Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Island has been a challenge for developers

Patrick Dunn in 1879 established one of the world's most unusual cattle ranches on Padre Island.
   Dunn for 50 years was the padrone of the island. He put up cattle pens made from driftwood, mostly mahogany, that washed up on the island after storms. He dug water wells to reach the freshwater table that lies on top of the saltwater under the surface. The water tanks were below ground level so cattle would kneel in the sand to drink. Dunn had 75 of these cattle wells down the length of the island. The cattle would walk along the shore, hock-deep in the surf, foraging for whatever the tide brought in.
   At roundup, Dunn's cowboys, who called him "Don Patricio," started at the island's southern tip and worked north, chasing the cattle out of the sand dunes into the driftwood corrals along the way. There were four working camps, each a day's ride from the other. There was one camp at the head of the island, another called the Novillo (steer) Pens, another at Black Hill and a fourth at Green Hill. His first ranchhouse was at a place called "The Settlement," about 20 miles south from where the causeway exits now. He built another home in 1907 facing Packery Channel; it was destroyed in the 1916 storm.
   While Dunn ran his cattle ranch on the island, fishermen, shell collectors or anyone else who wanted to visit the island - which was reachable by boat or wagon at low tide - had to get written permission from one of Dunn's agents in Brownsville or Corpus Christi.
   In 1925, Dunn sold the island to a developer. He kept grazing rights. (I know this has been legally contested for decades by the descendants of Padre Balli, but that's another story.) Dunn moved into the Nueces Hotel and lived to regret selling the island. Before he died in 1937, he said, "If the Lord would just give me back the island, and wash out a channel 20 feet wide and put devilfish and other monsters in it to keep out the tourists, I'd be happy."
   That was not the plan of Col. Sam Robertson, who bought the island from Dunn. He wanted to turn it into a world-class resort. Robertson, an Army engineer by training, came to South Texas to supervise laying tracks for the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railroad. He was elected sheriff of Cameron County.
   Robertson wanted to develop both ends of the island. He planned to build a toll road from North to South Padre. He called it the Ocean Beach Driveway. He acquired financial backing from Kansas City investors to build the Don Patricio Causeway. This causeway, built on pilings, opened on July 4, 1927. The toll was $3 a car for a round-trip. Three trips, it was said, would ruin a set of tires.
   This was the initial step in Robertson's plan for a gigantic playground on the island. Next, he built the Surfside Hotel, cottages on the beach, and a bridge across Corpus Christi Pass. At the southern end of the island, he laid out a subdivision and began operating a ferry between Port Isabel and South Padre and from the mainland to Port Aransas.
   The colonel's dreams of developing the island were washed away when the Depression hit. He sold his interests to the financial backers in Kansas City. Four years later, the 1933 storm washed away the actual structures - the causeway, the Surfside Hotel and the beach cottages. The ferries were abandoned, and the island once again was isolated.
   The Kansas City investors who took possession of the colonel's land, and his dreams, began a long effort to get a public-financed causeway built to the island, a necessary prelude to development. The principal investor was Albert R. Jones, an oilman, who eventually bought out the other two investors. He owned some 85 percent of the island.
   Jones said Padre Island was the best prospect for resort development in the country and he pursued plans to make a profit from his investment. But nothing happened during the Depression years and then the war came. The island was used by the Navy for bombing practice. Cattle left from Dunn's ranch learned to run when they heard aircraft overhead.
   On June 17, 1950, the Padre Island Causeway opened. Cars streamed across to this newfound playground and almost immediately plans for development came back to the forefront. Padre Island, it was said, would be the next Miami Beach. No, it would be better than Miami Beach; Florida, it was said, never had the equal of Padre Island for its rugged beauty.
   One man who planned to develop the island was John L. Tompkins, a former World War I pilot who sold real estate in Corpus Christi. Tompkins tried to put together enough land on North Padre to attract developers. He envisioned North Padre as becoming a wonderful resort playground, a place where thousands of visitors would find rest and pleasure. He practiced what he preached and often camped out on the island with his family.
   But Tompkins was not able to put together enough land to begin a development. Finally, frustrated by his inability to get anything done on North Padre, he turned his attention to the southern tip of the island, where he found a desolate place occupied by a few fishing shacks.
   Tompkins spent years researching land titles and buying what he could. On the day the Korean War broke out, he bought his first strip of beach on the island's southern tip. Over the next few years, he acquired clear title (clear enough to get title insurance) to five miles of beachfront property on South Padre. He began selling beachfront lots for $1,250 and residential ones for $250. After Tompkins came Jonathan H. Conrow, a Connecticut investor who bought a 32-mile strip of South Padre Island for development.
   It wasn't long before Cameron County built the Queen Isabella Causeway and the first hotels and restaurants were built. That was the genesis of South Padre Island as a major resort destination. The developer who had failed to succeed on North Padre made it happen on the southern end of the island.
   Tompkins died in 1979. His son Frank Tompkins, and his son-in-law Lawrence Young, are still in the real-estate business here. A few years the late Tompkins was recognized for his achievement when a plaque was dedicated to "Mr. Padre Island - John L. Tompkins."
   There have been many efforts, successful and not, to develop the island, and we will see many more. The island as a pristine wilderness hasn't existed for a long time; nature long ago gave way to human nature. The very name Packery Channel is a reminder that more than a century ago this was the site of an industrialized slaughterhouse where many thousands of cattle were killed and shucked of their hides. The island has never been a static place: Wind and tides are constantly changing its sandy contours, just as storms have opened and closed the passes across it. The island, steeped in history, has always been an enduring, fascinating, and magnetic attraction, a place of sand castles, dreams and buried treasures, real and imagined. It still is.
   (Sources include Caller-Times archives; "South Padre, The Island and Its People" by Bob St. John; and "The Secrets of Padre Island," a pamphlet by Vernon Smylie.")
  

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