Fort Ringgold

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Down in Starr County, right on the Rio Grande, there's a place called Fort Ringgold, and the story starts, as so many Texas stories do, with a man who didn't survive to see what he'd set in motion. Brevet Major David Ringgold served with the 4th U.S.

Artillery, and on May 8, 1846, at the Battle of Palo Alto, he received wounds that would take his life. The barracks established in his honor would carry his name forward across the decades; through abandonment, reoccupation, war, and the long, complicated business of holding a border. It was October 26, 1848, when Captain J.

H. La Motte of the 1st U.S. Infantry established what was then called Ringgold Barracks, at a place known as Davis Landing.

You plant a fort on a river like the Rio Grande and you're making a statement. This ground matters. We're staying.

Except, well, they didn't always stay. Troops were withdrawn on March 3, 1859. Then, just nine months later, on December 29 of that same year, the post was reoccupied.

Then came 1861, and the barracks were abandoned again; as the nation tore itself apart and armies had to choose their loyalties and their ground. It wouldn't be until June of 1865 that U.S. troops reoccupied the post once more. Now, somewhere in the middle of all that coming and going, in 1856 and again in 1860, a man named Robert E.

Lee passed a few days at the barracks. Just a few days each time. The marker doesn't linger on it, and neither should we, but it notes it, and so do I.

The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936, staking a claim of a different kind: not on a river crossing, but on memory. Fort Ringgold stood, fell, rose again, and bore the name of a man who fell at Palo Alto long before the first stone was ever set at Davis Landing. That's the kind of story a river border tends to collect; layered, restless, and never quite finished.

What the marker says

Established October 26, 1848, at Davis Landing by Capt. J.H. La Motte, 1st U.S. Infantry, as Ringgold Barracks • • Named in honor of Brevet Major David Ringgold, 4th U.S. Artillery, who died of wounds received at Palo Alto, May 8, 1846 • Troops were withdrawn March 3, 1859 • Reoccupied December 29, 1859 • Abandoned in 1861 • Reoccupied by U.S. troops in June 1865 • General Robert E. Lee passed a few days here in 1856 and in 1860 Erected by the State of Texas, 1936