The southern edge of the Wild Horse Desert is bordered by the Rio Grande River (known as the Rio Bravo to Mexicans), which rises far to the northwest in the mountains of Colorado, then snakes its’ way down nearly 1,900 miles before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico at the southern tip of Texas. The lower Rio Grande delta was historically home to several small nomadic native tribes, the Spanish passed through on their way north into Texas but did not settle in the relatively inhospitable area. The swamps and marshes were fertile ground for disease and the land was not suitable for farming due to the lack of water. Matamoros, Mexico, (founded on the south bank of the river in 1784) was the location that immigrants and visitors to the area disembarked. In the aftermath of the war with Mexico in 1836 the Republic of Texas established the Rio Grande as the border with Mexico. After Texas was annexed into the United States in 1846, the Mexican-American War contested the border. The United States won the war and confirmed the border as the Rio Grande. A side impact of the war was the establishment of Fort Brown on the north bank of the Rio Grande across from Matamoros.
The area around Brownsville was hotly contested by Union and Confederate troops during the Civil War, particularly later in the war as cotton in the area became crucial to the Confederacy as it could be shipped out of Matamoros to avoid Union blockades. The last battle of the Civil War was actually fought and won by the Confederacy at the Battle of Palmito Ranch near the city a month after General Lee surrendered. The arrival of the railroad in the area in 1904 and development of large irrigated agricultural tracts northwest of the city lead to the construction of a substantial central business district in Brownsville, a town founded in 1850 near Fort Brown. Today the economic center of the RGV has moved farther northwest towards Harlingen and McAllen. Agriculture and tourism are the two main components of the local economy and each winter thousands of “snowbirds” or “winter Texans” flock to massive rv parks to enjoy the temperate winter climate, warm, humid and incessantly windy. The “RGV” or the “Valley” is how residents refer to the region, now home to nearly 1.4 million people. I had no idea…
Brownsville
Brownsville was founded by Charles Stillman in 1850. The arrival of the railroad in 1904 signaled the beginning of a boom that lasted nearly half a century. Sadly the boom has passed and downtown Brownsville is slowly decaying. The train depot, built in 1928, has been restored and is now a local museum. It is one of the few buildings in the area that display the ornate Spanish architecture that I expected in a border town.
The small museum celebrates the local culture, in particular “Charro Days”, a tradition that started in 1937 in an effort to stimulate the local economy in the wake of the Great Depression and bring together Brownsville and Matamoros in a celebration of community.
An homage to the railroad takes place in a separate building where most of the space is taken up by a restored 1877 steam engine. Note the large, sturdy cattle guard on the front, a necessity is this land of free-ranging cattle on the huge ranches of southern Texas.
Just west of the train station is the Brownsville City Cemetery. Founded in 1850, the cemetery is still in use today. Reflecting the multi-cultural nature of the city with its’ mixture of Spanish, French, New Orleans Creole and Texan residents and their traditions, many of the crypts and mausoleums are built above ground.
A stroll around the central core shows a city center in decay. A key indication of conditions is the noteworthy fact that the Dollar Tree is one of the newer and better kept buildings in the city center…
The 1927 Capitol Theater sits across from an abandoned hotel of similar vintage, now an empty testimony to times long gone.
The end of World War II saw the peak in Brownsville’s prosperity with the construction of a federal courthouse/post office as well as the Art Deco Majestic Theater.
Many of the storefronts are empty, most of the others are discount stores clearly targeted to low income customers, mostly Hispanic. The old city center of Brownsville is adjacent to the Rio Grande River, these pictures are only 2-3 blocks from the border fence on the north bank. Closer to the river buildings from the very beginnings of Brownsville still stand. This restored building (just the light blue part in the picture) was constructed in 1848 as one of the first buildings in Brownsville and used as a business on the ground floor and a residence on the second floor.
Just out of the picture to the right across the street is the Rio Grande River, hidden from view by the border fence and flood-control levee.
I walk up to the fence and take a picture through the steel bars. This is the Gateway Bridge from Brownsville to Matamoros, Mexico. US Customs is out of the picture to the left, the arches on the right denote the Mexican customs entry to Matamoros.
A few blocks west a number of historic homes have been restored, interspersed with many others not quite so elegant…
The 1904 Cedaya House
The 1894 Browne-Wagner House
The 1911 Puente/Brulay Home
1870 Russell/Cocke House
The 1888 Brooks House
Just southeast of Brownsville is a remnant of one of the great plantations that used to dominate the area in the late 1890’s, the Rabb Plantation.
