Padre Island National Seashore ⓘ

The first European to explore this area was Captain Alonso Alvarez de Pineda, who was commissioned by the Spanish Governor of Jamaica. In 1519, they left to explore the coast with four ships and 270 men in hopes of finding a water passage to the Orient. De Pineda mapped the entire coast of the Gulf of America from Florida to Vera Cruz (in present-day Mexico), including what was then known as "la Isla Blanca" (the White Island), which later became known as Padre Island. Legend claims he also discovered a small bay on June 24, 1519, which he named for the celebrated day of the Catholic feast of Corpus Christi. After his voyage of exploration, de Pineda went on to become a conquistador and eventually mayor of Peru, where he died in 1534. De Pineda is known only to have passed through the area, though he probably saw the island from off-shore. There is no record of de Pineda having set foot on Padre Island.

The next European who passed through the area was Cabeza de Vaca, who was part of an unsuccessful exploratory expedition to what is now Florida in 1527. After Cabeza de Vaca and much of his company were marooned, he and several companions tried to return to Vera Cruz by sailing around the Gulf of America in makeshift boats. Unfortunately, they were caught by a storm and shipwrecked somewhere near present-day Galveston.

Cabeza de Vaca and the few of his companions eventually became the slaves of the local indiginous peoples, with whom they had spent their first winter. Fortunately, the medical skills of Cabeza de Vaca were valuable to the natives and he was able to establish himself as a merchant between the two groups. As time progressed, Cabeza de Vaca lived and traveled with several native peoples along the coast and eventually made his way to the west coast, where he rejoined the Spanish who had been living in what is now California.

Although the exact route of Cabeza de Vaca's journey is unknown, based on clues in his writings in later years, it is believed that he passed through the vicinity of Padre Island. Like de Pineda, there is no evidence that he ever actually set foot on the island, though it is possible that he did.

In 1543, the remnants of Hernando de Soto's expedition that marched from Florida into what is now the American south came down the Mississippi to the Gulf under the leadership of Luis Moscoso (de Soto having died of fever a few weeks before). There they built crude boats with sails made from animal skins and sailed down the coast to Vera Cruz. They are known to have come ashore at several points along the way, and the descriptions of several of those locations are very similar to the terrain of Padre Island. Nothing explicitly states that they were on Padre Island, but it is quite probable that they did land on the island at least once.

The first documented visit by Europeans was in 1554 when three ships were blown off course by a storm and shipwrecked near the present-day Mansfield Channel. The ships (the San Esteban, the Santa Maria de Yciar, and the Espiritu Santo) had been carrying colonists, cargo, and treasure from Vera Cruz to Spain. Of the approximately 300 passengers and crew onboard, thirty are believed to have sailed one of the ship's boats back to Vera Cruz under the command of Francisco del Huerto. They were to report the wrecks and begin rescue and salvage operations; however, those left at the wreck site were not so lucky. A chance meeting with local natives, which began peacefully, turned into a battle. The remaining survivors then began to walk back to Vera Cruz. Only two are known to have survived the trek, and the rest were either killed by native peoples or died from thirst or starvation.

A salvage crew traveled from Vera Cruz to recover the gold and silver that had been lost in the wreck. They recovered most of the treasure and what little remained has probably been collected by treasure hunters and archaeologists since then. Unlike the survivors of the wrecks, the salvage crews did not encounter any hostile natives.

The salvage crew was headed by Garcia de Escalante Alvarado, and salvage operations lasted from July 23 to September 12. Alvarado's arrival was preceded by Angel de Villafane, who arrived in June with a small unit of soldiers to protect the site of the wreck from looters from the (nearest) villages of Panuco and Tampico. Villafane stayed on the island until the end of operations and ultimately returned to New Spain with Alvarado.

At the wreck site, Alvarado and Villafane found that only the superstructure of the San Esteban was visible. The Santa Maria de Yciar and Espiritu Santo were completely submerged and had to be located by dragging a chain. At the end of the operations, Alvarado recorded 29,075 pounds of silver and 22,000 pesos (in gold and silver, with one peso equaling about one ounce in weight) recovered. Also found were other articles, including clothing, utensils, cargo, and other items.

