Fort Brown

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Fort Brown. Cameron County.

The oldest permanent fort in Texas. Let that settle for a moment, because that's not a small thing to carry. The oldest.

In all of Texas. And the story of how it got there is exactly as complicated as you'd expect from a place that's changed hands more times than a poker pot on a Friday night. It starts in March of 1846, when the post went by a different name entirely.

Fort Taylor, they called it then. But by May of that same year, a man named Major Jacob Brown had been killed right there on that ground. And so they renamed it.

Fort Brown. A name earned in blood, and carried forward. The permanent post was formally established in 1849, and it seemed like things might settle into something steady.

They did not. When 1861 came around, Federal troops evacuated the fort. Then in 1863, the Confederates evacuated it too.

This place had a way of being abandoned by the very people who held it. But it kept drawing soldiers back. United States troops reoccupied Fort Brown in 1865 and held it all the way through 1906.

Then quiet again. Until 1913, when U.S. troops came back once more. Some ground just refuses to be left alone.

Fort Brown is that kind of ground.

What the marker says

Oldest permanent fort in Texas; Called Fort Taylor in March, 1846; Later renamed in honor of Major Jacob Brown killed here in May, 1846; Permanent post established, 1849; Evacuated by Federal troops in 1861, by Confederates, 1863; Reoccupied by United States troops from 1865 to 1906; Again reoccupied by United States troops in 1913