Historic Rio Grande Valley

HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
An Illustrated History
by Marjorie Johnson
A PUBLICATION OF THE RIO GRANDE VALLEY PARTNERSHIP

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HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
An Illustrated History
by Marjorie Johnson
Published by the Rio Grande Valley Partnership
Historical Publishing Network
A division of Lammert Publications, Inc.
San Antonio, Texas

✧
The ruins of Revilla, renamed Guerrero in
1828, emerge from the waters of the Falcon
Reservoir during times of drought.
First Edition
Copyright © 2001 Historical Publishing Network
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to
Historical Publishing Network, 8491 Leslie Road, San Antonio, Texas, 78254. Phone (210) 688-9006.
ISBN: 1-893619-22-2
Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 2001093392
Historic Rio Grande Valley: An Illustrated History
author: Marjorie Johnson
contributing writers for
“sharing the heritage”: Marjorie Johnson
Marie Beth Jones
Eileen Mattei
Historical Publishing Network
president: Ron Lammert
vice president & project coordinator: Barry Black
project representatives: Roger Smith
Pat Steele
Rob Steidle
director of operations: Charles A. Newton, III
administration: Angela Lake
Donna Mata
Dee Steidle
graphic production: Colin Hart
John Barr
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
2

CONTENTS
4 FOREWORD
5 CHAPTER I early history
23 CHAPTER II part of four nations
35 CHAPTER III the valley takes shape
51 CHAPTER IV taming a wild country
73 CHAPTER V the Civil War to 1900
95 CHAPTER VI the twentieth century dawns
103 CHAPTER VII cities grow along the railroad
159 CHAPTER VIII entering the twenty-first century
191 BIBLIOGRAPHY
193 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
194 SHARING THE HERITAGE
387 INDEX
398 SPONSORS
✧
The Queen Isabella Causeway, longest
bridge in Texas, spans 12,510 feet across
the blue Laguna Madre from Port Isabel to
South Padre Island. Pleasure boats that ply
the Laguna’s peaceful waters and barge
traffic on the Gulf Intracoastal Canal can
move safely under the high causeway.
CHAPTER I
3

FOREWORD
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY is a project of the Rio Grande Valley Partnership in conjunction with Historical Publishing Network
of San Antonio. Though it deals specifically with the four counties of Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr and Willacy that comprise the Rio Grande
Valley, by necessity it deals with all of Texas and Mexico. Its purpose is to present in one volume the fascinating history of the Rio Grande
Valley from the first explorations by Europeans to the dynamic and driving forces that have propelled it into the new millennium. It is
written in a readable, informal style with historic and current illustrations to provide a permanent record of the area’s settlement, growth
and progress.
The Rio Grande Valley is among the oldest and most historic areas of Texas. This relatively small region has lived through violent conflicts
between early European settlers and Native Americans; witnessed battles that determined boundaries between rival nations of this
continent; played a pivotal role in the Civil War; and spread the Spanish-Mexican cattle culture over Texas and the rest of the Southwest.
The Rio Grande (“Big River” for those who are not bilingual), now the border between the United States and Mexico, winds through the
area’s past, present and future. Spanish Colonial settlements, the ranching economy, trade routes, military campaigns and agricultural development
of the early 1900s were defined by the river. Through the years towns of the borderland became intertwined through shared values
of family, friendship, health and economic livelihood to form the cultural continuity that exists between the U.S. and Mexico in this area.
Long accessible to the rest of the world only by sea and river steamboat, today the border region is open to the world. And that world
is just beginning to learn about the area’s past, its people, and what they created in this land. For those who want to know more about
this unique area at the tip of Texas, this book relates a fascinating story in words and pictures of how it got to be the Rio Grande Valley
of today.
The publication of this keepsake book with its hundreds of historic and current illustrations was made possible by those who share
their own history in the Heritage section of the book. They are part of the region’s past, present, and future. The sponsor and publisher
appreciate their participation and you are invited to share their heritage as you explore the pages of HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY.
Bill Summers,
President/CEO
Rio Grande Valley Partnership
✧
A map of the Rio Grande Valley.
Rio Grande Valley Partnership
P.O. Box 1499
Weslaco, TX 78599-1499
Phone: (956) 968-3141
Fax: (956) 968-0210
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
4

