The Texas Coast, region by region

The ten stretches of water IronJetty covers, Sabine Pass to the Rio Grande — each with its piers, its granite, the wrecks and reefs it runs to, a dash of history, the year on that water, and the local record book pulled straight from TPWD.

Sabine / Port ArthurTwo granite arms off a Civil War pass, a four-square-mile oyster reef, and a man-made island.Galveston ComplexMiles of granite, the longest man-built fishing pier on earth, and a bay that feeds Houston.Freeport & SurfsideA paved jetty you can walk, a river that was moved on purpose, and Liberty ships on the bottom.Matagorda & SargentA river mouth with granite on both sides, two bays that fish nothing alike, and the only locks in Texas.Port O'ConnorTwo ways to the Gulf - a dredged ship channel and a natural pass - and a drowned town on the bay behind.Rockport & Aransas PassSeagrass, a pass that keeps closing, and 540 whooping cranes wintering behind the bay.Port Aransas & Corpus ChristiThe oldest jetties in Texas, a pier rebuilt six times, and the town that used to be called Tarpon.Baffin Bay & the Upper Laguna MadreA jetty system with the jetties scattered across the bottom and none of them marked.Port MansfieldA village of a hundred-odd people holding one of the most celebrated trout fisheries in America.South Padre & Port IsabelThe snook end of Texas: Brazos Santiago, a lighthouse, a causeway that fell, and the Texas Clipper.

Coast-wide directories

Every pier48 piers, dikes and platforms with what is actually published about themThe jetties & passes20 structures, Corps construction records, what the rocks holdReefs, wrecks & structure44 sites — Liberty ships, the Texas Clipper, the Kraken, 1554 plate fleet, SelmaJellyfish & stingersMan o’ war to box jellies, stingrays, Vibrio, rips — and first aid that holds upThe Record Book, in detailAll 237 state records, every bay’s book, the stories, how to certifySpots libraryNamed spots with live odds, region by region

How this was built

Every figure on these pages was researched against a named source in September 2026 and the source is printed under it. Where a pier length, a jetty date or a reef depth has no published figure, the page says so instead of guessing — the same rule we apply to a captain’s license. Record tables are TPWD’s own, pulled 2026-09-04. Nothing here states a bag or size limit; those live on the season pages and are re-audited every September against the Outdoor Annual.