Rockport Air Force Station

The plaque gives the lease and the missile-crisis watch; the station's place in the air-defense chain is the rest. It was site TM-191, home from summer 1958 to the 813th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, which steered interceptors toward unknown aircraft with an FPS-3 search radar and an FPS-6 height-finder. Unattended gap-filler radars at Riviera, Palacios and Delmita watched the low approaches. Rockport was a manual Phase III site never slated for the SAGE computer network, which made it an early cut: the squadron was inactivated on August 1, 1963.

What the plaque says

Rockport Air Force Station On April 22, 1943, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) and Aransas County agreed to build an airport for military purpose and public use. A total of 700 acres was purchased and leased to the U.S. Navy until March 9, 1948, when it reverted to the county. In 1955, the county leased part of the property to the U.S. Air Force as a radar facility. The site was especially active during the Cuban Missile Crisis as an aircraft detection and monitoring site when it was necessary to strengthen the American coastal defense. The secure facility included several operations buildings, officers' barracks, family housing, dining hall and recreational hall with a bowling alley. (2016)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fulton Mansion State Historic Site — 2.5 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.
• Goose Island State Park — 4.5 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.
• Port Aransas — 18 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.
• Aransas National Wildlife Refuge — 21 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.

More markers nearby

• Aransas County Airport — 0.2 mi
• Site of One of the Homes of James Power — 1.4 mi
• Fulton Volunteer Fire Department — 1.9 mi
• Fulton Community Church — 2.0 mi