Tom Mayfield

Tom Mayfield is remembered two ways in the Valley. The plaque credits him with exposing the Plan of San Diego, and a copy did turn up when Basilio Ramos Jr. was arrested at McAllen on January 24, 1915. The Handbook of Texas traces the plan to a Monterrey jail and later raids to followers of Venustiano Carranza and describes no German plot. UTRGV researchers, working from oral histories, say the San Juan Hotel where he later lived was a site where Mexican Americans were hanged, and name him an actor in that violence. A columnist found no documents.

What the plaque says

Tom Mayfield (June 16, 1880 - November 26, 1966) Tom Mayfield left the Gonzales County farm of his parents, John and Maggie Mayfield, in 1898 to help buy horses for Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. Between 1910-1921 Tom served as Pharr city marshal, Texas Ranger, and Hidalgo County deputy sheriff. His role in exposing a German-Mexican WWI plot in nearby San Diego and his amazing escape from a Mexican firing squad in 1921 made Tom a local celebrity. As Pharr-San Juan-Alamo's deputy constable (1938-1963) Tom gained the community's highest respect. He spent his last years as a resident of the San Juan Hotel. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 7.5 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 — 7.8 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.
• La Lomita Chapel — 11 mi
  A small sandstone chapel on the Rio Grande levee, built by Oblate missionaries in 1865 and rebuilt at this site in 1899, the landmark that gave the city of Mission its name.
• Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park — 14 mi
  A 587-acre stand of Rio Grande woodland near Mission, once part of a Spanish porción, given to the state by the Bentsen family in 1944 and now headquarters of the World Birding Center.

More markers nearby

• San Juan Townsite — steps away
• Camp Ebenezer — 1.5 mi
• First Pharr School — 1.6 mi
• City of Pharr — 1.7 mi