Las Rucias
On June 25, 1864, Confederate forces led by John S. “Rip” Ford defeated Union troops under the command of Captain Phillip Temple at Las Rucias. The Confederates had abandoned Brownsville in November 1863 following Union Army General Nathaniel Banks’s invasion of South Texas and Union soldiers advanced up the Rio Grande as far as Laredo. After their initial foray into South Texas, however, many federal troops were redeployed elsewhere and Confederate units pushed back against the dwindling Union force. By June, Ford and his “Cavalry of the West," were within striking distance of Brownsville. Warned that Ford was nearby, Temple rode with 100 troops of the Union 1st Texas Cavalry to the Las Rucias Ranch, about 24 miles west of Brownsville, hoping to take Ford’s 60-man force by surprise. But Ford had added troops from the 4th Arizona Cavalry and arrived at Las Rucias with 250 men. In a short battle, the Confederates pinned the Union troops in the ranch headquarters then routed the federals, killing 20, wounding 25, and taking 36 prisoners. Despite his success at Las Rucias, Ford lacked the troops and supplies to immediately follow up on his victory. By the time he was ready to strike, Union troops had already abandoned the city and the Confederates reoccupied Brownsville on July 30, 1864 without additional fighting.
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Location: At junction of Highway 281 and Farm Road 1479. Nine miles southwest of Harlingen and one mile north of the Rio Grande.
Access: Open to the public
Interesting Facts:
Frank Wilson Kiel et al., “ Wir Waren Unser 20 Mann Gegen 150 The Battle of Las Rucias: A Civil War Letter from a German-Texan Soldier in the 1864 Union Invasion of the Lower Rio Grande Valley,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 105, no. 3 (January 2002): 464.
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Las Rucias marker:
"Here Colonel John S. Ford of the Confederate
army defeated the Union forces".