Brownsville-Matamoros Ferries and River Boardwalk
Brownsville, Cameron County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Ferry service along this stretch of the Rio Grande evolved as population in the area increased. In 1836, General Jose Urrea used rowboats at the Paso Real ferry near the later site of Fort Brown en route to Goliad. General Vicente Filisola used the same service on his retreat from the Battle of San Jacinto. Charles Stillman, a Matamoros merchant and businessman, and his estate owned most of the ferry operations near this site from about 1846. The three main ferry ports were located at newly emerging Brownsville, Anacuitas (also called Paso Libre, then Shannondale and later Freeport) and Mansfield. Brownsville and Matamoros were integral to one another and the ferries, or chalans, were a lifeline between them. During the Civil War, the Confederates used ferries to transport cotton to Mexico while southern ports were blockaded by the Union Navy. During Union occupation of Brownsville in 1863, the banks of the Rio Grande were teeming with families waiting to cross the river into exile in Mexico. In the 1880s the ferry company built a plank walk from the railroad tracks to the Brownsville ferry dock because of complaints from passengers who had tired of walking through six inches or more of mud. The walk expanded as the ferry dock relocated several times, and soon the space was filled with a variety of shops catering to the bustling crowds of travelers. The Brownsville-Matamoros bridge was erected in 1910, but for a time only freight traffic on the river decreased. When the gateway bridge was built in 1928, the need for ferryboats vanished, and the boardwalk, by this time as much a part of local life as the river itself, vanished with them. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
For nearly a century the ferries — the chalans — knit Brownsville to Matamoros across the Rio Grande, carrying everyone from retreating Mexican generals after San Jacinto to Confederate cotton dodging the Union blockade. Charles Stillman's operations dominated the crossings from the 1840s, and in the 1880s a plank boardwalk sprang up from the railroad to the dock, soon lined with shops for the crowds of travelers. The international bridges of 1910 and 1928 finally made the boats — and the boardwalk that grew up around them — obsolete.
Why it matters
The crossing shows how a single river ferry could become the economic and human lifeline binding two nations' border cities together for a hundred years.
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Related people
- · Charles Stillman
- · Jose Urrea
- · Vicente Filisola
Related events
- · Battle of San Jacinto
- · Union occupation of Brownsville (1863)
Themes & tags
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