Custom Boathouses
Covered slips, lifts and entertainment decks under the general permit's 2,500-square-foot cap — sized to the upper lake's narrower water and built tight to a constant-level shoreline.
Trinity, TX · Trinity County
Boathouses, docks and bulkheads built from Trinity, Texas.
Every other town page on this site describes somewhere Shoretech drives to. This one describes where the trucks start: the shop at 131 Carlisle Chita Cemetery Rd, a few minutes from the upper end of Lake Livingston.
The Home Town
A two-stoplight lumber town with a working waterfront.
Trinity counted 2,343 people at the 2020 census, about 80 miles north of Houston — and it is where Shoretech Marine keeps its shop, its equipment and its address.
Trinity grew up on timber. The Texas Long Leaf Lumber Company ran here until 1955, the Old Red Schoolhouse of 1915 still stands, and the town's motto — You'll never want to leave! — is the kind only a small town would print. What the sawmills left behind, the lake filled in: when Lake Livingston rose on the Trinity River in the late 1960s, this end of the county got a shoreline, and eventually it got a marine contractor.
Shoretech Marine is based at 131 Carlisle Chita Cemetery Rd, Trinity, TX 75862. Behind that address sit more than 40 years of marine construction, over 250 boathouses and over 850 shoreline and marine projects — the Henderson entertainment boathouse among them, framed over this same water. On the large Texas and Louisiana lakes and reservoirs our guarantee typically runs 2 to 5 years depending on the project. On private ponds and small lakes it can extend to 10 years.
Being based here has a practical meaning for the west shore and the upper lake: mobilization is a local drive, not a haul. A crew can be standing on a Westwood Shores bank the morning a survey question comes up, and the dredge works its home water between jobs elsewhere. Dave will travel as far as a project requires — but nobody reaches this stretch of shoreline faster.
The Upper Lake
Where the reservoir becomes a river again.
Shoretech's dredge barge at sunset on Lake Livingston — the home water, photographed from the working end of it.
Near Trinity the lake narrows toward the river channel that feeds it. The SH 19 crossing marks the transition: the 1940 Parker-truss bridge — two 250-foot spans, listed on the National Register — still stands at the Trinity–Walker county line beside the four-lane bridge that bypassed it in 2003.
Riverine water changes the design conversation. There is generally less open fetch in front of an upper-lake structure than on the broad basin to the south, the water runs turbid, and the constant pool near 131 feet — moving only a foot or two in a normal year — concentrates waterline wear on one band of a bulkhead instead of spreading it. Different questions than the lower lake; same permit numbers.
Built From the Home Base
The full scope, closest to the shop.
Everything Shoretech builds anywhere in Texas gets built here first, nearest the yard where the material and the equipment live.
Boat Docks & Piers
Fixed and floating structures with full-dimension rough-hewn timber pilings, driven or jetted the way the permit requires — never augered into a soft bottom.
Bulkheads, Seawalls & Retaining Walls
Galvanized steel, composite over heavy timber, and vinyl walls for banks that take the same waterline every day of the year.
Precision Dredging
Slip and access-channel dredging under the separate TRA dredging application and Nationwide Permit 19 — prop-washing is prohibited on this lake, and honest dredging is the alternative.
The Permitting Reality
Different county, same authority.
Trinity sits in Trinity County while the towns to the south sit in Polk and San Jacinto — but the lakebed belongs to the Trinity River Authority everywhere.
TRA holds fee ownership of the land under Lake Livingston up to elevation 131 feet msl, with a flowage easement above that. A bulkhead, boathouse or pier at the waterline therefore stands on TRA property, and TRA authorization comes before construction. The federal vehicle is USACE Galveston District General Permit SWG-2007-00720, which TRA administers locally as the Corps' designee — signed in January 2023 and running through December 31, 2028.
The quotable numbers: structures capped at 2,500 square feet in gross plan view including roof overhangs and appurtenances, extending no more than 150 feet into the water or one-third the width of a cove or channel. No living quarters, no covered second story, enclosed storage limited to 200 non-inhabitable square feet. Pilings driven or jetted; stumps sheared only with TRA permission and removed from the lake; new dredging handled separately under Nationwide Permit 19 with TRA's dredging application.
