 By 1940, Texas City was the fourth-ranked Texas port, exceeded only by Houston, Beaumont, and Port Arthur.Texas City is home to the Texas City Dike, a man-made breakwater built of tumbled granite blocks in the 1930s, that was originally designed to protect the lower Houston Ship Channel from silting.The dike, famous among locals as being "the world's longest man-made fishing pier", extends roughly to the southeast into the mouth of Galveston Bay.