El Paso de Jacinto
Laredo, Webb County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Throughout history, travelers sought natural fords that allowed safe passage across rivers and streams. Around 1746, Jacinto de Leon discovered such a crossing in this vicinity; it was probably used for centuries before that by indigenous cultures. The ford came to be known as Paso de Jacinto, and around it grew the Laredo community, which began as a ranch established by Tomas Tadeo Sanchez de la Barrera. In 1754, colonizer Jose de Escandon asked Sanchez to find a place for a settlement along the Nueces River. Sanchez failed to identify a suitable location on the Nueces, though, and instead settled in May 1755 along the Rio Grande downstream of Paso de Jacinto. Two years later, Agustin Lopez de la Camara Alta reported that the settlement at the crossing was important in sustaining what had become a major business and military route across the Rio Grande. He also stated that the settlers’ pursuits mainly involved breeding cattle and gathering salt from regional salt lakes. Most of the residents’ more than 10,000 animals recorded in a census that year were smaller livestock, such as sheep and goats. By the turn of the 19th century, maps indicated the crossing as “Paso de los Indios,” and 100 years later, the “Old Indian Crossing” was a well-known landmark near the northern edge of Fort McIntosh. A nearby ranch known as Rancho Paso de los Indios also indicates the significance of the crossing in the history of Laredo, which today features many reminders of the impact of and need for routes across the river. (2006)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Long before Spanish colonizers arrived, Indigenous travelers used a natural ford across the Rio Grande here, and around 1746 Jacinto de León marked the crossing that would bear his name. When José de Escandón's colonization push reached the region, Tomás Sánchez de la Barrera founded a ranching settlement nearby in 1755 that grew into Laredo. Maps later relabeled the ford "Paso de los Indios," a memory of its far older use, as cattle, sheep, and the salt trade moved across the river.
Why it matters
Laredo grew from a river crossing that tied Indigenous, Spanish colonial, and later American routes together, making it a lasting hinge point of trade and settlement on the Rio Grande.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
To understand this river crossing, picture the world before bridges and highways, when the whole logic of travel bent around water. A river was both lifeline and barrier, and a natural ford — a shallow, firm-bottomed place where people and animals could wade across safely — was one of the most valuable features on the land. Settlements, trade, and armies all gathered where the crossing was good.
The crossing here on the Rio Grande sits at the far northern reach of Spain's colonial ambitions in North America. In the mid-eighteenth century, the Spanish Crown was pushing to secure this frontier, planting settlements along the river to hold the region and knit it into the empire. The land was hard country, suited to ranching — to cattle, sheep, and goats — and to the gathering of salt from the region's salt lakes, a genuinely valuable commodity in that era.
And yet the ford was old long before Spain arrived. Indigenous peoples had almost certainly used this same shallow passage for centuries, following the plain fact that geography, not politics, decides where a river can be crossed. The Spanish newcomers were, in a sense, inheriting a route already worn into the landscape.
People & events
Around 1746, a traveler named Jacinto de León is credited with identifying the crossing in this vicinity, and his name stuck to it: Paso de Jacinto, Jacinto's Ford. That a single person's name attached to a river crossing tells you how much such places mattered — a good ford was a landmark worth naming and remembering.
The settlement itself grew from the ambitions of the broader colonization effort. In 1754, José de Escandón, the colonizer charged with settling this frontier, asked Tomás Tadeo Sánchez de la Barrera to find a place for a settlement along the Nueces River. Sánchez searched but could not find a suitable spot there. Instead, in May 1755, he settled along the Rio Grande, downstream of Paso de Jacinto — and that ranch became the seed of Laredo.
Within just two years the settlement had proven its worth. In 1757, an official named Agustín López de la Cámara Alta reported that the community at the crossing had become important to a major business and military route across the Rio Grande, its residents raising cattle and gathering salt, with a census counting more than ten thousand animals, mostly sheep and goats. Over time the ford's name shifted on the maps to Paso de los Indios — the Indians' Crossing — a lasting echo of the far older travelers who had used it first.
Its place in the American story
Laredo's origin at a river ford is a reminder that much of the American story was written at crossing points. Long before national borders were drawn here, this passage tied together Indigenous routes, Spanish colonial trade, and — eventually — the movement of goods and people that would define the later border region. A ford is where separate worlds meet, and this one has been doing that work for a very long time.
The economic life the marker describes — ranching, sheep and goats, and salt gathered from regional lakes — is a portrait of how frontier communities actually sustained themselves, far from the wealth of the colonial core. This was a working landscape, and its prosperity flowed along the very route the crossing made possible.
The layered names — Paso de Jacinto, then Paso de los Indios, the "Old Indian Crossing" near the northern edge of what became Fort McIntosh — capture how a single place can hold Indigenous, Spanish colonial, and later American history all at once. Laredo today is full of reminders of the enduring need for routes across the river, and it all traces back to a shallow spot where crossing was possible.
If you visit
Standing near this crossing in Laredo, try to see past the modern city to the plain geography underneath it: a river, and a place where the water ran shallow enough to cross. Everything else — the ranch, the settlement, the trade route, the city — grew outward from that single practical fact.
Let the shifting names be your guide to the depth of time here. When you read that the ford was later mapped as "Paso de los Indios," remember that this was the memory of travelers who used the crossing for centuries before anyone wrote a date down. Few landmarks let you feel the pre-colonial and colonial past pressing so directly on the same ground.
This is a rewarding stop for anyone exploring the deep history of the Rio Grande borderlands. Laredo wears its river-crossing heritage throughout the city, so use this marker as a starting point and keep an eye out, as you travel, for how much of the region's life still organizes itself around the ways people move across the water.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Jacinto de León
- · Tomás Tadeo Sánchez de la Barrera
- · José de Escandón
Related events
- · Founding of Laredo
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
El Paso De Jacinto
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