Kenedy County

The county's ranches have a hard origin. The Handbook records that in 1875 a group of Anglo vigilantes and outlaws from Corpus Christi attacked ranches in what is now Kenedy County, framed as retaliation for raids, and killed virtually all the adult men on four of them: La Atravesada, El Peñascal, Corral de Piedra and El Mesquite. The record names no victims. Many remaining Mexican rancheros were forced out, and a vaquero recalled that the ranches were fenced afterward. By 1930 thirteen ranches averaged 61,500 acres; by 1945 seven averaged 70,130.

What the plaque says

Kenedy County Kenedy County, Created April 2, 1921 out of Cameron, Willacy and Hidalgo counties. Named for Mifflin Kenedy 1818-1895, sent to Texas in 1846 on United States Army supply boats, commercial navigator of the Rio Grande 1848-1860. Sarita is the county seat.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kenedy Ranch Museum of South Texas — steps away
  A museum in the Kenedy Pasture Company's 1927 office in Sarita, telling how Mifflin Kenedy and three generations of his family shaped the Wild Horse Desert, with murals and an audio guide.
• Don Pedrito Jaramillo Shrine — 20 mi
  The grave and shrine of the folk healer of Los Olmos, a place of prayer where South Texans still leave candles and letters for the curandero who took no fee.
• King Ranch Visitor Center — 22 mi
  The bus-tour gate to a working ranch of about 825,000 acres, founded on Santa Gertrudis Creek in 1853 and worked from the start by the Kineños, families from Cruillas in Tamaulipas.
• Heritage Museum at Falfurrias — 22 mi
  A free town museum of ranch gear, a Texas Ranger room and 99,000 photo negatives, in the town Edward Lasater built around his railroad and his Jersey cows.

More markers nearby

• Riviera United Methodist Church — 5.3 mi
• Civil War Raid from Camp Boveda — 5.5 mi
• General Zachary Taylor — 6.2 mi
• Approximate Route of U.S. Army March to the Rio Grande, 1846 — 9.3 mi