History |
| Population: 285,267 (per US Census Bureau Est.) In 1519, on the Roman Catholic Feast Day of Corpus Christi, Spanish explorer Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda discovered a lush semi-tropical bay on what is now the southern coast of Texas. The bay, and the city that later sprung up there, took the name of the feast day celebrating the "Body of Christ." Corpus Christi began as a frontier trading post, founded in 1838-1839 by Colonel Henry Lawrence Kinney, an adventurer, impresario and colonizer. The small settlement was called Kinney's Trading Post, or Kinney's Ranch. It remained an obscure settlement until July 1845, when U.S. troops under General Zachary Taylor set up camp here in preparation for war with Mexico. The Army remained until March 1846, when it marched southward to the Rio Grande to enforce it as the southern border of the United States. About a year later, the city took the name Corpus Christi as a "more definite postmark for letters was needed." It incorporated Sept. 9, 1852. Residents elected a city council and a mayor, Benjamin F. Neal, who served from 1852 to 1855. The spot Pineda discovered is now home to the largest city on the Texas Coast and is the sixth largest port in the nation. Key industries include petrochemical, tourism, healthcare, retail, education, shipping, agriculture and the military. Since its incorporation in 1852, Corpus Christi has grown into a regional hub for marketing, processing, packaging and distributing agricultural commodities for a 12-county trade area. Sources: City of Corpus Christi. The Handbook of Texas Online. |
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