Quintana

Stephen F. Austin’s colonists landed the Lively here in 1821. Austin was commissioned to lay the town out in 1833 and named it after General Andreas Quintana, deputy minister of Mexican Foreign and Internal affairs, who was sympathetic to Austin’s efforts to colonize the area. Quintana prospered with a dry goods warehouse, meat market, school, hotel, grocery store and post office. It became a popular resort for plantation owners who built huge summer homes on the beach. The Civil War brought about a decrease in the population and a confederate fort guarded the mouth of the Brazos. But during the last 100 years, six hurricanes leveled nearly every structure and at least two major outbreaks of yellow fever and cholera kept it’s population in check. The hurricane of 1915 turned Quintana into a ghost town. The discovery of sulphur nearby paved the way for the first of the local chemical industries. But flooding of the river could no longer be tolerated and in 1929 The Corps of Engineers dug a new channel to the Gulf and the old river was sealed three miles above the mouth. At about the same time the Intracoastal Waterway was also completed, turning Quintana into a man-made island.