Fort Ringgold
Rio Grande City, Starr County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Established October 26, 1848, at Davis Landing by Capt. J.H. La Motte, 1st U.S. Infantry, as Ringgold Barracks • • Named in honor of Brevet Major David Ringgold, 4th U.S. Artillery, who died of wounds received at Palo Alto, May 8, 1846 • Troops were withdrawn March 3, 1859 • Reoccupied December 29, 1859 • Abandoned in 1861 • Reoccupied by U.S. troops in June 1865 • General Robert E. Lee passed a few days here in 1856 and in 1860 Erected by the State of Texas, 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Established in 1848 at Davis Landing on the Rio Grande, this post was named for Major David Ringgold, mortally wounded at the Battle of Palo Alto in 1846 during the Mexican-American War. Its garrison came and went through the mid-19th century—abandoned in 1861, reoccupied after the Civil War—and a young Robert E. Lee passed through in 1856 and 1860 while stationed in Texas. The State of Texas marked the site in 1936.
Why it matters
Fort Ringgold guarded the newly drawn Rio Grande border in the wake of the Mexican-American War, a frontier outpost whose visitors and garrisons touched some of the era's most consequential figures.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When Ringgold Barracks was founded in the autumn of 1848, the Rio Grande had only just become the official border between the United States and Mexico. The Mexican-American War had ended earlier that year, and with it the long dispute over whether Texas ended at the Nueces River or at the Rio Grande. The U.S. Army's job now was to hold the new line.
The lower Rio Grande valley was a long way from anywhere. The river was the main highway, and steamboats and trading landings like Davis Landing linked scattered ranches and towns on both banks. Families, trade and culture crossed the river freely. The new border ran through a region that had been one community for generations.
To guard it, the Army built a chain of posts along the river. Ringgold Barracks, later called Fort Ringgold, was one of the most important. Over the next two decades its garrison came and went as national events pulled troops away and then sent them back.
People & events
The post took its name from Brevet Major Ringgold, an artillery officer who was mortally wounded at the Battle of Palo Alto in May 1846. It was one of the first major battles of the war with Mexico. At Palo Alto, fast-moving American artillery played a decisive role, and the loss of one of its officers made him an early hero of the war. Naming a new border post for him tied the fort directly to the war that had created the border.
The post's history, as the marker tells it, was a series of arrivals and departures. Soldiers left in early 1859 and returned at the very end of that year. That return came during a troubled period along the lower Rio Grande, when border violence and the uprising led by Juan Cortina alarmed officials in Texas. The garrison left again in 1861 as the Civil War broke out, and federal troops came back in 1865 after the war ended.
One famous visitor passed through twice. Robert E. Lee, then a U.S. Army officer serving in Texas years before he led Confederate armies, spent a few days here in 1856 and again in 1860. Those short stays catch Lee at a revealing moment: still a career soldier of the United States, guarding its southern border only a few years before he would take up arms against it.
Its place in the American story
Fort Ringgold is a physical reminder that the U.S.-Mexico border along the Rio Grande was drawn by war, and that it had to be garrisoned from the start. The posts along the river turned a line on a treaty map into a border that was actually held.
The fort's comings and goings follow the nation's larger crises. It was built after one war, emptied at the start of another, and reoccupied when that war ended. For a remote post, it tracked the national story closely: expansion, sectional crisis, the Civil War and Reconstruction all show up in its garrison records.
Lee's visits give it one more link to the bigger story. Many officers who later led on both sides of the Civil War spent time on the Texas frontier in the 1850s. Posts like this one were where they served together before the country split apart.
If you visit
Fort Ringgold is in Rio Grande City, close to the river that gave it its purpose. The old post has been reused over the years, and parts of the historic grounds are now used by the community, so check locally about which areas are open to visitors and respect any posted limits.
If you can see the surviving older buildings, look for the solid, practical architecture of a frontier Army post, made for a hot climate and a long stay. Stand near the river and picture the steamboats and landings that once made this spot important.
Rio Grande City fits well into a drive along the Rio Grande through the lower valley, a route full of old towns, Spanish-colonial heritage and the traces of a borderland whose people lived on both banks long before any fort was built. This marker, placed by the State of Texas in 1936, is a good place to start thinking about that longer history.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · David Ringgold
- · Robert E. Lee
Related events
- · Mexican-American War
- · Battle of Palo Alto
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old Rancho Davis
Rio Grande City, TX
Kentucky-born Henry Clay Davis came to Texas in the late 1830s and served with Zachary Taylor's army during the Mexican-American War in 1846. Marrying into the prominent Garza family of the lower Rio Grande, he established a home around which Rio Grande City grew, fed by steamboat trade up from Brownsville and by the founding of nearby Ringgold Barracks in 1848. The town became the seat of Starr County.
Los Ebanos Ferry Crossing
Los Ebanos, TX
This bend of the Rio Grande has been crossed for centuries, first recorded when José de Escandón's Spanish colonists forded here in the 1740s along a route that also carried a salt trail to El Sal del Rey. Over the generations it saw Mexican War troops in 1846, Texas Rangers chasing cattle rustlers in 1874, and smugglers during Prohibition. A licensed ferry and inspection station opened in 1950, and the hand-pulled crossing—named for the ebony trees on its banks—is said to be the only government-licensed, hand-operated ferry on any U.S. border.
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.
Fort Ringgold, C.S.A.
Rio Grande City, TX
Early in the Civil War, Confederate Texans under Col. John S. Ford occupied Fort Ringgold on the Rio Grande, a vital link in the chain of posts guarding Texas's vast frontier, coastline, and border. From here commanders like Ford, August Buchel, and Santos Benavides scouted the river, defended ranches, and protected the cotton wagons trading through neutral Mexico for war supplies. Union cavalry seized the fort in late 1863, but Ford retook it in May 1864 and used it as a springboard to recapture Brownsville.