With Trace’s new job he doesn’t get a lot of weekends off, (Such is the life of retail management I know after 35 years of it), so when he gets off, I have to search for open campsites throughout Texas. This time I found one at Lake Corpus Christi which I figured was good since a cold front was arriving and we would be in deep coastal south Texas. Well guess what it gets cold down there too.
We had a beautiful lakeside campsite which would have been great, but not so on this windy cold weekend.
The site was huge as you can see and was on what is known as Catfish Cove.
Well, the wind whipped right up Catfish Cove and across our site, so on this day we probably had one of the worst sites instead of one of the best.
Anyway, we arrived at around 11 am after a drive of about three hours. We decided to do some hiking first in hopes that the wind would die down some as it was predicted to do midafternoon.
About this lake and park. Lake Corpus Christi is the reservoir for the city of Corpus Christi, Texas. Originally known as Lake Lovenskiold , the lake was first formed by the damming of the Nueces River in 1929 by the small La Fruita Dam. That dam failed in 1930. With funds from the New Deal the Dam was rebuilt and the lake renamed Lake Mathis. In 1934 Company 886 of the Civilian Conservation Corps developed Camp Kleberg on a site for a new state park leased for 100 years from the city of Corpus Christi who owns the lake. Camp Kleberg was named for Richard Kleberg a local congressman and heir to the nearby King Ranch the largest ranch in the nation.
The CCC built roads, culverts, a bathhouse a park residence, a boat house and a large refectory or pavilion.
In 1958 with the lake filling with silt and after numerous lawsuits from the locals, the new Wesley E Seale Dam was constructed 1000 yards downstream raising the lake twenty feet. This was the demise of the original boathouse and dock and today only the pavilion remains from the CCC’s work. After the construction of the Wesley Seale Dam the once again renamed Lake Corpus Christi became one of the largest artificial lakes in the state of Texas covering 21000 acres at a depth up to 60 feet. The Wesley Seale Dam is a concrete and earth structure 5,980 feet in length at a height of 75 feet. The top of the dam is at 106 feet above sea level and the normal lake level is at 94 feet above sea level.
Wesley Seale was mayor of Corpus Christi and Chairman of the Lower Nueces Water District.
Another interesting historical fact about this area, The Nueces River is where the Mexican Government claimed its northern boundary was. The Texans believed the boundary to be the Rio Grande, so this area was fought over for the whole existence of the Texas Republic. When Texas was annexed into the United States and war broken out between the US and Mexico, in part due to this land dispute the boundary was officially set at the Rio Grande in 1848.
The Pavilion is constructed of local caliche that was cut into blocks and laid to resemble a limestone structure. The Pavilion is also known as the Castle due to it’s size and shape.
The hiking here is minimal with only two main trails, The Catfish Point Trail is a loop around Catfish Point and past an old fishing dock which no longer exists.
Along this trail were what I thought were bamboo but turns out that these are known as big reeds and they are very invasive. They are taking over much of the lakeshore according to the park service. We had to follow a fishing trail through them to get to the lakeshore above.
After we did this loop, we did the Longhorn Trail which took us through the bird watching area to the Pavilion an out and back of about a mile each way.
here at the bird watching area was also the old water tower built by the CCC.
Back at camp we struggled through the wind gusts to get camp set up. Finally, just before dark the winds died down and the evening was gorgeous.
We enjoyed a nice evening fire to take the chill off and ate some BBQ brisket and sausages we bought for dinner at a little BBQ place near Belmont Texas on our drive down.
Lake Corpus Christi was a beautiful place. Had the weather been better we would have had a great time and Trace probably would have taken his kayak to paddle around the cove from our campsite. Oh well maybe another time.
Old Man Wandering 