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BOLIVAR
PENINSULA:
SCENE OF SLAVING, SMUGGLING, FILIBUSTERING AND FARMS.By
W. T. Block | |
Very
few areas of Texas can claim a longer time span of written history than can that
thirty-mile sliver of sand known as Bolivar Peninsula. Even its very name is written
in man's love of freedom for Simon Bolivar was the hero of the earliest filibusterers,
Xavier Mina, James Long, and Warren D. C. Hall, to reside within its confines.
But long before the first European ever visited there, it was also the gateway
to Galveston
Island for the East Texas Indian tribes, some of whom left its sands strewn
with their arrow heads, pottery shards, and the bones of their dead.
The
first European visitor there was probably Cabeza de Vaca, who in November, 1528,
was washed ashore on Galveston
Island and who later traveled extensively on the mainland. In 1719, the Orcoquisa
Indians captured Simars de Belle Isle, a French naval officer who had been accidentally
marooned on Galveston
Island. Perhaps the peninsula was also the scene of cannibalistic ritualism,
for both of its stone-age tribes, the Orcoquisas and Karankawas, stand accused
by Belle Isle as being practitioners of anthropophagy. However, many objective
historians reject Belle Isle's accounts of cannibalism.
Between 1816 and
1822, that coastal extremity, being one of a string of barrier reefs protecting
the Texas Coast, became notorious as a base for filibuster activities against
Spain, and hence, its name. At that moment, General Simon Bolivar was the leader
of almost all the republican revolts against Spain then in progress in Central
and South America, and the special hero of the American filibusterers of Texas
who sought to free Mexico from the Spanish yoke.
In 1816, two Spanish
rebels, Gen. Xavier Mina and Don Luis de Aury, began using Galveston
Island as a base of operations in their private war against Spain, and the
ranks included many Anglo republicans from Louisiana. In that year, Mina sent
100 of his men under Colonel Warren D. C. Hall to occupy Bolivar Point. Hall erected
a fort there, of log and sand embankments, where his small garrison remained for
the next six months.
After Mina's expedition abandoned the area, a second
filibustering expedition, under General James Long, occupied Bolivar point in
1820, and once more, Hall was one of the leaders of that group. In February, 1821,
when Long's forces departed for Goliad, he left his wife, Jane Long, his infant
daughter Ann, and servant Kian at the fort under the protection of a few soldiers.
As their supplies dwindled away and their position became increasingly untenable
and indefensible against the local Indians or the Spanish, the small garrison
deserted, leaving Jane and her charges to fend for themselves. While at Bolivar,
Mrs. Long gave birth to a second daughter, reputedly the first child of Anglo
origin to be born in Texas. Jane's 11-month vigil, awaiting her husband's return,
survives as the outstanding act of feminine heroism in early-day Texas.
During
the epoch of filibustering and piracy, the peninsula became an instrument in the
overland slave trade between Galveston
and Louisiana. The memoirs of Mary Campbell tell of her and her husband's (Capt.
Jim Campbell) arrival at Bolivar Point in their wagon, accompanied by a herd of
swine and 300 cattle, in April, 1817. The Campbells had come from Crow's Ferry
on the Sabine River to join Jean Lafitte's pirate commune, where they lived for
the next four years. Beginning in 1818, Lafitte and the Bowie brothers often moved
coffles of African slaves over that natural highway to the Sabine River, where
the sugar planters of Louisiana came to buy slaves at $1 a pound. In turn, other
residents of the notorious "Neutral Strip" of Louisiana traveled that same highway
of sand in order to reach Galveston
and join the ranks of the buccaneers. In fact, since Mary Campbell's first child
was born on Galveston Island in 1818, there is ample room for doubt about Jane
Long's child being the first Anglo child born in Texas.
