The Battle of Palo Alto
Brownsville, Cameron County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Was fought here May 8, 1846 and was won by the Army of the United States. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On May 8, 1846, the opening battle of the Mexican-American War was fought on this coastal prairie, where General Zachary Taylor's outnumbered U.S. army used its "flying artillery" to defeat Mexican forces. The victory helped launch a conflict that would redraw the map of North America.
Why it matters
Palo Alto was the first major clash of a war whose outcome added the American Southwest to the United States and set the stage for later sectional conflict.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related events
- · Battle of Palo Alto
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Cameron County
Brownsville, TX
Carved from Nueces County in 1848, Cameron County was named for Ewen Cameron, a captain of the ill-fated Mier Expedition executed at Querétaro. Its ground along the lower Rio Grande witnessed the opening clashes of the Mexican War and, remarkably, the last land battle of the Civil War at Palmito Ranch in 1865. Few American counties can claim to bracket two wars so precisely.
The Battle of Resaca de la Palma
Brownsville, TX
On May 9, 1846, U.S. forces under General Zachary Taylor defeated the Mexican army of General Mariano Arista in the Battle of Resaca de la Palma. Coming at the very outset of the Mexican-American War, the victory drove Mexican troops back across the Rio Grande and secured the American claim to the contested land between the Nueces and the river.
Kowalski-Dennett Home
Brownsville, TX
This French mansard-roofed house was built in 1893 for customhouse broker Louis Kowalski and his wife Amelia by S. W. Brooks, a designer of many public buildings along the border. Kowalski served Cameron County as treasurer and then district clerk for more than four decades; later owners Jesse and Mary Dennett traced their family's arrival to soldiers who came with U.S. forces in the Mexican War era and again in 1866.
Cameron County
Brownsville, TX
Created in 1848 in the wake of the U.S.-Mexican War, Cameron County sits where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf—ground crossed by explorers, empresarios, soldiers, and cattle kings for four centuries. This 1936 state monument catalogs the sweep of that history, from Cabeza de Vaca and the Escandón colonists to Zachary Taylor, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and border figures like Richard King and Mifflin Kennedy. The roll call reads as a layered map of who shaped the lower Rio Grande valley.