Historic Laredo

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Above: Another view down Flores
Avenue shows off the facade of the
City Hall Building on the 500 block
facing the old Strand Theatre and
Reed’s Drug Store. Note the city’s
transit system.
WEBB COUNTY HERITAGE FOUNDATION
Below: This May 1911 letter on Webb
County letterhead from Sheriff
Amador Sanchez recommends Miguel
Rodriguez for employment, endorsing
him as a well-known, hard-working,
and intelligent Laredoan.
ARTURO DOMINGUEZ
pushed through the sieve of the border a steady
pulse of Mexicans relocating in the United States.
National guardsmen were called to duty and
stationed at the border posts of Fort Brown, Port
Isabel, Ringgold Barracks, and Ft. McIntosh. Many
remained on the border until the outbreak of
World War I in Europe.
Farming production prospered and diversified.
Cotton became a cash crop grown on the rich tracts
adjacent to the river. A favorable climate, the accessibility
of water, and the technology to move water
sustained farming in Webb County until the 1930s
when agriculture bowed to the economic blows of
the Great Depression, market price declines due to
competition from the Lower Río Grande Valley, and
a rise in the price of diesel which was used to fuel
run irrigation pumps at the river’s edge.
THE WILDCATTER’S STRIKE
Wildcatter O.W. Killam’s first oil well in the
Schott Field south of Mirando City in 1921 began
an oil boom of significant importance to the
region, setting the table for an
industry that would for the
rest of the century have measurable
impact on the economy
of the area and on the tax
bases of school districts that
would educate the children of
Laredo and Webb County.
Killam’s Schott No. 2 made
history with its production of
300-400 barrels of oil per day
plus several million cubic feet
of natural gas.
A native of Missouri and an 1898 graduate of
the University of Missouri Law Department,
Killam also established the Texpata Pipeline Co. to
carry oil to tank farms and to railroad tank cars.
In those days of wooden derricks, O.W. Killam
wrote in literature produced to entice investors in
the oil field at Mirando, “The drilling is easy. The
time required to complete a well is but a few days
and the cost is small, ranging from four to eight
thousand dollars per well…. The oil is a light fluid,
twenty-three gravity, very high in lubricating
value. It is found in a 28-foot bed of coarse sandy
marl at the top of 300 feet of very rich lignitic carbonaceous
deposits in the mid-Yegua, and the
wells should last for many years. This geological
area is some sixty miles long North and South and
several miles wide East and West.”
Waxing literary, and probably having a great
appreciation for the landscape of South Texas,
Killam elaborated on the meaning of “Mirando,”
telling prospective investors, “Mirando is a gerundive
form of the Latin verb ‘mirar,’ meaning ‘to
wonder at,’ and literally translated means ‘deserving
to be wondered at’ or ‘must be wondered at.’ In
one word, it may be well translated ‘marvelous.’”
Seventy-nine years after he wrote this piece,
Killam’s enticements to investors still sound energetic
and full of promise and substance. “It takes
people and money to build a town and develop an
oil territory,” he wrote.
LAREDO AIR FORCE BASE
The April 17, 1973 decision by the U.S.
Department of Defense to close Laredo Air Force
Base, an installation that steadily and generously
fueled the local economy for over 25 years, packed
a resounding wallop to the City’s economy, removing
about $13 million from the flow of cash
through the city.
The 2,000 acre facility on U.S. Hwy. 59 had
begun operations in November 1942 as Laredo
Army Air Field, which included a gunnery range.
The base became inactive in 1945 and the property
reverted to the city which used part of the facility as
a municipal airport. In 1952, the base was reactivated
as Laredo Air Force Base for basic flight training.
The $34.3 million federal investment in the air
base (excluding land) dropped $13 million a year
into the local economy. Military personnel took
home $4.1 million in pay. Civilians took home $3.9
million. Living allowances for military personnel
14 ✦ HISTORIC LAREDO