Rockport’s Harbor

Rockport’s Harbor. . In 1866, James Doughty and Richard H. Wood, searching for a safe harbor location to ship cattle, built pens and a livestock-shipping wharf on “Rocky Point,” a prominent limestone protrusion that extended into Aransas Bay near present-day Wharf Street. Other wharves and pens followed. Soon, a regular schedule of Morgan Line shallow-draft steamboats arrived with merchandise for distribution inland, and then departed with cattle and packer products., The arrival of the railroad in 1888 ignited a boom in Rockport, prompting local businessmen to begin advertising a strategic harbor near the Gulf. They also pushed to deepen the harbor and create a deep-water port, but the effort ended when Corpus Christi opened its port in 1926., However, abundant harvests of fish, oysters, and shrimp fueled a thriving seafood industry. By 1910, fish houses anchored the southwest side of the Rockport harbor, and numerous fishing boats moored at harbor wharves., The Rockport Marine Laboratory began in 1935 aboard the houseboat Vivian. In 1947, a permanent building was constructed on the southeast side of the harbor to house the Marine Lab and an aquarium., Established in 1925, The Aransas County Navigation District began a program to improve the harbor. By 1940, a new breakwater and a concrete piling and steel seawall created a small-craft safety basin which became Rockport’s famous “fish bowl” harbor.