The cream-colored clock tower and spire of San Agustín Cathedral in Laredo rising above shade trees against a deep blue sky.
Billy Hathorn / CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons
Texas · Region

Laredo, Zapata & the Brush Country

San Agustín Plaza and the Republic of the Rio Grande Museum in Laredo, Fort McIntosh, San Ygnacio, the Zapata museum, Falfurrias and the Duval County courthouse.

10 places to explore

Carrizo and other Coahuiltecan peoples hunted this stretch of the Rio Grande for thousands of years before Spain arrived. Laredo was founded in 1755 as the last of Escandón's towns, and in 1789 110 of its 708 people were Carrizo. San Agustín Plaza and its church are still the center. In 1840 federalists declared the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande here, and Fort McIntosh, begun in 1849, guarded the crossing. Its barracks and 1895 chapel now sit on a college campus, and Lake Casa Blanca, a state park since 1991, offers bass fishing at the city's edge.

Downriver, the sandstone houses of San Ygnacio stand on a grant of 1750, with the Treviño-Uribe Rancho of 1830 among them. Falcon Dam drowned old Zapata in 1953-54 and moved about 3,000 people, a story the Zapata County museum keeps. San Ygnacio's post office, opened in 1876 under Fernando Uribe, now works from a restored Uribe family house.

East of the river the land turns to ranch country. Edward Lasater built Falfurrias around a railroad and a Jersey herd, and pilgrims still come to Don Pedrito Jaramillo's grave nearby. In San Diego, the Duval County courthouse recalls the Parr family machine, which ran the county until 1975. On May 18, 1912, three Anglo men shot dead three Mexican American officials on the courthouse grounds: Candelario Sáenz, Antonio Anguiano and Pedro Eznal.

What to See in Laredo, Zapata & the Brush Country

10 places across the region, grouped by what they are.

Hikes & Trails

The rough-stone entrance sign of Lake Casa Blanca International State Park in Laredo, lettered on a pale arched panel in low evening light.

Lake Casa Blanca International State Park

Laredo

A 1,680-acre reservoir on Chacón Creek at Laredo's eastern edge, a city lake run as a state park since 1991, with bass fishing, camping and a long human history.

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Historic Sites

A row of surviving Fort McIntosh frame buildings with screened porches and orange trees along a campus street in Laredo under a wide blue sky.

Fort McIntosh Historic District at Laredo College

Laredo

An 1849 Army post on the Rio Grande above Laredo, its barracks, officers' quarters and 1895 chapel still standing on a college campus that took over the site in 1947.

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A columned stone bandstand under shade trees in San Agustín Plaza, Laredo, with a brick path, stone benches and people seated on them.

San Agustín Plaza

Laredo

The shaded square at the center of Laredo's 1755 town, where Carrizo families, Spanish ranchers and a century of border politics shared the same ground.

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Towns & Gateways

Don Pedrito Jaramillo Shrine

Falfurrias

The grave and shrine of the folk healer of Los Olmos, a place of prayer where South Texans still leave candles and letters for the curandero who took no fee.

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Heritage Museum at Falfurrias

Falfurrias

A free town museum of ranch gear, a Texas Ranger room and 99,000 photo negatives, in the town Edward Lasater built around his railroad and his Jersey cows.

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The long, low front of the Republic of the Rio Grande Museum in Laredo, a cream stucco wall with a red and blue geometric band, three paired doors and a Texas historical marker.

Republic of the Rio Grande Museum

Laredo

A stone-and-adobe Laredo house, by tradition the capitol of a federalist republic that lasted ten months in 1840, now a museum of life in a mid-nineteenth-century home.

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Zapata County Museum of History

Zapata

The museum of a county whose old town of Zapata went under Falcon Reservoir, keeping the photographs, artifacts and natural history of the families who were moved.

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Architecture

The red-brick front of the Duval County Courthouse in San Diego, with white trim, a pedimented top and the words Duval County Court House over a central entrance.

Duval County Courthouse

San Diego

A red-brick Classical Revival courthouse of 1916 in San Diego, the seat of a county governed for decades by the Parr family machine.

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The cream-colored Gothic Revival front of San Agustín Cathedral in Laredo, with a pointed wooden door, a rose window and a tall clock tower and spire, seen across a brick plaza.

San Agustín Cathedral

Laredo

Laredo's Gothic Revival parish church, finished in 1872 on a parish older than Texas statehood, and the mother church of the Diocese of Laredo since 2000.

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Thick sandstone walls and a whitewashed gabled building of the Treviño-Uribe Rancho beside a village street in San Ygnacio, with historical markers on the wall.

San Ygnacio Historic District

San Ygnacio

A Rio Grande village of sandstone houses on land granted in 1750, home to the Treviño-Uribe Rancho, a fortified family compound begun in 1830 and a National Historic Landmark.

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Laredo, Zapata & the Brush Country rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.

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