64 THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • Winter 2018-19 TheCoastalBend.com Coastal Bend Community tel opened in 1911, and was an immediate hit, for a rate of $3.50 per night, a tidy sum for the day. Tourists from San Antonio, Houston and the Rio Grande Valley made their way to Rincon via the San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railway, to enjoy a relaxing, fam- ily vacation on Corpus Christi Bay, complete with what was claimed to be the very best fishing on the Texas Coast—and there was a worthwhile argument to be made for the title. In 1907, a million pounds of fish and ten million oysters were cultivated and shipped by the four commercial packers located on Rincon. It was an oyster reef bridge, in fact, that first connected San Patricio County to Rincon and on to Corpus Christi, and the streets of North Beach were considered better than the city’s in rainy weather, as they were paved with crushed oyster shells rather than dirt. By 1913, a well known list of powerful Coastal Benders, including the inves- tors in the Corpus Beach Hotel and other ventures on the beach, had built homes on Rincon, attracting others who could purchase or build their own, large and comfort- able beach house for $3,000 or less. A strict list of covenants had to be agreed to by purchasers, however, that prohibited the operation of a business in the subdivision, along with the participation of any “immoral activity,” and that no buyer could sell to anyone of “Negro blood,” a troubling but common standard of the era. A Methodist group known as the Epworth League was granted 15 acres of bay- front beach property for the construction of an encampment where their faithful could congregate, recreate, and meditate for ten days each summer, thousands of them traveling from across the country to North Beach. Also included in the deal from local leaders was a 10,000-gallon water tank, gas power for 300 electric lights, and an auditorium built at a cost of $3,000. Epworth by the Sea, as the camp was named, provided varying levels of accommodations, from modern guest rooms for well-to-do Methodists, to a tent city for those on tighter budgets. Over those ten sum- mer days each year, starting in 1905, Epworth became a village unto itself, where hundreds of families assembled a well-run, temporary community that operated un- der rules set for the vacation, especially regarding swimwear worn by female camp- ers—the standard was to cover up and that skirts should end below the knee for all properly modest Methodist women and girls. The first gilded age for North Beach rolled on through the middle of the new century’s second decade. In 1912, the first Nueces Bay Causeway opened to accommo- date the new proliferation of automobiles in South Texas, and the flow of visitors and commerce grew stronger than ever. In 1916 the beach front Epworth property was sold and its facilities provided new, public amenities that drew even-larger crowds to Rincon. In 1917, however, North Beach was once again taken over by military units as the United States entered World War I. The Texas Coast was considered a potential target for the Mexican military, as the Germans pursued an alliance with our southern neighbor that included an offer to finance Mexico’s war to recov- er long-lost territories that had become the states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The John Paul Jones Naval Training School was established at the Corpus Beach Hotel and the sons of many well-known local families took up training there, including the Hopkins, Baldwin’s, Blucher’s, Grant’s and Furman’s. By 1918, with the naval threat from Mexico safely averted, the hotel was taken over by the U.S. Army, which set up Army Base Hospital No. 15, caring for wounded and ill soldiers returning from Europe. A strong hurricane hit the Coastal Bend in 1916, all but de- stroying Port Aransas, but mostly sparing Corpus Christi. Although the Nueces Bay Causeway was heavily damaged and a few struc- tures were destroyed, no one died—a fact that would, sadly, create a false sense of security about the safety of North Beach in the event of another hurricane. As the summer of 1919 came to an end, so to would life as it would be forever known on North Beach. (Top) The rail bridge constructed by the San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railway in 1886 con- nected Rincon to San Patricio County; (Middle) the Spohn Sanitarium was the region’s first hospital, built on North Beach. ; (Lower) Fully-clad bathers in Corpus Christi Bay circa 1900.