The Kemah-Seabrook Drawbridge in this picture was a two-arm bridge that was built in 1962. It replaced a previous one-arm bridge connecting the towns of Seabrook and Kemah on the upper Texas Gulf coast. This bridge was dismantled in 1986 when the current fixed-span bridge was completed. This photograph has been published numerous times in the Clear Lake area, including on the cover of the local telephone book in 1984 and in many local magazines and newspapers.
The bridge over the Clear Creek Channel that fed into Galveston Bay, known as the Kemah-Seabrook Drawbridge, was the reason for many of my early Seabrook and Kemah waterfront photographs. The bridge would open frequently, especially on the weekend, to allow the sailboats to pass through. I would use the time when the bridge was open to get out of my car and photograph the boats as they passed under the bridge. It was an expansive vantage point, above the waterfronts of Seabrook and Kemah, looking into Galveston Bay with shrimp boats docked on each side and in front of popular seafood restaurants and a parade of sailboats and power boats in the channel. The draw bridge was replaced in 1986 by a fixed-span bridge. This ended the opportunity to photograph the sailboats as they circled and then filed in a straight line to go under the open drawbridge one by one.
