As a native of Aransas Pass, I am happy to reproduce here a rare promotional booklet produced by the Aransas Pass Chamber of Commerce in 1912. It is a fantastic glimpse at the dreams and plans early speculators and developers had for the town . . . where, incidentally, the last great (and illegal) land lottery was held in the USA. You are able to scroll through each of the 30 pages in this wonderful old publication, complete with great old photos of Aransas Pass "Where Sails Meet Rails".  

 Neither Barnum nor Bailey had anything on the copywriters who wrote this booklet. Aransas Pass was touted as a metropolis just waiting to happen! Folks flocked in for the last illegal land lottery in the USA.

The following pages are truly a time machine viewed from the 21st Century. Here is the best and most forceful pitch of more than a century ago! You will particularly enjoy a poem on page  22, curiously titled, "A Pessimist's  Prophecy."

 The booklet is from the collection of my late father, L.E. Ray, whose first job in Aransas Pass in 1939 was as accountant for the causeway company. His duties also included getting cars into the turnouts on the one-way wooden causeway before the cranky old locomotive engineer hauling jetty rock out to Port Aransas ran them all off into the water!  I hope you enjoy this booklet as much as I have. 

  

These last two pages are a link between the past and
present. So many of the names from these early days 
when our town was born are names of families we know 
and grew up with in Aransas Pass.  I hope you have had 
as good a time as  have had with this rare old publication.