Boca Chica (Texas) facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Boca Chica
Boca Chica Location in Texas
Location	Cameron County, Texas, United States
Nearest city	Brownsville

Boca Chica is a special area in Cameron County, at the very southern tip of Texas, right on the Gulf Coast. It's like a small land finger reaching into the ocean. To the north is the Brownsville Ship Channel, to the south is the Rio Grande river and Mexico, and to the east is the Gulf of Mexico.

This area stretches about 25 miles (40 km) east from the city of Brownsville. You can get there by driving on Texas State Highway 4, also known as the Boca Chica Highway. This road ends at the Gulf and Boca Chica Beach.

Over time, Boca Chica has been many things:

• Land from old Mexican land grants.
• Places for ranches.
• A battlefield from the American Civil War (the Battle of Palmito Ranch).
• A fun beach resort in the 1920s.
• A state park that opened in 1994.
• A small village called Boca Chica Village.
• And, since the mid-2010s, a very important place for private spaceflight. This is where SpaceX has built a huge facility to make and launch rockets, known as SpaceX South Texas launch site.

The name "Boca Chica" means "small mouth" in Spanish. This is because the Rio Grande river doesn't flow very strongly here. Sometimes, during dry periods, the river's mouth can even disappear!

How Boca Chica Was Shaped

Transportation has always been a big part of Boca Chica's story. In the 1800s, there was a land route across Boca Chica. It started at a Mexican port called Brazos Santiago, which is north of Boca Chica. From there, it went inland to the Rio Grande Valley area, which later became Brownsville.

Ships used to sail into a shallow bay called South Bay from the Gulf of Mexico. They would bring goods to the mainland. You can still find old things from those days! For example, there are cypress wood pieces from a floating bridge built around 1846. There are also "Palmetto Pilings" from a railroad bridge built around 1865. Both are near the beach at the end of Texas State Highway 4.

In the late 1800s, much of the good land in Boca Chica was used for ranching. Some famous ranches were Tulosa Ranch, Palmito Ranch, White’s Ranch, and Cobb’s Ranch.

In 1904, a railroad was finished to Brownsville. This brought many farmers from the north to the area. They cleared the land, built ways to water their crops, and made roads. They started growing lots of fruits and vegetables, especially citrus. This brought a lot of money and growth to Brownsville.

The cheap land also made people want to buy and sell it for profit. Special trains brought people to see the land. In the early 1920s, as many as 200 people came every day!

One exciting project was the Del Mar Resort on Boca Chica Beach. It was built in the 1920s and was very popular. It had 20 small cabins to rent for the day, a bathhouse, and a ballroom. But in 1933, a terrible hurricane destroyed most of the buildings. The remaining buildings were used by the US Coast Guard during World War II. After the war, because of the Great Depression and the hurricane damage, the resort never reopened.

The 1933 hurricane also led to the building of the port of Brownsville. The city had been trying to build this port since 1928. It finally opened in 1936.

While the ship channel was being built, a famous rocket inventor named William Swan tried a daring flight over Boca Chica in 1933. He jumped out of an airplane in what was supposed to be a rocket-powered backpack flight. He went into the clouds and was never seen again. Swan had already set records for rocket-powered flights before this.

The new port and the Brownsville Ship Channel created a new northern border for the Boca Chica area. This meant the only way to get to Boca Chica by land was from Brownsville.

Last Battle of the Civil War

The Battle of Palmito Ranch is thought by some to be the very last battle of the American Civil War. It happened on May 12–13, 1865, near the Rio Grande river, east of Brownsville.

Before this battle, the Union and Confederate armies in southern Texas had a quiet agreement not to fight. But a Union Colonel named Theodore H. Barrett, who had never been in a battle before, ordered an attack. The Union soldiers captured some prisoners. However, the next day, the Confederates, led by Colonel John Salmon Ford, fought back near Palmito Ranch. The Union forces lost the battle. Some say the Confederates even had help from the French Army, who were in the nearby Mexican town of Matamoros.

Boca Chica Beach: A Wildlife Haven

Boca Chica Beach is now part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. This refuge covers a huge area of about 10,680 acres (43.2 km²) in Boca Chica. It used to be a Texas state park, which opened in May 1994. Now, the U.S. Federal government manages this land as part of the wildlife refuge.

The northern part of the beach used to be called Del Mar Beach. This is where the successful Del Mar Resort was located in the 1920s. As we learned, a hurricane in 1933 destroyed most of the resort. The remaining buildings were used by the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II. After the war, the resort never reopened.

Old maps show that there used to be a water passage called Boca Chica Pass from the Gulf into the South Bay. This was when Brazos Island, the sandy area east of South Bay, was a separate island. For a while in the 1900s, there was even a road bridge called the Boca Chica Pass Bridge that connected the road from Brownsville to Brazos Island. But storms, especially hurricanes in 1933 and 1967, moved a lot of sand. This closed off the pass and connected Brazos Island to the mainland.

Boca Chica Village

Boca Chica Village is a small community that isn't officially a city. It's located on Texas State Highway 4, about 22 miles (35 km) east of Brownsville. It was started in 1967 as a land development project. About 30 houses were built, but then Hurricane Beulah hit later that year. The hurricane badly damaged the settlement and changed its future.

In 2014, SpaceX chose the village and the area around it to build its spaceflight facility. Much of the SpaceX building area is on land that used to be part of Boca Chica Village. The SpaceX test and launch sites are two miles further east, right next to Boca Chica Beach.

SpaceX: Building and Testing Rockets

In 2012, the private space company SpaceX said that Boca Chica might be a good place for their future launch site. In August 2014, SpaceX officially announced that they had chosen Boca Chica for their South Texas Launch Site. Their "control center" would be in Boca Chica Village, and the launch complex would be two miles east.

Building started slowly in 2014, but really picked up around 2018. By May 2018, SpaceX planned to use this site only for launching their new, fully reusable rocket, the SpaceX Starship.

Testing of the Starship rocket, with its new Raptor engines, began in 2019 and continued into 2021. Since the village is only a few miles from the test site, officials started asking residents to stand outside their homes during tests. This was a safety measure in case an explosion caused windows to break from the shockwave. SpaceX is planning its first test flight into orbit with the full two-stage Starship system in 2022, if the FAA approves it.

"Starbase," Texas

As early as August 2020, SpaceX hinted that it wanted to build a resort in South Texas. Their goal was to turn "Boca Chica into a '21st century Spaceport'."

In March 2021, Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, officially announced plans to create a new city in the Boca Chica area called Starbase, Texas. Starbase would include the existing Boca Chica Village, the SpaceX test and launch sites, and more of the surrounding Boca Chica area. Musk said Starbase would be "much larger than Boca Chica."

By April 2021, SpaceX was already calling the area "Starbase" during their test flight broadcasts. Elon Musk openly encouraged people to move to "Starbase," saying the population could grow by thousands in the next few years. "Starbase" also became a common name for the area among SpaceX fans. However, the company had not yet officially started the process to create a new city at that time.

See also

In Spanish: Boca Chica (Texas) para niños