b'Pat DunnThe Duke of PadrePublic access to Padre and Mustang Islands has foreverand will forever Knowing that his success would depend on access to the island by car, in 1927 dictate the pace at which the islands develop residentially and commercially.Colonel Robertson finished construction of a wooden causeway with in- and Except for the Intracoastal Waterway and other man-dredged channels of over 10out-bound lanes, along with room for pedestrians and fishermen. In honor of feet in depth, just about any healthy person could walk across the Laguna Madre,Patrick Dunn, who ranched on Padre Island for 50 years, he named it the Donthe average depth of which is about three feet. For well over a century, cattlePatricio Causeway. A whopping 1,800 vehicles took the round trip to the island were run over the lagoon on both the northern and southern ends, starting withthe first month the new, wooden causeway was open, then peaked in the second the ranching operation run by Father Jose Nicolas Balli who was posthumouslymonth with over 2,500. Usage declined a bit as repeat users started to notice that granted full ownership of the island in 1829 after Mexico won its independencetheir tires were getting chewed up by the causeways wooden rails, but public from Spain. Padre Balli, whose family settlement was located on the southernaccess to Padre Island had finally been established. Sadly, the Don Patricio Cause-end of the island, was the grandson of colonist Nicholas Balli, who was grantedway lasted less than six years, wiped out by a great hurricane in 1933.the island by King Charles III of Spain in 1759. Almost a decade before the Interstate Highway Act was signed into law, the Gulf Padre Ballis heirs sold off large tracts of the island, up to 7,500 acres, especially onIntracoastal Waterway was completed in 1949, providing a 12-foot-deep inland the north end farthest from their estate. Eventually, much of North Padre Islandchannel that runs almost 700 miles from the Florida Panhandle to Port Isabel. The came into the possession of Patrick Dunn, on whose island ranch cattle coulddredging of the Intracoastal forced the construction of a reliable roadway to Pa-be seen frolicking in the surf and grazing just over the dune line. The Pat Dunndre Island, and in 1950, the North Padre Island Causeway was inaugurated, con-Ranch was hailed as the most beautiful and prestigious in the entire world, andnecting Flour Bluff to the edge of the new channel, where a swing bridge opened Dunn was designated The Duke of Padreboth declarations made by noneand closed as needed to allow barges and boats to pass. There was a $1 toll until other than Pat Dunn himself! In 1925, Colonel Sam Robertson, a valley-based1967, when the public debt was paid off. The following year, it was renamed the builder and hero of World War I, purchased Dunns Padre Island property with aJohn F. Kennedy Causeway and over a million vehicles crossedin 1973 the JFK plan to develop a Miami Beach-style tourist destination on the Texas Gulf Coast. Bridge replaced the swing bridge and Padre Island really took off!TheCoastalBend.com THE COASTAL BEND GUIDE37'