28°01’28.3″N 97°03’01.5″W 198 TX-70 Loop, Rockport, TX (see map)
Rockport’s commercial seafood companies have been operating for more than one hundred years. By 1903, David Rockport Scrivner had opened a fish house. In 1907, it sold and became the Jackson Fish Company. A few years later, it sold again and began the Union Fish Company. The 1919 hurricane destroyed the Union Fish building, but it was rebuilt, and, in 1932, the building became a ship’s chandlery. About 1909, the Rockport Fish and Oyster Company was established. In 1919, Ford Jackson bought his brother’s interest in the Jackson Fish Company and changed the name to Jackson Seafood Company. Jackson added shrimp to his harvest, and the local shrimping industry developed rapidly after 1925. By 1935, the Johnson Fish Company was established; shrimp was its main product. After Hurricane Celia in 1970, Jackson Seafood diversified by harvesting sea scallops on the East Coast. Although the company closed in 1991, several other Rockport firms have continued harvesting fish and shrimp.
