1941 Corpus Christi Seawall

The steps were the point as much as the wall. Engineers Noyes and Myers studied Gulf Coast seawalls before drawing one fronted with concrete steps about a foot deep and nearly two feet wide, which also broke the force of waves. Behind it, fill extended the shoreline to make room for a road and boat basins. Crowds later used the steps as grandstand seating for boat races and for replicas of the Niña, Pinta and Santa María. The wall did not extend to North Beach, a low peninsula left outside its protection.

What the plaque says

1941 Corpus Christi Seawall A designated Texas Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, the Corpus Christi Seawall has helped to protect the coastal city for more than seventy years. Periodically devastated by hurricanes, Corpus Christi began to consider a protective barrier in 1919. For the next twenty years, seawall plans were proposed only to be ignored or rejected. Finally in 1939, seawall construction began, funded with over $2,000,000 provided by the remission of state ad valorem taxes from seven South Texas counties. San Antonio contractor Jay Depuy built the 1,100-foot long seawall, using the design of the Dallas Civil Engineering firm, E.L. Myers and E.N. Noyes. Dredging eastward from water street, Depuy created a new land mound extending over 500 feet into the bay. From its edge to its juncture with the shoreline, he drove creosoted timber pilings, able to bear eighteen tons of pressure, through the earthen mound into the bay bottom. Using a mobile foundation-forming device, he then erected a 14-foot high steel reinforced concrete seawall with steps from its top down to the water. When completed in 1941, along with three piers and a marina, the seawall was not merely a protective barrier; its steps provided the people of Corpus Christi with an amphitheater to the sea. With this as their base, they held bonfire war bond rallies during WWII, watched the sesquicentennial fireworks display and celebrated the arrival of the Columbus Ships. Constructed through the ingenuity of engineers, the persistence of politicians and the enthusiasm of citizens, this concrete wall has protected shoreline businesses and property well into the 21st century. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mirador de la Flor — steps away
  Corpus Christi's bayfront memorial to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, the Tejano singer from this city, killed in 1995 at twenty-three, visited by about thirty thousand people a year.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 1.0 mi
  Philip Johnson's 1972 museum on the Corpus Christi bayfront, joined in 2006 by Ricardo Legorreta's Miller Wing, holding more than 2,000 works mostly from Texas and the Americas.
• Texas State Aquarium — 1.3 mi
  A nonprofit aquarium on the tip of Corpus Christi Beach built around the Gulf and the Caribbean, with the largest coastal wildlife rescue center in Texas behind the exhibits.
• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 1.3 mi
  An Essex-class carrier of 1943 moored off North Beach, the Blue Ghost that Tokyo Rose kept reporting sunk, and the Navy's training carrier for nearly three decades after.

More markers nearby

• Gutzon Borglum and the Corpus Christi Bayfront — steps away
• 1966 Farm Workers Rally and March — steps away
• Site of Old Salt Mill — steps away
• The Ranchero — steps away