Reef Road

The plaque calls the reef the favored crossing; the Handbook of Texas explains why it was also a gamble. At low tide water over the shell beds averaged eighteen to twenty-four inches, but at Hall's Bayou horses had to swim, and the trail ran crooked. In 1865 Nueces County ordered it marked with posts, which pranksters sometimes pulled, stranding travelers as the tide rose. Spooked horses that left the reef could mire and drown. The prize was roughly fifty miles saved over the ferries at Hearn's and Miller's. Hall's Bayou later became the Port of Corpus Christi.

What the plaque says

Reef Road Early settlers in the eastern and central areas of San Patricio county faced difficulty traveling across Corpus Christi Bay to Corpus Christi, the main center for trade. The Reef Road, which according to local tradition was discovered by indians, was the shortest and most favored route. Consisting of oyster shell reefs close to the water's surface, the road was passable only at low tide. Construction of the railroad (1887) and first causeway (1915) across the bay signalled a decline in usage of the road, but it remains an important part of the county's history. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 3.6 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.
• Texas State Aquarium — 3.8 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.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 4.0 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.
• Mirador de la Flor — 4.7 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.

More markers nearby

• Site of Indian Point Mass Grave of 1919 Hurricane Victims — steps away
• Site of Bay View College — 2.1 mi
• Nueces County — 4.0 mi
• Corpus Christi and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway — 4.0 mi