Rockport is a city in Aransas County, Texas, United States. The population was 8,766 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat.

Rockport is adjoining the town of Fulton, and many tackle to the entire sum communities as “Rockport-Fulton”; however, Rockport and Fulton are legally cut off municipalities.

Following the Civil War, a number of people considered developing the Live Oak Peninsula. Joseph F. Smith, who had founded the affable town of St. Mary’s in 1850, joined next Thomas H. Mathis and his cousin J.M. Mathis, who were agents of the Morgan Steamship line, and built a quay at the site of what would sophisticated become the town of Rockport, in 1867. The thesame year, George W. Fulton and his wife, Texas heiress, and Joseph Smith’s cousin, Harriet Smith Fulton moved to her extensive home holdings on the peninsula. Fulton as well as took an fascination in the enhance of Rockport, as with ease as creating the town of Fulton farther going on the coastline. In response, a nascent cattle-slaughtering and packing operation at the waterfront expanded rapidly, allowing Rockport to be officially incorporated as a town in 1870; its publicize arising from the stone ledge that runs along the shore. Thomas Mathis became Rockport’s first mayor after innate appointed by the governor. A year future in 1871, the town achieved “city” status after continued growth.

In 1871, the Mathis cousins teamed taking place with local ranching families of George W. Fulton and Thomas M. Coleman to lift and slaughter cattle for shipment out of the city’s wharf on their steamship line. The partnership proved highly affluent and continued to appeal people and businesses to the city. The national Panic of 1873 took its part of the town’s privileged circumstances and caused a slump for the next-door few years. The meatpacking make known was slow to recover, and the Mathis cousins lonesome the ranching partnership in 1879. Fulton and Coleman later re-formed their ranching partnership, an management that continued into the 1930s. For many years Fulton and others petitioned for the railroad to extend their lines to Rockport to meet the expense of a second source of transportation and break the Morgan Line’s monopoly on the Coastal Bend ports. After offering pardon rights of exaggeration across the Coleman-Fulton ranch, and hundreds of acres in town lots, finally, in 1888 the railroad arrived. The Morgan Steamship company now had competition, and as the local cattle ranchers began shipping rouse cattle by train, The Morgan Line withdrew from serving the Coastal Bend. Another brief deposit spurt began and soon ended, here and across Texas, due to some bad winters and the evolve of the cattle industry in the mid-west. The railroad, however, brought tourists, and the city’s economy grew gone several large hotels catering to that industry. Rockport’s economy soon came to be dominated by shipbuilding and tourism toward the terminate of the 19th century. At the similar time, the railroad offered speedy transportation for crops, and a home boom caused by cultivation followed until brought to a halt with the national Panic of 1893.