Alleyton, C.S.A.
Columbus, Colorado County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born as War clouds gathered. Alleyton was a key point on the supply line of the Confederate States of American during the Civil War. It was both beginning and end of the cotton road leading to the Confederacy's back door on the Rio Grande River. By 1860 the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railroad extended from Harrisburg, near Houston. To Alleyton. As a railhead Alleyton became the site of an important cotton station and Quartermaster Depot during the War. Cotton came here from north and east Texas. From Louisiana, and from Arkansas on the Rails of the B.B.B. & C. and via wagon roads. From Alleyton the South's most precious trading commodity was carried to a point on the Colorado River across from Columbus. A point on the Colorado River across from Columbus. It was then ferried across for the start of a long, tortuous journey to the Rio Grande. The bales of cotton were hauled on big-bedded wagons and high-wheeled Mexican carts, pulled by mules, horses or oxen. The Cotton Road led to Goliad, San Patricio, the King Ranch and finally to Brownsville. Shreds of white fluff on bush and cactus marked the trail of the wagon trains. From Brownsville the cotton was taken across the river to Matamoros, Mexico and subsequently placed on board ships bound for Europe. As the only major gap in the Federal naval blockade of the Confederacy, neutral Matamoros was the place of exchange for outgoing cotton and imported munitions, clothing and medicine. When Federal forces took Vicksburg in 1863 the Mississippi River was sealed off and the Confederacy divided. The Texas-Mexico trade routes became the South's major military supply lines in the trans-Mississippi west. Alleyton was a main destination of the wagon trains returning from the Rio Grande. Rifles, swords, shirts, pants, alum, arrowroot and other items needed by soldier and civilian in the harried Confederacy were unloaded here for new destinations.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When war came, the little railhead of Alleyton became a vital artery of the Confederacy. As the terminus of the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railroad, it gathered cotton from Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas to launch it down the "Cotton Road" toward the Rio Grande. After Vicksburg fell in 1863 and the Mississippi was sealed, this route to neutral Matamoros, Mexico became the South's lifeline, exchanging cotton for guns, clothing, and medicine that flowed back through Alleyton.
Why it matters
The Cotton Road through Alleyton was the Confederacy's one great gap in the Union blockade, making South Texas a strategic lifeline for the trans-Mississippi war effort.
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Related events
- · Fall of Vicksburg, 1863
- · Confederate Cotton Road trade through Matamoros
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Columbus Tap Railway
Columbus, TX
When the state's pioneering Buffalo Bayou, Brazos & Colorado railroad routed its Houston-to-Austin line through nearby Alleyton and bypassed Columbus in the 1850s, local planters and merchants fought back by chartering their own Columbus Tap Railway in 1860 to connect the two. The Civil War intervened; though the Confederacy found the line useful and even impressed labor to work its roadbed in 1863, it went unfinished during the fighting. Completed after the war, it eventually folded into the Southern Pacific system.
Exum Philip Whitfield
Columbus, TX
Exum Philip Whitfield helped build the young town of Columbus into a commercial hub along the Colorado River, wearing the many hats common to ambitious men on the mid-19th-century Texas frontier — merchant, physician, farmer, and railroad president. His leadership of the Columbus Tap Railway from 1861 to 1866 tied a small Texas town into the region's expanding rail network, even as he twice enlisted in Confederate service during the Civil War. His long life spanned the boom decades that transformed Texas from republic to industrializing state.
Old Osage
Weimar, TX
This quiet park in Weimar marks a spot that helped decide the Texas Revolution. Jesse Burnam opened a trading post here in 1820, and his ferry across the Colorado River sped Sam Houston's army toward San Jacinto in 1836 — after which Houston burned the crossing to slow Santa Anna's pursuit. The town that later rose here took its name from the Osage orange trees nearby, and in 1861 it became a Confederate recruiting center that raised most of Company A, 5th Texas Cavalry.
Alleyton
Alleyton, TX
Alleyton was once the oldest permanent settlement and largest town in Colorado County, founded by the Alley brothers—William, John, Rawson, Thomas, and Abraham—all members of Stephen F. Austin's original 300 colonists. Its prominence grew when it became the terminus of the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railroad from 1860 to 1867.