In 1558, the Spanish crown commissioned a man named Martin Lavezares to take a small fleet and scout the Gulf coast between Vera Cruz and Florida, in order to establish colonies and outposts to protect Spanish interests in the region. The first stop he made was on the Texas coast at the latitude of present-day Kingsville, Texas. This is the same latitude as present-day Malaquite Beach. Lavazares did not attempt to establish a settlement here, so the stop may have been simply to explore the island or to search for fresh water or other supplies.

Over the next 200 years, few people are known to have passed through the Padre Island area. Those that are recorded were mostly Spanish ships searching for the ill-fated Fort St. Louis, established at Matagorda Bay by the French explorer Robert Cavalier Sieur de La Salle in February, 1685. At least two of these expeditions recorded descriptions of Padre Island in their logbooks as they progressed along the coast.

The first of these was led by Martin de Rivas and Pedro de Iriarte, who set sail from Vera Cruz on Christmas, 1686. In June of 1687, when Rivas and Iriarte were overdue to return, Spain sent two more ships under Captains Don Andres del Pez and Luis Gomez Raposo to search for the settlement. Based on the latitudes recorded in their logbooks, both expeditions are known to describe Padre Island. They described the island as low-lying and marshy, or subject to flooding, with dunes, tall-grass, and few, if any, trees.

Four expeditions for the La Salle colony were mounted by land from 1686-1689 and led by Alonso de Leon. De Leon marched up the coast from the Rio Grande to the Baffin Bay area on his second expedition and may have been on Padre Island, but this is only supposition. He found one survivor of La Salle's colony (Jean Jarry) on his third expedition, and finally found the remains of the colony at Matagorda Bay on his fourth.

The next documented visit was by Spanish troops and their Indian guides under the leadership of Diego Ortiz Parrilla in 1766. The Spanish government had heard that the English were trying to establish a settlement somewhere within the coastal bend area and sent Ortiz Parilla to scout the area for English settlements and to map it. Although the Colonel found no English settlers, he did draw up a map of the area which survives today and which shows the locations of several native bands living on the island, three channels breaking up the island into four smaller islands, and the location of several English shipwrecks on or near the island. At the time, the island was known as "Isla Corpus Christi", but afterwards it became known as "Isla de San Carlos de los Malaguitas" because of the Malaquite Indian settlements found in the southern half.

By 1766, the area between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande had been already been designated as the Spanish province of Nuevo Santander. From that point on, settlers gradually replaced explorers in the area that was later to become south Texas.

The first European settlement on the island was established around 1804, when Padre Jose Nicolas Balli founded a ranch named Santa Cruz de Buena Vista. This ranch was located about 26 miles north of the Padre Island's southernmost tip.

Nicolas Balli was born around 1768 and came from a wealthy family in the town of Reynosa, 70 miles from the mouth of the Rio Grande in what is now Mexico. His brother was the captain and chief justice of Reynosa, just as his grandfather had been. He likewise owned large tracts of land in the Rio Grande valley. Nicolas chose a different career path and decided to become a priest. He studied at the University of Salamanca, Spain, and was ordained a lay priest in 1790-91. However, his duties did not require a vow of poverty. Like his brother and grandfather, Nicolas also owned a large area of land. He apparently decided to increase his holdings, and sometime between 1800 and 1805, he applied to the Spanish crown for a land grant on the "Isla de Corpus Christi," the name the island acquired after the naming of Corpus Christi Bay in 1766. Previously, it had been known as "Isla Blanca" or "La Isla de los Malaquittas."

Padre Balli owned the island jointly with his nephew, Juan Jose Balli; Padre Balli owned the southern half of the island and Juan Jose owned the northern half. In addition to his island holdings, Padre Balli also owned large tracts of land in the Rio Grande River Valley and in the present-day border towns of Reynosa and Matamoros.

The actual ranch structures were probably basic, thatched huts made of willow laths. Little is known of the ranch operations, but the stock probably grazed freely throughout the island, and were probably only collected once per year. It was not a small operation. However, in 1811, Padre Balli stated in his will that he owned 1,000 head of cattle.

According to the land grant from Spain in 1804, Padre Balli had to reapply for it to the Mexican government, after Mexico won its independence in 1821. Along with having his land grant confirmed, the property had to be surveyed in 1828. The survey report included this description: "The land was characterized by high sand dunes, some of which were covered with grass. In addition, one found a great number of willows, oleanders, short oaks, plenty of herbs known as anise, and many fresh water lakes or pools covered with reeds."

