CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — 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.
The Feast of Corpus Christi is a major Catholic festival that affirms the doctrine that the bread and wine consecrated during Mass become the actual body and blood of Christ.
The feast was celebrated on June 23 in 1519, but this year it falls on June 4. Like Easter, the Feast of Corpus Christi is a movable holiday, observed on a different day each year.
Makes you wonder what our city's name would have been if Alonso Alvarez de Pineda had not sailed into our bay on the Feast of Corpus Christi.
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