Camp Scurry

Camp Scurry honored an adjutant general who had died five years before it opened. Thomas Scurry, born in Waller County in 1859, clerked in Houston wholesale houses and the Houston and Texas Central offices, then commanded the Houston Light Guards from 1880 to 1886. A major in the Spanish-American War and adjutant general from 1899, he supervised martial law at Galveston after the 1900 storm and helped draft the bill that reorganized the Texas Rangers. In 1902 he went to Brownsville to look into trouble between cowboys and Rangers in Cameron County.

What the plaque says

Camp Scurry Since 1848, smuggling, rustling and armed incursions by people on both sides of the Rio Grande were common. When the Mexican Revolution began, fear of violent attacks escalated. After Pancho Villa's raid in New Mexico on March 9, 1916, Brownsville, Harlingen, Llano Grande and other locations received national guardsmen. City officials lobbied to establish a camp in Corpus Christi, hoping the project would bolster the economy. The city, Nueces County and the Commercial Club offered to pay for all the required improvements needed to move troops from Brownsville to Corpus Christi. In August 1916, General Frederick Funston ordered the 2nd and 3rd Texas Infantry plus the Texas Brigade headquarters to move to Corpus Christi. The site for the camp, named after General Thomas Scurry, was a 200-acre pasture leased to a dairy farmer, more than a mile south of city hall. Forty buildings were erected, including 24 mess halls and three warehouses, all at no cost to the army. The soldiers stayed in approximately 450 16-square-foot tents, Soldiers daily routine consisted of strict training and guidelines, along with periodic sports and recreational activities in the camp and around Corpus Christi. The 2nd Infantry compiled an impressive football record, outscoring other units 432-6. Showing a strong connection between the camp and the community, large crowds of local residents watched football games, field day competitions and evening drills. The camp was unmanned for a month when guard units were ordered to return to their home states, but reactivated as a training site when the U.S. entered World War I. Camp Scurry not only provided training for National Guard and U.S. Army troops but also assisted in the growth of Corpus Christi and its economy. (2017)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mirador de la Flor — 1.9 mi
  Corpus Christi's bayfront memorial to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, the Tejano singer from this city, killed in 1995 at twenty-three, visited by about thirty thousand people a year.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 2.8 mi
  Philip Johnson's 1972 museum on the Corpus Christi bayfront, joined in 2006 by Ricardo Legorreta's Miller Wing, holding more than 2,000 works mostly from Texas and the Americas.
• Texas State Aquarium — 3.1 mi
  A nonprofit aquarium on the tip of Corpus Christi Beach built around the Gulf and the Caribbean, with the largest coastal wildlife rescue center in Texas behind the exhibits.
• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 3.2 mi
  An Essex-class carrier of 1943 moored off North Beach, the Blue Ghost that Tokyo Rose kept reporting sunk, and the Navy's training carrier for nearly three decades after.

More markers nearby

• Moses Menger Elementary School — 0.3 mi
• Sisters of the Incarnate Word — 0.5 mi
• Arthur Edward Spohn, M.D. and Spohn Hospital — 0.6 mi
• First Baptist Church of Corpus Christi — 0.6 mi