Mills Wharf

Mills Wharf owed its customers to the road at its door, and that crossing of Copano Bay has been rebuilt twice since. The first causeway, a timber one, opened in 1931. A concrete causeway replaced it in 1967, and the old wooden spans stayed on as a fishing pier. The pier closed for good in 2017 after a section fell into the bay, and TxDOT hired a contractor to pull its pilings, a $2.7 million job. A four-lane bridge, contracted in 2011 and finished in 2015, now carries Highway 35 past the wharf site.

What the plaque says

Mills Wharf MILLS WHARF, BUILT BY JOHN HOWARD MILLS IN 1932, WAS A RENOWNED CENTER FOR WATERFOWL HUNTING AND FISHING FROM THE 1930s UNTIL IT WAS SOLD IN 1960. IT CONSISTED OF COTTAGES, A COOK HOUSE, A GUIDE SERVICE OFFICE, A STORE, A TACKLE SHOP, AND A UNIQUE WILDLIFE MUSEUM WITH A FAMOUS DUCK, FEATURED IN "RIPLEY'S BELIEVE IT OR NOT," WHICH HAD AN OYSTER PERMANENTLY ATTACHED TO ITS FOOT. THE NEW "HUG THE COAST" HIGHWAY 35 MADE THE WHARF ACCESSIBLE, THEREBY AIDING THE GROWTH OF THE TOURISM INDUSTRY IN THE AREA. IN 1946, HERBERT AND HARRY MILLS BOUGHT THE WHARF FROM THEIR PARENTS AND EXPANDED THE BUSINESS WITH A UNIQUE SEAPLANE SERVICE TO DROP OFF CUSTOMERS AT REMOTE FISHING SITES. 175 YEARS OF TEXAS INDEPENDENCE * 1836-2011

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Goose Island State Park — 1.4 mi
  A bayside park between St. Charles and Aransas bays, home of the Big Tree, the state champion coastal live oak, thought to be more than a thousand years old.
• Fulton Mansion State Historic Site — 5.8 mi
  A French Second Empire house of 1874-77 on Aransas Bay, paid for with hides and tallow, with gas lights, central heat and hot running water no other house nearby had.
• Aransas National Wildlife Refuge — 17 mi
  Blackjack Peninsula's refuge on San Antonio Bay, winter home of the only wild migrating flock of whooping cranes, which fell to about fifty birds and now numbers over five hundred.
• Port Aransas — 21 mi
  The fishing town at the north end of Mustang Island, reached by a free state ferry that crosses the ship channel day and night, with a university marine lab begun in a one-room shack.

More markers nearby

• Site of the Town of Lamar — 0.8 mi
• John Fagan — 1.2 mi
• Stella Maris Chapel — 1.2 mi
• Site of One of the Homes of James Power — 2.4 mi