North American expeditions and exploratory endeavors emerged with the europeans engaging their efforts for transatlantic crossings during the late fifteenth century.

The Texas marginal seacoast acknowledged the arrival or entradas of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca during the first quarter century of the 1500s. Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish conquistador and a successor of Christopher Columbus, embarked on a calamitous coastal ship landing near the shore of Galveston Island on November 6, 1528.

In 1554, a Spanish cargo ship known as the San Esteban was tacking from Veracruz due north along the Texas Gulf Coast with an eastern destination at Havana and the West Indies. The New Spain galleon encountered a severe tropical cyclone in the Spanish Sea proximate the 27th parallel north and 97th meridian west decimating the Spanish treasure fleet known as Espiritu Santo, San Estaban, and Santa Maria de Yciar. The shipwreck derelict is entitled as a National Register of Historic Places. The underwater archaeology site was established as the Mansfield Cut Underwater Archeological District at Padre Island National Seashore in 1974.

The Texas oceanic basin was colonized by the France monarchy or Louis XIV from 1684 to 1689. In 1684, Robert Cavelier de La Salle sailing under the French ensigns guided an expedition in the Spanish Sea of four ships known as L'Aimable, La Belle, Le Joly, and St. François. La Salle and Henri de Tonti were pursuing the Mississippi River Delta seeking to discover the French colonial empire of New France. In 1685, La Salle navigated beyond the Atchafalaya Basin and lower Mississippi River basin inaccurately discovering Matagorda Bay where the French cargo vessels anchored near Indianola, Texas. During 1685 to 1689, the La Salle colonists adventured north of Lavaca Bay establishing a land settlement known as Fort St. Louis near Garcitas Creek and Inez, Texas ratifying the French colonization of Texas.

The Texas Gulf coast attested to a second wave of the European colonization of the Americas with the introduction of colonialism by the Spanish Empire in 1690. The España cultural evolution substantiated a christianization or religious conquest by the transatlantic crossing of the Spanish Inquisition. The España colonization established the Viceroyalty of New Spain administratively structuring an interior province known as Spanish Texas from 1690 to 1821. Beginning in 1810, the Mexican War of Independence was settled with the Spanish Empire ennobling a discontinuation of the Mexican Inquisition while creating the First Mexican Empire in 1821.

The Texas Gulf coast served as a sanctuary for seafaring buccaneers, corsairs, privateers, and non-fictional practitioners of the piracy occupation during the Age of Sail. Galveston Bay and Matagorda Bay were the Texas coast fertile crescent for anchorage and concealment of the barque, barquentine, and brigantine class sailing vessels.

In the early nineteenth century, Jean Lafitte and Pierre Lafitte, kinship of french basque and sea-going privateers, managed a modest metal forging establishment known as the Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop in the New Orleans French Quarter.

In 1807, the 10th United States Congress obtained a consensus on the Embargo Act of 1807. America's international relations legislation and Orders in Council of 1807 coerced the displacement of the Dominique You, Vincenzo Gambi, and Lafitte's piracy venture to Barataria, Louisiana geographically south of New Orleans within the Mississippi River Delta region. By 1808, the Lafittes' discovered brigandage to be an invaluable endeavor smuggling pirate booty from Barataria Bay to New Orleans.

In 1814, Jean Lafitte received a written appeal from Royal Marines officer Edward Nicolls beckoning loyalty for the Royal Navy breach at the Battle of New Orleans. On September 16, 1814, Commodore Daniel Patterson received orders to launch a naval offensive on the Baratarian's prize of war enterprise debilitating the Lafitte's French corsair sailing fleet.

After the remnants of the War of 1812, Jean Lafitte departed Grand Terre Island and the wetlands of Louisiana setting the sails for Galveston Island, Texas. The French Corsair's Galveston Island arrival was an antecedent to the 1816 Galveston inhabitants of Francisco Xavier Mina and Louis-Michel Aury. In early 1817, freebooter Jean Lafitte established a piracy colony at Galveston Island where the infamous Maison Rouge was built for his domicile.

