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The Brite Raid: Christmas 1917
- Shane Jahn
- Dec 25, 2025
- 8 min read
by Shane Jahn
I don't normally shoehorn my thoughts into Shane's articles. I can't imagine a situation where his work could benefit from my input—except for his villainous usage of commas. But on this Christmas Day, sitting here at my desk proofreading this article, I simply can't help myself. It was just a few years back when I started my career as a United States Border Patrol agent in West Texas—back when Shane was my supervisor. He and I spent many a day on the Brite Ranch welcoming questionable hikers to the United States. This article brought back a flood of memories of the rough land we had become so familiar with. There were many times I stayed in Shane's footsteps, pretending to also see the subtle tracks he was following. But on one particular occasion, I remember him kneeling down and picking up an empty, weathered rifle cartridge. It must have been something special, because he couldn't identify it. This memory instantly came back to me while reading the story of the Brite Raid. Could the old cartridge have been left over from this legendary confrontation? It sure is neat to think about, but we'll never really know. —Matt Covert
Bloody Christmas on the Mexican Border: The Brite Ranch Raid
The tale I’m about to share with y’all will sound a little like one of Jim Wilson’s fiction pieces, but it’s not. There are slight variations in accounts of the incident. What follows are some of the common reports gathered from multiple sources, along with information passed down to later generations from folks who were there. This Christmas marks the 108th anniversary of the raid on the Brite Ranch by Mexican bandits. The Mexican Revolution was raging during this time and the violence associated with that complicated civil war often spilled across the Rio Grande and into the United States. The fighting factions of the Mexican conflict saw an opportunity to raid ranches on our side of the river to re-supply their cause with horses, food, guns, ammunition, and anything else they needed. Extreme violence was dealt out in many of these episodes.
