#TBT: Corpus Christi's oldest park had artesian well known for curing what ails you
Artesian Park doesn't see a lot of activity most days, just the monthly First Friday ArtWalks and as a resting spot for the city's homeless population. But in Corpus Christi’s earliest years, the park was a hub of leisure activities, political speeches and band concerts.
The spot officially became a park in 1854, just two years after the city was incorporated. But the catalyst for the park location began nearly a decade earlier, when Gen. Zachary Taylor’s troops were stationed in the area in preparation for the Mexican-American War in the winter of 1845-46. The soldiers drilled an artesian well, but wouldn’t drink from it because of its strong sulfur smell and taste. One man’s account said it made you want to pull your hair out and run. And for the curious, an artesian well means it pulls groundwater to the surface by natural pressure, without the aid of a pump.
In 1854, town founder Henry Lawrence Kinney donated the one-acre site the artesian well sat on to the city, with a stipulation it always remain a public park.
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In the late 1880s, a new well was drilled near the original Taylor well, which had run dry before the Civil War. Mary Carroll wrote a letter to the Caller-Times in 1935, when the well was re-drilled again, after a request for more information about the 1880s artesian well. She recalled that her father Charles Carroll teamed up with Dr. Arthur Spohn and Thomas Beynon to form a company to drill the new well and promote the city as a health resort, selling the medicinal water.
The well borer struck gas before he hit water, but the owners weren’t interested in that, so they kept drilling until they hit the water again. According to the letter, they sold the water for either 5 cents a glass or 5 cents a barrel. And despite the water’s rotten egg smell, it gained a reputation as cure for what ails you.
Spohn, one of the more prominent physicians in town and creator of Spohn Hospital, often prescribed it to his patients.
Another 1935 article compiled by former Caller-Times editor Eli T. Merriman listed off the testimonials of people who had “taken the cure” from that artesian well, claiming it cured catarrh (post-nasal drip), eczema, sciatic rheumatism, and all sorts of bowel troubles. Many helpfully included whether they drank, bathed or did a sinus rinse with the curing waters.
With the reopening of the well in 1935, completed courtesy of a more than $1,000 donation from pioneering resident Simon Guggenheim, the city sent off samples to the State Health Dept. in Austin to find out what was actually in the water. The report came back with a variety of minerals listed including sodium bicarbonate, calcium sulfite, magnesium sulfite, sodium sulfite, and sodium chloride, with the article stating the composition was remarkably similar to Epsom salts.
But the well wasn’t the only draw at the park, which was actually called Artesian Square for the first few decades of its existence. In the early 1900s a bandstand was added, where bands played and politicians stumped. Much of the park’s early improvements were undertaken by the Women’s Monday Club. They added shell pathways, flower beds and benches. A weekly band concert was held every Wednesday in the summer months, and in 1907, the club raised funds to purchase two adjoining properties to expand the park further.
Political stumping drew crowds, from Nueces County Judge Walter Timon, to W. Lee “Pappy” O'Daniel when he ran from governor in 1938, and even Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson several times in the 1940s. The 1930s is when the shuffleboard court was added, although it was considered an old-timer’s sport, and the same with the addition of the domino pavilion in 1948. The famed well was boarded up in 1953, after tests found the steel casing had deteriorated and the water was stagnant. But the park remained a relaxing spot for residents and visitors through the 1960s.
Like the fate of all of downtown, Artesian Park suffered a major decline as the city grew in the 1970s and people abandoned downtown as a shopping and leisure destination. In 1975, LULAC offered to donate money to revive and renovate the park, but they requested the park be renamed LULAC Park. Local historians objected, citing the park’s historical record as the city’s first park and the proposal was dropped.
Then in 2002, the city received an offer to add additional park space and a monument commemorating the Taylor encampment. The donation of $1 million came through the Coastal Bend Community Foundation, and was made at the behest of retired Caller-Times publisher Ed Harte, whose office window overlooked the park. The land donation was coming from a silent partner, Robert Rowling, owner of TRT Holdings which owned a number of lots around downtown in addition to the Omni Hotel.
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The idea was shot down, opposed on the basis that the Mexican American War was an unjust war and would cause further division in the community, especially with the Hispanic population. Caller-Times historian Murphy Givens, while noting the little-used nature of the park, wrote in a Sept. 29, 2010 column of the folly of choosing not to acknowledge historical events, even the bad and uncomfortable ones.
“You don’t keep the memory of the past alive with its rights and wrongs, though some pact of silence,” Givens wrote. “This is like an amputation, a self-mutilation of history and memory and imagination. We don’t like slavery, but it would be a travesty to draw the curtain on that part of our history.”
Allison Ehrlich writes about things to do in South Texas and has a weekly Throwback Thursday column on local history.
This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Corpus Christi's Artesian Park dates back to 1854
