Historic Laredo

CITY OF LAREDO OFFICE OF THE MAYOR &
PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT
✧
Top, left: 1875 survey of original
Spanish boundaries, Webb County
Survey Books.
Top, right: Map of Laredo, 1757
Inspection Report, British Museum.
Right: Plano de los dos Laredos by
E. R. Laroche, 1881, Colección
Tamaulipas.
Laredo’s development from a small Spanish rancho
into one of the largest inland ports in the
United States is a two-and-a-half century drama of
determination to overcome the adversity of a desert
environment and invent a border culture focused
on the life-giving Rio Grande. A hallmark of the
city’s urban morphology is its street grid based on a
sixteenth century Spanish settlement system
imported to the New World. Today, Laredo’s Latin
American style settlement pattern is coupled with
modern suburban growth of the twentieth century,
generating a dynamic urban space shared by both
the United States and Mexico.
Tomás Sánchez founded Laredo in 1755 as a
family rancho on the northern bank of the Rio
Grande. In 1767, Juan Fernando de Palacios, governor
of Nuevo Santander, New Spain, officially
designated Laredo as a villa, laid out a central plaza
and issued porciones, or land grants to settlers.
Town lots were assigned for public and private
uses and six leagues of land surrounding the villa
were designated as ejidos, or common pastures.
Town lots measuring twenty-by-forty varas were
laid out around the plaza.
Central to the plan was the rectangular plaza.
The plaza was used to corral cattle during
roundups for branding and for public gatherings,
such as the visita general, or the reading of decrees.
The plaza was an integral part of the Spanish town
plan in the New World. It was the starting point for
the town, the center of civic life and was the pivotal
space from which the entire town’s plan evolved.
Following the Civil War, Mayor Samuel
Jarvis expanded this traditional Spanish plaza
town plan. Knowledgeable in engineering, Jarvis
surveyed the city to advance its development. In
1869, City Council adopted his new street plan,
which called for the naming of streets alternately
for Mexican and American war heroes.
92 ✦ HISTORIC LAREDO