East Matagorda Bay is located off Matagorda County on the Texas Gulf Coast, enclosed by the Matagorda Peninsula and the tidal flats at the mouth of the Colorado River. It is a minor estuary, one of a series of estuaries along the Gulf Coast of Texas, but it has no significant river sources, receiving only the runoff from the adjacent coastal watershed. Its only true opening to the Gulf of Mexico is through Brown Cedar Cut, near the north end of the peninsula. East Matagorda Bay was devastated by the 1942 Matagorda Hurricane, the most devastating hurricane of the 1942 Atlantic hurricane season.
It is part of the Matagorda Bay system, the third largest estuarine system in the state of Texas.
