JAMAICA BEACH, TEXAS. Jamaica Beach is on Farm Road 3005 and West Bay just south of Galveston Island State Park on Galveston Island, southwest Galveston County. The site, that of a former Karankawa burial ground, was developed in 1957 by Johnny Goyen and Earl Galceran of the Jamaica Corporation, as a resort subdivision by a marina. The 2,000-lot development, which attracted Houston buyers, was incorporated on May 12, 1975. By 1978 it had a population of 141, and in 1988 it reached 446 residents but had no businesses. In 1990 the population was 624. The population grew to 1,075 in 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Earl Wesley Fornell, The Galveston Era: The Texas Crescent on the Eve of Secession (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961). Galveston County, Texas: An Economic Base Study (University of Houston Center for Research on Business and Economics, 1965). Ray Miller, Ray Miller's Galveston (Houston: Cordovan Press, 1983).