After Padre Balli's death later that year, Juan Jose chose his brother-in-law, Raphael Solis, to take formal possession of Nicolas' share of the island. In 1830, Juan Jose sold his (northern) half and one-seventh of the southern half of the property to Santiago Morales, who kept it until 1845, when he sold it to Jose Maria Tovar. Except for 7,500 acres, all of the southern half was eventually sold off by the seven heirs of Nicolas, until it came into possession by Nicolas Grisante.

No one knows who the first native Americans to set foot on Padre Island were. By best estimates, the first people to inhabit the area now known as South Texas arrived around 10,000 B.C. The best estimate for the age of the island however, is 3,000 to 5,000 years, meaning the island formed sometime around 3,000 B.C. at the earliest. Recent analysis of native American points (i.e. arrowheads, spear points, knife blades, etc.) found on the island indicates the island has probably been visited, if not inhabited, by native Americans since its formation.

The peoples who most recently inhabited the coast of South Texas were the Coahuiltecans and the Karankawas . Both were groups of interrelated nomadic hunter-gatherer bands that roamed the coast and inland for some distance.

In general, the Karankawa ranged within the area between Corpus Christi Bay and Galveston and the Coahuiltecans generally ranged within the area from Corpus Christi Bay south into Mexico. However, please note that these areas are only broad approximations. Both peoples often wore little, if any, clothing and usually decorated themselves with tattoos and body piercings. The bands, usually consisting of a single family, were related linguistically and culturally, but otherwise probably had few ties. Each band wandered the country foraging for food on its own and probably seldom came together with other bands of its tribe, except by accidental meeting. Bands usually moved from place to place depending upon where they knew they could find food. Both peoples lived off deer, small game, rodents, and even insects, but their main food sources were probably plants such as prickly pear cactus, mesquite beans, and pecan. Bands from both the Coahuiltecans and Karankawa would sometimes come out to Padre Island to live off the game, fish, and abundant shellfish. Describing the Coahuiltecans and Karankawas is difficult, because customs could vary widely between bands of what we consider the same people.

Very little is known about the Coahuiltecans and the name of the group is a generalization. "Coahuiltecan" is a name used by archeologists to refer to the various bands of people that wandered in an area between present-day San Antonio and northern Mexico. The Spanish who colonized the area left few records of the Coahuiltecan people or their language or languages. It is probably best to say that the bands of the Coahuiltecan were probably related by language. Some bands of the Coahuiltecans were known to number into the hundreds. The Coahuiltecans usually built circular huts of a wooden framework, such as willow, and covered it with animal skins or matting. They would hunt with bow and arrow, but usually kept a club nearby for self defense.

One of the Coahuiltecan bands was known as the Malaquites (often seen on Spanish maps as Malaquitas or Malaquittas or even Malaguittas) and is the band for whom the Malaquite beach section of the National Seashore is named. A map drawn by Colonel Diego Ortiz Parrilla, who scouted the island for Spain in 1766, shows several Malaquite settlements on the southern end of the island while a Karankawa settlement and two other bands are noted on the northern end.

More is known of the Karankawa, who existed as a people in Texas until about 1850. The Karankawas lived in the same nomadic lifestyle as the Coahuiltecans, living in small bands, hunting with bow and arrow, eating whatever was available, and living in huts made of a simple wooden framework covered by skins or mats. Because the Karankawas were mainly a coastal people, they often traveled by dugout canoe. The Karankawas were noted for being tall (between 6'-7'), excellent archers, and ferocious in appearance. They also a somewhat undeserved reputation as cannibals, based on a religious ceremony taking place after a victorious battle, in which an enemy captive was at least partially consumed. Otherwise, the Karankawas were apparently as repulsed by the idea of eating other humans as modern people are. The Karankawa never adapted to the new ways of the European settlers as well as many other peoples did. Their population was decimated by intermittent warfare with them and by the new diseases which had been introduced.

After the dissolution of the Balli estate, the island passed through many hands. For most of the island's post-settlement history, very few people lived on the island and the island was used almost solely as open rangeland, although a meat packery to process hides and tallow did exist at Corpus Christi Pass from at least 1870 to 1874. This was followed by a short-lived cannery. During this time, much of the island was owned by Nicolas Grisante, who had purchased it from Padre Balli's heirs. Portions of Jose Maria Tovar's portion of the island's north was gradually sold off to prominent Corpus Christi citizens such as John McCampbell and Stanley Welch.

