May 19, 2026

The History of Surfing in Texas

When people talk about surfing, the state of Texas isn’t usually a part of the conversation. They speak more of the palm-lined beaches in Hawaii and the long point breaks of California. But if you’ve spent enough years along the 367 miles of Texas coastline, you know that Texas has a place in surf history. The story of surfing in Texas isn’t loud or glamorous—it’s stubborn, raw, windblown, and full of people who kept paddling out, even when common sense may have suggested otherwise.

I’ve been around long enough to remember when boards were hard to come by down here. In the early days, emerging brands from California like Dewey Weber, Gordie and Hobie saw the potential in the Gulf Coast surf scene and started showing up in the dozens of surf shops that were springing up in places like Galveston, Corpus Christi, Port Aransas and South Padre Island. I also remember that a handful of local surfboard brands had appeared by the early to mid-60s. Blaker Surfboards was one of them; you could get a new, custom Blaker for $120, but they also offered a $60 kit that included everything you needed to build your own surfboard. They ended up being heavy things, glassed thick, and shaped in garages by young surfers who had a lot more hope than skill. You just don’t see that these days.

Waves along the Gulf are known to be inconsistent, the winds are often onshore, and the water… well, it isn’t exactly postcard blue. But none of that stopped us. In Texas, you learn very quickly that surfing isn’t about perfection—it’s about patience. We didn’t have the luxury of clean, lined-up swells every week. We had to watch the charts, feel the pressure gradients drop, and wait for storms spinning out in the Gulf. Hurricanes, tropical systems—those were our calling cards.

I remember when tanker surfing started...probably somewhere in the mid-’60s. Some guys got the idea of riding the wakes generated by super tankers in the shipping channels off Galveston. Not only did weather patterns and tides matter – tanker surfing was also affected by the weight, speed and direction of the ship. But under the right conditions, two-foot waves could be ridden for up to a half mile. It’s not everywhere that someone can go tanker surfing!

Some of the best surfers to come out of Texas learned to read the chaotic surf conditions of the Gulf Coast. Wind chop stacked on swell, currents pulling sideshore, peaks shifting every few minutes. You didn’t just ride the wave—you negotiated with it. And if you could make something out of that, you could surf just about anything, anywhere.

Over the years, the Texas surf scene has grown. Shops continued to pop up, local contests started drawing crowds, and suddenly Texas wasn’t just a footnote. I remember a ‘64 issue of Surfing magazine reported that on a good day, it wasn’t unusual to count 200 surfers in the water at Galveston Beach. And that was then! You had people like Chris Ward putting Texas on the map, showing the world that even the Gulf could produce real talent. That mattered. It gave the younger generation something to watch and think, “Yeah, it’s possible from here.”

Boards got lighter. Forecasting got better. The internet really changed things—no more guessing if a storm might send something our way. Now you can track it, time it, plan your whole week around it. But even with all that, Texas surfing has never lost its edge.

Because the truth is, it still makes you work.

You’ll drive hours for just a maybe. You’ll paddle out in wind that never quite dies. You’ll sit there, watching the horizon, hoping the next set is bigger and has a little more shape than the last. And when it finally comes together—when the wind backs off just enough and a clean line comes out of nowhere—it feels earned in a way that’s hard to explain to someone who’s never surfed here.

That’s what has kept surfing alive all these years. Not perfection, but payoff.

Now I watch the younger crowd out there, same beaches, better boards, more radical turns. They’ve got more access, more information, more opportunity. But they’re still dealing with the same Gulf. Same unpredictability. Same lessons the ocean’s been handing out since before any of us showed up with a surfboard.

And I like that.

Because it means the spirit of Texas surfing hasn’t changed. It’s still about showing up, even when the conditions aren’t ideal. It’s still about making something out of nothing.

They may not look like the waves you see in magazines, but that was never really the point.