US Map / Cities / Corpus Christi

Corpus Christi Map

Corpus Christi wraps around a shallow bay on the south Texas coast, sheltered from the open Gulf by a chain of low barrier islands.

Where is Corpus Christi?

Corpus Christi is on the Gulf coast of southern Texas, about 145 miles southeast of San Antonio, roughly 210 miles southwest of Houston, and some 215 miles south of Austin. Laredo is about 145 miles west on the Mexican border, and Brownsville, at the mouth of the Rio Grande, is roughly 160 miles south. It is the largest city on the Texas coast between Houston and the Rio Grande, and the country behind it is dry brush ranchland rather than the wet prairie around Houston.

Corpus Christi at a glance

Corpus Christi in Texas

The city is the seat of Nueces County, but its limits also reach into Aransas, Kleberg and San Patricio counties across the water and down the island — an unusual spread even in a state with 254 counties, all of them on the Texas county map. Fourteen Texas cities are among the country's hundred largest and Corpus Christi is the only one standing on the coast itself; the others — Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin and the rest — sit inland, as the Texas state page shows.

Bay, barrier islands and the ship channel

Corpus Christi Bay is broad, shallow and almost fully enclosed by Mustang Island and the northern end of Padre Island, which run parallel to the mainland with a narrow lagoon behind them. The only reason ocean ships reach the port is a dredged channel cut through Aransas Pass and across the bay, and that channel has made the Port of Corpus Christi the leading crude oil export terminal in the United States, fed by pipelines from the Eagle Ford and Permian fields. Padre Island stretches roughly 110 miles south from here, most of it protected as a national seashore and largely undeveloped. The city stands mostly at or near sea level, apart from a low bluff behind the downtown waterfront, and its exposure on the Gulf coast makes hurricanes the defining local risk.

Cities near Corpus Christi

San Antonio and Austin are inland to the northwest, Houston up the coast, and Laredo west on the border. The West South Central division page sets Texas beside Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.