From El Fronton to a shrimp port
A 2015 resolution of the Texas House of Representatives lays out the town's long story. Coahuiltecan people lived here first. Spanish colonists who fished the Laguna Madre settled in the late 1700s, and in the 1820s the village, then called El Fronton, was claimed by Rafael Garcia as part of the Potrero de Santa Isabel tract. By 1850 it was known as Point Isabel.
The port served Mexican soldiers and then the U.S. Army, and saw fighting during the Civil War. Port Isabel incorporated on March 23, 1928, and in the years after, the same resolution says, it became an important center for processing shrimp and other seafood. In 1934 the town also hosted the first annual Texas International Fishing Tournament, which still runs every summer.
Then came the bridge. A $2.2 million swing bridge reached across the Laguna Madre to South Padre Island in 1954, and this working port became the gateway to a beach town. The Handbook of Texas notes that Hurricane Beulah destroyed much of Port Isabel in 1967, and the town rebuilt around the water again.
Today about five thousand people live here, 5,028 at the 2020 Census. The House resolution lists what draws visitors now: fishing piers, museums, shops, seafood restaurants and hotels on a bayside setting.
The light that guided ships to the Rio Grande
The Port Isabel Lighthouse went up in 1852 because so many ships had wrecked off Brazos Island, according to the Texas Historical Commission, which now runs it as a state historic site. Shifts in the Rio Grande and the rise of railroads cut shipping traffic, and the light was put out in 1905.
In 2022, after 117 dark years, a third order Fresnel lens was fitted in the lantern room. Visitors can climb 75 winding stairs and three short ladders to the top of the 72 foot tower, the last Texas lighthouse open to the public, and look out over the bay, the causeway and the island beaches.
