Why do I say Port Aransas is a Texas version of Key West? Take the Conch Republic during Ernest Hemmingway’s era and relocate it to the Texas Gulf coast and you would have present-day Port Aransas. Small fish camp cottages still outnumber sprawling beach houses, but that advantage is shrinking. Cabins arranged like tourist courts from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s are holding their own against the few chain hotels which recently started appearing. A ferry from the mainland or a long drive through Corpus Christi buffers Port A’s complete transformation into a vacation-only destination.
Ernest Hemingway, Bra Saunders, and Waldo Peirce with fish aboard a boat near Key West, 1928. Photograph in the Ernest Hemingway Collection of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.
