Fort Travis Guards the Tip of Bolivar With Old Gun Batteries and Picnic Tables

Ride the ferry to the Bolivar side and bear west to land's end, and you hit Fort Travis Seashore Park at 800 Anderson Avenue in Port Bolivar. The county runs it now as a day park and overnight stop, with covered picnic pavilions, cabanas, a camping area, wetland overlooks, and good fishing off the rocky shoreline where the bay meets the Gulf.

The name carries weight. This was the first fort the Republic of Texas built, in 1836, named for William B. Travis of the Alamo, set here to guard the entrance to Galveston harbor. The concrete you see today went up under the U.S. Army between 1898 and the 1940s — a ring of gun batteries, including Battery Kimble, whose twelve-inch guns could reach ships seventeen miles out to sea. Those squat emplacements still sit in the grass, and kids climb them like a playground.

The park came into public hands in 1976 with help from the Moody Foundation. It's an easy, breezy stop if you're already on Bolivar: history, a picnic, and a fishing line in the water without committing to a full beach day.