Camp Rabb and Fort Duncan, C.S.A.
Eagle Pass, Maverick County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Camp Rabb, 15 miles northeast, was one of 18 Confederate outposts placed a day's horseback ride apart, from Red River to Rio Grande, to prevent Indian attacks and Federal invasion. Named for captain in Frontier Regiment, Texas Cavalry; guarded ford on the Cotton Road, used as major Southern supply line. Fort Duncan, at this site, a former U.S. outpost, protected Civil War trade of cotton for vital supplies and arms. Fort served the counter threat from Federals in upriver El Paso and the Davis Mountains. (1964)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
During the Civil War, Camp Rabb was one of eighteen Confederate outposts strung a day's ride apart from the Red River to the Rio Grande, meant to guard against both Indian raids and Federal invasion. Named for a captain in the Frontier Regiment of Texas Cavalry, it watched a ford on the Cotton Road, the vital route by which Southern cotton reached market. Nearby Fort Duncan, a former U.S. post, protected that lifeline trade of cotton for arms and supplies against Union forces upriver.
Why it matters
These posts reveal how the Confederacy's survival hinged on the Texas-Mexico cotton trade, and how thinly the frontier was held against enemies on two fronts.
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Related events
- · American Civil War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Eagle Pass, C.S.A.
Eagle Pass, TX
When Union forces seized the lower Rio Grande in 1863, Eagle Pass became a vital Confederate customhouse and port of entry, the western terminus of the famed Cotton Road. Oxcart trains hauled thousands of cotton bales from San Antonio across a dangerous, bandit-plagued road to be ferried into Mexico and traded for guns, medicine, and supplies. Fort Duncan and Camp Rabb guarded the crossing in a town that had voted overwhelmingly against secession, and citizens once fought off raiders from behind barricades of cotton bales.
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Shelby's Flag Burial
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Three months after Lee's surrender, Confederate General Joseph O. Shelby led his un-surrendered Missouri cavalry brigade across Texas toward Mexico, unwilling to lay down arms. On July 4, 1865, at the banks of the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, his command gathered for a final ceremony: to drum and bugle, their battle flag was folded, weighted, and sunk into the muddy river. It is remembered as the last flag to fly over an organized Confederate force.
Maverick County
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Carved from Kinney County in 1856 and organized in 1871, Maverick County took its name from Samuel A. Maverick, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Its county seat, Eagle Pass, sits where the storied El Camino Real crossed the Rio Grande — the same road that carried Spanish missionaries, the explorer Louis St. Denis, Moses Austin, and generations of troops and settlers into Texas. The land holds Spanish mission ruins and old military posts, including Fort Duncan, which sheltered both U.S. and Confederate soldiers.