b'Coastal Bend CommunityThe storm known to us as the 1919 Hurricane, is known to others outside of Texas as the 1919 Florida Keys Hurricane, for its path that went through the Florida Straits as it crossed from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico. Although there was no official death toll among residents on land in the Bahamas, Florida or Cuba, over 500 people lost their lives at sea as dozens of ships were sunk by the storm. Over its 1,000 mile trek across the Gulf of Mexico, the storm continued to gain strength, and while some of us will criticize the accuracy of weather forecasting these days, hurricane tracking and predicting was, quite literally, no more than a guessing exercise in 1919.From Wednesday September 10th to the night of Saturday the 13th, the day before it struck the Coastal Bend, the 1919 Hurricane prompted daily warningsin orderfrom Pensacola to New Orleans, and then ex-tended westward covering the entire Louisiana coast-line, then for the Texas coast from Port Arthur south to Velasco, which is today part of Freeport, directly south of Houston. The final hurricane warnings the night be-fore landfall were for the entire Texas coast, with Cor-pus Christi not specifically named. Our city had long been thought of as protected from a major tropical cy-Above - The Bayfront as described by the photographer, Marie Shirkey: X is the old Japonica washed upclone by our barrier islands, the distance between the on the side of the bluff on South Broadway. This is down near the Municipal Pier. gulf and the city over Corpus Christi Bay, and especial-ly by the many high bluffs and cliffs on which much of Below - Lower Downtown (Marie Shirkey): Showing the street between the bay and the courthouse.the city was built. Just three years before, in 1916, most Courthouse just across the street from the house at XXX. Our house located about at X, one blockresidents rode out a major hurricane that had flattened east and nearly a block north from the courthouse. XX is the back of the Rankin house. LooksPort Aransas on its way to Corpus Christi, which en-undamaged here but if you could have seen it - even it would have been bad enough. Bay at O.dured relatively minor damage.Notice the rocking chair at the street crossing - just below O also the little house in the crossing. Saturday started off as a perfect late summer day, hitting 92 degrees in the city, although an unseason-ably strong northerly wind emerged in the afternoon. By the evening the winds had decreased and shifted back to their customary, late summer southeasterlies. AsmidnightapproachedandvacationersonNorth Beach reveled in celebration of the final weekend of summer, onshore winds in Aransas Pass had hit 45 mph, and the tide was rising high enough from (what is today) Redfish Bay to start flooding the town. Not un-like Hurricane Harvey 98 years later, the great storm of 1919 brought terror and destruction, shrouded in overnight darkness, to Aransas Pass, Port Aransas, and Inglesidewith two major differences. The 1919 Hur-ricane also brought death on land and at sea, and the brunt of the storm was headed directly to the Coastal Bends most populous city.By 8:00 a.m. Sunday morning, winds in Corpus Christi had reached 50 mph, heavy squalls had be-gun dumping rain on the city, and the tide on the bay was rising steadily. The eye of the massive storm was makingitswayfromnortheasttosouthwestdown the coastline, taking a path along the Coastal Bends barrier islands, Matagorda, St. Josephs, Mustang and Padre, while the most powerful and destructive north-46 THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINEFall 2019 TheCoastalBend.com'