Sabal Palm Sanctuary
The Rabb Plantation was originally known as Rancho San Tomas and encompassed over 20,000 acres on the north bank of the Rio Grande. Maria Starck, step-daughter of Miflin Kenedy, owner of the great Kenedy Ranch, was given the 20,000 acres in 1885 and married Frank Rabb in 1892. He was one of the first to utilize steam engines as irrigation pumps and thus opened up wide swaths of land to agriculture. They built the Rabb House in 1892. In 1917 Rabb offered a 200-acre old growth sabal palm grove to the US government as a national park in order to preserve the old growth. The government did not accept his offer but 60 years later the land was conveyed to the National Audubon Society and established as a sanctuary for wildlife. Today the house serves as the headquarters of the Gorgas Science Foundation, established in 1947 to support conservation and science education. The house is not in and of itself set up as a tourist attraction, this is a destination for bird watchers, people who want to walk in old growth forest, and others like me who are just curious!
The sanctuary is not on the beaten path, but rather down a narrow somewhat paved road that snakes through fields and brush through the border fence. Turns out that the sanctuary is on the OTHER side of the fence but still inside the United States. The location of the fence demonstrates one of the difficulties in fortifying the border. The Rio Grande is a living river, impacted by floods and such so in the Brownsville area the fence is usually located on levees that were built to restrain the river. Frequently there is land between the fence and the river, which is the actual border. An opening in the fence allows traffic through under the watchful eye of some Border Police.
The plantation house and grove are very close to the Rio Grande, sitting on the north bank. The upper floors would have had a view of steamboats coming up the river.
The ground floor of the home used as the visitor center and is open to visitors for a casual walk-through.
Leaving the house I walk a short distance to the banks of the Rio Grande. The far side is Mexico.
The sabal palm forest once stretched nearly 20 miles along the river but the rhythmic flooding of the river that was crucial to the health of the forest has been disrupted by dams and irrigation projects. The sabal palm is the only palm native to Texas.
Heading further east, but away from the river, our next destination is one of the premier spring break destinations in the US, South Padre Island.
South Padre Island
One of the distinctive features of the Texas Gulf Coast is the low coastal plain where the few rivers and creeks primarily enter the Gulf of Mexico through large bays ringed with marshland, not sandy beaches. The sand is not on the mainland, it instead piles up on long, narrow barrier islands off the coast, separating the mainland from the Gulf by a narrow band of water. Three of the largest islands are Galveston Island north near Houston, Mustang Island across from Corpus Christi, and South Padre Island near the southern border. Incredibly poor planning on my part has me in the RGV during spring break and South Padre is jammed with college students. Not to be deterred, I head for the island early in the morning, figuring the spring breakers would still be in bed. The plan worked and I got off the island before noon, just when the crowds were starting to stir. It also helped that some uncharacteristically cool weather was keeping people off the beaches!
It’s about 9am when I leave Brownsville and head east on the coastal plain towards South Padre. The Port of Brownsville is a large man-made lagoon at the west end of a ship route dredged through the marshes leading to the Gulf of Mexico nearly 20 miles east. An off-shore drilling rig is being constructed in one of the shipyards.
Port Isabel is on the mainland side of the Queen Isabella Bridge and causeway that lead to the island. Once over the bridge the hotels that line the beaches rise before me.
The next challenge is to actually get on the beach. Fortunately public access points occur frequently amongst the hotels and condominiums, unfortunately they are very small and not conducive to parking a motorhome! I find one that is combined with a strip of hotel parking where I park for a few minutes while I dash to the beach and take pictures looking north and south along the Gulf of Mexico.
It’s cold and very windy so I stash my Speedo in the cupboard and don’t linger on the beach. The hotel zone is focused at the south end of the island, which stretches about 30 miles from north to south. This is a barrier island made up of sand, anchored by grass and brush against the never-ending wind. On this particular morning the wind is quite strong and as I head north up the island the road is in the process of being covered with sand.
The farther north I go the less ground cover is present to contain the sand and blowing sand narrows the highway to one lane (or less!)
Occasionally glimpses of the raging surf beyond the dunes come into sight.
Finally I turn around and head back towards the south end.
Leaving the island the Queen Isabella Bridge is to the west and as I come down from the bridge Port Isabel with its’ iconic lighthouse come into view.
Heading towards Brownsville, the port again comes to view, rising above the flat coastal marshes.
Next up: Heading west up the Rio Grande
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