Bolivar Peninsula, Texas Bolivar Peninsula, Texas Bolivar Peninsula ( ) is a census-designated place (CDP) in Galveston County, Texas, United States. The population was 2,417 at the 2010 census. The communities of Port Bolivar, Crystal Beach, Caplen, Gilchrist, and High Island are located on Bolivar Peninsula. The peninsula was named by 1816 for Simón Bolívar, the famed South American political leader involved in the independence movements of Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and other Latin American nations. The pirates/privateers Jean Laffite and Louis-Michel Aury each used the Bolivar Peninsula as part of the pirate "kingdom" established around the Galveston Bay. The peninsula was part of
Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. World War II. Buckner, Lesley J. McNair, Frank Maxwell Andrews, and Millard Harmon, all lieutenant generals at the time of their deaths, were the highest-ranking Americans to be killed in World War II. Buckner and McNair were posthumously promoted to the rank of four-star general on July 19, 1954, by a Special Act of Congress (Public Law 83-508). Buckner was the son of Confederate general Simon Bolivar Buckner and his wife Delia Hayes Claiborne. His father was Governor of Kentucky from 1887 to 1891, and was the Gold Democratic Party's candidate for U.S. Vice President in 1896. Buckner was raised