Inside the Moon
Beach Babe A4
Fishing A7
Moon over Mumansk A11
The
Issue 586
Island Moon
Around The Island By Dale Rankin
Photo by Miles Merwin
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Weekly
The voice of The Island since 1996
July 9, 2015
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Photo by Mary Craft
Island Blast Fireworks Show Plays to Record Crowd
editor@islandmoon.com
By mid-morning Sunday outbound traffic was backed up on State Highway 361 past Port Royal at the Port Aransas City Limits. We include a number of beach shots in this issue as well as traffic counts from the counters which were placed at strategic spots on Island roads over the holiday weekend. It somehow reminds us of the admonition from an old postcard The Weather is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful…or something like that.
No Le Icey For the third week in a row we had an acute ice shortage on The Island. The ice supply at the Stripes stores draws tourists like bees to honey and by early afternoon the sweltering island is iceless. Things start to get desperate as beachgoers with rodeo cool twelvepacks go into overdrive from store to store searching for the ice nectar. The alternative is to drive back OTB but the traffic is an hour wait. It’s a dilemma not for the faint of heart. Warm beer or traffic… it’s the stuff folk songs are made of friends. One hint; try Sonic.
Death by cellphone The fellow at the WB Liquor store said he didn’t see a local all weekend. When the locals stop turning up at the liquor stores you know something is afoot. We all have our ways of dealing with the Big Tourist Weekends on our little sandbar. The best way to judge how long it is going to take you to get a taco on busy Island weekends is to try and get online with your cellphone. If it takes more than thirty seconds you probably only have one band of connectivity which means a taco line of somewhere between fifteen and twenty minutes. If you can’t get online with your phone forget about it; go tacoless. Take the backway across Aquarius to CVS and get some cold cuts and head for the Ski Basin. It’s just one tool in the Island Survival Kit. If you find the present tense, read the Moon and relax everybody; and say hello if you see us Around The Island.
55,000 Vehicles in one day!
Island Roads Staggered by Holiday Traffic
By Dale Rankin
Islanders – it is now safe to come out of your homes. Never was there ever a more resounding example of the old Island truism What Happens on The Island leaves on Sunday than 4th of July, 2015 as the Island diaspora headed OTB en masse. The consensus of folks who have lived on The Island for decades is that last weekend was by far the most crowded our beaches have ever been. From the sticks at the north end of PINS to the South Jetty in Port Aransas it would have been might near impossible to shoehorn another car onto our beaches. A flyover of Port Aransas and a shot from the top of the Holiday Inn on Padre show last weekend's crowd to be the largest ever. By early Friday afternoon traffic was at a crawl from the SPID/ Commodores intersection to Port Aransas and by Saturday afternoon it was backed up over the top of the JFK Causeway and from midafternoon Friday through Sunday noon the beaches were door to door and shoulder to shoulder. Even the beaches at the far southern reaches of Kleberg County and to the beach just north of Fish Pass (which is accessible only from the north side and usually sparsely populated) were full. Maybe it was due to pent up demand for beach time due to the rainy spring, or maybe it’s just the new normal hereabouts due to growth in the feeder markets; either way our roads and beaches were jammed in a way we haven’t seen before.
Live Music A18
More than 55,000 vehicles crossed the JFK Causeway last Saturday, July 4, according to a traffic count done by the local district office of the Texas Department of Transportation. The JFK Causeway is the primary gateway to 100 miles of public beach from the southern end of Padre Island National Seashore, north to Port Aransas; one of the longest stretches of public beach in the United States accessed by only a single, twolane bridge. In contrast the three lane Harbor Bridge over the Corpus Christi Ship Channel has an average traffic flow of 50,000 vehicles per day.
