San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Uneasy times for villagers as SpaceX roars ahead
Its presence amid their lives on beach grows ever larger
When he’s in town, Elon Musk surely can’t miss neighbor Rosemarie Workman’s frayed “Come and Take It” flag whipping in the coastal breeze.
Workers tinker in the side yard of the SpaceX founder’s temporary home on Weems Street. Across the road, Workman stands on her porch, her gaze gliding past them — and the Teslas parked on the street — to focus on the South Bay and the bright afternoon sky.
Truck engines drown out the songs of the area’s many birds. A quarter-mile down the street, a silver rocket nose cone marks the skyline, and behind the small ranch homes, massive tracking antennas aim skyward.
So goes another afternoon for the holdouts in the tiny community next to SpaceX’s Starship facility near Boca Chica Beach, about 25 miles east of Brownsville.
Many things merge in this part of Texas: land and sea, the Rio Grande and the Gulf, Mexico and the United States, big business and the federal government, and now the Earth and space. The relationships are complicated, and so is SpaceX’s with the Rio
Grande Valley.
SpaceX has followers around the world who devour every scrap of news about the pioneering commercial space company and Musk. But not all of SpaceX’s
South Texas neighbors are thrilled with a rocket factory and launch pad in their backyard.
Musk, who also founded electric-vehicle maker Tesla, is trying to incorporate Boca Chica and the surrounding area. He announced SpaceX’s plan on Twitter on March 2: “Creating the city of Starbase, Texas” and “From thence to Mars, and hence the stars.”
He said the city will encompass “an area much larger than Boca Chica.”
According to property records, SpaceX and its affiliates — Dog Leg Park and the Flats at Mars Crossing — are gobbling up real estate throughout the area. The company hasn’t spoken publicly about its plans, but the Starbase name is taking hold among SpaceX fans.
“Right now, we’ve been left alone since last October — and we really like it that way.”
Nancy Crawford, neighbor of SpaceX’s Starship facility near Boca Chica Beach
The village
The unincorporated area known as Boca Chica has roots in space exploration — at least in name. In the 1960s, as the Cold War space race played out, the area’s original developers called it Kennedy Shores, after President John F. Kennedy. In 1975, residents renamed it Kopernik Shores, after astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.
Hurricane Beulah flooded the 30-home community in 1967, and it hasn’t had running water since. Cameron County trucks in water monthly.
The villagers have lived with SpaceX since 2014, but the company’s operations have exploded — literally and figuratively — since 2019.
“We’ve been going through it for a long time, and we’ve got to live here,” Workman said. “You don’t want to say some of the words you’d like to use — they’re still neighbors, whether you like it or not.”
SpaceX has already bought out many of her neighbors. And in October, the company sent the dozen or so remaining property owners an email “final offer” of three times their property’s appraised value — roughly $150,000.
“They say it’s the final offer in every offer,” Workman said.
SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.
Since October, county appraisal district records show that property values on Weems Street have exploded, in some cases quadrupling.
SpaceX and its shell companies own 25 of the 37 properties on the street, according to property records. The company has renovated the houses, painting the bricks black and the trim white. They contrast sharply with the holdouts’ orange brick homes.
On this street, Boca Chica’s only residential thoroughfare, 1960s Americana meets the new space race.
The people who still live there, mostly retirees, want to be left alone. Only three or so residents — not counting SpaceX employees — stay in the village yearround. The others are “snowbirds” from Northern states who spend their winters in Boca Chica.
Some of the residents have an uneasy relationship with SpaceX.
Workman said someone on Musk’s security detail hassled her husband about using binoculars for bird-watching in his front yard.
“We complained,” she said. “This is not SpaceX property — this is my property. Not everything out here is owned by SpaceX.”
In another incident, a reporter and a photographer were speaking with a neighbor when a bodyguard told them they couldn’t take photos in the direction of Musk’s house.
A few doors down from Workman’s house, dozens of birds milled around Jim and Nancy Crawford’s lawn.
“This is one of their main flyways when they head back north,” said Jim Crawford, a retired sheriff from Osceola County, Mich. “It’s real unique as far as wildlife goes.”
In his backyard, he pointed out hummingbirds, indigo buntings, orioles and summer tanagers.
To her disappointment, Nancy Crawford said SpaceX hasn’t messed with the makeshift town sign, a cylinder that looks like a rusted propane tank with the words “Boca Chica Village Welcomes You” painted in white.
“I was kind of having hopes that they’d get rid of that big ugly thing and put in a proper sign,” said the retired Osceola County register of deeds. “But then they’d probably want Starbase, Texas, on it.”
Asked about the prospect of SpaceX turning the area into Starbase, she said, “It doesn’t matter to me as long as they leave us alone.”
The couple said communication between the company and residents has improved over the years. A couple of young SpaceX employees, whom they call “the boys,” are their liaisons with the company.
“They’re nice and easy to talk with,” she said. “They’re like our grandkids.”
SpaceX employees hosted residents for an informal block party recently.
Residents can stay in the village during static engine tests of the Starship, a reusable spacecraft that Musk hopes will someday carry people and cargo anywhere on Earth and to the moon, Mars and beyond.
But they receive notices from SpaceX that a malfunction could break their windows. The company asks residents to go outside when a siren sounds as a safety precaution.
When a Starship launches, SpaceX evacuates the villagers and pays for them to stay at a hotel on South Padre Island, according to Jim Crawford.
“I don’t like what they do, but you don’t want to start a fight with them,” he said. “It really don’t matter anymore — they do what they want to do anyway.”
Nancy Crawford added: “Right now, we’ve been left alone since last October — and we really like it that way.”
Neighbors
About 5 miles from the Starship production facility, a wrecking ball painted yellow with a smiley face welcomes people to Massey’s Gun Shop and Range, the southernmost shooting range in Texas.
The compound lies at the end of a dirt road on the banks of the Rio Grande. It’s the closest people can get to SpaceX when Texas 4 is closed for launches, and the business has capitalized on its proximity. It charges $20 per vehicle to park on its road for launches.
SpaceX employees, including Musk, “the big man himself,” as well as space tourists, visit the range, said a volunteer at the facility who identified himself only as Z.
“SpaceX has brought a lot of business out here,” he said.
The range makes ammunition and rents many types of weapons, including machine guns and a .50-caliber rifle.
“When SpaceX came along, that’s a huge diversion, and now everyone just talks about it in town,” Z said. “There’s people who are coming from all over the world, and they come down here to the very tip of Texas.”
Another place space tourists gather is Rocket Ranch, a couple of miles from Massey’s.
Teslas kick up dust from the