PORT LAVACA

city, seat (1886) of Calhoun county, on Lavaca Bay of the Gulf of Mexico, southern Texas, U.S., 70 mi (113 km) northeast of Corpus Christi. The site was settled by Spaniards in 1815. Some refugees from a Comanche raid (1840) on nearby Linnville sought sanctuary there and helped develop the settlement. By 1886 it was known as Port Lavaca, a name believed to have been derived from the French les vaches ("the cows") for the buffalo in the area. (It was probably named by the French explorer La Salle, who landed in Texas in 1685 at nearby Indianola [commemorated by a monument] and established Ft. St. Louis.) Because of hurricanes and Gulf storms, a seawall was built in 1920 to protect the city. For many years a processing and marketing centre for seafood, the community took a new economic turn in the 1960s-first, with the construction of aluminum and chemical plants across the bay at Point Comfort (with which it is linked by causeway), and second, with the completion of a deepwater ship channel through Matagorda Peninsula and Bay, a system that permits oceangoing vessels from the Gulf of Mexico to enter the harbour of Port Lavaca-Point Comfort. Tourism (fishing and duck hunting) and local oil and gas wells are added economic factors. Pop. (1990) 10,886.