Mexican American War

About 20 years before the Civil War broke out, Texas and the US were embroiled in the Mexican American War. We visited the Palo Alto Battlefield where on May 8 1846, Major General Zachary Taylor engaged Mexican General Arista who had 5 days earlier overrun Fort Brown handing the new Republic of Texas its first defeat. Despite being outnumbered in troops 3,700 to 2,300, Taylor had far superior artillery and shredded the Mexican Army forces. Mexican dead totaled 102 to Texan losses of 4. Arista, in order to stop the carnage, retreated 6 miles South and took a new stand in dense foliage hoping to avoid Taylor’s superior artillery. That's a Mockingbird checking out the cannon BTW.

We also visited the Resaca de la Palma Battlefield. The dense foliage provided the respite from the artillery that General Arista had hoped for. Unfortunately, the Mexican forces fared little better in hand to hand combat with the more experienced forces of Major General Taylor. This meeting resulted 154 Mexicans killed to 33 Texans. After this humbling defeat, Arista crossed the Rio Grande back to Matamoros with Taylor in pursuit. These two early battles set the tone for what ultimately led to the US seizing nearly half of Mexico’s claimed territory.

We discovered that Palo Alto Battlefield was one end of the Brownsville rails-to-trails bike path, which runs about 10 miles to the Gladys Porter Zoo. We brought out bikes along to check this out, and made a great day of it. Picnic lunch at the battlefield, scoring a cache along the way, we biked about half the trail, leaving the rest for another day.

Talk to you soon!