By Ruby A. Wooldridge and Robert B. Vezzetti

From the Karankawa Indians and Spanish explorers to the big-time ranchers and Fortune 500 companies of today, Brownsville has a fascinating and varied history. In Brownsville: A Pictorial History, this heritage is beautifully portrayed in more than 350 carefully selected, captioned photographs, many of them rare and previously unpublished.

The authors remind us that “history has flowed as a river through Brownsville for a period of more than 300 years.” To this once-remote place came men and women under five national banners. Among them were Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, Jefferson Davis, Porfirio Díaz, Manuel González, Robert E. Lee, and many others who left their mark on our nation and the world. “Here came William C. Gorgas to conquer yellow fever, providing the key to the building of the Panama Canal; Lieutenant Abner Doubleday, who would one day give us baseball; and Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, and Les Mauldin during the birth of air transportation.”

In Brownsville, revolutions have been planned and supplied. Forty-niners passed through on their way to the gold rush, and men of vision such as Robert King and Mifflin Kenedy stayed to find fame and fortune. All in all, an exciting history is artfully re-created by Ruby Wooldridge and Robert Vezzetti in this pictorial album.

The people of Brownsville, from simple soldiers to grand generals, from poor dirt farmers to the wealthiest ranchers, are all represented in this book, captured by the camera for one brief moment in time and hinting at their stories through the magic picture boxes of our imagination.