What we know of the island's population during this time comes from local accounts, reports of people who were shipwrecked on the island, or on the rare occasions that a military reconnaissance party scouted the island for a route to the Rio Grande Valley. From those sources, it is known that most inhabitants were ranchers or cowhands or hermits.

Mention of hermits being found on the island crops up periodically in the records. Little is known of them, although it appears that often they survived by being "wreckers", men who salvaged wrecked ships run aground or beach combed and either sold the spoils or used them to build their homes. Sometimes a wrecker was noted as deliberately luring ships to their doom at night by hanging a lantern from a donkey or horse and walking the animal down the beach. The crew of a ship would spot the light and, thinking it was another ship that had found a safe passage, head for it.

The historical records also note at least a few settlements in the island's interior, but usually inhabitants collected near the southern or northern tips. One settlement is said to have existed prior to the Civil War about sixty-five miles from the northern end on the Laguna shore. During the Civil War Union soldiers (probably ashore scouting for cattle to use as fresh meat) reportedly visited the "Curry settlement" on the Laguna Madre about twenty miles south from Corpus Christi Pass. The Curry settlement was named for one of its inhabitants, Carrey Curry, who raised cattle and was a Baptist minister. Another settlement is said to have existed at "Murdock's Landing" on the Laguna Madre thirty miles south of Corpus Christi Pass.

Perhaps one of the more notable people who lived on the island in its early days was John Singer, brother to the famous sewing machine manufacturer. He was captain of a vessel named the Alice Sadell, which wrecked on the island in 1847. Instead of hurrying to leave the island however, Mr. Singer bought one of the seven original divisions set up by Padre Balli for his heirs and set up a ranch across from Port Isabel and established a family consisting of a wife and six children. He made his living by ranching, wrecking, and selling vegetables he had grown. John Singer might have stayed on the island for the rest of his life but for the Civil War. Because his ranch was located near the strategic Brazos Santiago pass and because he was known to have northern sympathies and ties, he was forced off the island in 1861. He moved to Flour Bluff on the mainland, just across the Laguna Madre at the the island's northern tip. There his wife passed away in 1866. Then he sold his Padre Island holdings to Jay Cooke and moved to New Orleans. Rumors have persisted throughout the years that Singer buried as much as $80,000 before leaving the island, but no one has ever found his legendary treasure.

In the 1870's Richard King and Mifflin Kennedy acquired giant ranches between Corpus Christi and Brownsville. As they fenced off their territories with barbed wire the era of open range cattle ranching ended forcing many smaller landowners out of business. One of these was Patrick Dunn. Faced with either moving west or going out of business he decided to move east instead and set up his cattle operations on the island. By the 1940's Patrick Dunn owned most of the island. During the 1960's the National Park Service bought the Dunn Ranch in order to establish Padre Island National Seashore.

When Colonel Sam Robertson bought out Pat Dunn's interests (except for grazing and mineral rights) on the island, he envisioned developing Padre Island into the Miami Beach of the Texas coast. To that end he developed several projects to bring people to the island and which still exist, although not in their original form.

In 1927 Colonel Robertson built the first causeway from the island's northern end to Flour Bluff on the mainland. He named it the Don Patricio causeway in honor of Patrick Dunn. The construction was very simple: four wooden troughs supported by a trestle. The troughs were spaced so that a standard automobile could place it tires in them and drive across. One pair of troughs was for eastbound traffic and one was for westbound. In the first month of its operation, 1,800 cars used the causeway and 2,500 used it the second month. After that use dropped.

Robertson also stationed ferries at Port Aransas and built a bridge over Corpus Christi Pass. At the south end of the island he stationed another ferry. At the same time he began developing accommodations for the influx of tourists he anticipated. He built a hotel and four houses on the southernmost 45 miles of the island. He built a fifth house on the northern end about 3.5 miles south of the causeway.

By 1930, however, it was apparent that Robertson's plan was failing the the tourist boom did not develop. After the 1929 depression, Robertson was unable to make his payments and he sold his interests on the island to two brothers from Kansas City named Albert and Frank Jones, instead of allowing the land to revert to the Dunn family per his original agreement with the family.

