Boca Chica State Park Sale to SpaceX Is Off the November Agenda, but Questions Remain

Boca Chica State Park is not up for sale next month. Whether it could be sold later is a question state officials have not fully answered.

Texas Monthly reported last week that the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission had been scheduled to discuss selling about 1,300 acres of public land in Cameron County during a closed-door portion of its Nov. 5 meeting. Sources identified the land as including Boca Chica State Park and the likely buyer as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which launches rockets from its Starbase site next door.

What officials say

A Parks and Wildlife spokeswoman, Stephanie Garcia, told Texas Monthly: "The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission is not considering the sale of the Boca Chica property at its November meeting."

Gov. Greg Abbott, whose appointees make up the commission, said Monday he knew very little about it. "What I know is that that’s not coming up for a vote anytime soon," Abbott said at a news conference, The Texas Tribune reported.

Abbott said his priority is that the state live up to the parks laws he has signed. "No state in America has been adding more parkland than what I’ve done and what Texas has done; I want to continue to preserve our parkland in the state of Texas," he said.

Neither SpaceX nor the department immediately commented to the Tribune.

Notice what was and was not said. The agency ruled out a sale in November. The governor said no vote is coming "anytime soon." Neither statement rules out a sale for good.

The politics

Democratic governor candidate Gina Hinojosa, a Brownsville native, attacked the idea. "Like so many families in the Valley, I spent my summers at Boca Chica Beach," she said, according to the Tribune. She accused Abbott of "handing over our land to the world’s only trillionaire" and added, "Texas is not for sale."

That is a campaign charge, and the facts so far are thinner than the rhetoric. No sale has been voted on, scheduled or announced by the state.

This has come up before

In 2024, the commission approved a land swap in which the department would have given SpaceX 43 acres of Boca Chica State Park in exchange for 477 acres next to Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. SpaceX later withdrew from that deal, the Tribune reported.

The park covers more than 1,055 acres of dunes, marshes and coastal grassland along the Gulf, about three miles north of the mouth of the Rio Grande. SpaceX chose the remote area for a rocket test site in 2014 and has since bought private land nearby.

Environmental groups have argued that launches harm wildlife and the area, and they have sued state and federal agencies to keep SpaceX from getting more land. Those efforts have largely failed. Last month, a federal judge denied the groups’ attempt to stop the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from giving SpaceX 715 acres of nearby refuge land in exchange for 683 acres of private land next to another refuge, according to the Tribune.

Why outdoorsmen should care

Public land open to ordinary Texans is scarce. Most of Texas is privately owned, which is why state parks, wildlife management areas and public beaches matter so much to anglers, birders and families who do not own a ranch.

There is a fair case on the other side, too. SpaceX has brought jobs and investment to the Rio Grande Valley, and the state has traded land before when it believed it got more or better land in return. Any deal should be judged on what Texans give up and what they get back, and it should be done in the open, not decided behind closed doors.

For now, nothing is changing at Boca Chica. Before heading to any state park this fall, check whether it is closed for a public hunt, and remember you can fish without a license in most state parks. Coastal visitors should also check red tide conditions before they go.