The third edition of the Island Blast 4th of July fireworks show took the skies Saturday and lasted for just over half an hour as thousands of spectators took to their decks, lined Whitecap Boulevard, and beached their boats along the main canal creating the largest crowd ever to watch. The show is the creation of Islanders Sharon and Jerry Watkins who three years ago conceived the idea and began collecting donations to fund the $15,000 necessary to put on the show. “We want to thank the Islanders who for the past three years have donated the money it takes to put this show on,” Jerry Watkins said, “Every dollar
we collect goes to the show and we are already beginning to collect for next year.” Donations can be dropped off at the Padre Isles Property Owners Association office. Watkins said next year he is looking at expanding the event to include an Island event on July 4 before the fireworks show. “We’re looking to do an even bigger event next year, we would like to have some sort of an event leading up to the fireworks and are looking for a location that will allow us to do that, whether it is at the current location or somewhere else on The Island. We want to grow this event into something great for The Island.”
Update on Island Projects
Water Exchange Bridge to be Ready for Bids in 90 Days
By Dale Rankin City staffers told the Island Strategic Action Committee Tuesday they expect to hold a public hearing to review plans for the planned Park Road 22/SPID Water Exchange Bridge in September and put the project out for bids within 90 days. The bridge, with a current estimated cost of $8 million, will connect Lake Padre on the east to the existing Island canal system on the west through a 40-foot wide channel under the SPID/Park Road 22 roadway and,
according to current plans, would include two 40-foot wide pedestrian/ cart paths, one on each side of the water channel. The city is awaiting a final Environmental Assessment clearance from the Army Corps of Engineers which, they said is expected in the next few weeks, before scheduling the public hearing which is required by Texas Department of Transportation rules before the project can to bids,
Projects continued on A6
A little Island History
Even in 1776 Freedom Had a Cost Editor’s note: This item is a week late since it relates to United States independence. Since it happened 239 years ago we figured one week would make any difference. We thank readers John and Mary Anne Tucker and Micki Walls for sending it along.
Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence? Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the
JFK Causeway / SPID Holiday Traffic Counts July 4
The Island count shows that holiday traffic began early, between 7-8 a.m. when 1,025 vehicles traveled along the SPID corridor, and continued throughout the day with 7334 vehicles at the peak hours between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Between the hours of 10 a.m. and 9 p.m. more than 3000 vehicles per hour transited the JFK Causeway, with the peak being the seven hours between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. when 26,018 vehicles traveled along SPID between the base of the JFK Causeway and the Commodores/ SPID intersection. The counters along the SPID corridor are placed by TxDot, while the counters on other Island streets are placed and maintained by the City of Corpus Christi’s Traffic Engineering Division. Those counters show that the peak traffic through the Commodores/SPID/SH 361 intersection was on Friday, July 3 when 11,823 vehicles passed through the intersection, with at total of 9990 on Saturday, with the count of east/ west bound traffic being about equal in both cases. The average weekly traffic leading up and including the weekend was 10,732 vehicles. Further south at the Whitecap intersection the counters found an average westbound traffic count of 6587 vehicles per day and 7467 eastbound.
Traffic continued on A16 For the complete traffic count for the week leading up and including the July 4 holiday see the graphics on page A16
The Guns of Port Aransas
Revolutionary War. They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated, but they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured. Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags. Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly.
1776 continued on A6
Editor’s note: We had a question from a reader recently about guns mounted in Port Aransas during World War II. Here is some background. The fear of German submarines off the Texas Coast during World War II led to the placing of Battery 155 in Port Aransas from 1942-1944. Two 155mm M1918 rapid fire guns were mounted on M1917 Mobile Carriages emplaced on circular Panama mounts in the dunes near what is now the Nueces County Park
to protect the pass from enemy craft. Construction on the battery began on November, 26 1942 and was completed on December 13, 1942 and guns were transferred to the Coast Artillery for use on November 11, 1943 at a cost of $ 24,726.42. Originally built as a temporary World War II coastal gun battery the guns were stabilized with gunite. The mounds raised the gun trunion
Guns continued on A6