First Aero Squadron

The squadron took shape here at the start of 1913. Alarmed by revolutionary violence in Mexico, the Army formed its Second Division at Texas City, and the Chief Signal Officer ordered airplanes, personnel and equipment there from Augusta, Georgia. On March 5 they became the 1st Aero Squadron (Provisional), counted by one account as nine airplanes, nine officers and fifty-one enlisted men. It practiced cross-country flying and takeoffs from rough ground. By June 1913 it had moved to San Diego, and its first use in a real operation came in 1916, chasing Pancho Villa.

What the plaque says

First Aero Squadron First tactical air unit, U. S. Army; was stationed here 1913-1915 during U. S. border troubles caused by revolution in Mexico. The 7 planes, 5 officers, and 21 enlisted men were not in combat, but made aerial maps and achieved a long distance flight record. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — 8.3 mi
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.
• The Strand — 8.4 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• Moody Mansion — 8.7 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 8.8 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.

More markers nearby

• Texas City Dike — steps away
• The Texas City Disaster — 0.2 mi
• Shoal Point and Half Moon Shoal Lighthouse — 0.4 mi
• William Jefferson Jones — 0.4 mi