Once used by Indian tribes, then widened by Mexican oxcarts and Spanish expeditions, this trail has been called the Old Alice Road since its establishment as a stagecoach line from San Antonio to Brownsville in the 1860s. It was the main route between Brownsville and central and east Texas. Dubbed "The Cotton Road" in the Civil War, when Union troops blockaded Texas ports, this was the route by which cotton was moved down to Mexico. When the railroad arrived in south Texas in 1904, the old stage route fell into disuse. By the late 20th century, only impressions of the trail remained. (1997)