For
the first fifteen years after 1822, Bolivar Peninsula probably reverted to a habitat
for the herds of deer and the nomad Orcoquisa Indians. On August 5, 1838, the
peninsula's first settler, Samuel D. Parr, claimed a league of land, beginning
at its point on the bay and extending five miles to the east. He was later granted
a patent to it by the Republic of Texas. In the same year, he sold the first 960
acres to Archibald Wynn and William Lawrence, who in 1839 surveyed the townsite
of Ismail into lots and blocks and offered them for sale to the public.
Altogether,
the town at the tip of the peninsula has been known by four different names --
Ismail, Parrsville, Gabion, and Port Bolivar. For a time, the proprietors touted
Ismail as the "future seaport of Texas," but as the years passed, the new townsite
sprouted only prairie grasses to be treaded upon by the hooves of countless cattle
herds, whereas the new seaport of Galveston
quickly flourished.
Under
the Texas Republic, the site of Rollover, where the peninsula is only about 600
yards wide, won notoriety as the "rolling over place" for smugglers. In 1843,
Texas tariffs were so high that goods smuggled across the Sabine River could be
sold at cheaper prices in such places as Crockett
and Palestine than could
legal wares imported through the port of Galveston.
Hence, smugglers rolled their barrels of wares and freight across the peninsula
at Rollover and later reloaded them in East Bay.
During
the 1840s, only a handful of farmers had settled at Bolivar. In September, 1847,
three of them discovered a unique way to supplement their meager incomes when
a 70-foot sperm whale washed up on the beach, 10 miles east of the point. The
is the first historical account of a whale along the Texas coast, and according
to the Galveston "Civilian," none of the sailors then in port had ever seen a
whale previously in the Gulf of Mexico. In a week's time, the three farmers had
extracted 200 barrels of whale oil from the blubber, as well as 25 barrels of
sperm oil. The value of the whale oil would have been about equal to two years'
cotton crops for each farmer.
By
1850, fifteen families, half of them English immigrants, lived along the thirty
mile stretch of land between High
island and Bolivar Point. The earliest settlers included Martin Dunman of
High Island, S. D. Parr, John G. Simpton, J. H. Fredenberg, William Reeves, William
Allen, Solomon Bryan, Joseph Atkins, William Dorsett, William Holbrook, Thomas
Bostick, and J. B. Benjamin. The census indicates that most of them were subsistence
sodbusters, for only two of them, Parr and Dunman, owned a total of five slaves.
On March 2, 1836, Joseph Dunman had carried a copy of William Barret Travis' last
plea from the Alamo from Harrisburg
to Liberty. Also during
the 1830s, Capt. Simpton had been master of the Republic of Texas revenue cutter
"Santa Anna," which cruised regularly in Sabine Lake and Galveston Bay.
During
the Civil War, the peninsula was patrolled eastward to High
island by Confederate cavalrymen, because the Union blockade fleet offshore
often sent raiding parties ashore to slaughter cattle. During the four years of
war, a number of blockade-runners ran aground on the beaches while being pursued
by Union gunboats. On one occasion, a Confederate schooner ran aground and was
burned at High island
after jettisoning 200 kegs of gunpowder in an futile attempt to outsail its pursuer.
During the three decades prior to 1880, many new settlers came to the coastal
extremity to live until, by 1885, the population had increased to eighty families,
numbering nearly 500 persons. Some of the later arrivals included A. J. Johnson,
C. W. Kahla, John Crainer, Frank Crainer, Willie Patton, John Strathan, James
A. Crenshaw, Vincent Linder, Jacob Hampshire, R. C. Nuckles, Fred Schneider, R.
H. Slaughter, Oscar Flake, F. M. Roberson, George Simpton, W. H. Dailey, and five
Shaw families.
For
a few years after 1865, the Bolivar farmers turned to sea island cotton as their
principal cash crop. At its peak, the silky staple brought as much as $1.10 a
pound on the English market, where it was interwoven with the product of the silk
worm, after which the finished cloth was exported to America as "Pure Silk."