EARLY HISTORY
THE
RIVER
The international stream known as the Rio Grande in the United States and Río Bravo del Norte
in Mexico has played an important part in the area since long before recorded history.
The Rio Grande rises on the eastern face of the Continental Divide in southern Colorado. It
winds eastward across southern Colorado and turns southward to cut across the whole length of
New Mexico. Then it turns southeastward, except for the immense deviation known as the Big
Bend, forming the boundary between Texas and Mexico.
Along its way the Rio Grande receives few tributaries for so long a river. In Texas and Mexico
the Rio Concho renews the river as it is about to die in the desert. The Pecos River, Devil’s River,
and Río Salado are additional tributaries, as is the Río San Juan south of Rio Grande City, its last
tributary as it winds its way toward the Gulf of Mexico.
The romance and legends of the river have intrigued many writers through the years. Perhaps
the most complete study was made by Paul Horgan, a Pulitzer Prize winner, for his monumental
work, Great River—The Rio Grande in North American History, first published in 1954. In explaining
the length of his 945-page, two-volume work, Horgan said:
✧
The Rio Grande (known as Río Bravo in
Mexico) as seen from the historic plaza at
Roma on its winding route along the U.S.-
Mexico border to the Gulf of Mexico.
COURTESY OF CRAIG WIEGAND.
The river is nearly two thousand miles long. Its historical course takes us through something over ten
centuries of time and through the chronicles of three cultures. To do it anything like justice, I have
wanted to produce a historical experience rather than a bare record.
That is what the publishers of this work hope to provide: A historical experience in words
and pictures.
The story of the Rio Grande is as varied as the meandering of its current. Yet this winding, sometimes
treacherous and always muddy stream is the lifeblood of this fertile area. From it stems the
region’s heritage, agriculture, and industry, as well as the water supply for its people.
THE
LAND
On a map of the United States, the Rio Grande Valley hardly shows. Even on a Texas map it is a small
part of a large state. Yet it has a fascinating history and has been of great importance in the life of
CHAPTER I
5

two nations. This work is designed to give a
unique view of the region’s past as part of New
Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, and the
United States as it enters the twenty-first century.
The Rio Grande Valley is located in the
southern tip of Texas and consists of the lands
along the north bank of the Rio Grande in
Starr, Hidalgo, Cameron, and Willacy
Counties, covering 4,244 square miles. This is
the region specifically considered in this
book, although other parts of Texas and
Mexico are included as they affect its history.
Though called a “valley,” it is really a fertile
flood plain, delta, and associated uplands of
the Rio Grande. It is bounded on the east by
the Laguna Madre, South Padre Island, and
the Gulf of Mexico, on the west by Zapata
County, on the north by Jim Hogg, Brooks,
and Kenedy Counties, and on the south by
the Rio Grande, the international boundary
between the United States and Mexico.
moderating effect on Valley temperatures. In
general, summer highs are hotter and winter
lows are cooler as the distance from the Gulf
increases. Humidity is relatively high, with a
daily average of 40 to 50 percent and a nightly
average of about 90 percent.
In the early part of its history, the land area
was mostly covered with a dense growth of
cactus, thorny shrubs and trees, including
mesquite, huisache, and retama, and for a long
time was considered unfit for settlement.
When Stephen F. Austin passed through the
area in 1823 on his way to Mexico City, he
described the region as follows:
The country between the Nueces and the
Rio Grande is the poorest I ever saw in my life.
It is generally nothing but sand, entirely void
of lumber, covered with scrubby thorn bushes
and prickly pear.
The pages that follow document the region’s
transition from wild chapparal country, with its
thorny, low growing plants, into the irrigated
farmlands and modern cities of today.
THE
COAHUILTECANS
✧
The land was covered with a dense growth
of cactus, mesquite, and thorny shrubs.
For a long time it was considered unfit
for settlement.
It is a smooth, nearly flat, coastal plain with
a slope to the northeast, away from the Rio
Grande and toward the Gulf. Elevations range
from sea level at the Laguna Madre to five
hundred feet in the hilly areas of Starr County.
Geologically, the Valley’s surface land is still in
its youth, with sand, silt, and clay deposits of
recent ages, which overlie more ancient fluvial
deposits. Most of the soils are level, naturally
fertile, easily cultivated, and suitable for irrigation.
The Rio Grande Valley has a sub-tropical,
semi-arid climate, characterized by short,
mild winters and long, hot summers. The
moisture-laden air from the Gulf has a
Wandering tribes of nomadic Indians roamed
the vast expanses of South Texas long before the
Spaniards came. However, there were no wellestablished,
permanent settlements as were
found in the pueblo settlements of the upper Rio
Grande and other parts of the Southwest.
Compared with such tribes, these natives were
among the most primitive inhabitants of the
continent. Called Coahuiltecans by scholars,
they were related to the storied Karankawas of
the upper Texas Gulf Coast. They were divided
into several subgroups, of which the most
numerous were the Carrizos.
Bands within the groups consisted of up to
two hundred individuals, but there was little
social and economic cohesiveness. Their main
occupation was finding enough food to eat.
Their lives were affected greatly by the South
Texas environment. Since no large animals
inhabited the area, they depended on smaller
animals such as deer, antelope, small javelinas,
rabbits, and rodents. Those living along the
Rio Grande, Salado, and San Juan Rivers often
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
6

