Historical Marker

Camp Ebenezer

Alamo, Hidalgo County · Texas

Erected 1986

Alamo's first site did not last. After the Alamo Land and Sugar Company bought Blalock and Hawkins's 32,000 acres in 1909, the Handbook says it moved the town from Camp Ebenezer to higher, better-drained ground, though the marker has the depot moving a mile east only in 1919. C. H. Swallow and Rentfro Creager of the Alamo Townsite Company promoted the new site, and a post office opened in 1909. Early names reportedly included Forum and Swallow, and the final name may honor the San Antonio mission. Alamo incorporated in 1924.

What the plaque says

Camp Ebenezer From 1902 to 1909 Peter Ebenezer Blalock and George L. Hawkins bought 32,000 acres of land here. By 1908 they had built shipping pens at this site and named the railroad depot Ebenezer. Their ranching plans ended in 1909 when the tract was sold to the Alamo Land and Sugar Company. Under the direction of C. H. Swallow (1868-1957), the company colonized the land after 1914. Excursion trains brought prospective farmers, housed here at "Camp Ebenezer." The depot was moved one mile east in 1919 to serve the new town of Alamo. The camp served until the 1930s as temporary housing for land buyers. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

26.18540, -98.13339 · Directions

Worth the stop nearby

Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 7.1 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 — 8.3 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.
La Lomita Chapel — 12 mi
A small sandstone chapel on the Rio Grande levee, built by Oblate missionaries in 1865 and rebuilt at this site in 1899, the landmark that gave the city of Mission its name.
Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park — 15 mi
A 587-acre stand of Rio Grande woodland near Mission, once part of a Spanish porción, given to the state by the Bentsen family in 1944 and now headquarters of the World Birding Center.

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