Pirates, Presidents & the Lamar Peninsula

The Lamar Peninsula juts into Aransas Bay like a finger pointing at the Gulf. Drive it slowly. There's more history packed into these seven miles than most Texas counties can claim in a lifetime. The 1,000-year-old Big Tree stands at the corner of Twelfth Street in Lamar — a coastal live oak that was already ancient when Spanish explorers first mapped this bay. It survived hurricanes, droughts, and a century of coastal development. Ripley's Believe It or Not featured it, which is exactly the kind of fact this coast specializes in. Irish colonists established the settlement of Lamar in 1838 on a land grant awarded to empresario James Power — the same James Power who crossed the Atlantic, recruited settlers from County Wexford, and watched roughly 150 of them die of cholera in New Orleans before they ever reached Texas. The ones who made it settled this peninsula. El Copano, the colonial port on Copano Bay's northwest shore, was the entry point. Samuel Colt — of Colt revolver fame — held land grants in this area during the Republic of Texas era. The Confederate salt works that Union naval raiders burned to the ground in 1862 sat on this same shoreline. All of it is here, within a 45-minute drive. This episode pairs with the Lamar Peninsula Loop driving tour.

Published July 13, 2026