Arts, Culture and Heritage

The story of how our city received this name goes back hundreds of years. Legend has it that in 1519, on the Roman Catholic Feast Day of Corpus Christi, Spanish explorer Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda discovered this semi-tropical bay.

Colonel Henry Lawrence Kinney later established the area as a frontier trading post around 1838. Kinney was an adventurer, impresario, and colonizer. Kinney's Trading Post or Kinney's Ranch, as it was known, remained an obscure settlement until 1845, when U.S. troops set up camp in preparation for war with Mexico. 

Troops were encamped in Corpus Christi with General Zachary Taylor until 1846, when the army marched southward to the Rio Grande to enforce it as the southern border of the United States. About a year after the war, the City officially took the name Corpus Christi because a "more definite postmark for letters was needed."

Corpus Christi is now home to the largest city on the Texas Coast and is the sixth largest port in the nation. Corpus Christi boasts a rich culture and heritage.