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
History of South America the continent of North America via the Panama Block that closed the marine Bolivar Trough, leading to the Great American Interchange, the interchange of biota from both continents. The first species discovered to have made the northward migration was "Pliometanastes", a fossil ground sloth species, roughly the size of a modern black bear. Several migrations to the Southern Hemisphere were undertaken by tougher, North American mammal carnivores; fewer species migrated in the opposite direction from south to north. The result of the intrusion of North American fauna was that hundreds of South American species became extinct in a relatively short