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The Republic of Texas approved annexation by the United States of America on July 4, 1845. Shortly after, General Zachary Taylor arrived with 4,000 men to defend Texas from foreign aggression. Their camp spread out from an artesian well dug here to North Beach.
Corpus Christi had been chosen as Taylor’s encampment because it lay in the disputed area between the Rio Grande and the Nueces Rivers. Texas claimed the Rio Grande as its southern border; Mexico claimed the Nueces as its northern border. Added to that was the fact that Corpus Christi’s founder, Henry Kinney, had been busy writing letters to Washington extolling the virtues of Corpus. It was from Corpus that Taylor began his march into Mexico and, with that, the Mexican War.
Kinney donated the land around the artesian well to the city as a park in 1854, making it one of the oldest parks in Texas.
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