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The road from Hidalgo to Brownsville was reputedly laid out by General Zachary Taylor and his troops as a supply route during the Mexican War. The scenic, two-lane rural road traverses a varied cultural landscape with cultivated fields, irrigation canals, roadside family cemeteries, historic ranches, churches, and myriad historical markers, one of which commemorates the Thornton Skirmish, a nearby site where American and Mexican troops first exchanged gunfire on April 24, 1846. This rural landscape is rapidly changing due to intense development following the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement.