Bridgeport, Texas – an untold story of the arrival of Mexicans to North Texas

By Felix Alvarado

April 11, 2015

Bridgeport – What would you say?

What would you say if you were a young married man with a young child and a stranger walked into your town and asked you if you wanted a job?  You would probably look around and ask yourself a few questions.  I am certain many things would go through your mind.  You consider your economic situation and the kind of future your family can expect.  The stranger entices you with better pay than what you are making, if you are working at all.  You ask the stranger about your family.  The stranger ups the ante and tells you your family can go with you.

The stranger is recruiting young, strong men to work in Texas coal mines.  This is the Industrial Age.  American industry is expanding and transportation is a key factor in this expansion.  The horse and buggy and wagon train age have died a natural death.  Railroads are the transportation of the future.  Coal is needed to fuel the hungry engine.  In 1884 a coal mine opened in Bridgeport followed by Thurber in 1886.  Coal needed by the railroads that traveled west to El Paso and east to New Orleans.  There was an immediate need for experienced coal miners.  They could be found in Mexico.

You and your wife are faced with a decision.  You are from a small mining town in Mexico with a dismal future for your family.  The stranger offers to take you and your family several hundred miles north to a strange land where a different language is spoken and people are very different than you.  The job is hazardous but you are used to the hazard and the pay is much better.  You will be provided a house and the children will be allowed to go to school.    What will you tell the stranger?

Many Mexicans faced that decision.  The first Mexican families to come to North Texas came to Bridgeport to work on the coal mines.  They were not in search of the American Dream, they just wanted something better than what they had.  They did not even know what the American Dream was.

It is fascinating to write about the history of the Mexican in North Texas and not attribute the Mexican Revolution as a cause for our presence in North Texas.  The first Mexicans in North Texas were skilled coal miners.  In the front page we have a picture of Marcos Duarte.  His union card dated Oct 20, 1918 states that he has 30 years mining experience.  Marcos and his brother Miguel were working the Minera mine in Webb County in 1900.  By 1910 they were both working the mine in Bridgeport.

The picturesque and historical town of Bridgeport is located about 50 miles north of Fort Worth and west of Decatur.  The history of Mexicanos in North Texas begins here.  The picture of Marcos Duarte I obtained from the Bridgeport Heritage Museum. 

There is a group that I have not covered thus far.  They are the Mexican railroad workers that built the railroad.  These workers were transitory.  They too were instrumental in the industrial development of North Texas.  I will provide more information about them in the future.

Next issue we will have interviews with some of the descendants of the original group that came to Bridgeport in in 1880’s.  We will also cover the story of the third area in North Texas with a large influx of Mexican workers.

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