Navigation
Navigation was active during much of the 19th century, with over 200 different steamboats operating between the river's mouth close to Brownsville, and Rio Grande City, Texas. Many steamboats from the Ohio and Mississippi rivers were requisitioned by the US Government and moved to the Rio Grande during the Mexican War in 1846. They provided transport for the U.S. Army, under General Zachary Taylor to invade Monterrey, Mexico, via Camargo Municipality, Tamaulipas. Army engineers recommended that with small improvements the river could easily be made navigable as far north as El Paso. Those recommendations were never acted upon.
The Brownsville & Matamoros International Bridge is a large swing bridge that dates back to 1910 and is still in use today by automobiles and railroad trains, connecting Brownsville, Texas with Matamoros, Tamaulipas. It has not been opened since the early 1900s however, when the last of the big steamboats disappeared. The bridge is now operated by the Brownsville and Matamoros Bridge Company, a joint venture between the Mexican government and the Union Pacific Railroad.
At the mouth of the Rio Grande, on the Mexican side, was the large commercial port of Bagdad. During the American Civil War, this was the only legitimate port of the Confederacy. European warships anchored offshore to maintain the port's neutrality, and managed to do so successfully throughout that conflict, despite occasional stare downs with blockading ships from the US Navy. It was a shallow draft river port, with several smaller vessels that hauled cargo to and from the deeper draft cargo ships anchored off shore. These deeper draft ships could not cross the shallow sandbar at the mouth of the river. The port's commerce was European military supplies, in exchange for bales of cotton.
Read more about this topic: Rio Grande