The Jones brothers founded a company called the Ocean Beach Drive Corporation to continue Robertson's development, but actually did little or nothing. In 1933 a hurricane blew away most of Robertson's structures including the Don Patricio causeway. The brothers restored nothing and the island reverted to being primarily grazing land and a spot for fishermen.

In 1936 a bill was introduced into the Texas legislature to develop Padre Island into a state and it received wide support from Corpus Christi and many other communities. The legislature passed the bill and allotted $400,000 to purchase land. However, Governor Jim Allred vetoed the bill saying that true ownership of the land had not yet been determined and that it was possible that the state already owned a large portion of Padre Island. This was not settled until 1945 in State of Texas vs. Balli et al. in which the Texas Supreme Court determined that the original land grant to Padre Balli covered the entire island and not just 50, 912 acres as the state had maintained.

From 1933 to 1950 there was very little concrete development of Padre Island as a tourist destination. A few plans were dreamed up, but none came to fruition. The only real recreational development on the northern end came about in 1949, when 1,000 acres of land were set aside to establish a Nueces County Park. Development was also minimal on the southern end, where around the same time small areas were set aside for Isla Blanca and Andy Bowie county parks. The greatest concrete changes on the island during this time were the stationing of coast guard troops along the shoreline during the Second World War, development of a navy bombing range in the northern reaches (from the World War to 1960), and the beginning of drilling for oil and natural gas.

During this time the idea started to take shape of developing the island into something other than a resort area. A few people started to discuss preserving the island's natural state and using it for outdoor recreation. In retrospect, this growing dialog had an enormous impact on the island's future and influenced all the development that was to home. It was during the 1940's though that the idea to establish a national park on the island began to form among a few Texans who wanted to preserve the island's unaltered environment. Scientists and nature enthusiasts had long recognized the island's value as an unaltered barrier island, which was becoming increasingly scarce. Professional and amateur ornithologists had a longstanding interest in the island because of the thousands of annual migrants and the abundant rookeries. Since the 1930's the National Audubon Society had taken a special interest in two prominent Laguna Madre rookeries known as the Bird Islands. When plans were raised in the 1940's to build the Intracoastal Waterway and the Queen Isabella causeway on South Padre Island, the National Audubon Society protested fearing their development would harm the environment. When the waterway and causeway were finally built, no harm was done to the environment, but interest in preserving the island for its environment had been stimulated.

All the plans and dialogs began to take concrete form in the 1950's. The Queen Isabella Causeway to South Padre Island was completed in 1954, allowing easier access to the southern end of the island. A private channel was cut through the island in the present location of the Mansfield Channel in September, 1957, but its jetties were severely damaged by a hurricane in November of that year. It was rebuilt by the Corps of Engineers in 1962.

In 1958, Senator Ralph Yarborough introduced a bill into congress to establish a national seashore on Padre Island with hearings on the proposal beginning in 1959. The final bill took into account the variety of interests connected with the island (oil and gas industry, environmentalists, developers, and private citizens) and was signed by President John F. Kennedy on September 28, 1962.

Pilot training began at the new Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi in March, 1941 and the beginning of World War II accelerated it. By the end of 1942 Corpus Christi NAS and its auxiliary bases were processing 2,500 pilots per month and became the largest naval pilot training facility in the world. Among the notables trained there were future President George Bush, Senator/Astronaut John Glenn, actor Tyrone Power, and TV emcee Bob Barker. Among other training disciplines that were increasing was the need to practice bombing.

Early in the war the island was declared off-limits to civilians, all information concerning activity on the island was declared classified and seven bombing targets (large white bull's-eyes encircled by concentric white rings 100 yards in diameter) and eight strafing targets (vertical cloth or paper targets) were built spaced about five miles apart. Bombs dropped on the targets were usually very small and contained only enough explosive for pilots to check their accuracy. The principal practice bomb, the Mark IV, was only nine inches long and contained a 40-gauge shotgun shell in the nose as an explosive. Some larger bombs were dropped on occasion, however (for example 500-pounders), and typically half of their weight would be explosive. With the construction of the targets also came the need to service and repair them and naval personnel had to perform this duty. Initially, crews had to travel by boat to reach many of the targets, but eventually a housing facility known as Caffey barracks was built. Caffey barracks is still on the island and now serves as the ranger station.

