Matagorda Bay - History

History

Early European records suggest that the bay and the surrounding area went by the names Espíritu Santo and Costa y Bahía de San Bernardo. Spanish explorer Alonso Álvarez de Pineda's map from the late 1510s appears to be the first documentation of the bay. In 1685, French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle established the colony of Fort St. Louis along the bay's shore after missing the entrance to the Mississippi River. Half of the colonists were killed by disease, and the other half, save for five children, were killed by Karankawa Indians. The Indians kept the children until they were rescued by the Spanish during the Alonso De León and Domingo Terán de los Ríos expeditions near the bay. A fort, Presidio La Bahia, and Mission Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga was built by the Spanish on the site of Fort Saint Louis in 1722.

The port of Linnville was established on Matagorda Bay in 1831, and served as a main port for the Republic of Texas. The Great Comanche Raid of 1840 destroyed the town and forced the inhabitants to flee to the nearby Labbacca, which would later become known as Port Lavaca. Lavaca or la vaca, Spanish for cow, was founded in the wake of the Comanche Raid in 1841. It replaced Linnville as the main port on Matagorda Bay. However, the sandbar-heavy Lavaca Bay caused some navigational problems for ships. As a result, Lavaca was surpassed by Indianola as the main port on Matagorda Bay in the 1850s, even though the sandbars were dredged later in the decade. Indianola had been founded in 1846 as a landing place for German immigrants. It rapidly developed into a major seaport, and became the second largest in the state (after Galveston) by the 1860s. The two ports, and strategic control of Matagorda Bay in particular, became important during the American Civil War. Control of the bay shifted between the Union and Confederate forces several times. The Union presence in the area ended in June 1864. After the war, Indianola continued its growth, and had a population of 5,000 in the 1870s. A hurricane in 1875 caused massive damage to the city. It was rebuilt on a smaller scale shortly thereafter, but a second and more intense hurricane made landfall in 1886 (the fifth most intense in U.S. history), causing even greater destruction. The following year, Indianola was completely abandoned. Although Lavaca was also significantly affected by the hurricanes, it survived as a port, and again became the largest on the bay. It continues to hold this distinction today. It was renamed Port Lavaca in the late 19th Century. Palacios was established around 1901, and Port O'Connor was founded on the bay in 1909.

Before 1900, East Matagorda Bay was a free flowing extension, which formed the eastern segment of Matagorda Bay. Flooding and drainage issues caused by the Colorado River, which at the time emptied into the bay, precipitated a massive dredging campaign in the 1920s. Flooding was not remedied by the dredging, as sediment deposited in the bay and formed a tidal marsh that grew at 500 acres (2.0 km2) a year. As a result, local citizens decided to change the course of the Colorado River in 1934 to bypass Matagorda Bay into the Gulf of Mexico, the dredging from this project causing the split and forming the isolated East Matagorda Bay. In 1992, the river was diverted back to the bay.