Camp Ebenezer

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just the same. Out here in Hidalgo County, the land has a way of changing hands, changing names, and changing purpose, sometimes all in the span of a few years. This particular stretch of South Texas story starts in 1902, when two men, Peter Ebenezer Blalock and George L.

Hawkins, began buying up land. By the time they were done, somewhere between 1902 and 1909, they had accumulated thirty-two thousand acres right here. Thirty-two thousand.

That is not a small ambition. That is a declaration. By 1908 they had built shipping pens on the site and named the railroad depot after one of their own.

Ebenezer, they called it. Now, you might think two men sitting on thirty-two thousand acres and their own named depot were pretty well set. But 1909 had other ideas.

That year, the whole tract was sold to the Alamo Land and Sugar Company, and just like that, the ranching plans were finished. Enter C. H.

Swallow, born in 1868, who would not leave this world until 1957, and who directed the company as it set about colonizing the land after 1914. And here is where the story gets its particular flavor. The company ran excursion trains.

Prospective farmers would climb aboard, ride out to this far corner of South Texas, and step off into a place called Camp Ebenezer. Temporary housing, waiting right there to take them in while they decided whether this was the land for them. It had a certain showmanship to it, the train pulling up, the camp ready and waiting.

Then in 1919, the depot itself was picked up and moved one mile east to serve a new town, the town of Alamo. The camp kept going, kept housing land buyers on a temporary basis, all the way into the 1930s. Thirty-two thousand acres, two ambitious partners, a sugar company, excursion trains, and a camp that outlasted them all by a couple of decades.

The land had the last word, same as it usually does.

What the marker says

From 1902 to 1909 Peter Ebenezer Blalock and George L. Hawkins bought 32,000 acres of land here. By 1908 they had built shipping pens at this site and named the railroad depot Ebenezer. Their ranching plans ended in 1909 when the tract was sold to the Alamo Land and Sugar Company. Under the direction of C. H. Swallow (1868-1957), the company colonized the land after 1914. Excursion trains brought prospective farmers, housed here at "Camp Ebenezer." The depot was moved one mile east in 1919 to serve the new town of Alamo. The camp served until the 1930s as temporary housing for land buyers. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986