How to Get There

Overview

Padre Island National Seashore (PINS) is a national seashore located on Padre Island off the coast of South Texas. In contrast to South Padre Island, known for its beaches and vacationing college students, PINS is located on North Padre Island and consists of a long beach where nature is preserved.

Most of the park is primitive, but camping is available, and most of the beach is only accessible to four-wheel-drive vehicles. All but four miles is open to vehicle traffic. PAIS is the fourth designated national seashore in the United States.

North Padre Island is the longest undeveloped barrier island in the world. The national seashore is 70 miles (110 km) long with 65.5 miles (105.4 km) of Gulf beach. PAIS hosts a variety of pristine beach, dune, and tidal flat environments including the Laguna Madre on its west coast, a famous spot for windsurfing. It is located in parts of Kleberg, Kenedy, and Willacy counties, with Kenedy County having the majority of its land area.

Padre Island

Padre Island National Seashore is located on Padre Island, the largest of the Texas barrier islands and the world's longest barrier island. The island is located along Texas's southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico and is noted for its white sandy beaches. Meaning father in Spanish, it was named after Father José Nicolás Ballí (c.1770-1829), who owned the island and served as a missionary priest and collector of finances for all the churches in the Rio Grande Valley. He also founded the first mission in present-day Cameron County.

At is about 113 miles (182 km) long and 1.8 miles (3 km) wide, Padre Island is the second-largest island by area in the contiguous United States, after Long Island in New York on the Atlantic Coast.

Geology

The geology of Padre Island National Seashore doesn't just belong within the park itself. PAIS is part of the world's longest natural barrier bar system. Padre Island is a very young geological feature that only developed merely 4,500 to 5,000 years ago, according to radio carbon dating of shells.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Padre Island National Seashore", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0