Indianola, Texas
[1] Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels, representing the Adelsverein, selected Indian Point in December 1844 as the port of entry for the Verein colonists from Germany.
Prince Solms' choice of Carlshafen and its inadequate accommodations as a port of entry, as well as the isolated route to New Braunfels, was to keep the Germans from interacting with any Americans.
During World War II, the United States Army constructed an anti-aircraft firing range along the Indianola shoreline to train gunners and the facility was used primarily by military personnel from Camp Hulen, located outside of Palacios.
[11][page needed] Today, almost nothing remains of the original Indianola, as, due to storm erosion, most of the site of the city is now underwater.
A granite marker was placed on the shore at the nearest point to the Indianola courthouse, now 300 feet (about 90 meters) away in Matagorda Bay.
Frederick Olmsted describes Indianola in his 1860 memoir "Journey through Texas" with the following: "At the entrance are some prominent gables, and it was so like the approach to a European seaport that we thought of our passports and the octroi officers.
The beach on which the town is built is some three hundred yards in width, and extends about a mile in length, having but two parallel streets, front and back.
The beach beyond the town forms a pleasant promenade, and we enjoyed to the full the calm sunny sea, which seemed like a return to an old friend, after our months of inland journeying.
[17] In Elizabeth Hand's novel Aestival Tide, a reconstructed Indianola is featured as the lowermost level of the central ziggurat in the dome city of Araboth.
He further observes: "Six weeks after the second Indianola storm, a group of thirty prominent Galveston residents calling themselves the Progressive Association met and resolved to build a seawall", and "The city's Evening Tribune endorsed the plan".
However, although "The state eventually did authorize a bond to pay for the work," the city's engineer E.M. Hartwick observed, "this was some months after the flood, and by then the attitude was, Oh, we'll never get another one--and they didn't build."
'My father's store on Market Street was flooded,' she said, casually.Singer/songwriter Charlie Robison included a song titled "Indianola" on the 1998 album Life of the Party.
The narrator and his cousin attempt to traverse the South to join the Union Army in the American Civil War, though they encounter Rebel resistance in Indianola.
The next scene of the folk song briefly addresses the Wall Street Crash of 1929 in an indirect fashion, noting that little change occurred in their respective lives other than rust accumulating on wagon wheels.
While this verse is brief in regards to words and time, it denotes a subtle and increasing disaffection in the American/Texan experience, adversely affected by seemingly non-relevant incidences.
The storyline then progresses to World War II, introducing an internal struggle between the call of duty of the United States and its armed conflict with Germany, the ancestral point of origin of many Americans.
The overall sentiment of the song begins as a story of new promises followed by a series of fictional, though personally carved facts, that illustrate a common experience for the individualist.
Texas exemplifies a spirit that is not only uniquely a Texan story but an American one, thrusting the individual against the external influence that would assume its right to assert its own values.
[24] Alternative country singer/songwriter Scott Stutzman included a song titled "The Indianola Sway" on his 2016 single Halloween Sixteen (released under the alias Kasko Lunsford).