supplemented their diets with fish taken with
bow and arrow or nets. Most of their diet was
vegetarian, however, with their staples being
prickly pear, tuna, and mesquite beans. Large
quantities of the beans were often gathered
and thrown into a hole dug in the ground,
where they were pounded with a wooden club
into pulp.
They consumed mescal, a potent
intoxicating drink made from the leaves of
agave, and drank a “tea” made from the peyote
cactus, dried and ground into powder. They
also ate peyote, both green and dried. Though
neither a narcotic nor habit forming, it had a
hallucinatory effect and was commonly used
in religious ceremonies. It is still gathered by
area natives and sold legally to members of the
Native American Church in South Texas.
The tribes engaged in intense warfare with
each other, and feuds among tribal leaders were
quite common. Combat usually consisted of
small battles employing hit and run techniques,
similar to the guerrilla warfare of the modern era.
When the Spanish colonies were settled on
the southern banks of the Rio Grande, some
of the Indians were hostile, but others
accepted the colonizers and welcomed the
missions, where they lived and farmed under
the supervision and protection of the priests.
Such a mission was established near what
was first called Revilla and later Guerrero.
Called Ampuero, it was under the supervision
of Fray Miguel Santa María de los Dolores,
who described in detail some of the customs
of the Indians. One of his stories relates to the
mourning habits of the Rio Grande Indians:
When an Indian mother lost a son, daughter
or husband by death, she would go to some
isolated place, taking with her other women of
her household. In this place of seclusion, the
women would pull out their hair and with the
extraction of each strand would give a piercing
scream, all others present joining in the
outburst. This lasted days and weeks or as long
as the pain caused by the loss of the deceased
lasted, and the results were not a thing of beauty.
The priest added that, in the case of a widow, as
soon as someone else appeared to court her, that
sorrow was soon forgotten and all effort used to
again make herself attractive.
He also described their successful methods
of hunting: While hunting land animals they
used great craftiness by forming a big circle
over a larger area in the woods and slowly
closed in around all the game. By this method
they were able to kill a great deal of game.
A cunning way was used to secure ducks.
Placing baskets over their heads, they would
dive under the water and reach up and grab
the ducks by their feet, thereby catching all
that were needed in a very short time.
Contact with the Spaniards in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brought
great disaster to the Coahuiltecans. Disease
brought to the New World by the Spaniards,
especially smallpox, spread to the Indians and
destroyed entire bands and villages.
Though some of the natives mixed and
mingled with the Spanish settlers, the majority of
the Coahuiltecans refused to settle and continued
their nomadic lives until decimated by war,
disease or both. By 1850, only a few of the once
numerous Carrizo remained along the banks of
the Rio Grande. Numerous pieces of pottery,
stone tools, and campfire sites remain as evidence
of the Coahuiltecans and their ancestors.
THE FIERCE KARANKAWAS
The Karankawas, those distant cousins of the
Coahuiltecans, were a fierce five-tribe nation of
✧
The lifestyle and artifacts of Coahuiltecan
Indians who once lived in the area are
depicted in this exhibit at the Hidalgo
County Historical Museum, Edinburg.
CHAPTER I
7

