Camp Nueces was founded in April 1862 near this site to guard vital traffic crossing the Nueces on the San Antonio-Eagle Pass Road. It was a post of the Confederacy's frontier regiment under Col. James M. Norris, charged with ensuring that cotton passed through to Mexico and that munitions, medicines, and factory goods came north to supply the Confederacy. As one of a chain of posts set a day's horseback ride apart from the Red River to the Rio Grande, it could never relax, facing constant danger of Indian raids and shortages of food, horses, and guns. Like other frontier camps, it had none of war's glory and more than its share of hardships. It was located in Zavala County, created in 1858 and named for Lorenzo de Zavala.