Padre Island and Padre Nicolas Balli

Who owns Padre Island was settled in court, not by the priest. After the Mexican War, Balli-family land passed to Americans through purchases, back-tax payments and possession. Historian Paul Taylor argues that Mexican owners were pressed to sell. John Singer bought at the south end, while two Corpus Christi men held the north. In State of Texas v. Balli, the state claimed all but about 50,000 acres of the island's roughly 130,000. In 1945 the Texas Supreme Court held that the original Spanish grant covered the whole island, so those claiming under it were the owners.

What the plaque says

Padre Island and Padre Nicolas Balli First called Corpus Christi Island or Isla Santiago, Padre Island was named for Padre Jose Nicolas Balli (177?-1829). His family migrated from Spain in 1569 and became large landowners in the lower Rio Grande Valley, influential in military and governmental affairs. Ordained about 1790, Padre Balli applied to Spain's King Charles IV in 1800 for 11 1/2 leagues of land on the island. Padre Balli had the land surveyed and in 1804 started the first settlement, Rancho Santa Cruz, about 26 miles from the southern tip. He began the island's first mission for the settlers and to Christianize the Karankawa indians. With help from a nephew, Juan Jose Balli, as "Mayordomo" or Foreman, Padre Balli started ranching, bringing in large herds of cattle, horses, and sheep. Padre Balli served as missionary and the collector of finances for all churches in the Rio Grande Valley. With financial aid from his mother Dona Rosa Maria de Hinojosa, he opened the first mission in present Cameron County and began a church and the first school at present Matamoros, Mexico. Padre Balli's ministry influenced the lives of early settlers in south Texas. He was buried near Matamoros. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mustang Island State Park — 6.5 mi
  More than five miles of Gulf beach on a barrier island named for wild horses, with beach camping on the sand and a twenty-mile paddling trail on the bay side.
• Padre Island National Seashore — 12 mi
  About sixty-six miles of undeveloped barrier beach south of Corpus Christi, where more Kemp's ridley sea turtles nest than anywhere else in the United States.
• Mirador de la Flor — 18 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 — 19 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.

More markers nearby

• Pat Dunn Ranch — 2.6 mi
• German POW Camp at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi — 6.5 mi
• Naval Air Station Corpus Christi — 6.5 mi
• Flour Bluff — 6.5 mi