The Cool Coast Camp — The 1924 KKK Resort on Aransas Bay and the Sawfish Still Painted on Austin Street

There is a 17-foot sawfish painted on the side of a barbershop on Austin Street in downtown Rockport. Most people who drive past it assume it's local color — a nod to the fishing heritage of Aransas Bay. The name painted above it tells a different story. THE COOL COAST CAMP. Six feet wide. Two thousand pounds. Admission free. In 1924, the Ku Klux Klan operated a family resort near Rockport, Texas — and we know this not from local memory or rumor, but from a surviving printed brochure archived at Duke University's Rubenstein Library. "To All the Klans and Klansmen of Texas Greetings," it begins. It promised "a real family recreation under high-class moral conditions." It promised big-game fishing. It promised that the Fiery Cross would guard you at night. This episode follows the brochure, the mural, and the moment in Texas history when this was the establishment — not the fringe. The 1920s Klan claimed an estimated 150,000 Texas members at its 1922 peak. It held a probable majority in the Texas House. It operated openly, advertised nationally, and then lost 90 percent of its membership within 18 months of that peak. The Cool Coast Camp was launched almost exactly at that hinge point — which is likely why it left almost nothing behind except a painted wall. The same bay that once held sawfish large enough to paint life-size on a building no longer holds them at all. The last confirmed sawfish in Texas waters was 1984, in Aransas Bay. This episode is about both things — what the coast displayed on its walls and what it no longer holds in its water.

Available August 17, 2026