Civil War Raid from Camp Boveda
Riviera, Kleberg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On December 23, 1863, Capt. Jas. Speed of Gen. Napoleon J. T. Dana's Brownsville-based Federal army force raided unguarded King Ranch. Objectives were to capture or kill Capt. Richard King and destroy the Confederate cotton trade. King, forewarned, evaded the enemy. At King Ranch, the raiders killed Francisco Alvarado; captured C.S.A. Captains John Brown, Alvin Dix, W. S. Gregory and Jas. McClearly and Chaplain Hiram Chamberlain; rifled all buildings; dispersed ranch employees; declared the slaves free; confiscated all horses and mules; impounded Confederate government cotton, promising that if it were moved or burned, King's life would be the forfeit; and threatened further raids from Boveda by Col. E. J. Davis, former South Texas attorney turned Federal officer. Mrs. King and children moved to San Antonio for the war's duration; soon Col. J. S. "RIP" Ford's Confederate cavalry came to protect the cotton road and ranch. At Camp (Rancho) Boveda, near a ford on Los Olmos Creek, were seven cypress-walled water wells, possibly used by Gen. Zachary Taylor in 1846. Campsite is 2-1/2 miles east of this point, on lot 2, block 15, Koch subdivision number one, present Poteet Ranch.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In December 1863, the Civil War reached deep into South Texas when a Federal force out of Union-held Brownsville struck the vast King Ranch. Their aim was to cripple the Confederate cotton trade—the lifeline that carried Southern cotton to Mexican ports beyond the reach of the Union blockade—and to seize rancher Richard King himself. Warned in time, King slipped away, but the raiders killed a ranch hand, took Confederate officers prisoner, freed enslaved people, and stripped the ranch of livestock. Soon Confederate cavalry under "Rip" Ford arrived to guard the cotton road.
Why it matters
The raid reveals how the Rio Grande cotton trade made remote South Texas a strategic prize, drawing the Civil War onto the ranchlands of the far frontier.
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Related people
- · Richard King
- · E. J. Davis
- · John S. "Rip" Ford
- · Napoleon J. T. Dana
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The King Ranch
Kingsville, TX
In 1853 Rio Grande steamboat captain Richard King bought two Spanish land grants on Santa Gertrudis Creek and began building what became the legendary King Ranch. Through drought, cattle thieves, and the Civil War—when the ranch funneled Confederate cotton to Mexico—King and his heirs bred longhorns into fortunes, pioneered the Santa Gertrudis cattle breed, and expanded the ranch to nearly a million acres.
King Ranch, C.S.A.
Kingsville, TX
Founded in 1853 by Capt. Richard King, the King Ranch became a vital way-station on the wartime "cotton road" — the Confederacy's lifeline to the outside world. As the Union blockade choked Southern ports, wagons hauled cotton across South Texas to King's operation, then on to Matamoros, Mexico, where it was traded for guns, medicine, and coffee. The ranch fed and sheltered teamsters and Confederate troops alike, and drew both bandits and Federal raiders determined to cut the trade.
Camp San Fernando
Kingsville, TX
On San Fernando Creek stood a Confederate post guarding the "cotton road," the vital smuggling and trade route that ran from East Texas to the Rio Grande, keeping the blockaded South supplied. Manned from 1862 and reinforced in 1864 under the famed Colonel John S. "RIP" Ford, the camp anchored a network of cavalry commands — including Tejano units under Santos Benavides and home guards that counted King Ranch founder Richard King — who skirmished with Federal forces across South Texas. From here Ford's "Cavalry of the West" watched the cotton road and pressed the fight toward the Rio Grande Valley.
Banquete, C.S.A.
Banquete, TX
During the Civil War, the little town of Banquete meant water, supplies, and repairs to the thousands hauling cotton along the Cotton Road toward Mexico. With Confederate ports blockaded, long trains of wagons and ox carts lumbered for weeks across the arid brush to the border towns of Bagdad and Matamoros, trading cotton for the guns, medicine, shoes, and clothing scarce at home. Banquete's water made those grueling hauls possible, giving a town named for an 1832 fiesta a strategic role in the Confederacy's lifeline to the outside world.