62 THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • Winter 2018-19 TheCoastalBend.com Coastal Bend Community (Above) Nueces Bay produced over 10 million oysters from huge beds in 1907, along with over a million pounds of fish. An oyster reef bridge connected Rincon to San Patricio County in the late 1800’s; (Middle) the Corpus Christi Golf & Country Club was dedicated with a round of golf by President William Howard Taft in 1909, who is pictured on a tour of Corpus Christi during his Octo- ber visit (Lower/Left); (Lower/Right) President Taft inspecting a horse at the Taft Ranch headquarters in La Quinta near Ingleside. The ranch was operated by the president’s half-brother, Charles Phelps Taft, the son- and-law of rancher David Sinton. Despite a population of some 7,000, Corpus Christi had no hospital when Dr. Arthur E. Spohn moved to town in 1895. Dr. Spohn, like all local physicians, was required to perform medical procedures and surgeries in private homes, without electricity and in dimly lit conditions, and without the sanitary facilities need- ed to avoid infections. He found support from prominent South Texans like the Kleberg’s and the Kenedy’s to build the region’s first hospital, which opened as the Spohn Sanitarium on North Beach. It was taken over by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word in 1905. Also built after the turn of the cen- tury was the Corpus Christi Golf & Coun- try Club, featuring a new, nine-hole golf course, right on North Beach! The club was situated where the Radisson Hotel is now, and was inaugurated with a round of play by none other than the President of the United States, William Howard Taft, who visited the Coastal Bend on October 22, 1909. President Taft’s half-brother, Charles Phelps Taft, operated the Taft Ranch and was, as one would imagine, namesake of the town of Taft. He hosted the president on the ranch headquarters at La Quinta, near Ingleside, where he watched roping exhibitions, went rabbit hunting, and played a round of golf on a course built specifically for his visit. Members of the country club decid- ed to sell the North Beach property with its nine-hole course and build a new, 18- hole, golf course west of the city in what is now refinery row. The buyer was L.G. Collins, who converted the country club building into a first-class bathhouse that hosted sun seekers and bathers in Corpus Christi Bay. By this time, the finest home on Rincon, built by D. Mahoney in 1891, had been purchased by Dr. W.E. Carruth and was operating as a guest house, the Shell Beach Sanitarium (yes, an odd- sounding name this day-in-age)—by all accounts, North Beach had come back and was thriving by the end of the cen- tury’s first decade. A group of some of the most promi- nent South Texans came together to construct a worthy replacement for the ill-fated Miramar on North Beach. Billed as a fireproof hotel located on the safest beach in the area, the Corpus Beach Ho-