‘Tis the Season; that’s for sure. However, it is not the season to be jolly, it is the season to be wary. What season is that, you might ask? It is the hurricane season and it is here from the 1st of June till the end of November. Wouldn’t it be a pain for all of us, except maybe the turkey, if we had a hurricane during Thanksgiving?
The thing is we rarely get hurricanes in October and November. Right after hurricane season ends, it does become the season to be jolly. Most of us like jolly better than wary.
Hurricanes are a fact of life when you live on the Texas coast. We even have a Historical Marker here in Calhoun County about Hurricanes. It is off to the left as you enter the court house. It talks about how it has affected life, limb, and property here in our county.
If one wants to do a little research on Hurricanes, you can do that on the web. There are records going back to 1851 about hurricanes and tropical storms. We have had 116 hurricanes or tropical storms hit the Coast in those 149 years.
Now mind you there have been far more hurricanes than just the ones that came our way. Some went to Mexico, some to Florida and many in between. I don’t know about you, but it is the ones that come here that really bother me. Hurricanes elsewhere are just over there.
For most of the last half of the 1800’s we had Indianola as a major port. It was in strong competition with Galveston for the busiest and most prosperous Port on the Texas Coast. Who knows what would have happened without the hurricanes.
The final blow came in an 1886 hurricane. They didn’t name them in those days. That was 125 years ago. Oh, we are still involved in the water, but our ports and shipping don’t dominate like they did in Indianola’s heyday. Given what I know about big ports, like Houston, our situation seems better.
Nevertheless, we should remember Indianola. It’s been called the Queen city of the West. The 125 year thing gives us a chance to remember her. There are several cities north and west as well, as many of our current citizens can call Indianola the place where their ancestors landed and settled this Texas region. So we are going to celebrate.
That final hurricane 125 year ago was both the end of the big shipping interests and the beginning of what we have today. That is the way history works its magic. We have a great deal to remember and celebrate about our, and a fair percentage of the regions past. It is best to mark the date August 20th as a day to celebrate what has happened and to anticipate what will happen in the future.
Remembering Indianola is but a start. There is something for everyone being planned.
Indianola Celebration – August 20, 2011
