The waymark coordinates are located at the southwest corner of the Uvalde County courthouse grounds, where a pink granite state historic marker stands, preserving the history of federal Fort Inge and Confederate Camp Dix, both of which guarded the cotton road, just at different times.
The marker reads as follows:
"(front of marker)
Fort Inge, Camp Dix (CSA)
A major road west from San Antonio forked in the area of these forts. One road went toward El Paso, the other to the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass. Travelers heading west "put on their guns" in this region, the start of hostile Indian country, troops from these posts guarded against Indian raids, bandits from Mexico, and marauders. Fort Inge, 4.5 mi. southeast, was on Cotton Road to Eagle Pass over which hundreds of wagons, oxcarts took cotton to Mexico in exchange for vital goods. Part defense line from Brownsville to El Paso. Occupied by volunteer cavalry. (see other side)
(Back of marker)
Camp Dix, located 7 mi. East. Established in 1862. Part of state frontier defense line a day's horseback ride apart from the Red River to the Rio Grande to protect frontier settlements. Occupied by Texas Frontier Regiment. Although Uvalde County voted 76 to 16 against secession, a number of men joined the Confederate Army. Some, being Unionists, moved to Mexico. The war brought hard times and a rash of Indian attacks. In 1863-64 when Federals held the lower Rio Grande, Eagle Pass became the chief export city for the Confederacy and wagon trains increased along the road. Often without food, clothing, horses, ammunition, the Confederate and State troops, backed by citizens' posses brought a measure of protection to this frontier region.
A memorial to Texans who served the Confederacy.
Erected by the state of Texas 1964."
This story in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times tells more history about the Cotton Road -- a trade route important to Texas, the South, and the Rio Grande Valley that passed by Uvalde during the Civil War: (
visit link)
"Givens: Cotton Road led to the back door of the Confederacy
by Murphy Givens
Posted: June 19, 2013 3:30 AM
Corpus Christi Caller-Times
When Union warships blockaded Texas ports in the Civil War, bales of cotton were hauled down the Cotton Road to be sold in Matamoros, then one of the world’s great cotton markets. This was the back door of the Confederacy.
The Cotton Road followed the old Matamoros Road, also known as Taylor’s Trail. From the Santa Margarita crossing on the Nueces River (near today’s community of Bluntzer), the road traveled to Banquete, then to the King Ranch headquarters. South of the King Ranch the route entered the Big Sands, also known as the Desert of the Dead. At the Rio Grande, the cotton was taken downriver to the Mexican fishing village of Bagdad, where ships waited to receive cargoes of cotton.
Throughout the war, a river of cotton flowed down the Cotton Road to be sold in Mexico to foreign buyers for gold, which bought military supplies for the Confederacy. These were boom times on the border called “Los Algodones” — cotton times.
Wagons and oxcarts from East Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas converged at Santa Margarita on the Nueces, south of the town of San Patricio. The cotton came down in a constant stream with hundreds of wagons hauling thousands of bales. The traffic never stopped.
John Warren Hunter was 16 when he hauled a load of cotton to Brownsville. He described the Santa Margarita crossing, with long caravans waiting to cross. As they passed through San Patricio, they saw few people but when they approached the river an animated scene came into view. Several wagon trains loaded with cotton were going to Brownsville and on the opposite bank were trains of pack mules returning from the border with supplies of guns and ammunition. It was sundown when Hunter rode into the encampment “with its bright fires and incessant din of oxen and horse bells and shouts of the herdsmen.”
The next major stop was Banquete, where trains of wagons and oxcarts passed day and night. A detachment of Confederate troops under James Ware and Mat Nolan camped on San Fernando Creek to guard this important way station. Banquete was a busy, clamorous place with a saloon, stables, and supply stores on the south side of Banquete Creek.
The next major stop was King Ranch headquarters on the Santa Gertrudis. Richard King was one of the organizers of the Cotton Road and the ranch was a receiving depot for the Confederate government.
Teamsters could buy supplies at the ranch commissary and replenish their fresh water before they hit the Big Sands, a sand belt 65 miles wide and 100 miles long. For the slow-moving wagon trains, getting through the Big Sands was an ordeal of searing heat, with no shade trees and no good water.
Brothers Robert and William Adams, who were 16 and 17 years old at the time, were drafted to haul cotton to Brownsville. Each had a wagon to drive and four yoke of oxen to handle. At night, their oxen were turned loose to graze. Because of a drought and the heavy traffic on the Cotton Road, the oxen would have to wander far off to find grass. In the morning, they had a horse to use to hunt their oxen. Finding and yoking the oxen could take half the morning. The horse would be tied behind the wagon as it moved along. The wagons loaded with cotton usually made from eight to 10 miles a day, but they were lucky to make four or five miles a day when they reached the arid sand belt.
Sally Skull, a woman gunslinger, bought a fleet of wagons and became a cotton trader and teamster on the Cotton Road. It was said that it was more profitable for those hauling cotton to the border than for those growing it. When John Warren Hunter saw her at the Las Animas water hole on the Cotton Road, she was wearing a black dress and sunbonnet, with a six-shooter hanging at her belt, and sitting on a black horse like a cavalry officer on parade.
A British military attache, Lt. Col. James Arthur Lyon Fremantle of the Coldstream Guards, traveled through the area on his way to join Robert E. Lee’s army as an observer. When his ship arrived at the mouth of the Rio Grande, on April 2, 1863, he saw some 70 ships waiting to take on their cotton cargoes. Fremantle wrote in his diary that endless bales of cotton could be seen at Bagdad.
Fremantle left the border in a four-wheeled carriage pulled by mules. His party followed the Cotton Road and saw many wagons loaded with cotton. “Generally,” Fremantle wrote, “there were 10 oxen or six mules to a wagon carrying ten bales. They journey very slowly toward Brownsville.” Fremantle traveled up the Cotton Road at the high tide of the Confederacy. He was with Lee and Longstreet at Gettysburg, where he climbed a tree to watch Pickett’s fateful charge, the beginning of the end for the Confederate cause.
After Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks’ Union forces captured Brownsville in November 1863, the cotton trains were diverted to Rio Grande City, Laredo, and Eagle Pass. At Eagle Pass, where cotton was crossed over to Piedras Negras on the Mexican side, it was said “the whole river bottom from the bank of the river to the end of town was covered with cotton.” Matamoros and the port of Bagdad continued to funnel Confederate cotton to waiting ships.
Matamoros, the capital of “Los Algodones,” was full of Union and Confederate agents, cotton brokers, commission agents, soldiers of fortune, draft evaders and Texas refugees. From Matamoros, the cotton was transported 25 miles east to the Mexican fishing village of Bagdad, a shanty boomtown made of tent hotels and tarpaulin restaurants. Cotton was piled everywhere waiting to be lightered to hundreds of ships riding at anchor at the mouth of the Rio Grande. French and British warships patrolled the Gulf to protect the merchant ships flying their national flags.
The end of the war spelled the end of “Los Algodones” and the boom times on the border. But for many years afterward it was said that the route of the Cotton Road was marked by small sprigs of cotton that had snagged on the brush and prickly pear and waved in the sun like small white flags."