PALM HARBOR, TEXAS. Palm Harbor is a small coastal development located on State Highway 35 about three miles southwest of Rockport in southern Aransas County. The subdivision began in 1960 when developers Raulie Irwin, Sr., and Doyle Brashear envisioned weekend dwellings built along a section of Redfish Bay known as Estes Cove. A sales office opened in 1961, but business slowed in the wake of Hurricane Carla, which struck the Texas Coast in September 1961. The first houses were small structures of 900 square feet or less. Construction crews dredged a long canal and built up lots on each side of this channel that linked with the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. In 1990 the unincorporated community had a population of 125. Palm Harbor maintained that number in the 2000 census.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: William Allen and Sue Hastings Taylor, Aransas: The Life of a Texas Coastal County (Austin: Eakin Press, 1997).
