Site of Cox's Point
Point Comfort, Calhoun County, Texas
Marker Inscription
An early landing place of supplies for the interior. Captain Jack Shackelford's "Red Rovers" of Alabama disembarked at this point. A town established here in 1836 was burned by Indians in 1840. Erected by State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This point on the Texas coast served as an early landing where supplies were unloaded for the interior. During the Texas Revolution, Captain Jack Shackelford's Alabama volunteers, the "Red Rovers," came ashore here on their way to the fighting. A town founded at the site in 1836 was short-lived, burned in an Indian raid in 1840, and the state marked the spot in 1936.
Why it matters
Coastal landings like this were the lifelines through which men and matériel flowed into the young Republic of Texas during its violent struggle for independence.
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Related people
- · Jack Shackelford
Related events
- · Texas Revolution
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fort St. Louis
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In 1685 the French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, planted the first European settlement in Texas near here, only to have it collapse under hardship and attacks by the Karankawa people; a Spanish expedition under Alonso de León burned its ruins in 1689. On the same ground the Spanish later raised Presidio La Bahía to guard Mission Espíritu Santo, part of a mission-presidio system that moved twice more before settling at Goliad in 1749. The site witnessed the collision of French ambition, Spanish empire, and Native power on the Gulf coast.
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The oldest grave here belongs to Major H. Oram Watts, the Linnville customs collector killed in the great Comanche raid on that coastal settlement in August 1840. The site took its name after the 1850 burial of Margaret Lytle, wife of James T. Lytle, remembered as the "poet" of the Texas Rangers; during a Civil War epidemic a nearby house served as a hospital, and at least ten Federal soldiers who died were buried here. Members of the five families who owned the land also rest in Ranger Cemetery.
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Around 1831 pioneer Victoria merchant John Joseph Linn located a warehouse on this stretch of the Texas coast, and a small port settlement grew up around it. On August 8, 1840, a massive Comanche raiding party swept down to the Gulf and burned Linnville to the ground, part of the famous Great Raid of 1840. The town was never rebuilt, and the State of Texas marked the site in 1936.
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