EAGLE PASS

A short history of Eagle Pass

Eagle Pass was the first American settlement on the Rio Grande. Originally known as Camp Eagle Pass, it served as a temporary outpost for the Texas militia, which had been ordered to stop illegal trade with Mexico during the Mexican–American War. Eagle Pass is so named because the contour of the hills through which the Rio Grande flows bore a fancied resemblance to the outstretched wings of an eagle.

General William Leslie Cazneau (1807–1876) founded the Eagle Pass townsite in the 1840s. In 1850, Rick Pawless opened a trading post called Eagle Pass. In 1871, Maverick County was established, and Eagle Pass was named the county seat. During the remainder of the 19th century, schools and churches opened, the mercantile and ranching industries grew, and a railway was built.

On April 24, 2007, at 7:00 pm CDT, a tornado tore through outside of Eagle Pass and caused loss of life and property damage. Major damage occurred in southern part of the town.

The City of Eagle Pass was sued by the US government in 2008 to gain access to the land and construct a fence on the United States-Mexico border.

An ongoing public corruption, bid-rigging, and kickback investigation by the FBI and Texas Department of Public Safety has resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of all four Maverick County commissioners, one justice of the peace, and several local government employees and businessmen since October 2012, making it the largest public criminal probe in Eagle Pass and Maverick County history. On February 20, 2015, a federal grand jury in Del Rio indicted a county commissioner and a former county justice of the peace in connection with an alleged bribery, kickback, and bid-rigging scheme, all related to the ongoing public corruption investigation. On February 23, 2015, former Maverick County Commissioner Rodolfo Heredia was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to perform 1,200 hours of community service after completing his prison term. He was also ordered to pay a maximum of $56,003.88 in restitution to Maverick County.

On August 8, 2012, a federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court in Del Rio indicted five Eagle Pass residents, including a former Public Works Department employee, in connection with an estimated $70,000 credit-card fraud scheme. According to the indictment, during 2011, City of Eagle Pass employee Edgar Aguilar obtained five City of Eagle Pass-owned Fuelman credit cards designated for fuel purchases for Public Works department vehicles and distributed them to his accomplices to purchase fuel for their own vehicles and to purchase fuel for others at the city's expense. In some instances, defendants charged individuals a reduced rate for fuel purchased using the city's credit card and then pocketed the cash. On November 29, 2012, Aguilar entered a guilty plea for the charges of theft and fraud, and on May 15, 2013, was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $68,373.87 in restitution for his role in the fraudulent scheme.

On March 30, 2017, Hector Chavez Sr., the former Eagle Pass city manager, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI regarding a bribery scheme involving public contracts in Maverick County. Chavez, with the company Chace Management, was charged with receiving $20,000 from the owner of the engineering firm Hejl, Lee, and Associates to bribe a county commissioner to procure a $270,000 contract for the engineering firm. Chavez admitted to having given false information in 2015. Chavez was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison and three years' supervised release on August 21, 2017.

On January 11, 2024, following Texas Governor Greg Abbott signing an emergency declaration to close down Shelby Park as a part of Operation Lone Star, the Texas National Guard and Texas Rangers took control of the park, blocking the United States Border Patrol from patrolling the area (which is located along the Rio Grande, and the border between the United States and Mexico). This started the Standoff at Eagle Pass.

Adapted (trimmed) from the Wikipedia article Eagle Pass, Texas, revision 1380131478 by its contributors, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.