DESCRIPTION: This pictorial tourist map, drawn by C. C. Cole ca. 1929, presents Brownsville, Texas as a civic and recreational destination, combining a rectilinear street grid with illustrated landmarks, river scenery, and playful vignettes of fishing, boating, and wildlife along the Rio Grande and resaca waterways (1). Key sites are keyed in a numbered legend and include Fort Brown, the municipal airport, parks, cemeteries, schools, churches, rail depots, and cross border connections to Matamoros and Santa Cruz, Mexico. Produced in a hand drawn, chamber of commerce style, the map emphasizes accessibility, leisure, and modern amenities while still foregrounding the river, levees, and ship channel that defined Brownsville’s geographic and economic setting.
The map can be dated to the late 1920s, most plausibly around 1929, based on multiple internal clues. The inclusion of a municipal airport places it no earlier than the late 1920s, while the continued identification of Fort Brown with the 12th Cavalry reflects a period before the post cavalry drawdowns of the early 1930s. References such as Mexican National Lines, the Porfirio Diaz home as a tourist landmark, and the absence of later port and industrial expansions further support a pre 1930s context. The overall booster tone, pictorial style, and civic focus are consistent with chamber of commerce tourist maps produced during the interwar years, pointing to a narrow window just before the Great Depression reshaped local promotion and infrastructure.
NOTE:
(1) In Brownsville, resacas are crescent shaped oxbow waterways, ancient abandoned distributaries of the Rio Grande, formed by former channels as the river gradually shifted its course across the floodplain. These shallow, slow moving water bodies once formed an interconnected network around the city, supplying fresh water, supporting fishing and agriculture, and moderating seasonal floods before the construction of modern levees and drainage works. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, resacas had become defining geographic features of Brownsville, shaping neighborhood development, parkland, and transportation routes, and their continued depiction on civic and tourist maps reflects both their practical importance and their role as a distinctive element of the local landscape.
Recommended reading: Resacas: Remnants of the Rio Grande. Texas Highways. Online. https://texashighways.com/outdoors/water/resacas-are-the-natural-wonders-of-texas-rio-grande-valley/
PUBLICATION DATE: 1929
GEOGRAPHIC AREA: United States
BODY OF WATER: Rio Grande River
CONDITION: Good.
Browning as shown, mostly in the margins. Folds. Verso is blank
COLORING: None
ENGRAVER:
SIZE: 11
" x
8 "
ITEM PHYSICAL LOCATION: 13
PRICE: $250
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