The Texas Rangers: How the Lone Star Lawmen Began

Say "Texas Rangers" in most of the country and folks think of baseball in Arlington. This isn't that story. This is about the older Rangers, the lawmen with the silver badge, who have been riding for Texas in one form or another for more than two hundred years.

Their story is part legend, part hard history, and part lesson. Some chapters are proud. Some are painful. We'll tell you both, because that's the only honest way to tell it.

Short Answer: The Texas Rangers are a Texas state law enforcement force that today serves as the criminal investigative branch of the Texas Department of Public Safety. They trace their roots to 1823, when Stephen F. Austin hired ten frontiersmen to protect his colony's settlers. Texas lawmakers formally created a ranging corps on November 24, 1835. Over the years the Rangers went from frontier militia, to cattle-country lawmen, to the modern investigators who work major crimes, cold cases, and public corruption today.

1823: Ten Men and a Wide-Open Country

In the early 1820s, Texas was part of Mexico, and Stephen F. Austin was trying to build a colony of American settlers along the Brazos and Colorado rivers. There was no army close by and no sheriff to call. Families were scattered over a lot of country, and they were on their own.

So in 1823, according to the Texas State Historical Association's Handbook of Texas, Austin hired ten experienced frontiersmen as "Rangers." They weren't a police force in any modern sense. They were neighbors with horses and rifles who could ride out quickly when trouble came.

The name came straight from the job. These men ranged. They covered big stretches of open country on horseback, scouting and watching, instead of sitting in a fort waiting for news. That idea of a small group of capable riders covering a lot of ground would stick with the Rangers for the next two centuries.

1835: Made Official

As tensions with the Mexican government came to a head, Texas leaders decided they needed something more organized. On November 24, 1835, Texas lawmakers formally created a corps of Rangers. The Handbook of Texas marks that as the official start of the force.

During the Texas Revolution and the years of the Republic of Texas that followed, Rangers served mostly as a mounted frontier guard. They scouted, carried messages, and patrolled a long, thinly settled frontier. It was hard, lonely work, mostly done by young men who had to supply their own horses and gear.

That last part matters. A Ranger had to be self-reliant. He needed to shoot, ride, read the country, and make do with very little. If you've read our piece on the vaqueros, the first cowboys, you'll recognize the same horseback skills that ran all through early Texas, much of it learned from Mexican and Tejano horsemen.

War, Reputation, and a Hard Edge

Rangers rode as scouts and soldiers in the U.S.–Mexican War of 1846 to 1848. They earned a fearsome reputation there. The Handbook of Texas notes that Mexican civilians called them los diablos Tejanos, "the Texas devils."

We'd be telling you a tall tale if we called that nickname a compliment. It reflected real fear. The early Rangers were tough and effective on the frontier, but their history also includes harsh treatment of Native American and Mexican people that historians document plainly. Being honest about that is part of understanding who they were.

1874: The Frontier Battalion and the Lawman Era

After the Civil War, Texas was rough country. In 1874 the legislature set up two Ranger units, according to the Handbook of Texas: the Frontier Battalion, six companies under Major John B. Jones, and a Special Force under Captain Leander H. McNelly for trouble down in South Texas.

This is the era when the Rangers increasingly became lawmen instead of soldiers. As the frontier settled down, their work shifted toward outlaws, cattle thieves, and feuds. It's also the era of the great trail drives. Millions of Texas Longhorns were walking north, and where there's that much cattle money moving, there's going to be rustling. Keeping some order in cattle country was a big part of what made Texas ranching possible.

By 1901 the frontier was closing, and the legislature shrank the force to four companies, each with no more than twenty men, the Handbook says. The age of the frontier battalion was over.

The Hard Chapter: 1915–1919

Here's the part of the story that older histories often skipped, and that we won't.

During the violence along the Texas–Mexico border in the 1910s, the Ranger force grew quickly, and some Rangers took part in serious abuses against Mexican and Mexican American people. The worst-known case happened in the early morning of January 28, 1918, at Porvenir, a small, remote community on the Rio Grande in Presidio County. According to the Texas Historical Commission, Rangers from Company B, along with U.S. Army cavalry soldiers and local ranchers, separated fifteen men and boys from their families and shot them.

