Brownsville, Texas
Brownsville, Texas is a great little city with a long civic tradition. Not far from the city is the Port of Brownsville, where a huge amount of goods can be accessed. The Gulf Intracoastal Waterway of Texas and Mexico's network of roads provide a massive thoroughfare through which trade can occur. Between the Port and the local University, a very large number of the locals have plenty of steady employment regardless of what the economy might be doing. This level of stability has led Brownsville to be a very stable and growing area for more than 100 years, and will no doubt continue this trend for a long time to come.
Of course, Brownsville is more than just a great place to go to work. It is a college town with a large number of students creating a scene for themselves each school year. It is also an area where a large number of established art galleries jockey for the patronage of the local tastes.
Brownsville is a great place to live in. It has something to appeal to everyone's senses. People of any age or any profession will surely find the city exciting and vivacious to their own liking.
Brownsville History
The city of Brownsville Texas's history begins in 1845, when a fort was built in the area to help stabilize the region. During the Mexican-American War, from May 3rd through 9th of 1846, two battles were fought in the area. The first was known as the Battle of Palo Alto, and the second was called the Battle of Resaca de la Palma. The Mexicans lost both, and ultimately had to give up their siege of the fort near Matamoros. Charles Stillman began Brownsville in 1848, and it became the seat of Cameron County in 1849. The incorporation of the city had to happen twice, however, as there was an issue over the ownership of the land between Stillman and those who had previously owned it. The Cortina Wars later influenced the city's development.
During the Civil War, the town of Brownsville was occupied twice by Confederate forces who smuggled goods out of the country through the Mexican port city of Bagdad. Their crossing point was Brownsville, so it became the location of two battles, including the Battle of Palmito Ranch. The Confederates won the last battle, though the war had already been lost.
Harlingen was begun in 1904 by Lon C. Hill, who believed that the Arroyo Colorado would become a significant commercial waterway. The city incorporated in 1910, and its early days were spent with growing vegetables and cotton. However, between World War II and 1962 there was an Air Force base in the area. In the years since then, the area has opened the Commemorative Air Field, a hospital and over 2,000 businesses that operate in the area and employ most of the roughly 58,000 residents.
In 1906 Brownsville experienced an issue when a pair of white individuals were killed, and a local regiment of black infantrymen was blamed for the crimes. All 167 of them were summarily dishonorably discharged, and it was not until the 1970s that subsequent investigations cleared the men of wrongdoing and reversed the dishonorable nature of their discharges.
In 1926, The Junior College of the Lower Rio Grande Valley admitted a class for the first time. Later on, that college would change its name to Texas Southmost College. In 1948, the college moved to the site of the old Fort Brown, which had closed down in 1945. Over the next few decades, the area slowly but certainly grew in population, going from around 25,000 people in the mid-1940s to over 50,000 people in the 1990s.
The city of Brownsville almost never receives snow. For 109 years before 2004 the city was without a measurable snowfall, and received 1.5 inches on Christmas of 2004.
About Brownsville, Texas
Brownsville, Texas is one of the most southern states in Texas. Located near the northern bank of the Rio Grande, the other side of it borders Mexico. With a fairly large population and lots of palm trees, Brownsville is a very interesting place. In addition to the natural beauty of this city, the local government has taken proactive steps to make the area cleaner. It is also a community with plenty of interesting history, including being the site of a significant battle during the Mexican-American War. Additional battles include one of the last stands of the Confederacy, after the Civil War had officially ended. Brownsville holds a special place in history in a lot of ways.
Brownsville is in a moderate but tropical place. Sitting in a latitude more southern than almost any other city in the United States, only a few number of places in Florida and Hawaii are further south than it is. As such, the winters are usually fairly moderate and the summers are hot. In one instance, the city received a measurable snowfall for the first time in 109 years, and the locals were so surprised by their first recorded white Christmas that they actually sold their snow on eBay.
Brownsville has been the site of two significant battles. The first was among the earliest campaigns of the Mexican-American War in 1846. The Battle of Palo Alto happened 5 miles away, as General Zachary Taylor's troops fought the Mexicans in an attempt to stop the Siege of what some people erroneously call Fort Texas. A battle the next day, known as the Battle of Resaca de la Palma, was actually fought within the modern city limits. Today an old cannon on the grounds of the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College marks where the commanding officer of the fort was mortally wounded. Another important battle that occurred in the city happened in 1865, an entire month after General Lee's surrender at Appomattox. The Battle of Palmito Ranch was the last Confederate victory, recapturing Fort Brown for the second time during the war but accomplishing little else.
Brownsville is one of 12 metropolitan areas in the United States that have the cleanest air, as identified by Forbes magazine. In spite of this already impressive accomplishment under its collective belt, Brownsville wants to take its goal of being a clean and green city even further. It was one of the first cities in the entire country to ban the use of plastic shopping bags, which has actually caused debate among other cities in the area about doing the same thing.
About Cameron County, Texas
The cities of Brownsville Texas and Harlingen Texas both form a large chunk of Cameron County. In fact, the Cameron County's seat is held at Brownsville. This county is named after a soldier named Captain Ewen Cameron, who was in the ill-fated and unsuccessful Mier Expedition during the Texas Revolution. This is a very large county in which nearly a third of its total area is composed of water. The county itself was formed in 1848. The demographic makeup of Cameron County is a fairly homogenized group of white hispanic and latino people with tiny sprinklings of other races. Interestingly, there are a host of unincorporated areas within this county.
The Texas Revolution was an interesting time for every county, because the area was seceding to go off on its own. However, Mexico had a problem with this, and launched several incursions into the area. During a retaliatory effort on the part of the Texan army, Captain Cameron was killed. His memorial is to have this county named after him a few years after the events unfolded.
The total surface area of Cameron County is 1,276 square miles. Out of all that space, 906 square miles are land and 371 square miles are water. With so much water as a part of the county, the fairly moderate temperature range often recorded in Brownsville and Harlingen makes perfect sense.
The 2000 Census reported that the total population of Cameron County was just over 335,000 people, including just under 80,000 families in the area. Out of all these people, the population density was 370 people for each square mile. The demographics were very homogenous, with 80% of the population being caucasian and over 84% of the population being hispanic or latino. Out of all the roughly 97,000 households in the county, just under 46% of them had children under the age of 18 living in them. There was an average different in household versus family size, as the typical household was composed of 3.40 people and the typical family contained 3.81 people. The average income for a household in this county was just over $26,000, and the income for a family was just under $28,000.