Taylor Camp Site, 1846
Kingsville, Kleberg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1846 Zachary Taylor's army marched from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande. On March 10,11, 12, 13, the four regiments in succession camped at this spot on Santa Gertrudis Creek. War with Mexico over the boundary of Texas began soon. The first battles -- Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma -- occurred near present Brownsville. General Mariano Arista led the Mexican army. The results of the war: the boundary of Texas was fixed at the Rio Grande; the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo gave the United States New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California; a notable group of men got training for later public service. Of the 251 officers camped here, many rose to national fame. The Honor Roll Twelve leaders in the Texas battles gave name to United States forts in Texas: Wm. G. Belknap, Jacob Brown, J. E. Blake, W. W. S. Bliss, Theodore L. Chadbourne, James Duncan, Clinton R. Gates, Zebulon P. M. Inge, George T. Mason, J. B. McIntosh, Samuel Ringgold, William Jenkins Worth. Many who camped here became commanders of great armies in the Civil War. Among them: Augur, Bee, Bragg, Kirby Smith, Longstreet, Meade, Pemberton, Reynolds, Twiggs, Whistler. Two of them -- Zachary Taylor and Ulysses Simpson Grant -- became President of the United States. Kleberg County Historical Survey Committee 1964
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In March 1846, as Zachary Taylor's army marched from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande, its four regiments camped in succession at this spot on Santa Gertrudis Creek. Within weeks the Mexican-American War erupted at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma near present Brownsville. The war fixed the Texas boundary at the Rio Grande and, through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, brought vast new territory into the United States — and the officers who camped here, among them future presidents Zachary Taylor and Ulysses S. Grant, went on to command great armies in the Civil War.
Why it matters
An ordinary campsite became a crossroads of American history, staging the war that redrew the nation's map and schooling the generals and presidents of the coming Civil War.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In early 1846, Texas had been part of the United States for only a few months, and where its southern border lay was still an open question. Mexico had never accepted Texas independence. It held that Texas ended at the Nueces River, while the United States claimed land all the way to the Rio Grande. The stretch of brush country between the two rivers was disputed ground.
President James K. Polk sent General Zachary Taylor's army to Texas, and it spent the fall and winter camped at Corpus Christi. In March 1846 Taylor was ordered to move to the Rio Grande. The army marched south in stages through dry, sparsely settled country toward the river the United States claimed as its boundary.
Santa Gertrudis Creek offered what any army on the move needed most: water and a place to rest. The regiments stopped here one after another on their way into the heart of the disputed land, and their arrival at the Rio Grande would soon set off a war.
People & events
Over four days in March 1846, Taylor's four regiments camped in turn along this creek. The column included 251 officers, a remarkable group. Among them was Taylor himself, a blunt and plainly dressed veteran his soldiers called Old Rough and Ready. Among them too was a young lieutenant named Ulysses S. Grant, who would later write that he thought the war was deeply unjust to Mexico, even though he served in it.
Within weeks, the army faced Mexican forces under General Mariano Arista near the Rio Grande. The first major battles came at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, near present-day Brownsville. Both were American victories, and the war that followed ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which fixed the Rio Grande as the boundary of Texas and transferred a vast territory to the United States.
The marker lists twelve officers from the Texas battles whose names were later given to U.S. Army forts in Texas, among them Jacob Brown, Samuel Ringgold, William Jenkins Worth and W. W. S. Bliss. Some of those names still survive in places like Brownsville's Fort Brown, Fort Bliss at El Paso and the city of Fort Worth. Other officers who slept here, including James Longstreet, George Meade, Braxton Bragg and John Pemberton, went on to command armies on opposite sides of the Civil War. Two of them, Taylor and Grant, became president.
Its place in the American story
Few campsites carry so much history. The march these soldiers were making led directly to the Mexican-American War. That war changed the map of the continent: it settled the Texas border at the Rio Grande and, through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, brought New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California into the United States. It also left lasting questions for the Mexican families who suddenly found themselves living inside a new country.
The war remains debated. Many Americans at the time, and many historians since, have questioned whether the United States provoked it by sending troops into disputed land. It is worth holding both stories together: a war of conquest that also produced much of the modern American West.
This campsite was also a school for a generation of officers. Young lieutenants and captains learned their trade in these campaigns, and fifteen years later many of them faced one another as generals in the Civil War. In that sense, a quiet creek in South Texas connects the nation's westward expansion directly to the crisis that nearly tore it apart.
If you visit
Today this is King Ranch country in Kleberg County, and the landscape can still give you a feel for the march: wide, flat brush land, big sky and water that matters. Picture long columns of infantry, wagons and horses strung out across this country, stopping gratefully at the creek at the end of a hot day's march.
Take a moment with the long list of names on the marker. Many of them belong to people you may have met in history books, all of whom camped in this spot in the same week.
Kingsville makes a good stop on a South Texas drive between Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande Valley. If you continue south toward Brownsville, you are following the army's route, and you can visit the battlefield sites at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma to see where the story went next.
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
- · Zachary Taylor
- · Ulysses S. Grant
- · Mariano Arista
Related events
- · Battle of Palo Alto
- · Battle of Resaca de la Palma
- · Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Themes & tags
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Henry L. Kinney built a fort-like trading post here, enclosed by a stockade around his home, store, and quarters for armed men, and Corpus Christi grew up around it. Much of his trade was with Indians and smuggling for Mexican Federalists, but business boomed when General Zachary Taylor's army camped nearby before marching to the Rio Grande in 1846. Kinney served as Taylor's quartermaster in the Mexican-American War, won repeated election to the legislature, and later ruined himself on a failed fair and a doomed Nicaragua scheme before dying in Matamoros.