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.