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PORTLAND,
TEXASSan Patricio
County, Texas Gulf Coast
Highway 181
North of Corpus
Christi across Nueces Bay
17 miles W of Aransas
Pass
22 miles SW of Rockport
Population: 14,827 (2000) 12,224 (1990) |
Portland
bay view
Photo courtesy Ken Rudine, May 2007 |
| History
in a Seashell
John G. Willacy, purchased 1,920 acres of land from
the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company in 1891. Willacy had formed an investment company
by uniting the New England Land Company of Portland, Maine and the Portland Harbor
and Improvement Company of Wichita, Kansas.
A post office was granted
in March of 1891and lots went on sale that July. Potential buyers were brought
across the bay by a chartered boat to a hotel built especially for the occasion.
Others arrived by train from San Antonio.
By the following year the population had reached 500 and a 1,200-foot wharf was
built.
Boom times disappeared with the panic of 1893 and the now vacant
hotel was converted into Bay View College - an institution that operated until
it was destroyed in a 1916 hurricane. |
| | Photo
courtesy Ken Rudine, May 2007 | |
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Since Portland had
no water supply of its own, water was piped in from a well in Taft.
In
1911 Willacy tried again by negotiating with the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company
for the land that it had repossessed.
Competetion from the Rio Grande
Valley (for agriculture) and the hurricanes of 1916 and 1919 dashed Portland's
dreams of becoming a port.
Portland's growth since then has been from
an overflow from Corpus
Christi. The city limits of Portland now extend into Nueces County.
Book
Your Hotel Here & Save
Portland
Hotels
Corpus
Christi Hotels |
| Photo
courtesy Ken Rudine, May 2007 |
| | Photo
courtesy Ken Rudine, May 2007 |
| | Photo
courtesy Ken Rudine, May 2007 |
| Photo
courtesy Ken Rudine, May 2007 |
| Photo
courtesy Ken Rudine, May 2007 |
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