When
that commodity dropped extensively in price, the peninsula pioneers began growing
produce for the Galveston and Houston markets, and by 1880, Bolivar had already
become the watermelon capital of Texas. In 1881 the farmers began shipping melons
by box car from Galveston, and in 1883, 137 cars, totaling 205,000 watermelons
went to northern markets, increasing annually for many decades thereafter. In
time, about 1,000 Bolivar acres were fenced off from the cow pastures for watermelon
culture, with similar acreage devoted to tomatoes, cantaloupes, and other produce.
Bolivar's supremacy as the watermelon capital lasted until the middle 1930s.
By 1885, Bolivar Peninsula was also commanding attention as a livestock region,
with its single cross fence at Rollover dividing the peninsula into two cow pastures.
In the west, or "18-mile," pasture, 10,000 heads of cattle and 2,000 sheep, belonging
to the Johnson, Nuckles, Kahla, and Atkins families grazed. The east pasture,
to a point beyond High
island, belonged to C. T. Cade and Co. of Iberville Parish, Louisiana, and
contained 12,000 steers. Until 1880, Cade regularly moved large trail herds of
cattle from High island
to Louisiana, crossing the Neches River with them at Beaumont.
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Bolivar
Lighthouse - 6 miles SW of Crystal
Beach near
Hwy 87
Photo courtesy Barclay Gibson |
In
1872, Port Bolivar acquired its most familiar landmark when the lighthouse was
completed. And for the next eighty years, its well-known beacon guided thousands
of mariners into port in Galveston Bay. In 1952, when better navigational aids
were available and its old beacon was obsolete, the Bolivar lighthouse became
only one of many Gulf Coast light facilities whose beacons were extinguished for
all time.
After
the Civil War, the protruding salt dome of High
island also acquired a few settlers, who promptly covered much of its square-mile
surface with flourishing peach and plum orchards. On the farm of George E. Smith,
there were two or three ice-cold springs, whose tart waters tasted of iron and
sulphur. And if a nearby hole were bored only a few feet deep, a strong flow of
methane gas rushed forth, which burned with a bluish flame if ignited. Some predicted
that, at some future date, the town would become one of the great mineral water
spas (or "watering places" as such spas were then popularly called) of Texas.
In time, High Island did acquire some fame, but not as a health resort
for the infirm. It was its oil field, Seaview Hotel, and its offshore bathing
facilities and fishing which attracted tourists. After the building of the Gulf
and Interstate line in 1896, High Island became a favorite winter playground for
the affluent lumber families of Beaumont.
In
1885, Bolivar also produced one-half of all the oysters consumed by the Texas
market. A fifteen-mile oyster reef, from Parr's Grove to Marsh Point, extended
along the south shore of East Bay, and during the slack months of the planting
season, many farm families supplemented their livelihoods by raking and shucking
oysters from the reef.
The event which gave Port Bolivar its greatest
commercial promise came in 1894 when the Galveston and Interstate Railroad to
Beaumont was chartered.
Headed by L. P. Featherstone and Fox Winnie, the new rail line became a reality
in November, 1896, after Beaumonters pledged $35,000 to finance a depot and the
necessary right-of-way within that city.
Featherstone
had great plans for development of the port of Bolivar into a great shipping center.
But only four years after the line's completion, a massive
hurricane struck the central Texas coast on September 8, 1900, totally destroying
Galveston and killing 6,000 persons there. Fortunately, 125 persons at Bolivar
had sought refuge in the light house, and all of them were saved. But the volume
of death and destruction everywhere on the peninsula was nonetheless staggering.
Almost every home was destroyed or washed away. Forty-one persons, mostly from
Crenshaw's, Patton, and Rollover, had drowned, including three entire families,
those of William Strathan, Charles Atkins, and Franz Vincent.
Over three
hundred bodies floated up on the beaches, water supplies were contaminated, and
the rapid putrefaction of hundreds of dead cattle forced the human survivors to
abandon the peninsula immediately. Damage was also severe at Fort Travis, a coast
artillery post near the lighthouse which had been built at Bolivar Point as part
of the Fort Crockett coastal defense reservation during the Spanish-American War.
