Posted 9/02/2005 05:24:00 PM by Douglas

Something about the news makes me think of this story.

But all were only prelude to Sept. 17, 1875. The sea that had created and nourished Indianola rose in monstrous salty, gray hummocks, lashed by shrieking winds - HURRICANE! Nine hundred perished, and three fourths of the city lay in matchbox shambles. "Quelle tragedie", as the French say. Disaster on an unimagined scale.

But Indianola was too prosperous, too vital, to quit because of one freak tragedy. So they decided to wait for another. Larger warehouses were raised; new piers of heavier pilings sprouted. Eleven years passed before a brutal fact was driven home: the earlier black September was no freak. An even more savage storm sounded the city's death knell.

Indianola was literally gone. After this second catastrophe, even wreckage was scarce. The few citizens who somehow survived did not return. The county seat, in name, was moved to Port Lavaca for there was really nothing left to move.

One thing more, appropriately: a solitary rose granite statue of Rene Robert Cavellier, Sieur de la Salle. The French explorer was first to leave a bootprint on the sands of Indianola more than 300 years ago. Today his stone likeness surveys the same featureless, unmarked sands.

Also here and here. Also reminds me of the Charlie Robison song of the same name:

. . . to Indianola. . .
It's 50 years later, and nobody cares
About some old city, that ain't even there. . .