Brazos Santiago Pass, south of this site, was an important Confederate harbor entry during the Civil War. On the island across the pass stood the fort and town of Brazos Santiago, where on Feb. 21, 1861, Texas troops under Col. John S. Ford captured the U.S. depot with mortars, siege guns, and ordnance, after which a Confederate battery was established. In March 1861, off the bar aboard U.S.S. "Daniel Webster," E.B. Nichols and Maj. Fitzjohn Porter, acting for Texas and the U.S., arranged the Federal evacuation of the Rio Grande. Blockade ships arrived in Dec. 1861, Col. Ford shifted forces to Brownsville, and in 1862 Gen. J.B. Magruder, C.S.A., ordered the lighthouse north of the pass blasted. Trade vital to the Confederacy moved from Cuba, Europe, and Asia to Bagdad, Mexico, often slipping into Brazos Santiago Pass, and the harbor sheltered blockade runners from 1861 to 1864. On May 10, 1863, U.S.S. "Brooklyn" destroyed schooners in the harbor. In late 1863, after French warships banned war material in Bagdad, Mexican steam lighters ran guns from sea vessels into Brazos Santiago. On Nov. 2, 1863, Gen. N.P. Banks landed the U.S. Army here, took the line of Rio Grande forts, refortified Brazos Island, and made it the terminus for an Army railroad to Rancho Blanco on the Rio Grande. When the C.S.A. retook the Rio Grande Line in 1864, Federals in Brownsville were driven back to Brazos Island. In May 1865, Col. Theodore H. Barrett led troops from here toward Brownsville, where Col. Ford's Confederates confronted them at Palmito Hill in the last engagement of the Civil War.