“Thriving Port Isabel Steeped In Tradition Seeks to Make State Monument Of Ancient Lighthouse”
HIGHLIGHTS:
• Known at “Fisherman’s Paradise” & “Brushville”
• Population 1,304 – 1,306 persons
• Two-thirds live on revenue derived from fishing industry
• Fishing industry estimated at a million dollars a year
• Small boat building businesses
• A million dollar port
• Lighthouse “extinguished”
• Sen. Kelly introduces a bill seeking funds to make lighthouse into a state monument
• South Padre Island known as “Padre Island”
• $2,000,000 bond issue voted on to build causeway
• Sea plane base and airport planned
• Port Isabel reclaiming 15′ waterfront by building retaining wall
• Preparing for annual Rio Grande Valley Fishing Rodeo
• Law Enforcement: 5 game wardens, county deputy, sheriff and constable, small jail
• Four buses in and out to Brownsville (daily)
• 7 restaurants; 5 cabin courts; 9 fish houses; 2 theaters; 2 hotels
• 300 students in a grade school, parochial school, high school
• Pleasure boat excursions
FULL STORY:
This article was published in the Brownsville Herald on Sunday, May 11, 1947, on page 8. It tells the story behind the photo.
By BETTY ALLEY, Herald Staff Writer
“Overlooking dimpled Laguna Madre at the very tip of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and Texas, is “Fishermen’s Paradise,” the City of Port Isabel, which through Friday had an estimated population between 1,304 and 1,306 persons.
Two-thirds of its population live on revenue derived from the fishing industry, estimated to run into more than a million dollars each ear. The remainder of the population is engaged in small business, boat building, utilities and various and sundry occupations available in a port city.
Overlooking the City of Port Isabel is the lighthouse, which from its vantage point at the north end of town, has guided hundreds of ships to port. The lighthouse is now extinguished. Erected in 1852, it has become a landmark of the Valley, and stands today as a symbol of beacons which have guided the destiny of men throughout the ages.
State Senator Rogers Kelly has introduced a bill into legislature which will provide funds for making a state monument of the lighthouse and for maintaining it.
Across Laguna Madre from the port city is Padre Island, Summer and Winter resort for Valleyites and tourists, who seek respite from hot weather in the cool waters, or doze contentedly in the warm sun. A project is now under way to build a causeway from Port Isabel to the island, a project the congenial citizens of the port city are hoping will be developed soon. A bond issue of $2,000,000 has already been voted for building and maintenance of it.
An airport, using facilities of Laguna Madre sub-base, abandoned by the Army since the war, is another hope for Port Isabel and there’s talk of a sea plane base to be located about one and one-half miles from the city.
Port Isabel is also reclaiming 15-feet of water front by building a retain wall which will provide three or four more blocks of land for the industrial city.
City officials are now working on a problem which deals with a complete revision of waterworks in the form of a water improvement district for domestic use. Under the present plan, the bay front from Port Isabel to, and including, Laguna Vista would be provided with utilities not now available.
Port Isabel now gets its water supply from the Rio Grande, but it has already contracted for a change, and when it goes into effect ….purchase of water from other water districts in the Valley.
Port Isabel has its eye on pleasure seekers, too, and is currently preparing for its Rio Grande Valley Fishing Rodeo to open August 14. Mayor of the city, Dr. J. A. Hockaday, is general chairman of the event.
Port Isabel boasts an active chamber of commerce, headed by President Ewing Clark; a law enforcement body, composed of about five game wardens, a county deputy, sheriff, and a constable. It’s jail is small, but there’s really not much need for a large one, for law breaking it at a minimum.
The city has four buses in and four buses out, scheduled to and from Brownsville each day.
Gregoria Tamayo and George Cail, city commissioners, and Mayor Hockaday make up the city administration. Ted Hund is Port Isabel’s Cameron county commissioner.
Vital statistics show that Port Isabel has at least seven restaurants, five cabin courts, and about nine fish houses, all of which thrive. It has two theatres, one of which is operated in the high school building.
Its schools, a parochial, grade school, and high school, provide education for about 300 students. Port Isabel has two hotels, and there’s a third on Padre Island, operated the year round. Pleasure boat excursions are also operated to the island the year round.
Port Isabel has a rotary club. It has small boat building businesses, and a port with facilities estimated to have cost about a million dollars, including improvements and expansions which have been made as necessities arose.
Port Isabel is about 120 years old, and is surrounded with tradition, and stories of good times and bad. Long ago, fishermen settled on what is now sometimes called “Million Dollar Hill” near Port Isabel about the time that the city then known as “Point” Isabel was getting its start in life. No one ever made a million dollars on the hill, a slope near the city, and no one knows why it was called such a name. It has also been called “Fisherman’s Paradise”, “Brushville”, and various and sundry other names.
The people of Port Isabel like to tell of the Spanish treasure which was buried on Padre Island, although no one will vow that it was buried there, even though one of the town’s citizens is said to have found a $500 silver piece on the island about 15 years ago.
They also like to “kid” ignorant tourists about porpoises, telling them that they roll the bodies of dead men to shore.
Most of the homes and business houses of the city were constructed after 1929 when a big storm riddled it.
Port Isabel is a city filled with friendly, eager, enterprising people–the kind of people who have made the city flourish, and who are laying a groundwork from which their descendants can build even a bigger more popular city.
Source: https://www.newspapers.com/image/20921048/?match=1&terms=port%20isabel