BOCA CHICA VILLAGE, Texas — Driving down a long empty stretch of Highway 4 in South Texas, there are few indications that this windswept corner of the nation, bound by the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio Grande, is host to more than dense mesquite thickets and the ghosts of the Civil War. The land feels vast, unchanging and decidedly apolitical — bigger than people altogether.
That is, until a break in the brush reveals an enormous gold bust of Elon Musk, staring into the distance.
Then, signs of the political moment are everywhere. U.S. Immigration and Enforcement agents in bullet-proof jackets flag down passing cars at an inland border checkpoint.
A road leading off the highway reads “Mars-a-Lago.” A hundred yards away, bookending an old, black Studebaker parked for-sale in a dusty pullout, murals of Musk’s face and the DOGE Shiba Inu plaster two 30-foot concrete towers.
And finally, rising from the empty salt plains, in the shadow of a towering rocketship and suborbital launch vehicles, sit homes and hangars, office buildings and neighborhood streets. This is Starbase, the soon-to-be newest city in Texas, and Elon Musk’s first company town. The far-flung settlement, populated almost entirely by SpaceX employees and construction workers, is the site of SpaceX’s launchpad for their next-generation of Starship rockets, and home base for humanity’s future colonization of Mars.
‘He’s Trying to Colonize This Community’: Inside Elon Musk’s Plan to Take Over This Texas Town