Santa Margarita Crossing

Vicente Filisola is the general the 1836 retreat made unpopular. Born in Italy in 1789, he served Spain, rose under Iturbide, brought Central America into the empire only to lose it when the emperor fell, and in 1831 took a contract to settle 600 non-Anglo families in East Texas that he never filled. As Santa Anna's second in command he withdrew the army after San Jacinto. Orders to hold ground reached him on May 28, after his army had crossed the Nueces. Charged with cowardice and treason, he was cleared by court-martial in 1841.

What the plaque says

Santa Margarita Crossing Ranchers occupying the 1804 Spanish land grant of Jose Herrera established this crossing of the Nueces and named the scattered settlement Santa Margarita. In 1828, John McMullen and James McGloin received a land grant from the Mexican government for an irish colony north of the river and founded the town of San Patricio. This site soon became a major crossing on the Matamoros Road into Texas. To protect the crossing, the Mexican army, in 1831, established nearby Fort Lipantitlan, which was captured November 4, 1835, by insurgent Texans. On Feb. 27, 1836, Gen. Jose Urrea's Army defeated the Texan forces of James Grant and F.W. Johnson here before marching to Goliad. After Texas won independence, Gen. Vicente Filisola led the defeated Mexican troops back to Mexico along this road. After crossing the river here in summer of 1845, Gen. Zachary Taylor held his army in this region until March 1846, when he moved to the Rio Grande, the action which precipitated the U.S. War with Mexico (1846-48). During the civil war the old Matamoros Road, then called the "Cotton Road", served as a trade outlet for the confederacy. Texas products were transported via the Santa Margarita crossing to Mexico, circumventing the federal blockade of confederate ports. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lipantitlán State Historic Site — 3.2 mi
  Five undeveloped acres on the Nueces named for the Lipan Apaches who camped here, where Mexico built an earth-and-rail fort that Texans took early in the Revolution.
• Lake Corpus Christi State Park — 11 mi
  A lake park in the South Texas brush country above Mathis, on a reservoir of the Nueces, with a Civilian Conservation Corps refectory and more than 200 bird species.
• Texas State Aquarium — 25 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.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 25 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.

More markers nearby

• San Patricio de Hibernia — 1.1 mi
• San Patricio County — 1.1 mi
• Josepha Rodriguez — 1.1 mi
• Courthouses of San Patricio County — 1.1 mi