Texas Rebuilt the Beach That Destroyed Highway 87 in 2023. The Road Is Still Lying in the Surf

There is a state highway in Texas that ends at a barricade on a beach. The pavement behind the barricade is in good condition. The pavement in front of it is in pieces, scattered down twenty miles of sand between the marsh and the Gulf of Mexico, in slabs the size of cars that you steer around at low tide. It is Texas Highway 87, and that stretch of it has been closed since the 15th of October, 1989, which is 37 years this month. It is still on the map. And at the far end of it is a town of a few hundred people, with some of the largest gas plants in the world beside it, and exactly one road out. This is not a story about a hurricane. The hurricane that closed this road was small, and the road was dying before it came. It is a story about what happens when the sea takes a road, two governments agree that it is gone, and then they cannot agree on anything else for 37 years. IF YOU ARE GOING UP THERE As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. DeLorme Texas Atlas & Gazetteer: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1946494488?tag=oldalignment-20 WHERE IT IS The closed stretch is Texas Highway 87 between Sea Rim State Park and High Island, about twenty miles of beach in Jefferson County. From the west: Highway 124 south from Winnie to High Island, where it meets 87 at the coast; the barricade is just east of that junction. From the east: Highway 87 southwest out of Sabine Pass, about twelve miles of open road past the McFaddin refuge turnoff to Sea Rim State Park, where the pavement ends. The beach between the two is open to vehicles at low tide only, with no services and no cell coverage for most of it. Check the tide tables and take a vehicle that can handle soft sand. The 57-mile detour the locals have driven since 1989 is 87 north to Port Arthur, 73 west to Winnie, 124 south to High Island. PRONUNCIATIONS Sabine: suh-BEEN. Bolivar: BOL-i-ver. McFaddin: mick-FAD-in. A NOTE ON THE IMAGES The research and the script are mine, from primary records and archives, and the sources are listed below. Where no photograph of a place survives, and for this channel that is often, the images are period material from elsewhere rather than the place itself. SOURCES Jefferson County, Texas, State Highway 87 environmental study page, on the 1863 map, the October 1989 closure, the 1990 planning, the 1998 federal earmark and the 1999 Federal Highway Administration notice Houston Chronicle, "Coast's cruelties create lost highway", 2006 The Examiner, Beaumont, on the 2023 community meeting, the port's grant application, the 148 million dollar levee design and the state's position, July 2023 KBMT 12News, on the closed road and the twelve open miles from Sabine Pass, 2023 KFDM, poll on rebuilding Highway 87, April 2026 Texas General Land Office and The Orange Leader, on the McFaddin beach and dune restoration, 2022 to 2023 TexasFreeway, photographs and notes on the barricade at High Island, 2001 Texas Department of Transportation, on raising Highway 87 on the Bolivar Peninsula Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Sea Rim State Park history United States Fish and Wildlife Service, McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge Texas Historical Commission, Sabine Pass Battleground State Historic Site and Fort Manhassett National Hurricane Center reports on Hurricanes Allen, 1980, Jerry, 1989, Rita, 2005, and Ike, 2008 IF YOU WERE THERE If you drove the beach road before 1989, with the Gulf on one side and the marsh on the other, or you were in Sabine Pass the autumn they put the barricade up, or you have family who kept that road open after the earlier storms, I want to hear it. And if anybody has a photograph of Highway 87 along McFaddin Beach from before it closed, the road and the dunes and the water in the same frame, I would very much like to know it still exists. Comment or write to [email protected]. Old Alignment. Abandoned American roads, railroads and infrastructure. New video every other day. My other channel, Legal Until, tells the stories behind the laws of the American road: @LegalUntil #texashistory #highway87 #gulfcoast