Frenchman Lafitte constructed the Maison Rouge structure perpendicular of the Galveston Channel and Pelican Island with the surroundings of a corsair's piracy settlement. The Brethren of the Coast discovered the Galveston landscape to be conducive for passage to the gulf waters supporting sailing ship tactics to intercept merchant ships and Spanish Empire armadas accomplishing the nautical journey from the Old World.

After the Galveston Hurricane of 1818, French privateer Lafitte abandoned Galveston Bay for the Bay of Campeche beseeching safe conduct at the cays of Campeche Bank. By 1821, the Texas seacoast exodus was resolutely coerced by the authorization of the 15th United States Congress legislative article known as the Piracy Suppression Act of 1819 enacted into law by United States President James Monroe on March 3, 1819.

In 1814, Lord Byron authored a poetic publication The Corsair which was conceivably an attribute to the life of Jean Lafitte. In 1927, Galveston's William Moody Jr. erected the Jean Lafitte Hotel in the Galveston's Strand Historic District as an observance of privateer Lafitte's origins on the Galveston Island shores.

Texas revered the first glance of the Texas Revolution with the Fredonian Rebellion occurring from 1826 to 1827 in the East Texas vicinity of Nacogdoches, Texas.

In 1825, the First Mexican Republic sanctioned Stephen F. Austin’s second empresario contract of 1825 validating the Galveston strand as a customs entry point and provisional maritime port.

In 1830, First Mexican Republic introduces the initial Galveston Custom house preferably referred as the Old Galveston Customhouse. The Mexican Republic customs were administered under the authority of Army of the Three Guarantees collecting custom duties at the Port of Galveston. In 1831, Mexican Commander Manuel de Mier y Terán appointed Jorge Fisher as the customs agent for the Galveston maritime port of entry.

The Galveston East End Historic District is a narrative of the original Greek Revival architecture of Galveston Island. The Galveston historic district is a few city blocks from Classical Revival architecture of the Old Galveston Custom House. The Galveston East End's emergence, occurring during the first half century of the long nineteenth century, was prized by the governance of Spanish America and occupancy of Spanish Texas.

After the conflict of cultural imperialism ceased between Mexico and Spain, the Law of April 6, 1830 and Treaty of Limits furthered the successive uniformity known as Mexican Texas from 1828 to 1836.

In 1836, Texas independence was expeditiously declared from the imperialism of Mexico subsequently to the San Felipe de Austin and Texian Consultation events;

and the forthcoming establishment and separation of powers for the Republic of Texas.

The Texas Gulf Coast provided a naval supply lifeline for the Texian Army and Texian Militia during the Texas Revolution sustaining from 1835 to 1836. The Texian Navy sustained the Texian revolutionary infantry forces by providing a flotilla for the safe passage of munitions and supply provisions. The Mobile and New Orleans harbors routing merchant ships defined a vast maritime area for the Texas Navy skirting the Texas seacoast while surveilling the Mexican state nautical hostilities and naval warfare on the Third Coast.

The Mexican Navy enforced coastline patrols and naval blockades of the Texas Gulf Coast harbors during the strife for Texas independence. The Texas naval forces appropriated four man-of-war schooners as a naval offensive for the sailing ship tactics of the Mexican Navy. The Texas Navy engaged four warships from 1835 to 1838 known as Brutus, Independence, Invincible, and Liberty for the establishment of the Republic of Texas.

During the nineteenth century, the Texas coastal counties encountered a disease vector which inflicted an arbovirus on the Texas ocean front townships. The pathogen transmission was potentially infiltrating the trade ports through merchant ships, nautical vessels, and seafaring watercraft along the Texas coastline. The predatorial Aedes aegypti yield a mosquito-borne disease aggressively disseminating an infection known as yellow fever on the South Texas civil parishes from the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century.

Broadway Cemetery Historic District served as burial grounds for the Texas coastal inhabitants subjected to the exposure of the yellow fever viral disease. The historic consecrated grounds are an epitome of the case fatality rates and communicable infection rates where the coastal populace was afflicted by the arbovirus epidemic at Galveston, Texas from 1839 to 1900.

