The Last Days of Brownsville’s Boardwalk, 1926
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The Year the River Let Go
Before there was a passenger depot…
before the park…
before the leveled ground and poured concrete…
there was a wooden walk along the Rio Grande.
It began near Twelfth and Levee and ran toward the ferry landing, hugging the riverbank the way older towns once did — shaped by water, not by blueprints.
And standing beside it — solid, older, and watching it all — was the great brick warehouse first erected by Charles Stillman, later known as the Maltby Building.
The warehouse fronted the river where the ferry approached. It had stood there since the mid-19th century, back when Brownsville’s fortunes rose and fell with river commerce. Cotton, hides, supplies, freight — all passed beneath its shadow.
By 1926, the wooden boardwalk stretched past it, leaning against a river that no longer ran as close or as deep as it once had.
Stillman’s warehouse represented the mercantile river age at its height.
The boardwalk represented its improvisation.
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January 17, 1926
The announcement came plainly:
“Historic Boardwalk to Go; Preparations Made for New Railway Depot.”
The Missouri Pacific Railroad would build a new passenger station. Roads would be realigned. Brush cleared. Structures removed. The ferry approach altered.
The boardwalk — one of Brownsville’s oldest surviving river landmarks — stood in the way.
The Stillman warehouse remained. But the wooden world around it would not.
A Cosmopolitan Strip Beneath a Brick Giant
By the 1880s, when the boardwalk was laid down, the great Stillman structure was already a relic of an earlier river power.
Small wooden shops clustered along the planks in front of and beside it:
Curio stands
“Abarrotes” groceries
Mexican money exchange
Ferry mementos
Immigration office traffic
1919 section of map from Jose Cazares showing ferry system.
Spanish and English blended there. Travelers stepped off boats within sight of brick walls laid decades before.
The San Antonio Express in February 1926 called it a district of “cosmopolitan complexion.” They were not wrong.
It was a frontier commercial strip pressed between a fading river and a permanent warehouse built when the river was king.
It Was Never Quiet
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In April:
“Pedro Rosas Cut in ‘Fray.’”
The fight unfolded near the ferry landing — in the shadow of that old warehouse, beside the wooden walk.
The boardwalk was a border in motion. Arguments that began across the Rio Grande sometimes ended on Brownsville planks.
The brick warehouse endured.
The wooden structures trembled.
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The River Keeps Its Secrets
In July, a body floated past Fort Brown.
The ferry boatman saw it first.
The river that had once fed commerce beneath Stillman’s warehouse now carried a traveling salesman in its current.
The boardwalk, the ferry, the warehouse — all bound to that water.
July 19, 1926
Now came the dismantling.
“Tenants Quit Board Walk.”
Orders to vacate had been issued July 1.
The Missouri Pacific owned the property.
Buildings were being torn down.
Some sold. Some moved. Some rebuilt across the river.
The paper called it plainly:
“Its knell of doom.”
The wooden planks that had leaned against the old warehouse for decades were coming up.
Stillman’s brick walls would survive the transition.
The boardwalk would not.
August 12, 1926
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The last shack at Twelfth and Levee was torn down.
Palm trees were transplanted.
Concrete poured.
The ground leveled.
Where wooden storefronts once pressed toward the ferry and the Stillman warehouse watched over river traffic, a new railroad station and park would rise.
Steel tracks replaced ferry ropes.
Schedules replaced currents.
What Remained
The Charles Stillman warehouse — later called the Maltby Building — stood as a reminder that the boardwalk had never existed alone.
It was layered history:
1850s river mercantile empire
1880s wooden commercial strip
1920s railroad modernization
The boardwalk was the middle chapter.
And in 1926, that chapter closed.
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