Bulwark Against the Bay

Mary Jo O'Rear has served in regional and local history groups and as adjunct history professor at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi and Texas A&M University–Kingsville. She is also a former instructor in history, economics, and geography for the Corpus Christi Independent School District. She is a fellow of the East Texas Historical Association.

Mary Jo O'Rear provides much appreciated background to one of the best known and most significant works of urban civil engineering in Texas. This book will continue the project of a number of recent historians of bringing Corpus Christi more firmly into the story of modern and urban Texas. O'Rear's primary research is truly innovative. No one has looked in such detail at such a variety of sources for post-1919 Corpus Christi before. ?"" - Alan Lessoff, professor of history, Illinois State University""The book draws in the reader with tales of intrigue and the sometimes duplicitous behavior of politicians, citizens, and even an artist, Gutzon Borglum, who was brought in to help design a seawall in the 1920s. Bulwark Against the Bay will provide interesting, and enriching reading for urban historians and Texas historians as well as the general reading public. Residents of the city will enjoy reading the story of the city’s development in the early twentieth century. O'Rear deftly interweaves stories about the Ku Klux Klan, the religious and political tensions, and personality clashes that fueled the city’s development."" - Anthony Quiroz, Professor of History, Texas A&M University""Almost on a daily basis we travel past major public works without giving thought to what it took to accomplish such impressive improvements to the natural environment. In Corpus Christi, known along the Texas Gulf coast as the ""Sparkling City by the Sea,"" one of the most significant of these projects is its pre-WW II downtown seawall. It took decades of tragic events, including the loss of hundreds of lives in an unnamed 1919 hurricane, local as well as national political maneuvering, creative funding and deal making, and just plain hard work on the part of countless unsung heroes to get this structure built. From concept to concrete, Mary Jo O’Rear’s Bulwark Against the Bay captures the story of this historic storm protection system and the men and women associated with its design and construction, which helped transform a burgeoning coastal town into a modern city. This book is a must-read if you’re interested in the tale of the less-than-straight and many times bumpy path the Corpus Christi seawall took before the vision to build it became a reality."" - W. Allan Hayes, P.E. Past President, Nueces County Historical Society