Bolivar Peninsula’s Island

For those seeking a remote vacation spot in the Gulf Coast area – where you can enjoy experiencing isolation in a beautiful area – a lesser-known beach town beckons. Here is how to find it, why it developed the way it did, why it means what it does to me, and why it will stay the same until the ocean swallows it up:

I first found out about High Island, TX and its history after visiting nearby Crystal Beach with a significant other and wondering what more-isolated beach lay northeast. For the unfamiliar, Crystal Beach/Port Bolivar and its surrounding cities lie across the ship channel dividing Galveston Island, south of Houston, and the Bolivar Peninsula to the north. You can reach the peninsula from Houston either by traveling east on Interstate 10 and south on TX Highway 124 at Winnie, TX or by taking the ferry from Galveston to Port Bolivar.

The ferry to Bolivar peninsula has been in service since 1898 when even railcars were ferried across the bay. The ferry takes you from Galveston’s East Beach area to Port Bolivar’s Highway 87, near old Fort Travis. This dated military facility is a relic of how rich a history this poorly-located spot of land has.

A Spanish explorer built an earthen levee there to protect his men from the Kawakawa Indians of the South Texas coast. Dr. James Long and his wife Jane, accompanied by 300 troops there to free Texas from Spain, defended the fort during the war for Texas Independence. Jane eventually gave birth to the first person of English descent in Texas. The confederates held the fort in the 1860s and the fort was expanded during WWII to keep watch over the entrance port to Houston. After the war, the fort was decommissioned into a sort of park and even served as a community hurricane shelter in the 1960s.

Highway 87 winds you closer to the beach as it runs northeast to the mainland, where beach house developments line the choicest spots, the sand is regularly cleaned, and dunes are maintained by bulldozing a mix of sand and seaweed against the existing dunes. However, the occasional powerful hurricane will clean Crystal Beach of everything, including houses.

Many from the greater Houston area will choose Crystal Beach over Galveston to visit for a few primary reasons: fireworks are allowed, driving on the beach is allowed, contained campfires (no bonfires) on the beach are allowed, and the public beaches are all free of charge (a note about that). BBC’s Stephen Fry delighted in the driving liberty when filming his Stephen Fry across America. Surf fishing is more common here, as the beach is less crowded than Galveston and allows for some buffer zones between fishing lines.

The highway moves past Crystal Beach until you cross over what’s called Rollover Pass, an artificial channel popular with fishermen, dug from the Gulf of Mexico through the peninsula to Rollover Bay. Recent controversy arose when there was talk of closing the Pass in an effort to desalinize Rollover Bay and stop the expensive dredging of coastal sand that pours into the Bay because of Rollover Pass. Technically, Rollover Pass makes Bolivar Peninsula into an Island.

The first time I traveled all the way out to High Island I was travelling alone and seeking solace. Myself a cross-country runner, I took a therapeutic jog down the desolate beach one fine, rainy, misty, foggy afternoon and evening. I ran north along the beach until I couldn’t see civilization anywhere around me, where the Hwy. 124 bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway, visible far from High Island, was completely out of site.

At that point, I stopped my mp3 player (I sweat too much to afford to run with an IPod).

I took out my earbuds and put them away. I took a look around.

The mist of the rain was all around me, blown up by the sea winds, scattering the soft blue dusk light in all directions. When I looked out onto the water, the similar blue hues of the sky and ocean made it difficult to discern where the two separated. When I looked back inland, the coastal marshes stretched out into a misty blur of green, occupied by the sounds of hundreds of birds nesting in low-lying bushes. That level of sublime solitude is truly unique. We can all attempt to clear our heads of distractions in our busy daily lives, but actually removing all distracting stimuli offers a solace that’s unmatched. If I close my eyes for a little bit, I can still remember how the feeling tasted.

I left that day knowing this was a special place, a sort of monk’s cave offering a path to some kind of peace.

My second trip was at the dark of night. Occasional nights of tense insomnia creep into my routine – when you’re unwillingly awake, it helps to make those twilight hours productive.

I set out on a meditative journey on the road, filling my car with music, thoughts, and a jacket. Again, I wanted to shut off all unwelcome distractions to orient myself in the direction I needed to be heading – a direction that my state of mind at that time hid.

