Port Isabel (Old Point Isabel)
Port Isabel, Cameron County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Site of a ranch settlement, owned by Don Rafael Garcia, called "El Fronton de Santa Ysabel" (Bluff of Saint Isabel) about the year 1828. The Mexican custom station was located here in 1844, after the villages of Brazos Santiago and Boca Del Rio were swept away by storms. Goods landed here were at once freighted inland to Matamoros. After the Mexican War (1846-1848), the United States Post Office of "Point Isabel" was created on April 9, 1849. Efforts to build a railroad line to Brownsville in the 1850s did not succeed, but after the Civil War, in 1866, public demands for a rail line to Brownsville were met by Rio Grande steamboat interests, who chartered but refrained from building the road. In 1871, competitors formed the Rio Grande Railroad Company, obtained a charter, and put the line into service in 1873 from Brownsville to a terminus here (450 feet south of this marker). The line served until 1933 when a deep water channel was built to Brownsville.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
About 1828 this bluff on the lower Rio Grande held Don Rafael Garcia's ranch, "El Fronton de Santa Ysabel," and by 1844 a Mexican customs station moved here after storms destroyed nearby coastal villages. Following the Mexican War, the U.S. established the Point Isabel post office in 1849, and goods landed here were freighted inland to Matamoros. In 1873 a railroad finally linked the port to Brownsville, serving until a deepwater channel to Brownsville replaced it in 1933.
Why it matters
Port Isabel sat at the crossroads of Mexican, Texan, and U.S. commerce on the border, its shifting fortunes tracing the contested history of the lower Rio Grande.
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Related people
- · Rafael Garcia
Related events
- · Mexican War
- · Rio Grande Railroad
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Port of Matamoros
Port Isabel, TX
Established in 1824, the Port of Matamoros channeled goods shipped from New Orleans and other U.S. ports overland to the towns of northern Mexico, guarded by a Mexican garrison and naval vessel. During and after the Texas Revolution it saw repeated naval clashes between the U.S. and Mexico in 1836–37. Jurisdiction was only settled in 1846, when General Zachary Taylor's forces occupied the area at the opening of the Mexican War.
These Palmetto Pilings
Brownsville, TX
These weathered pilings mark two separate military supply roads a generation apart. The cypress piles are remnants of a floating bridge Gen. Zachary Taylor threw across Boca Chica Inlet in 1846 during the Mexican-American War; the palmetto pilings are what remains of a railroad crossing begun by Gen. Francis Herron in 1864 and finished by Gen. Philip Sheridan in 1865 to move Union supplies at the close of the Civil War.
Old Point Isabel Lighthouse
Port Isabel, TX
Raised by the federal government in 1852, this lighthouse guided the busy commerce of the Rio Grande's mouth, where steamboats and coastal traders converged. Its light went dark during the Civil War and flickered in and out of service for decades before being permanently extinguished in 1905, a small monument to the rise and decline of Gulf maritime trade.
Site of Fort Polk
Port Isabel, TX
A Mexican ranching village once stood on this point, settled in the 1700s and abandoned before the United States declared war on Mexico in 1846. That March, General Zachary Taylor's forces occupied the site and built a supply depot to receive shipments from New Orleans, a six-sided earthwork named Fort Polk for the president. The fort was abandoned in 1850, but the settlement it drew grew into Port Isabel, with traces of the earthworks visible into the 1920s.