Cameron County
Brownsville, Cameron County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Created February 12, 1848 Since 1535 men of all nations of the earth sailed the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the green valley of the Rio Grande in search of happiness, and each found it in his own time and in his own way. 1535 Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca 1686 Alonzo de Leon, Fr. Damian Manzanet 1749 Jose de Escandon 1771 Jose Salvador de la Garza 1787 Jose Goseascochea 1794 Nicolas Balli 1818 Manuel Yturria, Cristobal Longoria, Jose Antonio Esparza 1823 Martin de Leon, Ramon Lafon 1828 Charles Stillman, James McGloin 1834 William Neale, Reuben M. Potter 1846 Zachary Taylor, George B. McClellan, Ulysses S. Grant, Mariano Arista, Mifflin Kennedy 1847 Jefferson Davis, Winfield Scott, Thomas J. Jackson, Stephen Powers, Richard King, John S. Ford 1849 Simon Mussina, John Young 1850 John R. Butler, Franklin Cummings, Joseph Kleiber, Francis W. Latham, Jose San Roman, Simon Celaya 1855 Edmund J. Davis, 1856 Robert E. Lee, 1859 Samuel P. Heintzelman 1863 John B. Magruder, Hamilton P. Bee 1864 Raphael Semmes 1865 Phillip H. Sheridan, Lew Wallace 1872 Richard Henry Savage, John L. Haynes 1875 Lee H. McNelly 1876 Porfirio Diaz 1878 James B. Wells 1881 William C. Gorgas, Enoch H. Crowder Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Created in 1848 in the wake of the U.S.-Mexican War, Cameron County sits where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf—ground crossed by explorers, empresarios, soldiers, and cattle kings for four centuries. This 1936 state monument catalogs the sweep of that history, from Cabeza de Vaca and the Escandón colonists to Zachary Taylor, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and border figures like Richard King and Mifflin Kennedy. The roll call reads as a layered map of who shaped the lower Rio Grande valley.
Why it matters
Few places distill the collision and blending of Spanish, Mexican, and American history as densely as this borderland where a war redrew the map of North America.
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Related people
- · Zachary Taylor
- · Ulysses S. Grant
- · Robert E. Lee
- · Richard King
- · Mifflin Kennedy
Related events
- · Creation of Cameron County
- · Mexican-American War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Town of La Feria
La Feria, TX
This land was surveyed in 1777 as part of Spanish grants to Don Juan Hinojosa and José María Balli, ancestors of the priest for whom Padre Island is named, and by the 1790s the ranch hosted a fairground—giving La Feria its name—for fiestas, horse racing, and sport. After the Mexican War of 1846–48, the Balli heirs had their Texas title confirmed, and in 1850 cattleman Nathaniel White opened Anglo ranching here. The town of La Feria was platted under its old name in 1906 and grew into a trade center for the farming country of the Rio Grande Valley.
Thomas Walter Jones
Alamo, TX
After the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican War in 1848 and set the Rio Grande as the international boundary, Major William Emory led a survey to map that new border. Thomas W. Jones, a young surveyor from Washington, D.C., joined the effort at El Paso in 1850 and worked as an assistant surveyor on the Lower Rio Grande. In July 1853 he drowned nearby and was buried on a local ranch, one of many who gave their lives to the exacting work of charting the frontier.
1912 Cameron County Courthouse
Brownsville, TX
Completed in 1913 to the design of San Antonio architect Atlee B. Ayres, this Classical Revival courthouse served Cameron County for most of a century. The county itself was created in 1848—before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo formally confirmed the region as American soil—and named for Ewen Cameron, a soldier killed after the ill-fated Mier Expedition. Voters approved the grand $200,000 building in 1911, and its octagonal rotunda and art-glass dome long stood as symbols of the growing border county, later renamed the Dancy Building.
Campo Santo Viejo
Brownsville, TX
Laid out as an entire block of the original 1848 Brownsville townsite and active by 1852, Campo Santo Viejo was the border city's first official cemetery. The city abandoned it in 1864, later burials trailed off in the 1870s, and the site was built over until its very existence faded from memory. Only in 2004, when human remains surfaced during county work, did archeologists rediscover its neat nineteenth-century rows and dozens of undisturbed graves, leading to its dedication as a memorial park and State Archeological Landmark.