From Red Fish Landing to a harbor
Port Mansfield sits on the Laguna Madre in northeastern Willacy County, across the water from a channel through Padre Island. The Handbook of Texas describes it before the 1950s as an isolated and obscure fish camp known as Red Fish Landing.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened a port here in 1950 because it wanted a harbor between Corpus Christi and Brownsville. The town took the name of Representative Joseph J. Mansfield, whose bill extended the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande.
When the first pass was cut through Padre Island in 1957, the settlement had a few homes, some port buildings, a motel, a store and a scatter of fishing cabins. The final Port Mansfield Channel was finished in 1962, and the Gulf began trading water with the lagoon on every tide.
The 2020 Census counted 319 people in the Port Mansfield CDP. There is no incorporated city, just a harbor, a chamber of commerce, and anglers who drive a long way to get here.
What the channel did for the fish
According to the Handbook of Texas, the tidal exchange that followed the 1962 channel produced an abundant population of redfish, brown shrimp and flounder, and greatly expanded the sport and commercial fishing around town. The National Park Service describes the Laguna Madre on this stretch as hypersaline, saltier than the Gulf, with tidal flats full of life.
The channel also marks a far point of Padre Island National Seashore. The park service lists Mansfield Channel among the spots that can only be reached by driving the beach down island, with four wheel drive recommended and no towing service from the park.
