During the Civil War, Banquete was a strategic stop on the Cotton Road to Mexico, providing water, supplies, repairs, and defenses to thousands traveling across arid country. The route followed part of the historic King's Highway of early explorers and for four years served a vital role in supplying the Confederacy. It led to the Mexican border towns of Bagdad and Matamoros, where 20,000 speculators sought cotton and offered valuable European goods in trade. To obtain guns, ammunition, shoes, clothing, and medicines that were scarce at home, the Confederacy sent long trains of 5 to 15 wagons or ox carts for many weeks over the desert to neutral Mexico. At times, cotton bales were hidden in roadside brush to lighten exhausted teams, and the heavy traffic marked the wilderness, sometimes leaving the landscape whitened by lint torn from passing loads. Banquete's water made the long journeys to Mexico and back possible for a goods-hungry Confederate population. Named for an 1832 fiesta honoring Texas colonists, the town served an important role in Civil War history from 1861 to 1865.