THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • March/April 2018 27 TheCoastalBend.com Railroad Company. Ropes’ railway promised to connect the Coastal Bend to Mexico, and on to Central and South America, but did not make it past the southern end of the city. The Panic of 1893 was an all-out economic depression that rattled the United States, largely brought about by the exploding bubble of the railroad finance system. Port Ropes Pass was plagued with dredging equipment fail- ures and unforeseen complications, and by 1893 work on the project had halted. Eli Ropes left town, pledging to return with more money—but he never did, and died five years later at the age of 53. The people of Ropesville changed the town’s name to Tarpon, which be- came Port Aransas in 1911. The population of Corpus Christi doubled during the four years of the Ropes Boom, and despite the economic ups and downs of the turn of the 20th Century, total property value of the city grew from about $1 million to over $8 million, and bank deposits grew more than ten-fold. In 1913, Mayor Roy Miller led the effort to modernize Corpus Christi, developing a bay front wharf, hiring and outfitting a paid fire department, paving streets and building sewer systems—but the development of a commercial seaport had not made it back on the agenda from the Eli Ropes days. The devastating 1919 Hurricane wiped out much of the Miller progress, and city leaders became determined to develop a port that would bring much needed commerce to the area. It was the port-World War I era and an American economic boom was just revving up. The 1920 Rivers and Harbors Act funded a 25-foot-deep, 200-foot-wide, channel from the Gulf of Mexico through Aransas Pass (the pass be- tween Mustang and St. Joseph’s Island, not the town), and to Hall’s Bayou south of Nueces Bay. A wooden bridge had been built over the bayou in the 1880’s, but the new Port of Corpus Christi included a 121-foot draw bridge that raised on one side— the Bascule Bridge. The top commodity that passed through the Port of Corpus Christi when it of- ficially opened in 1926 was cotton. The port’s original four cargo docks were kept so busy that funding for two more docks was approved by voters just two years later. The economy of the Coastal Bend would change forever when giant oil fields were discovered throughout the area in the early 1930’s. The first industrial plant on the port was Southern Alkali Corporation, now PPG Industries, which opened in 1934 and was attracted to the area by its abundance of cheap fuel and raw materials the company used, including salt, oyster shell and limestone. Taylor Refining soon opened, and the expansion of the port never took a break. In the 1930’s alone, a ma- neuvering basin was dredged, oil docks were expanded, the channel was deepened twice and the extension of the port to Tule Lake was approved. While the Bascule Bridge was a celebrated symbol of progress for Corpus Chris- ti, drivers who had to cross it on a regular basis soon lost their enthusiasm. As the port grew, shipping traffic required the raising of the bridge thirty times per day or more—at twenty minutes or more per crossing. By the 1950’s a grain elevator had been constructed, the channel had been widened to 400-feet from 200, the exten- sion of the port to Tule Lake was completed, and residents’ and truckers’ frustration with the “Bascule Bridge Bottleneck” had reached a boiling point. At the very peak of America’s biggest expansion of infrastructure, including the building of the Inter- state Highway System, funding for the Harbor Bridge was approved as part of the construction of IH-37 from San Antonio to North Shoreline Blvd. Built of steel and reinforced concrete, the gleaming new, through-type arch bridge opened to great fanfare in 1959—the newest symbol of progress for the Coast- al Bend, and a new visual icon for Corpus Christi. While the bridge did not increase top-left: Elihu Ropes was the first to invest in a ship channel to Corpus Christi top-right: Postcard rendering of Bascule draw bridge, which opened in 1926 middle: North and south sides of the 1959 Harbor Bridge close to intersecting below: Major trucking accident at curved ramp onto the Harbor Bridge, 2017