Wild Horses and the Mexican-American War

 

It's been chilly and rainy, and we've been hanging around the campground mostly. When it’s not actively raining we've walked along the beach, but otherwise we've been reading, cooking dinner, and occasionally meeting up with other campers at activities in the communal tent. We had a nice soup and salad potluck dinner last Sunday, and there was some Tuscan Kale soup that was super delicious. Mike liked the Brunswick Stew a lot, too. We also received invitations from our tablemates, in the case of one couple, to boondock in Lincoln, Nebraska, in their driveway, and from the other, to camp at the campground they own in Lyons Ferry, Washington, on the Snake River north of Walla Walla. Who knows, maybe our travels will take us both places. In the meantime, our downtime has caused me to do some more historical research, so that's the topic today.

We’re on Mustang Island, so named because once, a century or two ago, there were a lot of wild horses out here. In 1519, when Spanish explorer Alonso Álvarez de Pineda sailed through the pass to what he later named Corpus Christi Bay, he brought horses with him, and by the early 18th century, as a result of grazing herds of horses introduced by Spanish settlers, the island was first called Wild Horse and then Mustang Island. Up to the 1840s, the island and pass (now the ship channel) were frequented by buccaneers, smugglers, and merchants seeking their fortune—or someone else's. This is another area that was reportedly a hangout for the pirate Jean Lafitte. He was a busy and well-traveled fellow. Legend has it that somewhere on this island is a silver dagger, buried up to its hilt, marking the spot where Lafitte buried a gold treasure. I find it rather hard to believe that no one has found that dagger yet, but I'm still keeping an eye out for it.

Back to wild horses, on the mainland west of the city of Corpus Christi is an area called Wild Horse Desert, which was also known in the past as the Nueces Strip. Around the time of the Mexican American War, it was an important piece of real estate, but it was also a spooky place—there were horse tracks everywhere, but no people. It was said that the whole area was crisscrossed by well-worn trails, but the population was entirely equestrian, with estimates of more than a million horses descended from the ones that arrived with the Spanish conquistadors three centuries before.

This area, the Nueces Strip, was the land between the Nueces and the Rio Grande Rivers, disputed territory claimed by both the United States and Mexico. It was the primary cause of the Mexican-American War, which lasted from 1846 to 1848. The war was won by the United States, and ended with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which set the Texas border at the Rio Grande. The United States gained a half-million acres of what was once Mexican territory.

One soldier in the conflict was named Captain Richard King. On a scouting mission in the Wild Horse Desert, he came upon a creek-fed oasis in the desert, and a few years later he bought the land. With partners, he bought a lot more land, and eventually this became the King Ranch, still the largest ranch in the United States—it is bigger than the country of Luxembourg. It rambles over three counties, and the town of Kingsville on one edge of the ranch was named for Richard King. Another town called Alice was named for his daughter, Alice Gertrudis King. Her odd middle name came from the name of that creek that created the desert oasis, and it also became the name of a crossbreed of cattle, the Santa Gertrudis, bred to handle the harsh conditions of the Wild Horse Desert.

Santa Gertrudis cattle were crossbred

on the King Ranch to handle the hot,

dry conditions of West Texas

There’s a lot more about the King Ranch that I’ve read about since we’ve been here, but except for mentioning that the 1946 Triple Crown winner Assault was bred on the ranch, the only thing I’ll mention is that you’ve probably seen the ranch’s running W brand on the back of a Ford truck or SUV at some point—King Ranch models are very popular in Texas, anyway!

Of course the King Ranch isn’t the only one around here, and I discovered there was a ranch out this way with a Cincinnati connection. We were on the mainland, in Aransas Pass, looking for a Walmart so Mike could get some muesli (they didn’t have it, but that’s another story). The directions to the Walmart showed two nearby towns, Taft and Sinton. “What a coincidence!” I thought. “Two names that go together in Cincy . . .” I found out it was not a coincidence at all—Charles Phelps Taft had a ranch here, a BIG ranch, which he had inherited from his father-in-law, David Sinton, who had loaned money to Texas cattle barons that made him the majority stockholder in the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company, a leader in breeding new strains of cattle suited to the dry Texas climate. When Sinton died, his son-in-law took over management of the ranch, which was locally known as the Taft Ranch.  I had no idea either of them had been involved in Texas ranching. Charles Phelps Taft’s half-brother, William Howard Taft, visited the ranch in 1909 when he was president of the United States.

William Howard Taft, down

on the Taft ranch in Texas

Speaking of names, I also discovered that the nearby town, Port Aransas, where we go to the grocery and so forth, has had many names. It was originally called Ropesville, and I can't find any explanation for that name. Then from the 1880s for about 50 years or so, it was called Tarpon because it was a big place for sports fishermen to come try their luck catching a huge and mean tarpon. There was even a Tarpon Rodeo for many years. But, even though it was not a good fish to eat, the folks who wanted to say they'd caught a tarpon managed to deplete the stock, so by the 1950s there were no tarpon in Tarpon any more. That's when they started calling it Port Aransas, which means "spiders" in Spanish. Not the greatest name for a place where you want tourists, but that's what they went with.

A lovely sunset over the harbor in Port Aransas

from inside a restaurant, which explains the reflections

We'll try to do something more exciting next week, but unless we hear the sonic boom from the SpaceX launch 200 miles down the barrier island this afternoon, our quiet week will continue for now.