Tijerina House
Brownsville, Cameron County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A descendant of the 18th Century Rio Grande settler Blas de la Garza Falcon, Tomas Tijerina (1860-1932) moved to this site in 1904. His original frame house was moved to the back of the lot in 1912 when the present brick home was built. Tijerina, a deputy sheriff for many years, designed the residence and his neighbor Teodoro Perez served as general carpenter. The exterior brick walls are supported by brick buttresses for protection from hurricane winds.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Tomás Tijerina, descended from an 18th-century Spanish settler of the Rio Grande, moved to this Brownsville site in 1904 and built the present brick home in 1912. A longtime deputy sheriff, he designed the house himself while his neighbor Teodoro Perez handled the carpentry. Its brick buttresses were raised deliberately to brace the walls against the hurricanes that regularly menace the Gulf coast.
Why it matters
The house embodies the deep Tejano roots of the lower Rio Grande Valley, where families traced continuous residence back through Spanish colonial times into the American era.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The lower Rio Grande Valley has one of the longest continuous histories of European settlement in what is now Texas. In the mid-1700s the Spanish crown colonized the region along the river under the province of Nuevo Santander. Families received land and founded towns on both banks. Blas de la Garza Falcón, whom the marker names as Tomás Tijerina's ancestor, was one of the notable settlers of that era.
Borders later moved around these families. After the Mexican War, the Rio Grande became the international boundary, and Brownsville grew up across from Matamoros. Many Tejano families of the region kept deep roots on both sides of the river and went on living through changes of flag and government.
By the early twentieth century, Brownsville was changing quickly. The region was becoming more closely tied to the rest of the United States, and a changing Mexico lay just across the river. Tijerina built his brick home in 1912, in the middle of that transformation.
People & events
Tomás Tijerina was born in 1860 and died in 1932. He carried a family line that reached back to the eighteenth-century Spanish settlement of the Rio Grande. In 1904 he moved to this site and at first lived in a frame house. In 1912 that original house was moved to the back of the lot, and the present brick home went up in its place.
Tijerina was not just the owner. He designed the house himself. That fits a man the marker describes as a deputy sheriff for many years, someone used to practical problems and local responsibility. His neighbor Teodoro Perez served as general carpenter. The house was a neighborhood effort as much as a family one.
The design reflects life on the Gulf coast. Brick buttresses brace the exterior walls, a deliberate defense against hurricane winds. It is a builder's answer to a threat every Brownsville family knew well.
Its place in the American story
The Tijerina House is a reminder that American history in the Southwest did not begin with Anglo settlement. Families like Tijerina's lived in the Rio Grande region for generations before Texas was a state. They carried Spanish colonial roots into the American era and helped shape its communities as lawmen, builders and neighbors.
The house also shows how people have long adapted buildings to their environment. Along the Gulf coast, hurricanes shaped how and where people built. Tijerina's buttressed walls are a local solution to a problem that coastal communities across the country still face.
Finally, a house that a deputy sheriff designed and a neighbor built gives a rare view of ordinary people's history. Many landmarks honor grand public buildings. This one honors a family home and the practical skill of the people who made it.
If you visit
Look closely at the brick walls and find the buttresses. They are the house's signature feature and the clearest sign of how its builders thought about the Gulf's storms. Then picture the lot as it was in 1912, with the older frame house moved to the back to make room for the new brick home.
This is a historic residence, so enjoy it from the public right-of-way unless you know it is open to visitors, and respect the privacy of anyone living there.
Brownsville rewards a slow visit. Its older neighborhoods preserve buildings from its long, layered history as a border city. A drive through the lower Rio Grande Valley can make this house one stop on a larger journey through Tejano heritage, Spanish colonial roots and the Gulf coast landscape that shaped them all.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Tomás Tijerina
- · Teodoro Perez
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Presbyterian Church of Brownsville
Brownsville, TX
Organized in 1850 by the Rev. Hiram Chamberlain and nineteen charter members, this is Brownsville's oldest Presbyterian congregation, its earliest services held aboard a river boat and in borrowed sanctuaries on the young Rio Grande frontier. In 1927 the church finally raised its own home, a graceful 20th-century Gothic Revival sanctuary of cast stone with pointed arches and an irregular tower. The congregation still serves the border city.
Church of the Advent
Brownsville, TX
Founded in 1851 in the young river city of Brownsville, this congregation was among the earliest Episcopal churches organized in Texas, with the Rev. William Passmore as its first Rector and a completed church building by 1854. It rose in a border town barely three years removed from the Mexican-American War, as Anglo-American settlers, merchants, and clergy poured into the newly American lower Rio Grande Valley. A hurricane destroyed the building in 1867—one of the recurring Gulf storms that repeatedly reshaped the coast's frontier settlements.
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.
Cameron County Courthouse of 1883-1914
Brownsville, TX
Completed in 1883, this was Cameron County's first purpose-built courthouse, replacing the rented rooms officials had made do with before. The three-story brick building with its gabled roof and central tower served justice until a new courthouse rose in 1914, after which a Masonic lodge moved in. Later remodeling stripped away its distinctive tower.