Site of the Town of Copano
Bayside, Refugio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Named for the Indians who lived here; Important Texas port, 1722-1870; The landing place of many colonists; Winter quarters of the Texas Revolution Army in 1835; PROPOSED TEXT FOR SUPPLEMENTAL PLATE: This marker was moved from its original location on Copano Bay (5 miles northeast of this site) in 1978.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Copano took its name from the Native people of this coast and served as an important Texas port from the early 1700s into the 1870s. Colonists bound for the interior came ashore here, and in 1835 it sheltered the winter quarters of the army of the Texas Revolution. The town is gone now, its marker moved from the original site on Copano Bay in 1978.
Why it matters
Copano was a gateway for colonization and revolution on the Texas coast, linking Indigenous presence, colonial-era commerce, and the fight for Texas independence in one vanished port.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related events
- · Texas Revolution
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Reef Road
Portland, TX
For early settlers of San Patricio County, crossing Corpus Christi Bay to the region's main trading center meant taking the Reef Road — a natural causeway of oyster-shell reefs lying just below the surface, said by local tradition to have been discovered by Indians. Passable only at low tide, it was the shortest and most favored route across the water. The building of the railroad in 1887 and the first causeway in 1915 ended its usefulness, but it remains woven into the county's history.
U.S. Coast Guard on Mustang Island
Port Aransas, TX
To tame the treacherous Aransas Pass, the government established the first Aransas Life Saving Station on Mustang Island in 1878; when the 1919 hurricane destroyed it, successors carried on the work into the modern era. Woodrow Wilson's 1915 merger of the Revenue Cutter and Life Saving services created the U.S. Coast Guard, whose Mustang Island duties expanded from rescue to hunting enemy saboteurs with canine beach patrols in World War II and, later, to escorting military cargo and inspecting vessels in the War on Terror.
Mc Lester Family Cemetery
Rockport, TX
Tucked among hackberry, mesquite, and live oak on Texas's Coastal Bend, this family burying ground dates to the turn of the twentieth century, when Charles H. McLester—an engineer on the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad—and his wife Eliza inherited the land in 1903. The McLesters were among the vegetable farmers of the nearby Sparks Colony, and the first grave, dug in 1909, held their thirteen-year-old son Bennie. Generations of educators, city officials, and veterans followed, and descendants still tend the plot.
Rockport Air Force Station
Fulton, TX
In 1943 wartime need turned 700 acres of Aransas County into a military airfield, leased first to the U.S. Navy and, from 1955, to the Air Force as a coastal radar station. During the tense days of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis the site scanned the skies for approaching aircraft as part of a strengthened American coastal defense. Behind its fences stood operations buildings, barracks, family housing, and even a recreation hall with a bowling alley.