The beach was empty, it seemed. I pulled up after the hour and a half drive to the unofficial beach entrance, parked, and prepared myself for a little walk. Behind me, a large white pickup truck’s lights turned on. Initial paranoia faded after their engine idled for about a minute then finally pulled away.

Now there were no distractions. Neck tilted, I took in the ancient lightshow going on above my head. The view of the stars is fantastic at High Island. With clear cloud cover, comfort can be found even in the faint glow of High Island’s city center and traveling tankers flickering like distant torches at sea. The foamy crashing of waves was white noise I welcomed. I walked, finding that same ease in introspection and listening from before.

I left, deciding to head to the ferry instead of toward I-10 for my return to Houston. The reason that both highways 87 and 124 only end at High Island, rather than pass through it, is because the southeast TX coast is retreating.

The stretch of Highway 87 between Port Arthur and High Island has been closed continuously since 1990 after a hurricane left it in a state of complete disrepair. Now, when you hit the end of the road at High Island, you drive onto a crushed gravel roadway that eventually leads you to crumbling remnants of the old road bed – unmaintained, not-driven, unsettled for over 20 miles. Fortunately, most of it is a wildlife preserve. The further in you go, the less evidence you find of any road or accompanying civilization

I know this highway closure was what made it the sparsely populated beach I was looking for. I had to learn more about the city, so I started looking.

High Island is a rise in elevation resulting from what’s called a salt dome –ancient salt pushing its way up the earth’s crust and out through the surface, bringing minerals and petrochemicals up with it. According to some legends, the pirate Jean Laffite would have parties in the grove of oak trees on the hill. Many speculate that he stashed treasure there too.

The discovery of mineral water in the area - at the height of the “healing mineral springs” craze in America - played an important role in developing the community. A railroad running to High Island offered excursions to the community so that people could visit the springs and the beach. High Island had a large ornate hotel, facing toward the Gulf and appropriately called The Seaview, built in 1895.

There was a mule-drawn rail car to take guests to and from the beach several times a day. The Seaview survived the 1900 hurricane that devastated Galveston Island, remained an active destination for many years, but was abandoned during WWII and eventually burned in 1947.

The city today rises far above the surrounding marshes, providing the only favorable conditions for trees and shrubs for miles around. This makes it a vital home to birds migrating from Central and South America for summer breeding. The variety of birds nesting in High Island is almost unmatched.

During a spring northerly storm on the coast, what’s called a “fall out” occurs at High Island. Migrating birds encountering strong head winds arrive at High Island utterly exhausted and in such numbers that almost every tree and open space on the Island is covered with birds. They are so exhausted, most of the time you can walk directly up to the bird. Of course, don’t touch the bird.

Owen Wilson was in a comedy that took him to High Island for such an event, recently.

The Island’s elevation, 45 feet above sea level, makes it the highest geographic point on the Gulf of Mexico from Alabama to the Yucatan peninsula. When a hurricane’s storm surge advances on the coast, High Island actually becomes  an island.

(Smiley N. Pool)

My third trip to High Island was to live out dream I had – a sunrise beach run. I left Houston around 4 a.m. one morning to make it out there in time.

My trip there, a groggy blur of mostly pickup trucks and 18-wheelers on the trek there, was broken by growing light splitting apart the fog clouds on the coastal grazing fields as I approached the city from I-10, heading south on Highway 124.

The tall bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway materialized in front of me through the fog. Climbing the peak of the bridge my window fogged up – I thought it was from the inside until I moved my windshield wipers and saw something amazing.

At the top of the bridge, with the best view, I saw that from that height the marsh was invisible. I parked at the top to take it in – it was one of the few incredibly beautiful things I’ve seen that brought a tear to my eye.

The clouds of fog made every spot of ground invisible making it look like I was driving a bridge on Heaven’s highway, where power lines weren’t founded in dirt but in clouds. A lush green island appeared before me in the midst of this ocean of clouds – High Island’s elevation breaking through the cloud cover. The creeping dawn light made the sky a melt-worthy hue of pink.

A car honked as it drove past me and I quickly hopped back in my car and headed south – stopping at the top of the bridge is illegal, I do not advise you to do it.

In a short time I was on the beach and ready to run.

