Boca Chica State Park

Boca Chica is an area on the eastern portion of a subdelta peninsula of Cameron County, at the far south of the US state of Texas along the Gulf Coast. It is bordered by the Brownsville Ship Channel to the north, the Rio Grande and Mexico to the south, and the Gulf of Mexico to the east. The area extends about 25 miles (40 km) east of the city of Brownsville. The peninsula is served by Texas State Highway 4-also known as the Boca Chica Highway or Boca Chica Boulevard-which runs east-west, terminating at the Gulf and Boca Chica Beach. The Boca Chica area has seen various developments over the course of its history. These include Mexican land grants, Mexican and American ranches, a battlefield of the American Civil War, a 1920s beach resort, and a state park (Boca Chica State Park); additionally, a small settlement named Boca Chica Village existed in the area from 1960 to 2024. The village and some of the surrounding area were incorporated as Starbase, Texas, a Type C City, in 2025. This followed the tremendous growth since 2018 as the area became more widely known due to being the site of SpaceX Starbase, a major facility of aerospace company SpaceX for the development, manufacturing and testing of its rockets. Starbase is the primary launch and recovery facility for SpaceX's Starship launch vehicle. Boca Chica, meaning "small mouth" in Spanish, refers to the mouth of the Rio Grande.