Aransas County Texas map
28.12° N · 96.97° W · County seat: Rockport · 528 sq mi
More than half of Aransas County is water. Of its 528 square miles, 276 are bay — Copano, Aransas, St. Charles and Mesquite — leaving 252 square miles of peninsula, island and marsh. The dry part is a set of fingers pointing into the Gulf, and the whole county is reached by bridge.
Rockport and Fulton sit on the Live Oak Peninsula between Aransas Bay and Copano Bay. The long dark shape on the seaward side is San José Island; Blackjack Peninsula and the wildlife refuge are at the top of the map.
Where Aransas County is
The county was cut from Refugio County in 1871 and takes its name from Aransas Bay, a name carried down from the Spanish colonial period by way of Aránzazu in the Basque country. It sits on the middle Texas coast with Calhoun County northeast across Mesquite Bay, Nueces County south, San Patricio County southwest and Refugio County northwest. Much of what looks like a border on the map is open water.
Corpus Christi is about 34 miles southwest and Victoria 47 miles north; San Antonio is roughly 129 miles northwest. Aransas County makes up the Rockport micropolitan statistical area on its own.
Towns on the peninsula
| Place | Type | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| Rockport (county seat) | City | 10,085 |
| Fulton | Town | 1,524 |
| Aransas Pass (part) | City, mostly in San Patricio County | 711 |
Rockport and Fulton run together along the shoreline of Aransas Bay and are usually treated as one place. Lamar, on the north shore of Copano Bay, and Holiday Beach and Bayside on the county's inland edge are unincorporated.
Roads and bridges
- SH-35 – the coastal highway and the county's spine, entering from Aransas Pass in the south, running through Rockport and Fulton, then crossing Copano Bay on a long causeway to Lamar and on toward Tivoli and Port Lavaca.
- SH-188 – west from Rockport to Sinton and US-181, the inland route out of the county.
- Loop 70 – the business route through Rockport, following the older shoreline alignment.
- FM-1069 and FM-3036 – the Aransas Pass and Key Allegro side roads.
There is no bridge from Aransas County to San José Island or to Port Aransas; the crossing to Mustang Island is made by the free state ferry from Aransas Pass, in San Patricio County.
Whooping cranes and the wildlife refuge
Aransas National Wildlife Refuge occupies the Blackjack Peninsula in the northern part of the county, with more acreage across the line in Refugio and Calhoun counties. It was set aside in 1937, and it is the wintering ground of the Aransas–Wood Buffalo whooping crane flock, the only wild migratory population of the species left. The birds arrive from northern Canada in late October and leave in April, feeding on blue crab in the salt flats along San Antonio Bay. A 16-mile auto tour loop and an observation tower let visitors see them from a distance without disturbing them.
Goose Island State Park, at the tip of Lamar across Copano Bay, holds the Big Tree — a coastal live oak measured at more than 35 feet in circumference and generally reckoned one of the oldest in Texas. The wind that shapes it shapes the whole county: the oaks along the shore grow leaning inland, pruned flat on the seaward side by salt spray.
Rockport, Fulton and the 2017 storm
Rockport began as a cattle shipping and meat-packing port in the 1860s and turned to fishing, boatbuilding and shrimping. The Fulton Mansion, an 1877 house built by cattleman George Ware Fulton with running water and gas lighting, is a state historic site on the bayfront. The Texas Maritime Museum and a working harbor sit at the foot of the town.
Hurricane Harvey came ashore at Rockport on 25 August 2017 as a Category 4 storm, the first major hurricane to make landfall in Texas since 1961. It destroyed or damaged a large share of the buildings in Rockport and Fulton, and the rebuilding shows in the newer roofs and raised houses along SH-35.