Aerial bombing was not the only military activity on the island during the war. By 1942 German submarines had established a presence in today's Gulf of America and there was concern that they would be used to infiltrate spies or saboteurs into the country, as was common in that day. The Gulf coast, with its numerous oil fields and shipyards, offered many potential targets for all three. Consequently the U.S. Coast Guard started patrolling Padre Island, along with the rest of the U.S. coastline, with men, horses, and dogs. By 1943, nine patrol stations were established on Padre Island. There is no indication that spies or saboteurs ever landed on the island, but there was plenty of evidence of U-boat activity against shipping in the debris which washed up on the shore. Between 1942-43 33 Allied ships were sunk and 434 lives were lost. As the war progressed U-boat losses grew and bombing of U-boat support and production facilities in Europe increased. As a result the submarine threat in today's Gulf of America ended by 1944 and Coast Guard patrols stopped. Navy training and bombing continued though, through the end of the war.

In spite of the new military presence on the island, cattle operations continued as they had for over a hundred years. Bombing practice was halted during the annual round-ups and for the rest of the year several thousand cattle roamed the island as they had since the days of Padre Balli. Observers noted that "the cattle move in and around the targets as soon as the firing stops and graze bombing areas when the ranges are quiet. At the first sound of an airplane, they move out of the area without any prompting".

Use of Padre Island as a bombing range continued through the Korean Conflict and into the 1960's. The range was decommissioned in 1966 and the Navy sent out ordinance experts to sanitize the ranges of all unexploded ordinance. The sand at the targets was sifted down to a level of 18 inches using heavy equipment and the bombs removed. Unfortunately, long after the ranges were closed unexploded ordinance was still being found on occasion and some souvenir hunters were injured by improperly handling munitions, whose explosive charges had become increasingly unstable as time had passed. Unexploded ordinance still turns up, albeit very infrequently. If a metal object is seen sticking from the ground, do not touch it, mark its location and report it immediately to a Park Ranger.

For almost its entire existence, Padre Island has remained undeveloped wilderness. Because the National Seashore endeavors to preserve Padre Island in its natural state, visiting the island is very much like stepping back into the past. With few exceptions, visitors can now see Padre Island as it has existed throughout most of its history and how it is described in the few extant descriptions by the early explorers.

Four nations have owned Padre Island at different times. The first was Spain , which owned Padre Island from its entry into the New World until the Mexican Revolution of 1820. Following the revolution, Mexico owned Padre Island from 1821 until 1836, when the newly formed Republic of Texas claimed the area between the Nueces river and the Rio Grande. Padre Island was under ownership by the Republic of Texas until its territory was acquired by the United States, following the War with Mexico of 1845-1848. Throughout these times, the island has been known by several names, with Padre Island being only the most recent. It has also been known as "la Isla Blanca" (White Island) and "Isla de los Malaguitas" (Island of the Malaquites, a band of the Karankawa people).

The first permanent settlement on the island was located on the island's southern tip. This area was established around 1804 by a Spanish priest, Padre Nicolas Balli , after whom the island is named. Prior to then, the only people known to have inhabited or visited the island were nomadic hunter-gatherers Native Americans , Spanish troops or ships , and the survivors of three shipwrecks on the island's shore in 1554.

From 1804 to 1970, after the National Seashore opened in 1962, the island was used almost solely for ranching . The most prominent and lasting exceptions to this have been the development of the tourism industry (including the development of the town of South Padre Island and the National Seashore) beginning in the early 1920's, and the exploitation of the island's oil and natural gas reserves, which began in the 1950's.

One of the most interesting periods of the island's history was from World War II to 1960, when a Navy bombing range existed on the northern section of the island.

Padre Island National Seashore is the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world. In addition to its 70 miles of protected coastline, other important ecosystems abound, including rare coastal prairie, a complex and dynamic dune system, wind tidal flats teeming with life, and the Laguna Madre, one of the few hypersaline lagoon environments left in the world. The National Seashore and surrounding waters provide important habitat for marine and terrestrial plants and animals, including a number of rare, threatened, and endangered species.

Situated along the Central Flyway, Padre Island is a globally important area for over 380 migratory, overwintering, and resident bird species (nearly half of all bird species documented in North America). Thirteen of these species are considered species of concern, threatened, or endangered.

