The Spot Where "American Blood was Shed on American Soil"

Nobody can say exactly where this happened. On April 25, 1846, Captain Seth Thornton's dragoons rode into a field at Rancho de Carricitos, walled by chaparral with one narrow gate, and General Anastasio Torrejon's troops closed it behind them. The National Park Service counts eleven Americans dead and 46 captured, though other tallies run higher. The Rio Grande has shifted since then, so measurements along its old bends no longer fit, and the ranch has never been pinned down. Polk's war message turned the fight into "American blood" shed on "American soil."

What the plaque says

The Spot Where "American Blood was Shed on American Soil" The spot where "American blood was shed on American soil" April 25, 1846 Here Captain Philip Thornton and 62 dragoons were attacked by Mexican troops.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park — 19 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 — 21 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.
• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 22 mi
  About 2,000 acres of river forest on the Rio Grande's north bank, the surviving part of Benigno Leal's 1834 land grant, kept as a refuge since 1943 where two bird migration routes meet.
• Museum of South Texas History — 29 mi
  Edinburg's regional museum, begun in 1967 in the 1910 Hidalgo County jail and now telling the Rio Grande's story from fossils and native peoples through steamboats to the 20th century.

More markers nearby

• Near Route of Alonso de Leon Expeditions — steps away
• Rancho de Santa Maria — 3.3 mi
• Battle of La Bolsa — 5.4 mi
• El Horcon Tract and Rio Rico — 6.8 mi