Maverick County Texas map
28.73° N · 100.32° W · County seat: Eagle Pass · 1,291 sq mi
Maverick County is a border county built around one city. Eagle Pass faces Piedras Negras, Coahuila across the Rio Grande, and two international bridges between them carry the truck and pedestrian traffic that drives the local economy. The 2020 population was 57,887.
The Rio Grande forms the entire western boundary. The pin marks Eagle Pass; Piedras Negras is the larger city directly across the river.
Where Maverick County is
The county sits on the Rio Grande roughly halfway between Del Rio, 56 miles northwest, and Laredo, about 97 miles southeast. San Antonio is 120 miles northeast. Kinney County is directly north, Uvalde and Zavala lie northeast, and Dimmit and Webb are to the southeast. Everything west of the river is Coahuila.
The Legislature created Maverick County out of Kinney County in 1856 and organized it in 1871. It is named for Samuel Augustus Maverick, the rancher and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence whose habit of leaving calves unbranded put a new word into English.
Eagle Pass, the only city
| Place | Type | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| Eagle Pass | City (county seat) | 28,130 |
Eagle Pass holds about half the county's people; the rest live in unincorporated colonias and subdivisions ringing the city — Rosita Valley, Seco Mines, Chula Vista and Radar Base among them — and on ranches out toward the Nueces divide. Quemado and Normandy sit north along the river where irrigated fields run down to the water.
Roads
- US-57 – northeast to La Pryor and I-35 at Moore; southwest across the Camino Real International Bridge into Piedras Negras, where it becomes Mexican Federal Highway 57 toward Monclova and Saltillo.
- US-277 – north to Del Rio, south toward Laredo, running through Eagle Pass as Main Street.
- SH-131 – northeast toward Spofford and US-90 in Kinney County.
- Loop 480 – the bypass around the east side of Eagle Pass linking US-57 and US-277.
There is no interstate in the county. US-57 is the designated connection to I-35, about 55 miles northeast.
The border crossings
Two bridges cross the Rio Grande here. Bridge 1, the Eagle Pass–Piedras Negras International Bridge, runs from downtown Eagle Pass and handles pedestrians and passenger cars. Bridge 2, the Camino Real International Bridge on US-57 south of the city, takes commercial trucks and is the reason Eagle Pass functions as a freight gateway well out of proportion to its size. Union Pacific also crosses the river on a rail bridge; the line carries traffic between the Texas network and the Mexican railroads at Piedras Negras.
Piedras Negras is several times larger than Eagle Pass, and the two cities work as one labour market, with daily commuters in both directions.
Fort Duncan and the coal country
The U.S. Army established Fort Duncan on the bluff above the river in 1849 to guard the crossing, and the town that grew beside it became the first permanent American settlement on the Texas side of the Rio Grande. The post was garrisoned on and off into the twentieth century; the surviving stone buildings are now Fort Duncan Park and a museum on the edge of downtown.
Bituminous coal lies in seams under the county, and mining around Eagle Pass dates to the 1880s — the community of Seco Mines takes its name from it. Surface mining continued into the modern era, with coal moving across the border to power plants in Coahuila. Away from the river the land is Brush Country: mesquite, prickly pear and cattle, with irrigated pecans and vegetables on the bottomland.