The Corpus Christi Bay country was long the coastal homeland of the Karankawa and Coahuiltecan peoples. A Spanish expedition associated with Alonso Álvarez de Pineda mapped the bay in 1519 and gave it the name it still carries. The modern city began in 1839, when Henry Lawrence Kinney set up a trading post on the western shore; it became the Nueces County seat in 1846 — a staging ground for Zachary Taylor's army on its march toward the Mexican-American War — and was incorporated in 1852. Wool, cattle, and the railroad built the town through the 1870s, but the turn came in 1926, when the deepwater Port of Corpus Christi opened, and in 1930, when oil was struck in the county. Salt water and crude oil have shaped the city ever since.
The Sparkling City by the Sea — where a WWII carrier rides at anchor and the longest wild beach in America runs down the Gulf. Corpus Christi is the largest coastal city in Texas, wrapped around Corpus Christi Bay on the South Texas Gulf Coast. Off its downtown bayfront rides the USS Lexington — "the Blue Ghost" — a World War II aircraft carrier turned museum, and south of the city the dunes of Padre Island National Seashore run nearly seventy miles, the longest undeveloped barrier-island beach in the United States. Spanish explorers named the bay in 1519 for the feast of Corpus Christi, and the city that grew on its shore became one of the nation's great ports. This page tells the story of the Sparkling City by the Sea.
Why People Visit Corpus Christi Texas
Corpus Christi draws people who love the water, the wind, and a deep streak of history on the same coast. It is the Sparkling City by the Sea — home of a WWII carrier you can walk, the longest wild beach in America, a leading Gulf-coast port, and a proud Tejano-cultural heart. Visitors come for the rare combination: a working bayfront, barrier-island shore, the steady Gulf wind that made the bay a windsurfing capital, and the Blue Ghost riding at anchor over it all.
