THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE 117 TheCoastalBend.com P o r t A r a n s a s Top: FDR landing a 77 lb. tarpon, May 1937. Left: FDR toured the Texas Coast aboard the presidential yacht, the USS Potomac. Above: 2-way radio used to communicate by FDR staff. Lower/Left: FDR with LBJ, then a congressman. Below: The next generation. Above: Hundreds of signed tarpon gill plates posted in the lobby, the oldest from 1897. Inset: FDR’s signed plate. Below: Famed Tarpon Inn proprietor Ed Cotter, who pioneered sportfishing in America. Just as The Tarpon Inn and the newly-coined town of Port Aransas were peaking in popularity, almost everything was wiped out in the powerful 1916 Hurricane that took a turn and spared Corpus Christi after striking the island. The inn took a big hit, but Ed Cotter persevered and quickly rebuilt—it was the Great Storm of 1919 that destroyed the inn’s front two buildings, before wreaking death and destruction on Corpus Chris- ti, where almost 1,000 people died or went missing. Another rebuild within just a few years was too much for Ed Cotter to endure, and he sold the property to James Ellis in 1922. Three years later, in 1925, the again-rebuilt Tarpon Inn reopened to guests eager to enjoy the beach and get back on the water. The hotel was rebuilt by Ellis to withstand the next big storm, reinforced with pilings set in concrete, driven up to 20-feet underground, and extending into the attic. In 1929, the 43 professional fishing guides who comprised the Port Aransas Boatman’s Association organized the first “Tarpon Rodeo,” which evolved into the Deep Sea Roundup, one of the oldest and most popular sportfishing tournaments in the U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was undoubtedly the most famous and cele- brated tarpon angler to visit Port Aransas, where he caught a 5-foot, 1-inch, 71 lb. “Silver King” on May 8, 1937, in the middle of the Great Depression, but years before the breakout of World War II. Roosevelt was on a tour of the Texas Gulf Coast aboard the presidential yacht, the USS Potomac, inspecting sites for port facilities and military installations that included NAS Corpus Christi, on the bay in Flour Bluff. FDR’s fishing trip in Texas was generated into a national media event when it was chronicled in the May 24, 1937, edition of LIFE magazine. As was the case throughout his historic presidency, photos of Roosevelt were carefully staged to conceal his con- finement to a wheelchair. Lee-Roy Hoskins explained, “The famous oilman Sid Rich- ardson had a house on St. Jo’s Island and said, ‘They rolled him down the cattle chute to the fishing boat,’ but nobody saw the wheelchair.” In 1970, around the time that the tarpon started to vanish from the waters of Aransas Pass, James Ellis sold The Tarpon Inn to John J. Miller, followed by a string of owners that included James & Douglass Atwill, and ended up with a real estate management firm in 2008, whose interested buyer planned to tear the inn down and build condos on the land. At that great crossroads in over a century of history for the inn, it was saved, renovated and improved, and even expanded with first-class restaurant and bar facilities by Lee-Roy Hoskins. Over more than 15 years under his ownership, the inn has prospered as a business and stands stronger than ever as the starting place and center of the rich history of Port Aransas—and especially as a wonderful place to vacation in the most beautiful, family-friendly, seaside village on the Texas Gulf Coast!
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