In 1910, the Galveston municipality commenced a public project to provision electricity and water amenities for the immigration and life-saving stations at Galveston, Texas. The public works was endorsed by the 61st United States Congress passing the Galveston Channel Cable Act of 1910 as House bill 20988 on May 17, 1910.

On April 26, 1926, the United States Government by orientation of the 69th United States Congress passed Senate bill 3287 petitioning the State of Texas for the purchase of quarantine stations domiciled on the Texas Gulf Coast.

• "Galveston Immigration Stations – Galveston County ~ Marker Number: 7469". Texas Historic Sites Atlas. Texas Historical Commission. 1993.
• "Galveston Quarantine Stations – Galveston County ~ Marker Number: 7474". Texas Historic Sites Atlas. Texas Historical Commission. 1993.
• "Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1862 – Matagorda County ~ Marker Number: 18121". Texas Historic Sites Atlas. Texas Historical Commission. 2015.
• "Huntsville Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1867 – Walker County ~ Marker Number: 18491". Texas Historic Sites Atlas. Texas Historical Commission. 2016.
• "Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1867 – Fayette County ~ Marker Number: 18523". Texas Historic Sites Atlas. Texas Historical Commission. 2016.

The Texas Gulf coast had a vital necessity for seacoast defense as the international relations of superiority cultivated during the late 19th century to the mid-20th century. The United States artillery installations were erected during the Spanish–American War frequently referred as Cuban War of Independence, and relatively to the world war periods of the 1910s and 1940s.

The Texas coastal artillery command posts were established as casemates or pillboxes developed with reinforced concrete strategically situated at Bolivar Peninsula, Texas and Galveston Island, Texas. The United States Army Coast Artillery Corps commanded the operations of the coastal artillery emplacements which originated as Fort Crockett, Fort San Jacinto, Fort Travis, and inclusion of Sabine Pass. The artillery fortifications achieved the purposes of economic warfare or embargo for Galveston Bay, vigilance of maritime security, and safeguarding the trade routes for Port of Galveston and the Port of Houston.

Imagery of Texas Gulf Coast Fortress Installations

• Media related to Fort Crockett at Galveston Island at Wikimedia Commons
• Media related to Fort San Jacinto at Galveston Island East Point at Wikimedia Commons
• Media related to Fort Travis at Bolivar Peninsula at Wikimedia Commons
• Media related to Sabine Pass at Gulf of Mexico & Sabine River at Wikimedia Commons

At the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, came the first wave of refugees to flee but it was during the week of April 25th to the 1st of May. A year later in 1976, there were Indochina refugees residing in all states and even American Samoa, District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The leading state with the most refugees was California and the second was Texas with 11,000 refugees. The American unemployment rate during this time was 9-percent, and the refugees were considered a threat to the American workforce. In 1976 a poll was created to find the consensus on how Americans felt about refugees staying in America. This poll is known as the, Gallup Poll, and if found that 54-percent of American felt that the refugees should not be allowed to remain in the United States. For the Indochina refugees this made integrating more difficult as there were language barriers, their networks dwindled as they were separated by state lines and how they were portrayed in the media. There were also refugee camps throughout the United States. These both helped and hindered their integration into America. Soon the narrative surrounding the arrivals of the refugees became one that painted them as immigrants rather than a refugee and even the media had picked up on the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan’s (KKKK) rhetoric of painting them as communists.

After the Vietnam War, 100 Vietnamese refugees were placed in Seadrift, Texas. At the time the city was composed of only 1,000 people and their local economy heavily relied on fishing for shrimp and crab. Upon the arrival of the Vietnamese refugees, they used their skills of fishing to integrate into America and have an income. The refugees did not know the English language, nor the fishing laws for the region. The white fisherman in Seadrift became angry with the refugees as they were not following the legal guidelines to fish. Louis Beam and the Texas Klansmen joined forces with the white fisherman to enforce laws that they felt the government was not enforcing and to address their goals of fighting communism on American soil. In doing so, the Klansmen and white fishermen took to the ocean with military grade firearms and pointed them at the refugees both in water and on land. This prompted the Vietnamese Fishermen’s Association to take legal action against Louis Beam and those involved in the violence and harassment of the Vietnamese refugees in the Gulf of Texas in 1982. The judge, Gabrielle McDonald handled the case. She ruled in favor of the Vietnamese Fishermen’s Association.

