Pass Cavallo lies between Matagorda Bay and the Gulf of Mexico and separates Matagorda Island from Matagorda Peninsula.
The Spanish name means ‘’Pass of the Horse.”
This pass into Matagorda Bay was used by the early explorers and was the site of many shipwrecks in the 1800s.
In 1847 Port Cavallo was listed as having a post office. The post office papers show William E. Hanson as postmaster from July 28, 1847, to April 28, 1848, and listed the post office as being in Matagorda County.
The post office was discontinued in 1848, and reinstated in 1852, with Thomas Decrow as postmaster.
For a short time during Decrow’s tenure, the records show the post office as being in Calhoun County.
Decrow served from March 15, 1852, until October 27, 1853, when the post office again was discontinued.
Decrow lived on the western end of Matagorda Peninsula, where he had a wharf (extending outward to 10 feet of water) that could accommodate steamers.
This area was known as Decros (Decrow’s) Point.
Pass Cavallo has been a strategically important area throughout Texas history, for control of the pass meant control of Matagorda Bay and its coastline.
The pass is situated approximately 55 miles southwest of Bay City; it is bordered on the east by Decros Point on Matagorda Peninsula, and on the west by Matagorda Island.
Several important towns have been situated around the pass: Saluria was built on Matagorda Island within sight of the pass, and before the Civil War, it boasted the largest lumber yard west of Pensacola; Fort Cavallo, settled in 1840 was situated on Decros Point; as was Calhoun City where most of the bar pilots lived; Indianola, the oldest and largest, was established north of the pass.
At present Port O’Connor is situated at the mouth of the pass.
Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle sailed his ship La Belle through Pass Cavallo when he entered Matagorda Bay in 1685.
He established Fort Saint Louis at a point somewhere near Indianola.
The pass was used by Stephen F. Austin when in 1821, as an empresario under Mexican Rule, he brought colonists to settle along the Texas coast.
During the Texas Republic, Albert Sidney Johnson established a garrison of three cannon and 25 men on Matagorda Island in anticipation of a Mexican blockade that never occurred.
The Mexican War saw Zachary Taylor establish a garrison on Matagorda Island to protect the pass and to take care of the shiploads of troops and ammunition needed in the war with Mexico.
In 1850 J.T. Mansfield made an inspection tour of the Texas coast in search of a site for an ammunition depot and decided that Indianola provided the most advantageous location.
Anita Hill recounted the story of her grandfather, William Andrew Hill, who left Denmark for Texas in 1835.
Shipwrecked off the coast of Cuba, where he had to await transportation, he arrived in Indianola in 1836.
He became a “bar pilot,” one of those hardy men who guided vessels over the shallow and shifting sandbars of the pass.
He and his wife settled in Saluria where they built a large house with a lookout on top from which vessels in the pass could be observed.
During the Civil War, northern soldiers commandeered the Hill’s home, and the family was forced to move up the coast to Portsmouth, near present-day Palacios.
William Hill became captain of the blockade runner Lizzie Lake which took cargoes of cotton from Indianola to the neutral Mexican port of Baghdad, where it was exchanged for guns and ammunition.
The Lizzie Lake and several other “cotton-clads” were used to transport Captain E.S. Rugeley and his company, known as the “Matagorda Coast Guards” in December, 1863, when they made an attempt to dislodge a federal force encamped below Fort Caney on Matagorda Bay.
They were put over the side of the larger boats in small skiffs and were some distance away when a sudden “norther,” so typical of this area, blew in and swamped the skiffs.
Twenty-two of the men died by drowning or freezing before the “cotton-clads” could reach them.
The era of heaviest traffic through Pass Cavallo was from 1848 until the Civil War.
During this time Indianola grew in importance as a center of commerce.
It had long been a freight-wagon center for goods brought in by sea to be carried overland to San Antonio.
After peace with Mexico, the wagon trails extended to forts along the border west of San Antonio, and on to Chihuahua in Mexico.
The heavy covered wagons, pulled by oxen at first and later by mule teams, carried heavy mining machinery for the silver mines in Mexico, as well as cotton, tools, firearms, books, whiskey, and even an iron bridge carried piecemeal for the city of San Antonio.
On the return trip the wagons brought silver in coins and in bullion, and hides to be shipped from Indianola to tanneries in the East.
The beginning of the Civil War found a contingent of Union soldiers stationed in San Antonio with orders to return to the North.
An undated issue of the Galveston News describes the new part that this are was to play:
The beginning of the Civil War found Texas in dire need of a military commander.
General Earl Van Dorn was selected to lead the Texas forces, and he set up his headquarters in Indianola, which thus had the distinction of being the first military headquarters in Texas during the Civil War.
Upon receiving the order to return with all Union forces, General [David E.] Twiggs surrendered the Union fortifications in San Antonio, and marched with his men to Green Lake (south of Victoria) which had been selected as a point of congregation for Union soldiers awaiting a ship to take them to New York.
General Van Dorn felt that he could persuade some of the Union troop to join the Confederate forces, so he journeyed to Green Lake to try to convince them. He met with little success.
Later he received orders from Jefferson Davis to try to capture these Union soldiers, so he proceeded to fill the sloop Matagorda with Galvestonians and head for Saluria.
There he met the Star of the West and captured all the Union soldiers on board.
In 1861 Texas troops under the command of Dan Shea set up camp on Matagorda Island.
His force was not strong enough to protect the pass, so in 1862 work was begun on a fortress on the eastern tip of Matagorda Island.
Christened Fort Esperanza, it was built by slave labor using oyster shell, concrete, and logs brought from a log jam on the Guadalupe River.
The fort was designed to repel attacks from the sea only, all gun emplacements were pointed across Pass Cavallo.
General Paul Octave Hebert, the commander reduced the strength of the garrison, and as a result two Union gunboats sailed through the pass unchallenged and conquered Indianola.
When General John B. Magruder took command of the Texas forces, he began the task of retaking the ports along the Texas coast that had fallen to Union forces.
At Pass Cavallo, he strengthened the garrison at the fort and ordered the wharves and warehouses burned.
In November, 1863, during a severe “norther,” Union troops advanced up the coast from Aransas Pass, approaching the fort from its undefendable lower side.
For four days approximately 3,000 Union soldiers laid siege to the garrison of 500 Confederates in the fort, until itssurrender.
The Union forces were ordered to remain in the Pass Cavallo area, thus giving Magruder time to fortify and strengthen Lavaca against a possible attack.
When Union orders arrived, the troops were to march around Magruder’s forces and join General Nathaniel P. Banks at the Red River. The Union forces were defeated in the Red River campaign, and the Confederates drifted back to Fort Esperanza, but there was only blockade action until the end of the war.
Today the ruins of Fort Esperanza lie under water, some of which can be seen at low tide.
Presently Pass Cavallo is used by pleasure craft and small shrimpers; all deeper-draft vessels use the Matagorda ship channel which traverses Matagorda Peninsula a short distance to the east of the pass.
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