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| | Statue
in memory of the victims of the 1900
Storm
Photo courtesy Lou Ann Herda |
In dollar values
apart from human life, the greatest loss had been sustained by the railroad. The
forty miles of trackage to High island were totally destroyed, and depots and
rolling stock were washed away. And a passenger train which had just arrived at
Bolivar from Beaumont before the storm was inundated by a mountain of sand. When
the trackage was rebuilt and the locomotive and cars returned to Beaumont
in 1904, they were publicized as the "train which ran three and one-half years
behind schedule." For a time the railroad's directors considered abandoning the
line, but like the nucleus of nestors who returned to rebuild their homes, they
too finally gave in and began seeking the financing needed to rebuild.
Bolivar's
recovery was painfully slow, and five years transpired before the peninsula regained
its pre-hurricane status. During that period of years, the Army's Corps of Engineers
spent about $1,000,000 to rebuild Fort Travis, provided needed seawall protection,
and deep channelization to Port Bolivar.
Perhaps it was Col. Featherstone
who contributed the most to the peninsula's recovery, for he continued his dream
to build a great lumber and iron ore export terminal. The Galveston and Interstate
line soon became a part of the Sante Fe rail system, and its eventual link-up
with the Gulf, Beaumont and Kansas City Railroad constituted a continuous line
extending to Longview, Texas.
The Port Bolivar Iron Ore Railroad, to connect Longview with the ferrous mines
at Ore City, Texas, was then in the planning stages.
Featherstone soon
organized and headed the Port Bolivar City Company and helped organize the Sante
Fe Dock and Channel Company, which in 1908 spent a half-million dollars to build
piers, rail sidings, and warehouses. On June 9, 1909, the first deep-sea vessel,
the "Margaret M. Ford," docked at Bolivar to unload granite for the seawall. And
two weeks later, an English steamer, the "Penrith Castle," arrived and loaded
aboard the port's first lumber shipment.
In 1912, the ore dock there was
completed. And lumber shipments quickly mushroomed, increasing to 15,000,000 feet
in 1911 and 23.8 million feet in 1912. For a few years, especially during World
War I, the new port of Bolivar prospered, but soon after, a number of items would
account for its eventual demise. Completion of the Houston Ship Channel diverted
much of its traffic, and the demand for East Texas iron ore, a greatly inferior
grade, quickly plummeted. Eventually, the deep channelization of the Sabine and
Neches Rivers to Beaumont
and Orange would end the
lumber trade to Bolivar as well.
Rather than another great hurricane,
it was the receding financial tides, the throes of the Great Depression, which
would sound the eventual death knell of Port Bolivar. Passenger train service
from Beaumont to Bolivar was soon suspended, and a few years later, about 1932,
the thirty miles of peninsula rail trackage beyond High Island was abandoned entirely.
But unwittingly, the Gulf and Interstate Railroad had already shaped Bolivar Peninsula's
future. With the building of the Sea View Hotel, High
island, Rollover, Crystal
Beach, and other peninsular resorts quickly became the year-round playground
for the families of both Beaumont
and Galveston,
not to mention more distant points. And the passage of time has altered that seashore
panorama but slightly. Despite the continuing threat of high winds and high tides
during the hurricane season, the popularity of sea bathing, boating, beach cabins,
bay fishing, or just a place to lay on the beach and soak up some sun, combine
to guarantee the peninsula's continuance as a tourist mecca for decades to come. |
©
W. T. Block, Jr.
"Cannonball's
Tales" > more
September 4, 2006
column
Reprinted
from Beaumont ENTERPRISE, February 5, 1984, p. 1cc. Sources: Principally from
"On Bolivar Peninsula," Galveston DAILY NEWS, July 25, 1886; various census lists;
and other DAILY NEWS articles between 1895 and 1912. |
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