The Battle of Resaca de la Palma
Brownsville, Cameron County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Was fought here May 9, 1846 And the defeat of the Mexican Army under General Mariano Arista by the United States troops under General Zachary Taylor made good the claim of Texas to the territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande Erected by the State of Texas
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
Resaca de la Palma was one of the opening battles of a war that redrew the map of North America, adding the Southwest to the United States and launching Zachary Taylor toward the presidency.
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Related people
- · Zachary Taylor
- · Mariano Arista
Related events
- · Battle of Resaca de la Palma
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.
Cameron County
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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.
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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.
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