In Drought and Flood -
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In Drought and Flood
After a very long, hot summer it has finally started to rain in Kingsville, Texas. We have had a few not so big rains in the last week or so, but the rain that came down Wednesday afternoon, September 9, 2009, got me very wet as I left the 1904 Kingsville Train Depot Museum. The five inches of rain had streets in downtown Kingsville flooded within minutes. That is the normal condition for a rainy day here. It started me thinking of our pioneers in this community and how they had to cope with weather in the Wild Horse Desert.
Everyone knows about the great hurricane of 1916, and the Corpus Christi hurricane of 1919, and several more over the years. But the alternating drought and flood which is the normal condition of our “desert” holds more interest. Our flooded streets are not something new or unexpected. Our streets prior to 1925 were unpaved. Newspapers of the day alternately complained of the choking dust stirred up by local traffic or the rivers of mud caused by the rains.
But the pioneers of Kingsville took it all in stride. The Kingsville Record newspaper of 1915 had a full page report on the success of the Kleberg County fair. They stated, “despite Jupiter Pluvius and a north wind thousands were present on first day of the fair.” Now that term sent me to the internet search engines. “Jupiter Pluvius” is the mythological sender of rain, the reliever of droughts. Jupiter was the Roman mythological king of gods and one of his names was “Jupiter Pluvius”.
Perhaps y’all remember the delightful Christmas Eve snow fall of 2004. Even that has a parallel in the past. It was Christmas Eve, 1924, a norther blew in depositing sleet and snow over the community. The trains were running an hour late because the sleet had downed the telegraph and telephone lines. The train orders were all supposed to be sent by telegraph at the beginning of each day, but not this Christmas Eve. Trains were forced to run on “flags” without train orders. Refugio reported eight inches of snow. Wow, after our long, hot, dry summer what a wonderful thought, snow.
The bad weather of 1924 continued and delayed the laying of the cornerstone for the new South Texas State Normal School. After working for ten years to secure the Normal School for Kingsville, the weather was unwilling to cooperate. The community had planned a big Bar-B-Que for January 3rd, 1925, to celebrate the laying of the cornerstone. In fact, the BBQ was to be so extreme that the Kingsville Record called it a “monster” Bar-B-Que. It wasn’t until late in March of 1925, that thousands of visitors to Kingsville would gather for that grand Bar-B-Que and cornerstone laying event.
Yes, the weather will always regulate our lives and social events. So, I plan to enjoy the long awaited rains down at the 1904 Kingsville Train Depot Museum. Stop by and share your weather stories with the Depot volunteers.