How Aransas County Grew: From Cattle Packeries to Shrimping

Long before Europeans arrived, the Aransas coast was home to Indigenous peoples. Karankawa groups lived along these bays for thousands of years. Spanish explorers sailed the area in the early 1500s. They built a small fort called Aránzazu on Live Oak Point. In 1828, James Power and James Hewetson got a land grant to settle Irish and Mexican colonists here.

Rockport's modern start came just after the Civil War. In 1865, William S. Hall built the first cattle packeries in the area. Workers processed and shipped beef by sea. The industry grew fast. The Coleman-Fulton Pasture Company ended up controlling about 167,000 acres of coastal rangeland. On September 18, 1871, the Texas legislature created Aransas County from Refugio County. Rockport became the county seat. Architect J. Riely Gordon designed a courthouse there in 1889.

Corpus Christi became the main regional port in the 1890s. Rockport then branched out. Commercial fishing picked up around the turn of the century. By the 1930s, shrimping had become a major industry. By 1950, the area was producing tens of millions of pounds of shrimp each year. Oil was found in the county in 1936. Today the economy mixes tourism, fishing, oil and gas, and coastal recreation.