1899.] HAUPT — REACTION BREAKWATER AT ARANSAS PASS. 137 



from Congress, to undertake the construction of a breakwater on 

 this plan, after all previous attempts had failed to secure increased 

 depth. 



Aransas Pass. — It may be well to state just here that this inlet 

 opens into Corpus Christi, Aransas, Copanio and Nueces bays., 

 covering in all about 350 square miles of tidal waters ; that the mean 

 range of the tide of the Gulf is but fourteen inches, and that for 

 many years the pass has been drifting southwestwardly at the 

 average rate of 260 feet per year. It is now about 175 miles west 

 of Galveston ; is the point farthest west on the Gulf coast of the 

 United States where it is possible to create an inner harbor, without 

 great cost and has consequently a larger extent of tributary terri- 

 tory than any other Atlantic port, with the important collateral of 

 giving the shortest transcontinental haul. Its position is therefore 

 strategic, and but for the lack of sufficient water on the bar it 

 should long since have become the great metropolis of the Gulf. 

 The controlling natural depths were from six to eight feet on the 

 site of the recent bar, while at Galveston they were twelve and one- 

 half feet, which gave the latter place the precedence and caused the 

 termini of the transportation routes to be located at that point. 



Government Efforts. — The superiority of the more western 

 location, however, led the Government to make several vain 

 attempts to secure a navigable channel at Aransas Pass, and as early 

 as January 13, 1853, Lieut. George B. McClellan reported on the 

 pass which was then some two miles east of its present position^ 

 and when, in consequence of its steeper slope and more direct dis- 

 charge, ^' the depths were about nine feet, but that the channel was 

 constantly shifting." That was a very different pass from the present 

 one and not comparable with it. Fifteen years later (1869) the 

 citizens of Rockpoit constructed a short wooden spur dike 600 feet 

 long from the shore of St. Joseph's Island on the north side of the 

 pass, which increased the depth two feet, but which disappeared 

 with the destruction of the dike in a few years by storms. 



Surveys were renewed by the Government in 1870-71, but no 

 recommendation to improve was made because of the great expense 

 of building a jetty sufficiently strong to withstand the storms of the 

 Gulf because of the alleged existence of quicksands. This it was 

 said was an *' insuperable objection to any such experiment. '■* 

 Nevertheless, after eight years more, or in 1879, it was estimated 

 that a channel twelve feet deep might be secured over the bar by 



