Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Eagle Pass to Laredo.

It’s been too long since I was down along the Border, Eagle Pass was always my favorite Border town, lots of interesting history there, and back in the days one would take visitors across the Border Piedras Negras was quieter with the church and town square right there by the river, Nuevo Laredo always smelt like pee.

En route, a different sort of image from Uvalde, 70 miles from home, the city park along the Leona River and Uvalde Springs.



Twenty miles north of Eagle Pass, life in the Borderlands. I’ll bet that garden fence keeps deer out of the roses too.





…and a note of appreciation….

There's no way I could live near the Border.
That little Uvalde green spot looks nice.

No thanks!

Life’s too short to be stuck living existing like that!

Eagle Pass, TX population 27,000. Right across from Piedras Negras, Coahuila population 245,000. It would be a mistake though to think that they are the same place, they are not.

Coming in to Eagle Pass from the north you first hit the four lane main drag with the McDonalds, convenience stores, Subways, Walmarts, Best Westerns etc. It’s always the old downtowns by the river that interest me.

First view of Shelby Park, on the river. This was where Confederate General Jo Shelby and his cavalry crossed the river to offer his services to Maximilian rather than surrender. His flag is buried there somewhere.

…and a Border tableaux 140 miles from my front door. The metal fence in the foreground is about 15 years old-George Bush? There is no railway, the box cars lined up were put there to serve as a makeshift fence.

The dark vehicles on the left of the compound are Texas DPS. All the white vehicles in the middle are Border Patrol, the White tent at the right is a State of Florida humanitarian outfit. Given the widely disparate orders sent by their respective bosses, conversations are prob’ly interesting.

The stacked orange objects are buoys, but I saw none deployed.

I believe the fence on the Mexican side across from them is a soccer field.



People I know from Eagle Pass tell me illegal immigration at the Border has always been crazy, it’s only occasionally the rest of America pays attention. For them and their relatives this latest crisis is pretty much business as usual.

I musta got there between surges, things were quiet. Those agencies took my favorite spot for look-Mexico-is-right-there photos. This was the best I could do with limited time.

Look, Mexico is right there, looking downriver, Border Patrol watercraft in foreground, the two birds in the branches above are Great Kiskadees, the Piedras Negras church steeple is in the background. The concertina wire is new.



A bad photo looking upriver, and a possible fourth Agency on the scene. A National Guard Humvee?

Too fuggin hot. 21 below at 7 this morning here . It's temporary- be up to 20 above in a day or so.


Too many people there too. YMMV.

It gets hot down there!!

I was in Eagle Pass and Piedra Negras back in 1988. That was a long time ago.

I was there coming up from working in Monclova to Eagle Pass for a weekend, 2008. Gave me a hard time crossing into the USA, someone hadn’t stamped something properly when going from DFW to Monterrey. Plus an Aussie in a Mexican registered Taho going into Texas.

Was interesting to me. Nice building for the Maverick County Seat, and learned that was why the Maverick Mossberg was so named.

Square in Piedrass Negras (means black rock due to the coal from Texas to Monclova) was the one filmed in No Country for Old Men. Quite a fortified Frontiera on the Mexican side too!

Eagle Pass, In the past was always a good place to import and export livestock,not so anymore. now it looks like a land fill as does all the Border, Migrants my ass they are illegal aliens, we are going to be paying for for the next 100 years. Rio7

I drove Laredo to Eagle Pass many times in the big rig.

Apologies for the poor photos. I was just taking a quick look at Eagle Pass. It was already afternoon and the long stretch of dirt road I was gonna cover that lay between Eagle Pass and Laredo was an unknown quantity. It couldn’t be that bad because the Google Earth truck had driven it and photographed it, but I was in a 2wd pickup and needed to allow time for possible flats etc.

For example I only have this poor shot of the old bridge. Only about 150 yards distant but my iPhone 8 doesn’t do landscapes well.

In No Country for Old Men, Llewelyn Moss, wounded and fleeing Anton Chugarsh, tosses the suitcase with the money off the bridge and into the reeds below. There ain’t been any reeds for a long time and during the time that movie was set (1980) a sizeable cardboard shack settlement of non-treaty Kickapoo Indians were living under that bridge. Also no mention of the surreal nine-hole Eagle Pass golf course that still operates on the flats along the river on the other side of that bridge.



I believe this bridge is currently closed to vehicle traffic, all traffic being diverted to the newer main bridge east of town, maybe that is where all the illegals are being processed I dunno.

