Santa Fe (
Spanish:
Holy Faith) is a city in
Galveston County,
Texas, United States. It is named for the
Santa Fe Railroad (now part of
BNSF Railway) which runs through the town alongside
State Highway 6. The population of Santa Fe at the
2010 census was 12,222. It was incorporated in 1878 through the combination of three smaller communities: Alta Loma, Arcadia, and Algoa.
It is served by the Santa Fe Independent School District.
On February 14, 1981, the
Ku Klux Klan hosted a fish fry on a private farm in Santa Fe to protest the growing presence of
Vietnamese shrimpers in the Gulf. During the event, a Vietnamese fishing boat was ceremonially burned. That controversy, as well as similar conflicts in nearby port towns like
Rockport, led to a decision of the United States District Court, S.D.Texas, Houston Division
Vietnamese Fishermen's Association v. Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and also served as the basis for the 1985 Ed Harris film
Alamo Bay.