HITCHCOCK, TEXAS
Handbook of Texas Online, Diana J. Kleiner, "HITCHCOCK, TX," (
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HITCHCOCK, TEXAS. Hitchcock, also known as Hitchcock's and as Highland, is an incorporated community fourteen miles northwest of Galveston on State Highway 6, Farm roads 519 and 2004, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line in southwestern Galveston County. The area was settled around 1846. On May 31, 1848, Jonas Butler acquired a league of land on Highland Bayou and built a house, part of which still stood in the 1940s. Butler was followed by a group of French settlers, who established homes on the bayou. The community was originally known as Highland for its location on the bayou's high banks. Travelers used the bayou to reach Galveston until the 1870s, when the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway built through the settlement. The town was renamed around 1873, when Emily Hitchcock, widow of Galveston civic leader Lent M. Hitchcock, offered a 450-foot-wide tract from Cow Gully east to the section house for a townsite if the railroad would name the community for her husband. Local farmers shipped cattle and vegetables. A post office was established in 1884 under the name Hitchcock's, later shortened to Hitchcock. Thomas King platted the townsite around 1891, and by 1892 the community reported a population of 275, two grocers, and several fruit growers and commission merchants. Farmers later marketed their vegetables through a cooperative association. A local public school opened in 1894, and by 1907 the town had two schools, one with eighty-nine white pupils and two teachers and one with thirty-seven black pupils and one teacher. In 1914 Hitchcock had a bank, a hotel, a blacksmith, three general stores, and a population of 550. The town began to decline with the end of local truck farming after 1920. Most local packing houses closed, many residents moved to find work in Texas City, and by 1925 Hitchcock's population had fallen to 350.
During the early 1930s the town grew slightly, but declined again by the eve of World War II to 350 residents and seventeen businesses. In the 1940s the Hitchcock population level remained steady because of local oil and gas development, the establishment of Camp Wallace, and Navy construction of a local blimp base for surveillance of enemy submarines (see HITCHCOCK NAVAL AIR STATION). The camp and base were used as discharge centers after the war, and some of those who passed through became local residents. During the postwar boom, Hitchcock developed a chamber of commerce, sewers, improved roads, natural gas service, a phone system, and three white and two black churches. In 1948 Hitchcock was made an independent school district. The community benefited from proximity to petrochemical industry centers at Texas City, Chocolate Bayou, and Freeport. Hitchcock's population jumped to 1,105 after 1954 and increased steadily after 1960, when the town incorporated. In 1968 Hitchcock's population reached a high of 6,954, served by thirty-six businesses. The number of residents fell during the 1970s. Hitchcock became a residential suburb with the development, only twenty minutes away, of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Project Apollo Space Laboratory Project at Clearwater. Hitchcock grew from 5,565 residents and twenty-five businesses in 1972 to 6,405 residents and sixty-seven businesses by 1988. The town offers a yacht basin and resort facilities and celebrates a Christmas Parade each December and a Good Ole Days Parade in August. In 2000 Hitchcock reported 214 businesses and a population of 6,386.
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Remains of Hitchcock Naval Air Station (the “Blimp Base”,)
Genevieve Miller Hitchcock Public Library
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A United States Naval Air Station better known as "the Blimp Base"existed in Hitchcock during World War II. The station was commissioned May 22, 1943 and was closed in October, 1944. It was located in Hitchcock because of its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, where submarines called “wolf packs” of the German Navy were believed to be lurking. The blimp hanger was 1000 feet long, 300 feet wide and 200 feet high. The Blimp Base was purchased by John Mecom in the late 1950's. The hangar was torn down after Hurricane Carla hit the Texas Coast in 1961. The four massive pillars remain today and have been a local landmark for years.
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Stringfellow Orchard
National Register of Historic Places Program
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Henry Martyn Stringfellow, an influential early Texas horticulturalist, established his well-known orchard in Hitchcock in 1883. Though he began his career in nearby Galveston nearly twenty years earlier, it was here that he solidified his reputation as a pioneering authority on pears. His productivity in Hitchcock coincided with and influenced the emergence of a thriving agricultural economy in Hitchcock. He sold his thirty-acre orchard after just ten years, but in 1920 the Kipfer family once again used the property to sustain an agricultural enterprise. They successfully made a living on the property by operating a truck farm and flower shop until 1989. Stringfellow Orchards is nominated to the National Register of Historic Places under Criteria A for its association with agriculture and under Criterion C for architecture, both at the local level of significance.
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Hitchcock Watertower - Hitchcock Bull Dogs
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HarborWalk Yacht Club
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Hitchcock High School
Mid-West Steel Building Company (
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Hitchcock High School, a 81,410 square-foot school located in Hitchcock, Texas, is a 2013 Mid-West Design Build Competition Award of Excellence winner. General Contractor and Roofing Contractor was Durotech of Houston, TX and it was erected by Ramco of Humble, TX. The project utilizes vertically placed PBU wall panels and horizontal 7.2 panels for a different architectural look. SuperLok roof panels were used as well for an architectural look. The building employs eave canopies, purlin extensions, walk door canopies and 22-ga “B” deck for built up roof.
Bulldog Stadium:
Texas Bob (
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Comments: Opened 1994. Renovated spring 2009. Fieldturf playing surface and Beynon track. Burnside Services Inc. out of Navasota constructed the field. A 2.5 million dollar fieldhouse to be completed in the south endzone in early 2010.
Waters Edge Bar and Bait
Located at 7827 2nd Street, on a canal that leads to West Bay this is a favorite area for fishing and launching boats. It appears that they are no longer in business.