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The Baytown Nature Center is located in Baytown, Texas, 20 miles east of Houston. It is located on a 450-acre peninsula along the Houston Ship Channel and surrounded on three sides by Burnet Bay, Crystal Bay, and Scott Bay. The Baytown Nature Center is both a recreation area and a wildlife sanctuary that is home to hundreds of bird species, mammals, reptiles, and aquatic species. The City of Baytown created this Nature Center 10 years ago. The SWA Group’s Houston office provided carried out land planning and landscape architectural services.

The Baytown Nature Center was, in the 1940s and 1950s, a highly desirable residential neighborhood known as Brownwood with nearly 400 substantial homes on a 500-acre peninsula. In 1961, Hurricane Carla devastated the Texas Gulf Coast, flooding Brownwood and ending any new development in the area. Afterwards, subsidence became a serious problem as oil and chemical facilities along the Houston Ship Channel pumped out groundwater faster than natural forces could replenish the water table. Thus, during the 1970s and 1980s, much of the Texan Gulf Coast (including Brownwood) sank a total of 10 to 15 feet. Brownwood, which had previously been high and dry, was repeatedly inundated by high tides and storms.