24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Seadrift, TX

Seadrift is a small fishing city in Calhoun County, Texas, on the northeastern shore of San Antonio Bay, about 80 road miles northeast of Corpus Christi, and part of the Victoria metropolitan area.

According to the Seadrift Chamber of Commerce, the community was founded in 1848 by German settlers who had originally come to Texas to settle at Indianola, and it was incorporated in 1911.

Local tradition holds that the name Seadrift came from debris washed ashore from the hurricanes that destroyed the nearby port of Indianola.

Seadrift boomed after the railroad arrived in 1909 and a channel was dredged to the Intracoastal Waterway; a canning factory and ice factory opened in 1913, and by 1914 the town had about 1,250 residents, two banks, and four hotels.

A severe hurricane in 1919 ended Seadrift's rail service and drove residents away, and by 1926 the population had fallen to about 320.

Seadrift had a population of 995 at the 2020 census, living in 393 households, down sharply from 1,364 in 2010.

Seadrift's economy remains rooted in commercial fishing, shrimping, and oystering, and in the 1970s and 1980s many Vietnamese refugees settled in Seadrift to work in the fishing fleet and a local crab-picking plant.

Seadrift is remembered for the killing of local crabber Billy Joe Aplin on August 3, 1979, amid tensions between white and Vietnamese fishermen; the episode inspired the 1985 film Alamo Bay and several documentaries.

Anglers come to Seadrift to fish San Antonio Bay and nearby Espiritu Santo and Shoalwater bays for redfish, black drum, and flounder, and the city has a humid subtropical climate with hot, humid summers.

Seadrift children attend Seadrift School, a Pre-K through eighth-grade campus in the Calhoun County Independent School District, and then Calhoun High School in Port Lavaca.