)
   (Murphy Givens can be reached at 886-4315 or by email at givensm@caller.com.)
  
  

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