coastal Indians whose greatest claim to fame was
their practice of cannibalism. The men were
giants in size, fine physical specimens ranging in
height from six to seven feet. Their facial features
were grotesque and their hair was as coarse as
that of horses and worn long, often reaching to
the waist. The women, worn by the drudgery of
their lives, looked sullen and morose. They were
fat, plain and even in youth not pretty.
Numbering only a few thousand at any one time,
they were scattered over some three hundred
miles of Texas coastline from Matagorda Bay to
the southern tip of Padre Island.
They usually traveled in bands of 30 to 40
people, seldom remaining in one place more than
a month. They used little fleets of crude pirogues
to move from island to island along the coast in
search of food. Their main diet was fish, along
with clams, mussels, tortoises, and alligators that
they managed to catch in the rivers.
In the spring they moved away from the
fishing waters of the Gulf, going inland where
there were wild dewberries, blackberries and
mulberries to be had for the picking. The
outing was in the nature of a picnic—the
Indians remained in the woods for weeks,
gorging themselves, dancing and enjoying the
warm spring weather. With no permanent
settlement to call home and no cultivated fields
to maintain, the nomads spent their summers
roaming from place to place; the men fishing
and hunting, the women “grubbing for truffles.”
Though engaged in constant struggles with
the white men as they pushed their way into their
domain, the “Kronks,” as they were called, did
accept the Franciscan padres, who built four
missions in a futile attempt to tame and
Christianize them. The padres continually sought
to bring the Indians into the various missions to
teach them both religion and the delights of
common labor. However, it proved an impossible
task as the Kronks were interested in neither.
In 1768 Fray José de Solís visited the region
and wrote a vivid description of the
Karankawas and their brother tribesmen from
the coastal areas:
These Indians are dirty, foul smelling, and
pestiferous, and throw off such a bad odor
from their bodies that it makes one sick. The
men are keen-witted and shrewd and go about
stark naked. They are cruel, inhuman and
ferocious. They are so greedy that they eat
meat almost raw, parboiled, or half-roasted
and dripping with blood. They look upon
their wives as simple instruments of pleasure
in which the heart takes no part, not paying
them the slightest attention.
The Karankawas naturally resented the
colonists and adventurers who confiscated land
that the Indians had long considered their own,
and they had trouble with almost everyone who
crossed their path. This included the pirate Jean
Lafitte when he attempted to establish his
empire on Galveston Island in the early 1800s.
They put up such a fight for their tribal land
that the pirates called them “demons from hell.”
According to available records, only
approximately 250 Karankawas remained
✧
The fierce Karankawas lived along the
seacoast and traveled in dugout canoes.
There are many legends about these early
inhabitants of the Texas coast.
COURTESY OF THE PORT ISABEL HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
8

when the Texas colonists revolted against
Mexico in 1836. Having lost most of the land
over which they once roamed, they continued
their wanderings along the coast and up and
down the beaches of Padre Island, gradually
sliding into extinction. There are many legends
about these fierce natives, who established
a niche for themselves by the obstacles
they tossed in the paths of those who were
attempting to bring civilization to the area.
EARLY EUROPEAN
EXPLORATIONS
It was 1519, twenty-seven years after
Columbus’ first voyage, before Hernán Cortés
headed for the mainland of what became New
Spain and then Mexico. As the Spaniards
conquered the larger islands of Hispaniola,
Cuba, and Jamaica, they established Spanishstyle
governments, subjugated the natives, and
tried to Christianize them. Cortés had sailed
from Spain to Hispaniola in 1504 when he was
only nineteen. There he settled as a farmer and
public notary in a small town near Santo
Domingo. He must have seen friends and
neighbors sailing for glorious conquests and
dreamed of such glory for himself. In 1511 he
accompanied Diego Velásquez in his expedition
to Cuba, where he became alcalde of Santiago
for several years. Velásquez sent him to explore
what is now Mexico in February 1519, and his
great adventure began.
Meanwhile, the Spanish governors of other
island kingdoms had their own dreams of
further conquests. In 1519, Francisco de Garay,
who had been with Columbus on his second
voyage, was the wealthy and ambitious governor
of Jamaica. A strong rivalry had developed
between Garay and Cortés, and Garay wanted to
lay claim to some of the unexplored coast before
Cortés claimed all of it. He sent an expedition of
four vessels under the command of Alvarez de
Piñeda to explore and lay claim to the area.
Piñeda sailed north by Cuba and followed
the Gulf coast toward the west, making detailed
notes on the land, bays and rivers, the natives
and the vegetation. He reached Veracruz in
August, only to learn that Cortés had already
been there. When Cortés learned of the arrival
of this expedition, he feared the intruders would
interfere with his conquest and occupation of
Mexico. With some of his men he marched to
where Piñeda’s ships were anchored and
captured seven of the newcomers who had gone
ashore. Piñeda didn’t stay around to meet Cortés
personally, but sailed away to the north.
RÍO DE LAS PALMAS
After leaving Veracruz, Piñeda did not stop
until he reached a “very large river” where there
were many palms. He named it “Río de las
Palmas” and went ashore to claim the land for
Spain. His ships entered the mouth of this stream,
where they spent forty days repairing the ships
and exploring the country. A party of Spaniards
went upstream about eighteen miles, where they
found forty mud and reed Indian huts. The
expedition then sailed back to Governor Garay
with glowing reports of their findings and said the
land was suitable for colonization.
Because of the sabal palm jungle along the
mouth of the Rio Grande, most historians
have considered Piñeda’s river to be the Rio
Grande. In recent years, however, many
believe that what Piñeda saw was the mouth
of the Río Soto la Marina, some 120 miles
south of the larger Rio Grande.
Either way, it was in the neighborhood, and
Governor Garay believed it was his destiny to
establish a colony in his new territory. The
following year, he got permission from the King
to mount another expedition, and early in the
✧
Above: Spanish ships plied the seas in
the early 1500s and explorers often
competed with each other to claim new
lands for Spain.
COURTESY OF THE TREASURES OF THE GULF MUSEUM,
PORT ISABEL, TEXAS.
Below: Hernán Cortés feared the explorers
under Piñeda would interfere with his
conquering and occupying all of Mexico.
This portrait was taken from Historia
de Mexico.
CHAPTER I
9