• Weddle, Robert S. (1985). Spanish Sea: the Gulf of Mexico in North American Discovery, 1500–1685. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-1585440665. OCLC 11468026.
• Weddle, Robert S. (1991). The French Thorn: Rival Explorers in the Spanish Sea, 1682-1762. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-0890964804. OCLC 23286547.
• Weddle, Robert S. (1995). Changing Tides: Twilight and Dawn in the Spanish Sea, 1763-1803. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-0890966617. OCLC 32202575.
• Francaviglia, Richard V. (1998). From Sail to Steam: Four Centuries of Texas Maritime History, 1500-1900. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0292723054. OCLC 36548957.
• Davis, William C. (2006). The Pirates Laffite: The Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf. Orlando, Florida: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0547350752. OCLC 68570266.
• Williams, C. Herndon (2010). Texas Gulf Coast Stories. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-1614232469. OCLC 664519681.
• Winningham, Geoff (2010). Traveling the Shore of the Spanish Sea: the Gulf Coast of Texas and Mexico. College Station, Texas: Texas A & M University Press. ISBN 978-1603441612. OCLC 613354738.
• McDougal, Steph (2014). Lighthouses of Texas ~ Images of America. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-1531675660. OCLC 858731310.
• Blackburn, James B.; Galveston Bay Conservation & Preservation Assn. (2015). The Book of Texas Bays. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-1603447829. OCLC 907399500.
• Lardas, Mark (2016). Texas Shipwrecks ~ Images of America. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-1467116176. OCLC 930257191.
• Lardas, Mark (2021). The Vanished Texas Coast: Lost Port Towns, Mysterious Shipwrecks, and Other True Tales. Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press. ISBN 978-1540248619. OCLC 1252763669.

• Harrigan, Stephen (January 1979). "In Search of La Salle". Texas History. Texas Monthly.
• Tyer, Brad (September 1996). "Dig This" [A salvage operation in Matagorda Bay unearths a bureaucratic feud]. Texas History. Texas Monthly.
• Dingus, Anne (November 2002). "Lights Out". Texas History. Texas Monthly.
• Gustavus, Sarah (November 2002). "Texas History 101" [Half Moon Reef Lighthouse served as a beacon for ships coming into Matagorda Bay]. Texas History. Texas Monthly.
• Harrigan, Stephen (March 2017). "They Came From the Sky" [The first Spanish conquistadors arrive on our shores, starving, haggard, and in no mood for conquest]. Texas History. Texas Monthly.
• Berwald, Juli (September 2021). "Behind the Fight to Save the Gulf's Spectacular Coral Reefs". Texas Travel & Outdoors. Texas Monthly.

• "Bays and Estuaries". Texas Aquatic Science. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. July 31, 2013.
• "Coastal Conservation". Audubon Texas. National Audubon Society. January 8, 2016.
• "Gulf Coast". Education ~ Resources. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
• "Oceans: The Gulf of Mexico". Texas Aquatic Science. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. July 31, 2013.
• "Red Tide in Texas". TPWD Harmful Algal Blooms Status. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
• "Texas Beach Watch". Texas General Land Office. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
• "USGS Texas Coastal Science". USGS Oklahoma-Texas Water Science Center. U.S. Department of the Interior.
• "Wetlands". Texas Aquatic Science. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. July 31, 2013.

• Media related to Bays of Texas at Wikimedia Commons
• Media related to Beaches of Texas at Wikimedia Commons
• Media related to Estuaries in Texas at Wikimedia Commons
• Media related to Texas Coast at Wikimedia Commons
• Gulf Coast (Texas) travel guide from Wikivoyage