Boca Chica is an area on the eastern portion of a subdelta peninsula of Cameron County, at the far south of the US State of Texas along the Gulf Coast. It is bordered by the Brownsville Ship Channel to the north, the Rio Grande and Mexico to the south, and the Gulf of Mexico to the east. The area extends about east of the city of Brownsville. The peninsula is served by Texas State Highway 4—also known as the Boca Chica Highway, or Boca Chica Boulevard within Brownsville city limits—which runs east-west, terminating at the Gulf and Boca Chica Beach.
The Boca Chica area has seen various developments over the course of its history. These include Mexican land grants, Mexican and American ranches, a battlefield of the American Civil War, a 1920s beach resort, and a state park (Boca Chica State Park); additionally, a small settlement named Boca Chica Village existed in the area from 1960 to 2020. In recent years, the area has become more widely known due to being the site of Starbase, a major facility of aerospace company SpaceX for the development, manufacturing and testing of its rockets. Starbase is envisioned to one day serve as the primary launch and recovery facility for SpaceX's Starship launch vehicle.
Boca Chica means "small mouth of the river" in Spanish, as the Rio Grande's flow is modest, and in droughts, the mouth of the river may disappear altogether.
The making of the area of Boca Chica
Transportation across Boca Chica has been an important part of the history of the area. A land transportation route existed across Boca Chica in the 19th century, starting at the Mexican port of Brazos Santiago, north of Boca Chica, and heading inland to the Rio Grande Valley area that would later become Brownsville. The shallow-water sail port at Brazos Santiago was used by sailing ships that used Brazos Santiago Pass to enter the South Bay of Laguna Madre—a shallow, hypersaline, natural bay—from the Gulf to transit goods to the mainland north of the Rio Grande. Historical artifacts of human usage from those eras remained illustrating road use during the Mexican–American War (circa 1846) and railroad use during the American Civil War. Two historical artifacts. Cypress pilings from a circa 1846 floating bridge and the "Palmetto Pilings" from a circa-1865 railroad bridge were both yet extant in 2013. Both are located within of the beach near the eastern terminus of Texas State Highway 4.
In the late 19th century, much of the arable land on the subdelta peninsula of Boca Chica was used for ranching. Historical ranches include Tulosa Ranch, Palmito Ranch, White’s Ranch, and Cobb’s Ranch. No historical Native American usage is known, and consultation with a number of tribes in 2013 identified no verbal record of native use of the area.
In 1904, the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway was completed to Brownsville, which "opened the area to northern farmers who began to come to the area at the turn of the 20th century. They cleared the land, built irrigation systems and roads, and introduced large-scale truck farming and citrus farming. The new farming endeavors began a new period of prosperity around Brownsville."
The availability of cheap land in the area created a strong interest in land speculation. Special trains were dispatched to bring land speculators to the area and by the early 1920s as many as 200 people a day were coming to see the land.
One of the more notable land speculation ventures was the construction of the Del Mar Resort on Boca Chica Beach. Advertised as being on the same latitude as Miami, the resort was built in the 1920s by Colonel Sam Robinson, who moved to the Rio Grande Valley in 1917. The resort had 20 daycabins available for rent, a bathhouse, and a ballroom. It was quite successful resort until 1933, when a hurricane destroyed most of the buildings. The remaining buildings were turned into a base for the US Coast Guard during World War II. As a result of the Great Depression and the hurricane damage, the owners of the property were not able to reopen the resort after the end of the war.
The devastating 1933 hurricane spurred the Works Progress Administration to take part in the dredging and construction of the Port of Brownsville, a venture that the city had been trying to complete since 1928. The port was officially opened in 1936.