Brownsville Palmito Ranch Battlefield
— the last shots of a war already ended.
Not only on a wall.
Brownsville Palmito Ranch Battlefield, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“A low rise of brush and salt prairie above the river, twelve miles east of Brownsville. The fight here ran two days in May of 1865, more than a month after Appomattox. The Confederates won the field. Word of Lee's surrender had not reached the Rio Grande. A Texas Historical Commission marker sits at the roadside on State Highway 4, and the wind off the Gulf moves through the mesquite the same way it did that afternoon. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Palmito Ranch Battlefield sits on the north bank of the Rio Grande in Cameron County, Texas, about 12 miles east of downtown Brownsville along State Highway 4. The site preserves roughly 3,400 acres of coastal brushland and resaca where the last recognized land engagement of the American Civil War was fought on May 12 and 13, 1865. Congress designated it a National Historic Landmark in 1960, and the National Park Service administers the landmark in cooperation with the Texas Historical Commission, which maintains roadside interpretation along the highway.
The battle was fought 34 days after Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. A Union column of about 500 men under Colonel Theodore H. Barrett moved out from Brazos Santiago and was met by Confederate cavalry under Colonel John S. Ford. The Confederates carried the field; Union losses were roughly 30 killed or wounded and 100 captured. Word of the surrender had not yet reached the Rio Grande border. By June the last Confederate troops west of the Mississippi had also stood down.
The battlefield is undeveloped and remains open ground; there is no visitor center, no entry fee, and no staffed interpretation on site. A Texas Historical Commission marker stands at a pull-off on State Highway 4 about 12 miles east of Brownsville, with a short interpretive panel describing the engagement and the order of the day. The land beyond the right-of-way is largely private ranch and the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge; visitors are asked to read the marker and keep to the roadway rather than walk into the brush.
