California Camp

John Twohig, who laid out the townsite, was an Irishman from County Cork, born in 1806, who opened a store in San Antonio in 1830 and fought in the siege of Bexar. When Adrian Woll's army took San Antonio in September 1842, Twohig blew up his own store to keep its ammunition from the enemy. Taken to Perote Prison, he tunneled out with fourteen others on July 2, 1843, and was one of nine never recaptured. As a San Antonio banker he paid for a breadline for the poor, and in 1870 he ranked among the hundred wealthiest Texans.

What the plaque says

California Camp After founding of Fort Duncan (2.5 blocks south) in 1849, this site was a camp ground and staging area for California emigrants. These were forty-niners going through Mexico - via Saltillo and Parras - either to Chihuahua and Gila River or to Mazatlán to finish the journey by sea. Paso del Águila (2 miles downstream) had sprung up in 1848 on an old smugglers' trail. Its settlers soon moved to California Camp for trade advantages. Landowner John Twohig of San Antonio in 1850 laid out a townsite here and named it Eagle Pass. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Duncan Museum — 0.5 mi
  The 1849 river post at Eagle Pass, where the first Black Seminole scouts enlisted in 1870, kept by the city as a park with its old headquarters as a museum.

More markers nearby

• Eagle Pass, C.S.A. — 0.3 mi
• Camp Rabb and Fort Duncan, C.S.A. — 0.3 mi
• Maverick County — 0.3 mi
• Fort Duncan — 0.4 mi