Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Time, growth obscured early landmarks

Corpus Christi in the beginning was a "dobie" town. Most of the earliest buildings were made of a form of adobe called shellcrete, which consisted of crushed oyster shells for the aggregate, burned shells for the builder's lime, then mixed with clay and allowed to harden under the hot Texas sun. It was a wonderfully strong building material.
   Shellcrete was used because there were almost no trees. What few there were, were mesquite - too twisted and tough to turn into planks. A few years later, schooners brought fine lumber from the endless pine forests of the South.
   The first buildings were scattered along the waterfront and on the strand, that strip of land between the bay and the bluff. H. L. Kinney's trading post was a shellcrete building with a wall around it, for a fort. It occupied a prominent site on the bluff, where the telephone company building is today.
   Kinney arrived in 1839. Some believe he landed at the mouth of Blucher Creek, which emptied into the bay about where Cooper's Alley intersects with Water Street today. Blucher Creek, an arroyo, was originally called Chatham's ravine, according to Bill Walraven. This ravine was dammed (where Blucher Park is today) to form a reservoir. Hogs wallowing in the water supply was a persistent problem.
   The other inlet was a slough called Hall's Bayou. It separated Corpus Christi proper from the "rincon" - that corner of beach stretching north that would become known as North Beach. Hall's Bayou is the ship channel entrance today.
   In 1845, six years after Kinney built his trading post, some 4,000 soldiers in Zachary Taylor's army pitched their tents along the bay. They used mesquite brush and sand to build embankments for windbreaks. These have disappeared.
   Water was a problem. Soldiers dug shallow wells on the beach, but the seepage from the water table below was brackish and caused diarrhea; it could be used only for washing. A well was drilled at where Artesian Park is today, but the water was also unfit to drink. Soldiers began the hard task of hauling water by mule train from the Nueces River. Taylor's officers, looking for an easier way to transport water, decided to use boats. One obstacle was the oyster reef barrier that divided Nueces Bay from Corpus Christi Bay. This was the "reef road" travelers used to cross the bay.
   Taylor's men gouged out a cut on the Corpus Christi side wide enough for shallow-draft boats to squeeze through. Later, horses crossing the reef road would have to swim that stretch where Taylor's men had cut through the reef.
   Fresh water and good timber
   A party sent to find the Nueces River found some of the largest trees in this area. There were strips of timber several miles in depth on both sides of the river at its junction with Nueces Bay. This place had a plentiful supply of the two things Corpus Christi did not have - fresh water and good timber.
   John Anderson, who built a windmill-powered sawmill on Water Street in the 1860s, shipped wood from the Nueces Bottoms to cut for firewood. When a norther hit, people lined up on the wharf waiting for his boat to come in with firewood.
   During a drought, when no rain fell to fill the cisterns, men called "barrileros" hauled water from the river and sold it to townspeople.
   Other people went up the Nueces River to gather palmetto leaves, used to make thatch roofs, and wild Muscadine grapes that grew in abundance along the river.
   Back near Corpus Christi, a mile west of town, was the Salt Lake, between Winnebago Street and where the port turning basin is today. This lake disappeared after the drought that began in 1863. (The Salt Lake is often confused with Tule Lake, which lies nine miles from Harbor Bridge and is also a salt lake.) The salt flats that had once been the Salt Lake were used as a dump until 1913 when the city bought its first garbage incinerator.
   The Salt Lake, Blucher Creek, and Hall's Bayou are among those natural features that have disappeared, obliterated by time, weather, and a growing city. They exist now only on old maps, and in the sepia-toned pages of history.
  
   Murphy Givens can be reached by phone at 886-4315 or by e-mail at givensm@caller.com.
  
  
  

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