Bolivar Peninsula, Texas Gilchrist Post Office, which opened on September 16, 1950. It closed on July 31, 2010. 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
Orindatus Simon Bolivar Wall Orindatus Simon Bolivar Wall Orindatus Simon Bolivar Wall, known as O.S.B. Wall (1825-1891), was an American attorney and politician who was born into slavery but, during the American Civil War, became the first black man to be commissioned as captain in the Regular U.S. Army. One of several mixed-race children of a white planter, Wall and others were freed by their father, given a bequest and guardian, and sent to Ohio to be educated at Oberlin College. After the war, Wall read the law and passed the bar. Wall moved to Washington, DC, where he practiced law and was appointed