Corpus Christi, Padre Island & the Coastal Bend

The Coastal Bend wraps around Corpus Christi Bay, the homeland of Karankawa peoples whose descendants have organized again in this century. Henry Kinney opened a trading post on the bay's west shore in 1839, Zachary Taylor's army camped beside it in 1845 on the way to war with Mexico, and the town grew into the port of South Texas. The aircraft carrier Lexington is now a museum moored on the bayfront.

Padre Island runs about 130 miles south from Corpus Christi, and Padre Island National Seashore, signed into law by John Kennedy in 1962, protects 67.5 miles of it with the Laguna Madre behind. North across the bay, Rockport began after the Civil War as a cattle packing port, and George and Harriet Fulton finished their mansard-roofed house nearby in 1877. Beyond them on Blackjack Peninsula, the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, set aside in 1937, is the winter ground of the whooping crane.

Inland is ranch and brush country. Richard King bought the Rincon de Santa Gertrudis grant in 1853, and the King Ranch at Kingsville later bred the Santa Gertrudis, a breed recognized in 1940, worked from the start by the Kinenos, families King brought from Mexico. Irish colonists of McMullen and McGloin founded San Patricio in 1829. Beeville, Alice and George West are the county seats on the roads to San Antonio.

Corpus Christi, Padre Island & the Coastal Bend rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.