Stillman Ranch House to Stay in Linear Park After All According to Workmen on the Scene

Workmen Shoring Up Stillman Shack
for Final Resting Place, Linear Park

Yes, it's a multi-layered, but somehow annoying story; the transport of an old worker's shack in Nueces County to the home of the anglo ranch holder's hometown in Cameron County as some sort of historical edifice.

It's fitting that City Manager Charlie Cabler would sign the original Memorandum of Understanding to transport and maintain the shack  as he seldom understands anything swirling around him.

$25,000 of always disrespected Cameron County taxpayer dough was used to move the dilapidated dwelling from just south of Corpus to Brownsville's 13th and Madison, next door to El Cueto Building. $14,000 more was spent when Mayor Tony Martinez who, like the subject of a John Lennon song, "jump when his mama tell him anything," heard the house was in the way of a new parking lot Juliet Garcia needed and wanted at El Cueto.

Ramiro Gonzalez, Brownsville's
Hapless "Planner"

So, Mayor Tony snapped his fingers and Cabler and company wasted another stash of hard earned tax dollars to shift the building to Linear Park where interim planner Ramiro Gonzalez, subserviently on cue, declared the structure an appropriate mascot to welcome tourists and history buffs to the city's Mitte Cultural District.

As Ramiro was quoted at the time: 
"The thought process was: How do we activate the park a little more? How do we really complement what goes on there as far as the farmers market and everything else? Having the founder of Brownsville’s ranch house as an attraction point at Linear Park kind of makes sense,” Gonzalez said. “The idea is that this would promote further use of the park. I think once it’s restored it’s going to be an amazing addition to the (Mitte Cultural District).”

Attorney John Shergold, whose office sits just across from Linear Park on E. 7th Street, disagreed, filing a complaint with the city that the building was an eyesore, unpermitted and a danger to streams of school kids filing by morning and evening:

“Make no mistake, I am filing this complaint as a citizen in

order to protect the safety and welfare of citizens as the ordinance was designed to do,” he said in the letter. 

“Currently, the location is surrounded by a six-foot, chain-wired fence that is unlocked and secured by only twisted wire.”

Now, eight months after it's transfer to Brownsville, workers are cutting through the concrete at Linear Park to make way for footings to secure the building in its final resting place.

"No move.  It stay here!" a worker shouted when we asked if this was another transport job.

Nena visited with a worker using a concrete blade to cut through the Linear Park pavement.  He told her they were going to make the building "look good," inviting us to come back regularly to check on the progress.

I never use the phrase "Stillman Whorehouse" when referring to this property as I buy into Nena's argument that the women abused within its walls by their anglo masters were not whores, but victims.

We wonder if the future hoards of tourists to the Mitte Cultural District, Linear Park or the children walking by this building daily to and from school will ever know its real story.