✧
This Piñeda tablet found by local Naval
reservists looking for Civil War relics at
Boca Chica Beach. It was buried several feet
down under the remains of two wooden
boats. Now on display in Rio Grande Valley
Museum, Harlingen, it has aroused much
historical interest.
summer of 1520 he sent Diego de Camargo to
establish a permanent settlement. This
expedition had three ships, 150 infantrymen,
seven cavalrymen, brass cannon, a supply of
brick and lime, and several masons. Camargo
was to supervise the building of a fort at the
mouth of the Río de las Palmas, from which
missionaries would be sent to convert the native
tribes and to keep Cortés from claiming the area.
Historians agree that this expedition reached
the Rio Grande. Camargo sailed upriver about
twenty miles and found the native inhabitants
friendly. These natives, however, soon tired of
their visitors when they made demands for food,
shelter, and women and decided to drive them
away. Camargo tried to punish them, but was
defeated, losing his horses and eighteen of his
men. The remainder reached their ships and,
pursued by hundreds of canoes filled with angry
natives, succeeded in reaching the mouth of the
river. One ship sank in the river and the other
two were old and worm-eaten. Some of the
strongest men decided to head for Veracruz
overland. One ship reached Veracruz, but it
sank three days later. Camargo, who was a
former governor of Jamaica, and sixty of the
survivors got permission from the commanding
officer at Veracruz to march to Mexico City,
where they joined Cortés.
Still dreaming of establishing the colony of
“Garay” and assuming that Camargo had built
his fort at the mouth of the river, Garay
organized a third voyage, which he led himself.
The king of Spain had granted his request to
establish a settlement in the land explored by
Piñeda. He was directed to choose locations
with a healthful climate not subject to floods
and to give the natives instruction in the
Catholic faith. By early summer of 1523, Garay
was ready to head for the mouth of the Rio
Grande. He had sixteen vessels and 600 men,
among them prominent residents of Jamaica
and Cuba, supplies of provisions, 200 guns,
300 crossbows, and several pieces of artillery.
On St. James Day, July 25, 1523, his
expedition sailed through a pass between two
long islands, today’s Brazos Santiago Pass. To
Garay’s surprise, no fort was found. An officer
was sent upriver to find a site for the settlement,
but returned after four days with the report that
there were native villages further up, but the
land was not suitable for a settlement. Though
this was not true, Garay believed him. He
commanded that four hundred of his men and
all of his horses be landed so he could lead
them overland to the Panuco River near
present-day Tampico, where they would meet
the ships and the rest of the men.
The explorers encountered many
difficulties on the long march across rivers
and marshes. Horses drowned, hostile Indians
attacked the men, mosquitoes and other
tropical insects harassed them, and some of
the men threatened mutiny. When they finally
arrived at the Panuco, they fell into the hands
of Cortés. Though treated with courtesy and
allowed to spend time in Cortés’ home, the
broken-hearted Garay died in less than a year.
ANOTHER FAILED
EXPEDITION
While in Mexico, Garay met an old friend,
Pánfilo de Narváez, who had been defeated
and imprisoned by Cortés. Feeling sorry for
this friend, he interceded with his captor,
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
10

