1886 Gulf Coast Inn Rebuilt After Fire and Hurricane
200 East Cotter Avenue, Port Aransas, TX 78373
Age
Guests must be 25+ to rent a room
Cost
$$$
Rooms typically priced in the $150-300 range; rates vary seasonally. $40 pet fee per stay.
Access
Limited Access
Mixed
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1886 · National Register of Historic Places (1979) · Birthplace of Texas Sport Fishing · FDR Visit 1937 · Survived Hurricane Harvey 2017
Frank Stephenson, a boat pilot and assistant keeper of the Aransas Pass Lighthouse, opened the original Tarpon Inn in 1886 from surplus Civil War barracks lumber on what was then a sparsely settled stretch of Mustang Island. The inn served sport fishermen drawn by the Gulf's famously large tarpon, and Port Aransas would later be designated the Birthplace of Texas Sport Fishing.
The first building burned in 1900. Two replacement buildings were constructed and destroyed in turn by the 1919 Florida Keys-Texas hurricane, which generated a 12 to 15 foot storm surge that flattened most of the small port community. James M. Ellis purchased the wreckage in 1923 and rebuilt the inn in 1925, setting twenty-foot pilings into sixteen feet of concrete at each room corner to harden the structure against future hurricanes. That building still stands today.
The Tarpon Inn became a literal logbook of its own clientele: starting in the 1930s anglers signed and dated the scales of their catches and pinned them to the lobby wall. The collection now exceeds 7,000 scales. President Franklin D. Roosevelt fished from Port Aransas during a May 1937 trip; his signed scale is preserved on the wall, and the on-site restaurant Roosevelt's takes its name from that visit.
The inn was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 14, 1979. In August 2017 Hurricane Harvey made landfall at Port Aransas as a Category 4 storm; the Ellis-era piling reinforcements held, and the Tarpon Inn reopened in April 2018 after eight months of repairs.
Sources
Port Aransas residents and inn staff have logged decades of reported phenomena at the Tarpon Inn. The most-cited account describes a bride who, according to local lore, was abandoned on her wedding night and found hanging in Room 29. Visitors who book that room report a persistent floral perfume that does not match any in-house product.
Guests on the second floor have reported hearing the sound of children running along the wooden breezeways late at night. Staff describe these as the most common reports they receive at the front desk, often from parents wondering whether other families are staying nearby. Inn records show no children registered on those floors at the times of many reports.
The original concrete-floored shower stalls are described in multiple submitted accounts as cold spots. Voices murmuring inside empty bathrooms have been reported by overnight guests since at least the 1990s. A separate, less-corroborated account in local folklore describes a kitchen-related death involving a chef and a waiter; the inn does not endorse this story and there is no published primary documentation for it.
Room 40 is identified by inn staff and Port Aransas paranormal researchers as the most consistently active room in the building. Haunted Rooms America has offered overnight investigations at the property, and the inn occasionally hosts ghost-hunt sleepover events in partnership with Visit Port Aransas.
Notable Entities
Stay in one of the small original rooms in the 1925 reconstruction, the third generation of inn on this site since 1886. The lobby wall is famously covered in over 7,000 signed tarpon scales, including one signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt during a 1937 fishing trip.
On-site restaurant named for Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1937 visit. Coastal cuisine in a building that has stood through the 1919 hurricane and 2017's Hurricane Harvey, both of which it survived structurally intact.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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