Castolon Historic District

Castolon grew up as a farming community on the Rio Grande where Mexican families and later Anglo settlers lived side by side. The Mexican Revolution that began in 1910 brought raids on small border settlements, and after an attack on Glenn Springs in 1916 the War Department sent thousands of soldiers into the Big Bend. Cavalry troops set up Camp Santa Helena here, first in tents. Work on permanent buildings began in 1919, and the first were finished in 1920, just as the revolution ended and the troops were withdrawn. The barracks were probably never occupied.

In 1925 La Harmonia Company bought the empty post. Wayne Cartledge and Howard Perry, the owner of the Chisos Mining Company at Terlingua, had formed the company in 1918, and Cartledge named it for the harmony he hoped to encourage along the river. The store moved into the barracks and soon added a post office. It sold saddles and screwworm medicine, patent remedies, groceries, shoes and cloth, and bought pelts, and it did business in English and Spanish with ranch and farm families from Castolon, La Coyota, El Ojito and Terlingua de Abajo. The post office closed in 1954, and the store stayed open until 1961, when the land became part of the park.

On May 22, 2019, a fire that started in Mexico jumped the river and badly damaged the store and the old latrine, though firefighters saved the other buildings. The district has a temporary visitor center, exhibits including old cotton gin machinery, and the nearby Cottonwood Campground.