Bolivar Point

Bolivar Point is where Galveston's harbor was made deep. The North Jetty here is one of twin walls built into the Gulf; work began as an experiment in 1874, Congress funded the major part in 1890, and the finished system of 1898 made Galveston a deep-sea port. Ferries and barges later carried loaded freight cars from the point across Bolivar Roads to the island's wharves. Port Bolivar became a freight terminal for the Santa Fe, whose trains ran from here to High Island until 1942. The Gulf and Interstate Railway went into receivership in 1900.

What the plaque says

Bolivar Point In 1815 Colonel Henry Perry established a military camp here as part of a plan to invade Spanish Texas. In 1816 Galveston-based privateer Louis-Michel de Aury forced shiploads of captured African Slaves to walk from this point to New Orleans along old Indian Trails. Aury is credited with naming the point after South American liberator Simon Bolivar. While commanding a filibuster to win Texas independence, James Long established Fort Las Casas on Bolivar Point in 1820-21. His wife, Jane Herbert (Wilkinson), gave birth to a daughter, Mary James, in December 1821 at the fort. Mary James Long is often referred to as the first Anglo child born in Texas. A lighthouse, erected here by the Federal government in 1852 and later dismantled by Confederate soldiers during the Civil War, was rebuilt after the war. Many area residents sought shelter within the lighthouse during the damaging storms of 1900 and 1915. The Gulf and Interstate Railroad was completed from Beaumont to Bolivar Point in 1896. A boon to peninsula farmers, the railroad was destroyed in the 1900 storm, then rebuilt in 1903. Ferry service, purchased by the Texas Highway Department in 1933, continues to provide free public access to Galveston Island. (1995)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — 4.6 mi
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.
• 1892 Bishop's Palace — 4.7 mi
  Nicholas Clayton's stone house on Broadway for the railroad lawyer Walter Gresham, later home to Galveston's Catholic bishops and one of the most admired Victorian houses in the country.
• The Strand — 4.7 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 5.1 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.

More markers nearby

• Point Bolivar — steps away
• Fort Travis — steps away
• SS Selma — 2.5 mi
• Galveston: Gateway to Texas — 2.5 mi