Battle of La Bolsa

Why would raiders go after a steamboat? The Ranchero, owned and run by Richard King and Mifflin Kenedy, was heading downriver on February 4, 1860, with soldiers from Ringgold Barracks aboard to guard its cargo while Rangers rode the north bank. Juan Cortina's men fired from the south bank, and the boat answered with rifles and two cannons. When John Ford's Rangers arrived, they crossed into Mexico and secured the far bank. Cortina withdrew, the Ranchero reached Fort Brown, and Colonel Robert E. Lee soon came to the lower Valley to restore order.

What the plaque says

Battle of La Bolsa In 1859 and early 1860 a series of raids on Texas settlements led by Juan N. Cortina (1824-1894) led to skirmishes with companies of Texas Rangers and U.S. soldiers. These conflicts became known as the Cortina Wars. On February 4, 1860, a battle occurred at La Bolsa Bend (ca. 1 mi. S.) between Cortina's raiders and Capt. John S. "Rip" Ford's Texas Rangers. The Rangers successfully defended the riverboat "Ranchero", traveling downstream from Rio Grande City, from an attack by Cortina's band. Cortina escaped into Mexico and later became a general in the Mexican Army. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 17 mi
  About 2,000 acres of river forest on the Rio Grande's north bank, the surviving part of Benigno Leal's 1834 land grant, kept as a refuge since 1943 where two bird migration routes meet.
• Museum of South Texas History — 24 mi
  Edinburg's regional museum, begun in 1967 in the 1910 Hidalgo County jail and now telling the Rio Grande's story from fossils and native peoples through steamboats to the 20th century.
• Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park — 25 mi
  A flat coastal prairie north of Brownsville where Taylor's army and Arista's Army of the North fought the first major battle of the Mexican War on May 8, 1846, now interpreted from both sides.
• Stillman House Museum — 26 mi
  The 1850 Greek Revival house of Charles Stillman, who laid out Brownsville in 1848 beside the army's Fort Brown, and for a century the home of the Treviño family.

More markers nearby

• El Horcon Tract and Rio Rico — 1.4 mi
• Rancho de Santa Maria — 2.1 mi
• Relampago Ranch — 3.2 mi
• Temple Beth Israel — 4.9 mi