Cameron County

The plaque stands on the grounds of the courthouse that ended years of improvisation. For a generation Cameron County had no formal courthouse, and officials worked from homes and rented rooms. The first courthouse, built on Jefferson Street in 1882-83, was sold to the Rio Grande Masonic Lodge after thirty years. In October 1911 voters approved a new $200,000 building by 1,058 to 148. San Antonio architect Atlee B. Ayres designed it, with a dome, octagonal rotunda and art-glass ceiling. Since 1981 it has been the Dancy Building, after Oscar C. Dancy, county judge for 48 years.

What the plaque says

Cameron County Created February 12, 1848 Since 1535 men of all nations of the earth sailed the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the green valley of the Rio Grande in search of happiness, and each found it in his own time and in his own way. 1535 Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca 1686 Alonzo de Leon, Fr. Damian Manzanet 1749 Jose de Escandon 1771 Jose Salvador de la Garza 1787 Jose Goseascochea 1794 Nicolas Balli 1818 Manuel Yturria, Cristobal Longoria, Jose Antonio Esparza 1823 Martin de Leon, Ramon Lafon 1828 Charles Stillman, James McGloin 1834 William Neale, Reuben M. Potter 1846 Zachary Taylor, George B. McClellan, Ulysses S. Grant, Mariano Arista, Mifflin Kennedy 1847 Jefferson Davis, Winfield Scott, Thomas J. Jackson, Stephen Powers, Richard King, John S. Ford 1849 Simon Mussina, John Young 1850 John R. Butler, Franklin Cummings, Joseph Kleiber, Francis W. Latham, Jose San Roman, Simon Celaya 1855 Edmund J. Davis, 1856 Robert E. Lee, 1859 Samuel P. Heintzelman 1863 John B. Magruder, Hamilton P. Bee 1864 Raphael Semmes 1865 Phillip H. Sheridan, Lew Wallace 1872 Richard Henry Savage, John L. Haynes 1875 Lee H. McNelly 1876 Porfirio Diaz 1878 James B. Wells 1881 William C. Gorgas, Enoch H. Crowder Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stillman House Museum — 0.2 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.
• Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park — 7.0 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.
• Port Isabel Lighthouse State Historic Site — 22 mi
  A 72-foot brick tower finished in 1852 for the Brazos Santiago shipping lane, dark from 1905 until a reproduction lens was lit in 2022, and the only Texas lighthouse open to the public.
• Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge — 24 mi
  A coastal refuge set up in 1946 for wintering redhead ducks, with 417 bird species recorded and, by the Fish and Wildlife Service's account, the largest ocelot population in the United States.

More markers nearby

• Home of Charles Stillman, 1810-1875 — 0.2 mi
• Fort Brown — 0.3 mi
• Bagdad-Matamoros, C.S.A. — 0.4 mi
• Fort Brown Reservation — 0.4 mi