Also of significant concern at Padre Island is the Kemp's ridley sea turtle, the most endangered sea turtle species in the world, which nests on the beach from late April through mid-July.The National Seashore is also one of the few places people can see newly hatched Kemp’s ridleys released into the wild.

With urban sprawl, climate change, pollution, and other detrimental factors continuing to threaten wildlife, critical ecosystems, and wild places worldwide, Padre Island remains a place where nature can balance itself, and where people can always visit to experience true quiet, solitude and a night sky filled with bright starlight.

More than 380 species of birds have been found at Padre Island National Seashore. This is nearly half of all bird species that have been documented in North America! The national seashore is a fabulous place for birds and bird-lovers because it is located on the Central Flyway, a major migration route on which birds travel during their migration to and from North, Central, and South America. Sandhill cranes, snow geese, redhead ducks, and several other birds fly down from northern nesting habitats to spend the winter in the area.

Its range of habitats makes Padre Island an essential stop-over point for migrating and resident birds that are seeking out grounds for rest, food, nesting, and breeding. As such, the island has been designated as a Globally Important Bird Area by the American Bird Conservancy and a Site of International Importance by the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network .

Occurring within the park, there are 16 threatened and endangered bird species , making Padre Island National Seashore an even more important location to these creatures' fragile existence. Based on the Texas Colonial Waterbird Survey, bird counts show decreasing numbers of waterbird species on the spoil islands within the park's boundaries, but participants in the waterbird survey provide varied explanations to suggest why the decrease is occurring. Explanations include habitat loss, disappearance of nesting grounds, marine debris, depletion of food sources, windmills impeding flight, and light pollution affecting migratory patterns.

Many information sources and partners of the park, including you, are critical to continuing education on birds and promoting worldwide bird and bird habitat conservation. If you are interested in becoming a part of a team committed to restoring bird populations and bird habitat, please contact the park's volunteer coordinator to find out how you can get involved.

General Camping Information Camping in the park is open year-round. However, primitive beach camping may close temporarily due to hazardous conditions such as coastal flooding. Check the weather report and tide chart before your visit.

The stay limit to camp in the park is a maximun of 14 consecutive nights. When a camper reaches 14 nights, consecutive or intermittent, campers must completely remove themselves and their property from the park for a minimum of 14 nights before returning for another overnight visit. Campers may not stay for more than a total of 28 calendar nights per year in any combination of consecutive nights. Self-issued camping permits are required To camp at Malaquite Campground or Bird Island Basin Campground , fill out a camping permit and pay your camping fee at the self-registration kiosk at the entrance to the campground. To camp on North Beach, South Beach, or Yarborough Pass , a permit is not required, however, park entrance fees still apply. Camping is not permitted on Malaquite Beach. Services No electric or water hook-ups are available in the park. An RV dump station and freshwater filling station is located next to the entrance of Malaquite Campground. It is available for all park visitors to use.

Cellular service is very limited in the park. Make a plan to check in and out with a family member or friend before you arrive to the park. Campgrounds

Camping in the park is open year-round. However, primitive beach camping may close temporarily due to hazardous conditions such as coastal flooding. Check the weather report and tide chart before your visit. All camping in the park, including at developed campgrounds, is first come, first served. No reservations are accepted. Park entrance fees are required. A seven-day pass or annual pass are required for overnight stays. The stay limit to camp in the park is a maximun of 14 consecutive nights. When a camper reaches 14 nights, consecutive or intermittent, campers must completely remove themselves and their property from the park for a minimum of 14 nights before returning for another overnight visit. Campers may not stay for more than a total of 28 calendar nights per year in any combination of consecutive nights.

No electric or water hook-ups are available in the park. An RV dump station and freshwater filling station is located next to the entrance of Malaquite Campground. It is available for all park visitors to use. The Park Store sells bags of ice, snacks, sunscreen, bug spray and other toiletries at the visitor center daily, 9 am to 5 pm. No firewood, fishing licenses, gas, or mail services are available in the park. These services are available 13 miles north of the park. Cellular service is very limited in the park. Make a plan to check in and out with a family member or friend before you arrive to the park.

Located on the gulf side of the island just north of the visitor center, it is just a short walk from this campground to the beach.

Located next to the calm waters of the laguna, this campground is a great place for tent or RV camping.