Site of Kinney's Trading Post

Kinney did not build the post alone. William P. Aubrey was his partner from the start, and the two did well enough in unlicensed trade with Mexico to make enemies. The sharpest was the merchant Philip Dimmitt, who objected to Kinney buying out small ranchers and traders. When Mexican raiders captured Dimmitt and others, Kinney was accused of informing for Mexico and tried for treason. He was acquitted and went back to business. Attacks by Mexican bands forced the post's abandonment in 1842; when Kinney returned, a post office opened with Aubrey as postmaster.

What the plaque says

Site of Kinney's Trading Post Henry L. Kinney, born in Pennsylvania in June 1814, came to this area about 1858 and established a fort-like trading post (across Broadway). The building, enclosed by a stockade, contained his home, store, and quarters for armed men. The bulk of Kinney's trade was with Indians and smuggling for Mexican Federalists who were in constant conflict with Centralist forces. The city of Corpus Christi grew up around the post. In 1845 Kinney's business boomed as Gen. Zachary Taylor's army camped in the area until March 1846, when it moved to the Rio Grande. Kinney enlisted with Taylor as a quartermaster and served in the U.S. War with Mexico until Oct. 1846. Upon returning from Mexico, Kinney won election to the state legislature, representing this district until 1853. When business began to falter in the early 1850's, he organized the "Lone Star Fair" in an attempt to attract settlers. The venture failed and forced him into bankruptcy. Kinney then attempted, unsuccessfully, to gain control of the "Mosquito Kingdom" in Nicaragua. After returning to Corpus Christi in 1858, he again won a seat in the legislature, from which he resigned in 1861, to resume international intrigues. Kinney was killed in the early 1860s in Matamoros under unknown circumstances. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mirador de la Flor — 0.4 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 — 1.2 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 — 1.4 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 — 1.6 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.

More markers nearby

• Confederate Army Deserters Hanged in Corpus Christi — steps away
• Old St. Patrick's Church — steps away
• The Ranchero — steps away
• Felix von Blucher — 0.2 mi