It was another fulfilling experience – but being the first sunny time I had visited the beach, I discovered another interesting migrating group – nudists.

(Self governance – “NO CLOTHES. NO KIDS”)

A few miles down the beach I start to get to the point where it’s much harder to drive on the beach. Hidden behind dunes of sand I found a gathering of cars and my imagination immediately painted stories of drug traffickers who might use the isolated beach the way pirates were reputed to, but my paranoia turned to surprise when I saw some of the most leathery skin I’d ever seen.

Apparently, the tedious terrain of this meetup spot lies right across the Galveston County border in which High Island lies, and it would involve a huge amount of effort for the neighboring Jefferson County Sheriff’s to patrol the spot.

A Suesslike assortment of different, shapes, sizes and shades of human presented itself before me. There’s groups of nudists as well as the occasional creepy loaner that heads out there to bear all, but it is still a technically illegal nude beach. Law enforcement rarely makes an appearance if there are no complaints.

While passing the group of mostly aged charcuterie gave me an initial shock, passing sandy disheveled campsites with zipped tents hiding unseen faces stirring inside made me more cautious.

I remembered approaching the figure of a guy standing outside of his car and tent. He must have seen me from a distance, because by the time I reached his campsite he zipped himself up and out of site. I turned around at that point to start jogging back to my car.

I’ve continued my returns to High Island, and expect I will intermittently. As I write this, I’m thinking about planning another trip.

I’ve returned with dates - hoping that if I met someone who could enjoy outdoors and see beach as more than just a giant pool where you can ogle at some skin, maybe they were a soul I’d want to swim around in.

On one trip, what I thought was driftwood from a distance revealed itself as a black-stained deceased dolphin on approach. On another trip, I realized how easy it was to find some sort of half-buried hurricane debris, usually with some digging. In my mind, I already didn’t hold High Island to any ideal standard of some tropical paradise, but my repeated visits helped me see that the beach’s isolation meant that it would inevitably have a dark underbelly of secrets too.

Dean Corll, the “candyman” killer of Houston, used a spot just inland of Highway 87 as a site to bury his victims. It wasn’t until accomplice Elmer Wayne Henley killed Corrll that Henley led authorities to Corrll’s known dump sites.

(Henley with fellow accomplice David Brooks guiding state authorities, Corbis)

Seemingly since then, “undesirables” have been drawn magnetically to the area, including a man whose recent kidnapping of a Virginia college student started a national manhunt. His creepy glance at a beachgoer led to his arrest:

It’s not uncommon to see random tents on the barren beaches, nor for sheriff’s deputies to encounter people who don’t want to identify themselves, Trochesset said. “We get lots of weird folks,” Rob Faupel, 45, an air conditioning technician, said. “It seems like a good place to seek refuge. It’s kind of remote.” 

As far as the campers, beach maintenance crew member Cliff Reichel said, “We don’t bother them unless they flat out are doing something wrong.” Reichel, 62, of Galveston, recalled one woman who was noteworthy because she had puppets on stakes outside her tent. She stayed for five months, then abruptly left. “You get people who stay a month at a time, a week at a time,” his partner, Jacob Huffstetler, 25, of nearby High Island, added. “We get some strange ones that come through here. Some have stayed. It’s like a magnet”, said 54-year-old Becky Sosa

This dark underbelly hasn't taken the magic away from the area for me. I’m not seeking a family vacation destination. I’m seeking an adult’s retreat.

High Island has offered me great solitude. I’ve even camped a night alone out by the beach, mediating, running, reading and writing – I recommend everyone camps alone at least once in their lives.

While it offers me this peace, the fact that the beach will never be favorable to long-term permanent habitation, hurricane-ridden as it is, serves as a cautionary metaphor for me:

Such isolated retreats of the mind are not homes - they are not a place you want to live in and the reasons are usually clear.

Isolated retreats are migration camps, a place to visit, a bridge to the next permanent spot, the next safer ground. They are limited islands, not untapped wells of worth, purpose, and self-meaning. Obligatory cliché: no man is an island. Very few birds nest permanently in High Island.

Here’s some pictures from my solo camping trip, if you visit, please share your experiences &/or pictures with me.

A glob of Uranus' seed

A Great Blue