Artesian Park and Sulphur Well

Ask who actually used the park and the record turns to games. A photograph from the late 1930s shows men playing dominoes here, and an archaeological survey turned up gaming pieces, which suggests the habit is older than any picture. The well needs no pump, since the pressure of the aquifer pushes the water up. The Woman's Monday Club, begun in 1897 as a literary club, counted the park among the places it helped preserve. A granite marker and the state marker for Taylor's camp stand beside it, and the park is still where people gather.

What the plaque says

Artesian Park and Sulphur Well After a convention of Republic of Texas citizens accepted terms on July 4, 1845, for annexation to the United States, General Zachary Taylor brought 4,000 men of the U.S. 3rd infantry to Corpus Christi to defend the embryonic state from indians or foreign powers. He remained eight months; more than two months after Texas became a state he marched to the Rio Grande. Among his troops in Corpus Christi were three future United States presidents (Taylor, Pierce, and Grant), and many other future celebrities. A landmark of Taylor's sojourn was a sulphur-rich artesian well he had drilled adjacent to the camp. In 1854, out of regard for the significant well and campsite, and to give the city he had founded (1839) a public park, H.L. Kinney deeded and dedicated the well site and an acre of surrounding land to the municipality. This park is one of the earliest in Texas to have been given by an individual to the public. By 1900--when a bandstand, drinking fountain and walks had been installed by civic or private means--the park was regarded as an historic, greatly cherished city facility. More land was added in 1907--08 through efforts of the Woman's Monday Club. Use and improvements have continued over 120 years. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mirador de la Flor — 0.3 mi
  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 — 0.8 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 — 1.0 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 — 1.1 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

• The Corpus Christi Caller-Times — steps away
• Site of the Corpus Christi Lighthouse — steps away
• John Bernard Murphy — steps away
• Mother Margaret Mary Healy Murphy — steps away