Captain Enrique Villarreal and Rincon del Oso Land Grant

Villarreal's own side of the 1841 meeting is the part the plaque leaves out. Born about 1788 in what became Matamoros, he fought at Medina in 1813 and won General Arredondo's praise. Indian raids drove him from Rincón del Oso in 1817. About January 1841 he led some 300 men to the ranch, where Kinney had bought land without a valid title. That June he was sent to lead 200 rancheros against illegal trade, and in 1842 he reported his herd cut from several thousand head to a few hundred. Kinney bought a sitio from him on July 16.

What the plaque says

Captain Enrique Villarreal and Rincon del Oso Land Grant A soldier, colonist, Indian fighter, and explorer, Captain Enrique Villarreal at one time held title to most of the land that now constitutes Nueces County. The Rincon del Oso land grant, encompassing approximately 44,000 acres, was awarded to Villarreal by the Mexican government in 1831, although he had been using it as ranch land since 1810. Trouble with raiding Indians forced him off the land until peace was made in 1824. As an officer in the Mexican Army, Enrique Villarreal participated in the Mexican War for Independence, the Texas War for Independence, and the U.S.-Mexican War. He was made commander of the troops at Fort Lipantitlan in 1830. When Henry Lawrence Kinney established his trading post at the site of what is now the city of Corpus Christi, he did so on land that was part of Villarreal's Rincon del Oso grant. In 1841 the two men met, and Kinney purchased one "sitio" of Villarreal's land the following year. Kinney came to own all of the Rincon del Oso Grant after Villarreal's death in 1846. Captain Enrique Villarreal's significance to local history lies in his position as original title holder to most of what is now Nueces County, including the City of Corpus Christi. (1986)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mirador de la Flor — 0.8 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 — 1.2 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 — 1.4 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 — 1.6 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

• Henry Lawrence Kinney — steps away
• Antonio E. Garcia — steps away
• Site of Cheston L. Heath School — 0.2 mi
• LULAC — 0.2 mi