It was a terrible wrong, and there were consequences, even if they were far from enough. In June 1918, Governor William P. Hobby and the adjutant general disbanded Company B, dismissed five Rangers, and forced the captain to resign. The surviving residents left Porvenir.

Then a state representative from Brownsville named José T. Canales did something that took real courage. He filed charges against the Rangers in the Texas Legislature. The investigation that began on January 31, 1919, led lawmakers to reorganize the force and cut it down in size.

In 2019, the Texas Historical Commission dedicated a historical marker for the Porvenir Massacre, so the people who died would be remembered by name and the story would be told in the open. That's hard history. But there's hope in it too: a lawmaker who wouldn't stay quiet, and descendants and historians who kept the truth alive for a century until the state put it on a marker.

1935: From Horseback to Detective Work

In 1935, the legislature created the Texas Department of Public Safety and made the Rangers one of its units. When Homer Garrison Jr. took over DPS in 1938, the Handbook of Texas says, the Rangers entered a long stretch of rebuilt professionalism and renewed respect.

Over the following decades, the job kept changing. Rangers traded long rides for long investigations. The force has opened up too. In 1993, the legislature expanded the Rangers to ninety-nine officers, and that complement included two women, according to the Handbook.

Today, the Texas Department of Public Safety calls the Rangers its primary criminal investigative branch. They work cases like murder, sexual assault, public corruption, and missing persons. They run cold-case work through the Unsolved Crimes Investigation Program and investigate officer-involved shootings. They also help local departments that don't have the people or tools for a big case.

Myth vs. Reality

Myth: "One Riot, One Ranger" is a real quote. It's mostly legend. The story usually credits Captain Bill McDonald, who supposedly showed up alone to stop trouble and said there was only one riot, wasn't there? Historians haven't pinned down that exact phrase in the record. What is documented is McDonald's creed, printed in Albert Bigelow Paine's 1909 biography: "No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that's in the right and keeps on a-comin'." That line is worth keeping, whoever said the other one.

Myth: The Rangers were always heroes. They did a lot of good, brave work, and many still do. But the record also includes real wrongs, Porvenir most of all. Both are true.

Myth: The Rangers are just history now. They're very much active today. A Ranger in 2026 is more likely to be working a forensic file than riding a horse, but the badge still means the same thing: show up, do the work, see it through.

Why the Story Still Matters

The best of the Ranger tradition lines up with a lot of what we talk about in the Code of the West: do your job, keep your word, and don't quit on the people counting on you.

The hard chapters teach something too. An outfit, like a family or a country, gets better when it's willing to look at its own mistakes in the light and fix what it can. José Canales stood up in 1919. A historical marker went up in 2019. Today's Rangers train, investigate, and answer to the public. That's not a tidy legend. It's something better: people choosing, again and again, to do right.

If you want a place to see the whole story for yourself, the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco opened in 1968 and is the official museum of the Texas Rangers. It's well worth a stop on your next drive through central Texas.

Quick Answers

When were the Texas Rangers founded?
Their roots go back to 1823, when Stephen F. Austin hired ten Rangers to protect his colony. Texas lawmakers formally created the Ranger force on November 24, 1835.

Why are they called Rangers?
Because they ranged. Early Rangers rode across wide stretches of open country, scouting and patrolling, instead of staying put in one fort.

Are the Texas Rangers still around today?
Yes. Since 1935 they've been part of the Texas Department of Public Safety, where they serve as its main criminal investigative branch.

What do Texas Rangers do now?
They investigate major crimes like murder and sexual assault, plus public corruption, missing persons, cold cases, and officer-involved shootings, and they help local agencies with big cases.

What was the Porvenir Massacre?
On January 28, 1918, Texas Rangers from Company B, U.S. Army soldiers, and local ranchers killed fifteen Mexican and Mexican American men and boys at Porvenir in Presidio County. Company B was disbanded afterward, and a state historical marker was dedicated in 2019.

Did a Ranger really say "One Riot, One Ranger"?
It's a legend tied to Captain Bill McDonald. The exact phrase isn't well documented, but McDonald's creed about a man in the right who "keeps on a-comin'" was printed in 1909.

Where is the Texas Ranger museum?
The Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum is in Waco. It opened in 1968.

— The Sackett Ranch Family

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