The Last Link

From Corpus Christi to the Mexican border, the slender, 119-mile-long finger of Padre Island guards the Texas gulf coast from the Gulf of Mexico, forms the shallow waters of Laguna Madre. Within this calm lagoon one day last week, two huge Government dredges, the Caribbean and the Miami, chewed their way towards each other through mud, sand, shell and stone. About eight months ago, the Caribbean had started north from Brownsville, the Miami south from Corpus Christi. Last week the big cutting blades of the dredges slashed through the last barriers between them--completing the last link in the $80 million Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, which already stretched from Florida's Apalachee Bay to Corpus Christi.

For the cotton growers, oilmen and cattlemen of the Lower Rio Grande, it was as historic a moment as the coming of the railroads. Through the waterway, freight barges could be towed all the way from Brownsville, Tex. to Florida--1,116 miles --without exposure to the open sea. Cried one Texan: "A shining strand linking together those jewels of progress into a fabulous necklace along the curving bosom of the Gulf."

The canal from Florida to Corpus Christi had already proved a lifesaver in World War II. While tankers were being sunk by submarines within sight of the coast, the canal barges were safe from attack. That boomed shipping on the canal from 7,000,000 tons (prewar) to a peak of 17,500,000 tons in 1944. There has been little tapering-off since.

The farmers of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, who had just begun to harvest the biggest cotton crop in their history, reckoned that the new canal would bring them 1) cheaper freight for their products, 2) lower prices for the steel and other materials they need for plants to process and can seafood and the valley's produce. Three new plants worth about $65 million were already abuilding in Brownsville, partly in expectation of the boom.

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