Applications, payments, inspections and permit status all run through the Lake Livingston Project Online Portal, with the permits office at 936-365-2292. Shoretech has prepared these packages — vicinity map, plan view, cross-section with deck height and water depth, waterfront width — for its own home water for decades, and folds the paperwork into every project rather than handing it back to the owner.
131′
Elevation TRA owns the lakebed to, ft msl
2,500
Sq-ft cap on a structure in gross plan view
2028
Current general permit runs to December 31
850+
Shoreline and marine projects completed
Around Trinity
The west shore's named waterfront.
The Trinity side of the lake concentrates its waterfront in a handful of named places rather than a continuous strip of lake towns.
On the Water
- Westwood Shores
- Westwood Shores Country Club
- Trinity Cove
- The SH 19 lake crossing
- The 1940 Parker-truss bridge
- The Trinity River channel
In Town
- 131 Carlisle Chita Cemetery Rd — the Shoretech shop
- Old Red Schoolhouse, 1915
- Downtown Trinity
- SH 19 south toward the crossing
Westwood Shores is the dominant waterfront community on this side — 1,200-plus acres hugging the shoreline, with its own POA, a country club, nine interior lakes, townhomes and a private campground, and a club membership attached to every lot. Trinity Cove appears steadily in the town's waterfront listings. Work in either one clears community review on top of the TRA permit, and Shoretech coordinates both.
Questions We Hear
Trinity FAQ.
Where is Shoretech actually based?
At 131 Carlisle Chita Cemetery Rd, Trinity, TX 75862 — the company's shop and home base, a short drive from the upper end of Lake Livingston. That is not a service-area claim; it is the address. The record behind it is 40+ years of marine construction, more than 250 boathouses and more than 850 shoreline and marine projects, and while the home water gets the shortest drive, Dave travels as far as a job requires.
Who permits a dock or bulkhead on the Trinity end of the lake?
The Trinity River Authority, even though Trinity sits in a different county than the towns to the south. TRA owns the lakebed up to elevation 131 feet msl, so a bulkhead, boathouse or pier at the waterline stands on TRA property and needs its authorization. The federal vehicle is USACE Galveston District General Permit SWG-2007-00720, administered locally with TRA as the Corps' designee; applications, payments and inspections run through the Lake Livingston Project Online Portal, and the permits office answers at 936-365-2292. The current general permit was signed in January 2023 and runs through December 31, 2028.
What is different about building on the upper lake?
The water. Down at the lower basin the lake opens out to miles of width; up here it narrows toward the Trinity River channel that feeds it, past the SH 19 crossing where the 1940 Parker-truss bridge still stands beside the four-lane span that replaced it in 2003. Narrower water generally means less open fetch in front of a structure than the broad lower lake, and the same constant-level pool — held near 131 feet with only 1 to 2 feet of annual fluctuation — means a bulkhead takes its wave action at the same waterline year after year. The design answers change; the permit numbers do not.
Does Shoretech work inside Westwood Shores?
Yes — it is the dominant named waterfront community on this side of the lake and it is minutes from the shop. Westwood Shores is a 1,200-plus-acre resort community with its own property owners association, a country club, nine interior lakes and a private campground, and every lot carries a club membership. Practically, that means shoreline plans there clear the POA's review as well as TRA's authorization, and Shoretech coordinates both rather than leaving the paperwork to the owner.
What drives the cost of a bulkhead or boathouse near Trinity?
The site, more than the structure. Wall height and run length, the soil behind the bank, how equipment reaches the shoreline, water depth at the terminal structure, the material — composite over heavy timber, galvanized steel, vinyl — and the permit-driven requirements, like pilings that must be driven or jetted rather than augered and stumps that may only be sheared with TRA's permission. Those variables move a price more than square footage does, which is why the honest answer starts with a site visit rather than a number.
Down the Shoreline
The rest of the home lake, and the next lake over.
Talk To The Builder Down The Road
Planning waterfront work near Trinity?
Tell Dave which stretch of shoreline you are on, what is standing there now, and what you want the finished waterfront to do. On this end of the lake the site visit is a short drive, and the TRA application gets handled with the design.