Cameron County Is Named for a Soldier of the Mier Expedition

Cameron County was officially created on February 12, 1848. The Texas legislature passed that law shortly after the Mexican-American War ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The county was named for Captain Ewen Cameron. He was a soldier born in Scotland. He joined the Mier Expedition — a 1842 armed raid from Texas into Mexico that failed. Mexican forces later executed him.

The area's history goes much further back. Indigenous peoples lived here for at least 10,000 years before Spanish explorers arrived in the 1600s. Spanish and Mexican land grants shaped who owned land long before Texas statehood. Fights over those grants went on in court well into the late 1800s.