From the Matagorda County History & Genealogy page
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following articles are from the Matagorda County Hiistory and Genealogy page and include the promotions and social columns about groups heading for the beach in the early 1900s.
While it’s noted that the Ben Hur Motel was located where the mouth of the Colorado River is located today, there was no land bridge then from Matagorda to Matagorda Peninsula.
Almost all travel was by boats, as one of the photographs on this page shows.
Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ was a novel written by Lew Wallace and published on November 12, 1880 by Harper & Brothers.
It was the best-selling American novel from the time of its release until replaced by Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind in 1935.
The popularity was bolstered by the release of a 15-minute silent film version in 1907.
The focus of the short movie was the chariot race which was filmed on a beach in New Jersey.
The area firemen played the charioteers and their fire horses pulled the chariots.
Watching the 1907 silent movie will make you appreciate high-definition that is available today.
Watch the movie at Internet Archive .
The movie inspired the organizers of the Ben Hur Hotel on Matagorda Peninsula.
About 1908, several families from Matagorda — the Ward McNabbs, Goodwin Sternes, Albert Wadsworths, and the Culvers; built the Ben Hur Hotel on Matagorda Beach.
It was built near the mouth of the river and was constructed of beach shell and concrete.
Hurricanes finally washed it away.
Buy a Lot on the Beach!
The Ben Hur Beach Hotel
and Boating Association has been organized with a capital of $20,000.
The officers are J. C. Kennedy, an Indiana capitalist, president; Geo. B. Culver, former tax assessor of this county and now a leading business man of Matagorda, vice-president; Goodwin Sterne, the Matagorda banker, secretary and treasurer.
These three officers together with Dr. A. A. Luther of Bay City and A. L. Gibbs of Oklahoma constitute the board of directors.
The Hotel Proposition.
The above named company has taken over the concrete Beach hotel on the Gulf front of Matagorda Peninsula, across the bay from Matagorda, together with 300 acres of adjacent land, and will renovate and greatly enlarge the building, terrace and beautify the grounds with palms and other tropical plants, shell walks and grassy lawns, etc.
The bath house will also be enlarged and improved and an adequate hack and livery service provided.
The company is now having a fine power boat constructed to convey passengers to and from the main land at Matagorda.
This boat will have comfortable seats, a canopy top and adjustable side protection and will carry 100 passengers and their baggage, and is expected to make the trip of four miles across the bay in 30 to 40 minutes in any sort of weather.
She is to be equipped with two gasoline engines and two propellers, so that if one balks the other will keep her going.
During the last two years this has been pronounced incomparably the finest resort on the Texas coast by all who have visited it, without a single exception.
No place on a bay, where there is always a mixture of fresh water and more or less mud, is to be compared to it. Here the pure, unadulterated brine of the rolling and roaring old ocean quickens, vitalizes and invigorates.
No undertow. A smooth, hard bathing beach and automobile course stretches away more than 30 miles in each direction.
The Santa Fe railroad will put on excursion rates to this resort twice a week.
Another Proposition.
Adjacent to the hotel grounds the Southwestern Land Development Co. has platted and staked off 1000 acres of the finest land on this famous peninsula — famous for its freedom from frost, its sub-irrigated, warm, early soil, loose and easy of culture, and for its adaptation to the production of tropical fruits, winter berries and vegetables, and such crops as sea island cot-ton, peanuts, sweet potatoes and melons in summer.
This 1,000 acres is subdivided into lots ranging in size from one-quarter acre to five acres, and of course those who want larger tracts can select as many adjacent lots as they wish.
The quarter acre tracts are ample for those who want only a site for summer bungalow or a winter cottage; and those who wish, while renewing flagging energies or re-covering lost health, to have a healthful, delightful and profitable occupation, will want a larger lot upon which to raise oranges, lemons, figs, pineapples, etc., or on-ions, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, lettuce, asparagus in winter, and cotton, melons, sweet potatoes and peanuts in summer.
Strawberries and tomatoes can, be put on the market from this peninsula in January, and melons in May, and you know what that means in the way of fancy prices.
You Are invited to the Grand Opening of These Enterprises on May 26th.
When the new boat will be christened, the hotel opened for the season and an opportunity given to purchase stock in the Ben Hur Beach hotel and Boating Association entitling you to membership and special rates and privileges, and also an opportunity to select such lots or tracts as you may want out of the 1000-acre sub-division. On this occasion there will be a
Grand Barbecue, Oyster Roast and Fish Fry,
with such other diversions as oratory, bathing, boating, motoring, etc. Don’t miss it. You can’t afford to miss it. For further particulars call on or address the
DRAWER 595, Bay City, Texas, or GOODWIN STERNE, Matagorda, Texas.
SPECIAL TRAIN
Excursion to Ben Hur Opening On Matagorda Peninsula May 26th
The Sante Fe will run a special excursion train to Matagorda next Tuesday Morning, passing Bay City at 8:15 a.m. and arriving at Matagorda at 9:30. Returning will leave Matagorda at 10 p.m.
Fare for round trip only 50c from Bay City, 75c from Lane City and 95c from Wharton.
Be sure to see the races, trap shooting, bronco busting, roping contest, etc., and enjoy the barbecue, oyster roast, fish fry, bathing and sailing.
Matagorda County Tribune, May 1908
Personal and Social
The first “sailing party” of the year was given Saturday by Mr. and Mrs. W. G. Thornhill to some of their many Matagorda friends.
The boat carrying the jolly crowd was the Alphonsina of Port Lavaca and with the Carter boys as managers, soon landed the party on the peninsula.
The day was an ideal one. Everyone seemed to forget the past and future and thought only of this one day.
Upon reaching the Ben Hur Hotel, different groups scattered along the beach, some kodaking , hunting, running races and little Lila Thornhill and Master Bill were even brave enough to go into the gulf while Mr. Rugeley, Serrill and Miss Reba Rugeley chaperoned Pauline and Lila Thornhill, Glendora Shindler and Robert Smith eight miles down the beach to see the wrecked fish boat.
This took four hours and some doubt their seeing it; however they had a kodak and promised to prove their expedition.
Such a picnic dinner was never seen, a table the full length of the hotel dining room was laden with all kinds of good things to eat and was very greatly enjoyed by all except Johnnie May who declared he was too excited and had lost his appetite and of course this distressed some of his friends who knew his failing.
Most everybody has heard of messages in bottles being thrown over board at sea and Mrs. Thornhill was lucky enough to find one on the beach and after all had read it Miss Minnie Dea Coffin was voted to do as “Nemo” requested and write him at Galveston.
The return trip was begun about five o’clock and had it not been for Tas in his little tug in which he pulled the Alphonsina from a shallow place the party might have stayed stranded for some time.
However the party landed at the Thornhill wharf about eight and those declaring they had the best time ever and thanking Mr. and Mrs. Thornhill for such a treat were: Prof. and Mrs. Smith and son Robert, Mrs. Goodwin Sterne, Mrs. Chester Rugeley, Misses Loula Belle Salley, Reba Rugeley, Vera Burke, Nellie Murdock, Imogene Inglehart, Minnie Dea Coffin, Myrtle Duffy, Beth and Minnie Phillips, Glendora Shindler, Bertha Boyd, Gertrude Sharkey, and Helen Gilbert, and Messrs. James Miller, Carroll Ryman, Johnnie May Williams, Tas Thornhill, Rugeley and Gober Serrill, Jakey and Frankie Smith, Roland Smith, Sidney Schindler and Harold Feather.
Matagorda News, April 11, 1913