Spanish explorer Alonso Alvarez de Pineda sailed into a bay on June 23, 1519 — which that year was the Feast of Corpus Christi — and named the bay in honor of the feast.
De Pineda was on a 9-month expedition commissioned by the governor of Jamaica to find a water passage from the Gulf to the Orient. A statue honoring him stands at the Agnes and Laredo Street “Y.”
Over the centuries, a growing number of people settled along the Bay of Corpus Christi. In 1839, Henry Kinney established Kinney’s Trading Post just south of the Nueces River, attracting more settlers to the area. That settlement officially incorporated as the city of Corpus Christi in 1852…