- City:
- Texas City, TX
- Site Type:
- Flood and Erosion Control, Infrastructure and Utilities, Roads, Bridges, and Tunnels
- New Deal Agencies:
- Work Relief Programs, Works Progress Administration (WPA)
- Quality of Information:
- Good
- Marked:
- No
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
Authorized by the River and Harbor Act of 1913, the Texas City Dike was to divert the flow of silt from the Texas City Ship Channel by steering the waters of Galveston Bay out to the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Galveston District constructed the first version of the dike in 1915 using timber pile construction. Dredging material from the Texas City Ship Channel was deposited on top of the timber pile, but the material eventually washed away. The Corps added a rubble-mound formation to the supplement the existing dike in 1931-1932 to stop the erosion.
Around 1937, under project number 65-66-1198, the Works Progress Administration did maintenance and built a roadway on the dike—a feature that paved the way for more tourism.
The dike currently has four boat ramps, ten picnic shelters and one pier. The dike as a whole is the second-busiest boat launch site in the state.
Source notes
Texas City Library: (https://www.texascity-library.org/history/growth/dike.php), accessed March 23, 2018.
Period Photographs from the National Archives and Records Administration digitized by the Historic Sites and Structures Program, Texas State Parks (Texas Parks and Wildlife Department)
(https://www.flickr.com/photos/141324854@N04/26254754915/in/album-72157664518878833/), accessed March 23, 2018.
Site originally submitted by Larry Moore on March 23, 2018.
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Gordon Ray Haire
As a Boy Scout in the mid 1950s, I hiked to the end of the dike. There was no road. There wasn’t even a footpath. Part of the way was granite blocks, part of the way wooden pylons, The end of the dike was overgrown with vegetation; grasses, palmetto and prickly pear cactus.