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PADRE ISLAND |
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The spirits
lingering on this island are probably all searching for
lost treasure.
Tourists visiting this giant sandbar have been finding
Spanish
jewels and gold coins for the last century, along with
encountering
the ghosts of long-dead treasure seekers. The artifacts,
which originate
from dozens of ships sunk in the Gulf, are churned up
by storms
and deposited on the beaches here. A whole city has even
been discovered
under the sand. The town of Southern most was buried
by tons
of sand during the hurricane of 1875 and was unveiled by the
blowing
winds of another hurricane in 1961. John Singer, brother of
the sewing
machine tycoon, was shipwrecked here in 1847. He liked the
island
so much that he established a cattle ranch. During digging of
the foundation
for his house, he discovered a metal chest filled with
eight hundred
thousand dollars worth of doubloons and jewels. Just
after the
start of the Civil War, Singer fled the island for the Texas
mainland
and buried the treasure, along with his own sizable fortune,
in a huge
cast iron bathtub between two oak trees. When he returned
after the
war, the trees were gone, and he spent the rest of his life
searching
for the treasure. To date, it has not been found.
LOCATION
Port
Isabel is on the Gulf of Mexico at the extreme southern tip of
Texas,
twenty three miles northeast of Brownsville on Highway 48.
The island
is a three mile wide, 232 mile long sandbar near the mouth
of the
Rio Grande River off Port Isabel. John Singer's ranch was
twenty
three miles north of Brazos Santiago Pass
