The Corpus Christi Caller-Times

Behind the plaque's list of owners is a ranch. The Caller took its name from the San Francisco Call, and Richard King of the King Ranch was one of its first stockholders; the Handbook of Texas says Harte-Hanks bought the paper in 1929 from the King Ranch. The Caller merged with the Herald in 1910, and the Times began in 1917 when W. E. Pope renamed the Daily Democrat. For its hundredth birthday in 1983 the paper gave the city the bayfront sculpture Wind in the Sails by Kent Ullberg.

What the plaque says

The Corpus Christi Caller-Times The first issue of the Corpus Christi "Caller" was published on January 21, 1883. It was established by Eli Merriman, owner of the Corpus Christi "Free Press", Ed Williams, co-owner of the "Semi-Weekly Ledger", and W.P. Caruthers, who is credited with naming the "Caller". One of the original stockholders was King Ranch founder Captain Richard King. W.E. Pope, who was to represent Corpus Christi in the state legislature for many years, purchased the town's "Daily Democrat" in 1917 and renamed it the "Times". Eleven years later he sold it to Houston Harte of San Angelo and Bernard Hanks of Abilene, owners of several Texas newspapers. In 1929 the "Caller" was purchased by the Harte-Hanks group and the two papers were combined as the Corpus Christi "Caller-Times" with Grady Kinsolving as publisher. The "Caller-Times" has outlasted over two dozen newspapers that have served the city since the first two, the "Gazette" and the "Star", were published in the 1840s. The "Caller" and the "Times" were in two separate locations until operations were consolidated at a third site in 1929. The newspapers have been published at the present location since 1935. (1983)

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 — 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 — 1.2 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

• Site of the Corpus Christi Lighthouse — steps away
• Artesian Park and Sulphur Well — steps away
• John Bernard Murphy — steps away
• Mother Margaret Mary Healy Murphy — steps away