This is the southernmost city in Texas, located about 500 miles south of Dallas-Fort Worth and across the border from its Mexican sister city of Matamoros.

Brownsville is a bilingual city with 134,267 residents; people from both sides of the border frequently cross the three international bridges to shop, visit, and work.

The city is known for its shrimp fleet and its dual-frontier maquiladora manufacturing program, which includes Fortune 500 companies among scores of firms operating on both sides of the border.

A major seaport and railhead, Brownsville exports agricultural products from the Rio Grande Valley and Mexico.

During the nineteenth century, Brownsville and Matamoros were enemies, engaging in war and banditry.

A boundary dispute between the United States and Mexico led to the construction of a US fort across from Matamoros, which provoked the 1846-48 Mexican-American War. Mexican troops attacked the fort, killing Major Jacob Brown, for whom the town is named. During the 1861-65 Civil War, Brownsville supplied Texas cotton to Europe, avoiding the Union stockade on the Texas coast. The last battle of the Civil War was fought five weeks after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, at Palmito Ranch, east of Brownsville. Union troops attacked from Brazos Island and were defeated by Confederate forces led by Colonel Rip Ford.

Brownsville is popular with bird-watchers, who have spotted more than 370 species in the refuges and wild places around the city. The convergence of two major flyways brings an abundance of northern birds migrating for the winter. At the Sabal Palm Grove Sanctuary, the rare green jay, the chachalaca or Mexican pheasant, olive sparrow, white-tipped dove, green- and red-crowned parakeets, least grebe, buff-bellied hummingbird, kiskadee flycatcher, and black-bellied whistling duck may be seen. The 172-acre sanctuary protects the last remaining sabal palm grove in the delta. These trees reach 20 to 48 feet and are topped with a feathery crown.

Brownsville has scores of historic buildings of Spanish Colonial, Gothic, and Renaissance Revival architecture. Historic Brownsville Museum, housed in a 1928 Southern Pacific depot, displays the Spanish Colonial Revivalist style. It contains photographs, exhibits, and artifacts from the area, as well as local military history.

Brownsville visitors can easily walk across bridges to Matamoros and its gift shops and markets.

Brownsville has an international airport, and can also be reached by car by US-77, or by bus.