Stagecoach to the Rio Grande, C.S.A.

This marker no longer stands where its text assumes. It was first set at Sebastian, in Willacy County, where its opening line about Paso Real ten miles east made sense. Moved to this corner near Rio Hondo, it now sits about four miles from the crossing, as the state's own file records. Paso Real lay on the Arroyo Colorado along the Beeville to Brownsville stage road. One ghost-town register says a stagecoach inn there served travelers from about 1860 to 1904, and that part of it was rebuilt at the Rio Grande Valley Museum in Harlingen.

What the plaque says

Stagecoach to the Rio Grande, C.S.A. About 10 miles east of this site during the Civil War was Paso Real, ferry point on Arroyo Colorado. As early as 1846, stagecoaches had gone over Paso Real Ferry (the name probably meant "The King's Pass"). In the 1860's, the spot had international importance. It was a crossing for the cotton road, lifeline of the Confederacy. When Federal coastal blockades had cut off imports and exports for the entire South, this road moved cotton down to Matamoros so that it coud be exchanged for guns, ammunition, medicines, cloth, shoes, blankets and many other vital goods. Besides the prized cotton loads that went past Paso Real, the stagecoach connection there was of importance to Confederate and foreign businessmen, government agents, diplomats and Army personnel. This was an area of conflict and intrigue. Bandits and Army deserters watched the road for stages and cotton wagons to pilfer. Mysterious travelers went this way--sometimes with a pursuing Sheriff on the next stage. Of 31 stagelines in Confederate Texas (hauling mail, soldiers, civilians), no other was more vital nor more interesting to travel than this through Paso Real. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge — 16 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.
• Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park — 18 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.
• Stillman House Museum — 25 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.
• Port Isabel Lighthouse State Historic Site — 27 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

• City of Harlingen — 7.3 mi
• Spiderweb Railroad — 7.7 mi
• Joe Callandret School — 7.8 mi
• Bobby Joe Morrow — 7.8 mi