Join us Thursday to hear author Mary Jo O’Rear speak on her newest book, Bulwark Against the Bay.
Statues of Jesus, hurricanes, PWA, and politics—all had a part in the controversies surrounding the creation of the Corpus Christi seawall. Well-known participants included renowned sculptor Gutzon Borglum, New Deal administrator Harold Ickes, and President of the United States Franklin Roosevelt. Others involved and just as important were activists Ben Garza and Henry Boyd Hall, mayors “Big Bill” Shaffer and A.C. McCaughan, and engineers Edward Noyes and John Bisset.
Their struggle, and that of the people of Corpus Christi, for a protected bayfront came to a head in the buoyant years of the New Deal. What happened then—and how it affected Corpus Christi forever afterwards—is the subject of this presentation, “Bulwark against the Bay.”
