Fort Brown (Cameron County, Brownsville, Texas)
Cameron County, Brownsville · Texas · Mexican-American War, Civil War
History & Significance
Fort Brown was established when Zachary Taylor and the United States forces of occupation arrived on the Rio Grande on March 26, 1846, to establish the river as the southern boundary of Texas. Taylor built an earthen fort with a perimeter of 800 yards, six bastions, walls more than nine feet high, a parapet of fifteen feet, and a ditch fifteen feet deep and twenty feet wide, armed with four eighteen-pound guns and garrisoned by the Seventh Infantry commanded by Major Jacob Brown.
On May 3, 1846, Mexican forces under General Mariano Arista besieged the fort, and Major Brown was struck in the leg by a cannonball on May 6 and died on May 9, just hours before the siege ended. On May 17, General Zachary Taylor formally named the site Fort Brown, to honor Major Jacob Brown who had commanded the fort during the siege.
In February 1861, Union General David Twiggs agreed to surrender all military sites in Texas to the Confederacy; during most of the Civil War, Confederate troops at Fort Brown served as guardians of the prosperous cotton trade to Matamoros, but in November 1863, General Napoleon Dana and seven thousand Union troops seized control of Brownsville. Union forces occupied the fort until July 1864, when it was again taken by Confederate forces, who held it until November 1865. Surviving elements of the fort were designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1960, and the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 authorized the addition of Fort Brown (166 acres) to Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park.
Key Facts
Map
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🧳 Visiting
What you’ll see when you visit:
- Original 1846 fort defending early Texas statehood
- Mexican-American War and Civil War military history
- Surviving earthwork fortifications and historic structures
- National Historic Landmark District in Brownsville
Sources
- https://www.utrgv.edu/civilwar-trail/civil-war-trail/cameron-county/fort-brown/index.htm
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Texas
- https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/fort-brown
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Brown
- https://www.cyark.org/projects/fort-brown/in-depth
- https://www.nps.gov/places/fort-brown.htm
- https://www.preservationtexas.org/mep/fort-brown-earthworks