Nathan

[🦋🦋T71🦋🦋 @Tackle71Wall]

If you take the jetty boat in Port Aransas onto San Jose Island know that you will be stepping off into a little piece of living Texas history.
A little Island history San Jose Island
Largest privately owned barrier Island in the United States
By Dale Rankin
If you have ever taken the jetty boat in Port Aransas across the channel to San Jose Island you know it is a stretch of beach untouched by development. What you may not know is why.
The Handbook of Texas says the French had landed parties on the island in 1712 and 1718, and José de Escandón explored San Jose, Padre, Mustang, and Matagorda islands in 1766. The combined islands of San Jose and Matagorda were also known as Culebra. The first United States flag to be raised in Texas was raised on San Jose Island by United States troops on July 26, 1845 and forts were erected at various times on the south end of the island.
The shallow pass between San Jose and Mustang Island in the days before dredging caused many shipwrecks and in 1834 two vessels bringing Irish colonists to the Power and Hewetson Colony on the mainland went aground on the island. While waiting for transport to the mainland 250 of the colonists died in a cholera epidemic. Soon after the Texas Revolution several families of cattlemen and seafarers established homes on San Jose.
In May of 1863 A Confederate Company under the command of Captain Edwin E. Hobby attacked the Union post on San Jose and secured it for the remainder of the war which was then used to store captured Confederate cotton.
Into private hands
The Island’s history was much tamer after that and in1936 oil magnate Sid Richardson bought it for less than $30,000. The well-worn shot of President Franklin Roosevelt holding up two fingers while riding in a boat was taken when he came to visit Richardson at San Jose. Richardson and his partner Clint Murchison made their fortunes in the oil business. According to a family history commissioned by Perry Bass, whose family interests now own San Jose, Bass was commissioned immediately after World War II to design a house for Richardson on the island. According to the book Bass came up with the idea of making the house from shellcrete and that house still stands on the island today.
Richardson also realized that San Jose Island was well suited for cattle raising and bought 100 Santa Gertrudis bulls from the King Ranch and began a cattle operation on the island’s 33,000 acres. One of the bulls, Mr. Sid’s Ditto, won seven grand championships by the time it was two years old in Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Houston, all in the same year.
Richardson then began raising Texas Longhorns and engaged famed Texas historian J. Frank Dobie to help him select stock to begin his herd. They chose a group of longhorns from East Texas because they were the closest to the original longhorns that roamed freely on the Texas plains. The descendants of those longhorns can be seen on San Jose Island today.

[Nathan @Nathan_nelson_]

Studying, blahhh