A federal committee rejected a proposal on Thursday to rename Boca Chica Beach in South Texas to "Cyber Beach." The move preserves the historic name despite a SpaceX supporter’s effort to rebrand the public beach near the company’s Starbase launch site.
The U.S. Board on Geographic Names' Domestic Names Committee voted against the proposal during its monthly meeting. The decision means Boca Chica Beach will remain the official name used on federal maps and records.
Boca Chica Beach sits at the southern tip of Texas near the mouth of the Rio Grande. The beach has carried its current official name since 1936 and has long been a destination for fishing and camping along the Texas Gulf Coast.
In recent years, however, it’s become the center of SpaceX's growing footprint throughout the region. The public beach sits next to the company's Starbase launch and production complex, where SpaceX builds and tests its Starship rockets.
The name-change proposal was submitted in late 2024 by Josh Hazel, a SpaceX supporter from Mississippi who said the new name would recognize the beach's role in spaceflight development at SpaceX’s nearby Starbase launch site. The area has become the focus of ongoing debates over public beach access, environmental protections and Elon Musk's expanding influence in the region, particularly after voters approved incorporating the company town of Starbase in May 2025.
In the proposal, Hazel wrote that enthusiasts commonly refer to the area as “Cyber Beach” and that formalizing the name would commemorate “the location where inter-planetary travel was started.”
When asked about the significance of the term "cyber," Hazel said it was "a hat tip to the CyberTruck."
“Many references around Starship and the CyberTruck use the Cyber moniker just to infer the reference of out-of-this-world exploration or experiences and such,” Hazel wrote.
Ahead of Thursday's vote, the proposal received little institutional support.
The City of Starbase, Cameron County, the Texas Geographic Names Committee and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service all recommended keeping the existing name. Cameron County commissioners said Boca Chica Beach had been used for generations and remains the name most commonly used by residents.
“Maintaining these established names helps preserve local heritage, reflects how residents have identified the area for generations, and provides consistency for the community and visitors alike,” wrote Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño, Jr. in an April letter to the federal committee.
State Rep. Erin Gámez, a Democrat whose Texas House district includes part of Cameron County, had urged the committee to reject the proposal. On Thursday, she celebrated the decision on social media.
“Together, we showed that when a community comes together and makes its voice heard, we can influence government decisions and protect the places that matter to us,” Gámez wrote.