The old downtown, not abandoned like most small towns and prob’ly kept economically viable by the people who walk across the bridge to shop on our side, this is the area where Cormac McCarthy set his shootout in “No Country”. You do have to give Border residents credit for their parallel parking skills.



Just east of the bridge, the old Fort Duncan barracks ca. 1868. Eagle Pass began in the 1800’s as a smuggling locale, 100 miles upriver from the main port of entry at Laredo. It was a rough place. All along the Texas Border the American side today is surprisingly peaceful given the chaos just across the river, and Piedras Negras comes across as a quieter backwater relative to Nuevo Laredo and points downriver.



The best photo I have of the golf course, through the fence immediately in back of Fort Duncan. People playing there have always had to watch for runners across the course and the BP trucks chasing them, hit a slice too and the ball could land in the other side of the Universe in Mexico. I was happy to see it still in full swing, reg’lar Americans with golf carts down there having a good time. Actually, I shoulda gone maybe 200 yards further east where the fence ends abruptly and I coulda got an uninterrupted viewpoint.

I think we are headed down to Kenedy county this coming weekend.

Stay safe, Birdy.

I hunted down in that area for many years. Always enjoyed going across to Piedras Negras and eating at Modernos restaurant and then going over to club 54 for some brown breasted bed thrasher action.

Exactly. People need to get that schidt right. They are "ILLEGAL ALIENS"!!!!!!! They need to be deported, not supported!!!

No worries Bob, my two personal protection/emergency chick magnet dogs were riding shotgun 😎



Plus I was packing a Glock 42 loaded with HardCasts, IMHO the best pocket carry firearm I have found.


Shades of Clayton Williams

Anyways Bub, you’re a braver man than I am Gunga Din , all I ever did was bring people there to buy serapes and stuffed frogs and chit, plus the mandatory sombrero with “Mexico” on the front.

Back to the narrative….

The biggest of the three Casinos in Texas, the Kickapoo Lucky Eagle, right outside of Eagle Pass, all over the radio and billboards here in San Antonio. Advertised as “just a short ride from San Antonio”



Considerable irony here, as the Kickapoos have been the most reclusive and exclusive of American Indian Tribes, this faction avoiding White contact since Colonial times. The nearest thing we have to an intact Eastern Woodland Algonquin society.

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/kickapoo-indians

On the Plains in the 19th Century they showed up as far west as the Front Range in Colorado. 1850’s Mexico grants them and some equally remarkable Seminoles and Black Seminoles land south of the Border in return for protection against Comanches and Kiowas. It was some of these Kickapoos that handed some Confederate Cavalry and Frontier Militia there a$$es when attacked at Dove Creek 1864.

OTOH Ranald MacKenzie himself took 400 Cavalry South of the Border and hit them in response to Kickapoo raids, 1873.

Since then they had been Stateless, avoiding unnecessary interaction with Mexicans and Americans alike, people compared them to the Gypsies in Europe.

They come and go to find work and visit kin in Kansas and Oklahoma, pretty much allowed to come and go, not declared citizens of either country. They had a permanent shanty town right there under the Eagle Pass International Bridge on our side occupied in part by their spray paint and alcohol addicts. IIRC the nine-hole Eagle Pass Golf Course was adjacent and still operating, one of those surreal Border juxtapositions.

1983 the US Government opened a five (??) year window where even the Mexican-born Kickapoo were granted American Citizenship if they asked (IIRC most did not) and bought them 160 acres on the river where their current casino now stands.

Only interaction I’ve had with them was a few years back when some students with grandparents in Eagle Pass did part of a study project there. The woman we dealt with spoke English fluently and seemed literate and educated etc etc. I’ve also taught the kids of a part-Kickapoo father (other half was Lipan) whose kids went on to college. Like ever’body else, much depends on the parents.

Birds, it might be interesting and revealing to run down to Eagle Pass and get a look-see and maybe some pics when the Nues is reporting another wave of mass invasion is going on there.

Be interesting to see if what you see on TV matches up with what you see.

That fence around that house is intense!

Thanks for the ride along!

JFC! this is a home??? I though it a county jail.

Guess I' more naive than I thought, & maybe should travel a bit more.......... Or never, ever again.

Birdie, is the fenced home semi typical ?

Did you carry on this trip? (sorry, missed the G42 comment)

Is theft more typical than violence?

Or, is violence common when not complying to theft?


Otherwise, thanks for the ride along.