Gulf Intracoastal Waterway Between Apalachee Bay, Florida and The Mexican Border (Galveston District) Project Map: U.S. Engineer Office, 1946

This mid‑twentieth‑century project map shows the alignment and state of completion of the standardized Gulf Intracoastal Waterway channel along the Texas coast—from the Sabine–Neches Waterway on the Louisiana line to Brazos Island Harbor at the mouth of the Rio Grande—with inset vicinity maps locating the work in its broader Gulf‑Coast setting, a graphic hierarchy and legend distinguishing completed and incomplete reaches measured in 10‑mile intervals from Harvey Lock near New Orleans, embedded textual summaries of the underlying River and Harbor Acts and the prescribed 9‑foot‑deep, 100‑foot‑wide channel with associated locks, floodgates, cut‑offs, tide data, and harbor connections, and dense annotation of ports, industrial canals, and bridge crossings that collectively reveal how the U.S. Engineer Office at Galveston, operating within the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ civil‑works program, conceived this inland waterway as a continuous interstate navigation corridor reshaping the economic and logistical geography of the Texas coastal plain in the immediate post‑World War II era.

Background on Creator

The U.S. Engineer Office at Galveston, later formalized as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Galveston District, was established in 1880 as the first federal engineer district in Texas with the primary mission of overseeing river, harbor, and coastal improvements along the Texas Gulf Coast. Over time it evolved into a major civil‑works organization responsible for dredging and maintaining navigation channels, constructing harbor works, and, after the 1900 hurricane, leading large‑scale coastal protection projects such as the Galveston Seawall, which cemented its reputation as a key institutional “custodian of the coast.” By the mid‑twentieth century—when the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway project map you provided was produced—the Galveston office functioned as a regional headquarters coordinating design, construction, and maintenance of inland and coastal navigation infrastructure across the Texas shoreline, integrating military engineering traditions with expanding commercial and environmental responsibilities.