Matagorda Island
landform in United States of America
Matagorda Island ( ), Spanish for "thick bush," is a 38-mile (61 km) long barrier island on the Texas Gulf coast, located approximately seven miles (11 kilometers) south of Port O'Connor, in the southernmost part of Calhoun County. The traditional homeland of the Karankawa people, the island is oriented generally northeast-southwest, with the Gulf of Mexico on the east and south, and Espiritu Santo Bay on the west and north. It is separated from San José Island to the south by Cedar Bayou, and is separated from the Matagorda Peninsula to the north by Pass Cavallo. It is accessible by boat only. It has a land area of 60.7 square miles (157 square kilometers).
Matagorda Island is devoted to wildlife refuges managed by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and is known as Matagorda Island National Wildlife Refuge and State Natural Area.
The land that is now Matagorda Island State Park was acquired in 1940 by condemnation from the Hawes, Hill, and Little families (but not the Wynne-Murchison interests) for use as a temporary training facility for the World War II era.
Matagorda Island State Park was featured as a "survival location" by the main characters in the book Day by Day Armageddon by J.L. Bourne. The island is also featured as a principal location in the book Powersat by Ben Bova. Life on the island in the late 1800s is described in the book A Texas cowboy, or, Fifteen years on the hurricane deck of a Spanish pony by Charles A. Siringo.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1649874. VIAF identifies the subject as 315527603. The Library of Congress control number is sh92002110. Authority coordinates are 28.227, -96.640. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940.
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This entry incorporates text from “Matagorda Island” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.