DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Cox's Point, Calhoun County — sounds peaceful enough, doesn't it? Just a quiet stretch of Texas coastline where supplies came ashore, bound for the interior.
An early landing place, the kind of spot that sees history walk right off the boats and head inland without so much as a how-do-you-do. And history did walk off the boats here, sure enough. Captain Jack Shackelford's company — they called themselves the Red Rovers, and they came all the way from Alabama — disembarked at this very point.
The Red Rovers. Now that is a name that carries some weight on the tongue. They came, they landed, and Cox's Point was where Texas first felt their boots on the ground.
A town took root here in 1836, the same year so much else was taking root and tearing apart across this young, turbulent republic. Folks built it up, the way frontier people do — with stubbornness and hope in roughly equal measure. They had four years.
Four years of whatever a town on the Texas coast in those days could offer, which was no small thing and no easy thing either. Then 1840 came around, and the town was burned by Indians, and just like that, Cox's Point went from a place where futures arrived to a place where one particular future ended. The supplies had come ashore here.
The Red Rovers had stepped off the boats here. A town had risen and fallen here. Cox's Point holds all of that now, quiet as the water beside it.
What the marker says
An early landing place of supplies for the interior. Captain Jack Shackelford's "Red Rovers" of Alabama disembarked at this point. A town established here in 1836 was burned by Indians in 1840. Erected by State of Texas 1936