Taming the Nueces Strip: The Story of McNelly's Rangers

Only an extraordinary Texas Ranger could have cleaned up bandit—plagued Southwest Texas, between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, in the years following the Civil War. Thousands of raiders on horseback, some of them Anglo—Americans, regularly crossed the river from Mexico to pillage, murder, and rape. Their main objective? To steal cattle, which they herded back across the Rio Grande to sell. Honest citizens found it almost impossible to live in the Nueces Strip.

In desperation, the gove...