Santa Rita

Santa Rita was a place before it was a seat of government. In the late 1700s both a Cavazos of Reynosa and the Espiritu Santo grantee, Jose Salvador de la Garza, claimed the south bank, and a community stood here before Matamoros existed. About 1830 the river changed course, leaving it north of the stream. In 1834 Mexico granted the bank to John Stryker, and after Taylor's army reached Matamoros other Americans crossed to his place. When the county seat moved, some owners rolled their houses away on wheels. By the 1930s nothing remained.

What the plaque says

Santa Rita Here was Santa Rita; First Anglo-American settlement on lower Rio Grande and county seat of Cameron County; 1848 1849

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stillman House Museum — 5.2 mi
  The 1850 Greek Revival house of Charles Stillman, who laid out Brownsville in 1848 beside the army's Fort Brown, and for a century the home of the Treviño family.
• Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park — 6.0 mi
  A flat coastal prairie north of Brownsville where Taylor's army and Arista's Army of the North fought the first major battle of the Mexican War on May 8, 1846, now interpreted from both sides.
• Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge — 23 mi
  A coastal refuge set up in 1946 for wintering redhead ducks, with 417 bird species recorded and, by the Fish and Wildlife Service's account, the largest ocelot population in the United States.
• Port Isabel Lighthouse State Historic Site — 24 mi
  A 72-foot brick tower finished in 1852 for the Brazos Santiago shipping lane, dark from 1905 until a reproduction lens was lit in 2022, and the only Texas lighthouse open to the public.

More markers nearby

• Cameron County — 3.3 mi
• Rancho Viejo — 3.3 mi
• Hebrew Cemetery — 4.5 mi
• J.T. Canales — 4.6 mi