equesting that Narváez be allowed to return
to Cuba. Feeling that neither man could
endanger his interests, Cortés agreed, gave his
prisoner his freedom and bid him Godspeed.
Tradition has it that, after Narváez was
released from prison, he and the remnant of
his men set out for Cuba. But Father Zamora
and five officers gave up further plans to
travel with Narváez and settled in Peñitas, just
west of Mission, in the early 1520s, making
Peñitas one of the oldest settlements in the
United States. The refugees were befriended
by Indians living in huts and dugout-type
homes in the vicinity. But the Spaniards
erected stone houses with whitewashed walls.
Father Zamora brought the Catholic faith to
the Indians, also teaching them weaving and
better farming while the Indians taught
cookery to their guests. Some of the
descendants of this small band of refugees still
live in the area and recall the stories handed
down through the centuries, though no
physical evidence remains of the early
settlement in present-day Peñitas.
As soon as he reached Cuba, Narváez started
planning another journey to explore Florida and
the Gulf Coast. This turned out to be the most
disastrous expedition of all. Narváez left Cuba in
1527 with sixteen ships and 750 men, among
them Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, comptroller
and royal treasurer. Their ships got lost, then
shipwrecked, and for seven long years nothing
was heard of Narváez. Then in 1536, north of
Culiacán, Mexico, a Spanish slave-gathering
expedition came upon four starving, almost
naked and destitute men. The leader of the party
was none other than Cabeza de Vaca. With him
were Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andrés
Dorantes, and Estevanico, a black Moorish slave
belonging to Dorantes. They were the only
survivors of the ill-fated Narváez expedition.
They recounted one of the great adventures
of all time. Shipwrecked on Galveston Island,
they were passed from native tribe to tribe,
sometimes as slaves, at other times sought
after. In the seven years of their wanderings
they saw no sign of white men. In their
travels, they passed through the Rio Grande
Valley. They had an opportunity to observe
the natives who lived in the area, finding
them no better than the barbarous tribesmen
who had mistreated them all along their
torturous journey.
ORDER COMES TO
NEW SPAIN
Once the conquest of New Spain was
accomplished, King Carlos I knew a more
orderly government was needed than could
be provided by Cortés and the interim
government in Mexico City of the audencia, a
court of judges. A viceroy, a personal
representative of the crown appointed by the
king to govern a territory, was needed.
Fortunately, he chose Antonio de Mendoza as
the first viceroy in 1535, and he served until
1550. A man of exceptional background and
talents, he established the basic foundation of
colonial government in New Spain.
He desired to preserve the Indian class
structure and advocated proper food and
clothing, decent wages, and protection of their
health. The Indians used human burden
carriers as they had no beasts of burden. Nor
did they have the wheel. Mendoza gradually
eliminated the custom through the introduction
of beasts of burden, carts, and road
construction. Agriculture was encouraged, and
the livestock of the Spaniards was introduced
—horses, mules, oxen, cows, sheep, goats and
pigs. A cattle association was formed as early as
1542. Gold and silver mines were developed, as
the primary interest of the Spanish Crown lay in
the wealth they could produce.
To Mendoza belongs the honor of setting
up the first printing press in the New World.
Early religious publications were followed
by books on mathematics, physics, navigation
and law codes, all before 1600. He was also a
strong advocate of education and supported
Franciscan Bishop Juan de Zumarraga in his
efforts to establish a university, which was
founded in 1553, two years after the viceroy
had left his Mexican post. Nevertheless, he
deserves to be listed among the founders of
the present-day National University of
Mexico, which, along with the University of
San Marcos in Lima, Peru, are the oldest
universities in the Americas.
During the three hundred year colonial
period, New Spain was to have sixty-two
✧
The Spaniards became very demanding of
the natives who, though friendly at first,
soon tired of their visitors and their
demands. The natives attacked the
Spaniards, driving them back to their ships.
COURTESY OF THE TREASURES OF THE GULF MUSEUM,
PORT ISABEL, TEXAS.
CHAPTER I
11

✧
Above: A member of the failed Narvaez
expedition, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
was shipwrecked on Galveston Island. After
seven years he and three companions made
their way across Texas and into Mexico.
What a story they had to tell!
Below: Twenty heavily loaded ships that
sailed from Veracruz for Spain in 1553
were buffeted by wind and rain. A large
part of the fleet, spars broken and sails
carried away, was grounded on the
sandbars off Padre Island.
COURTESY OF THE TREASURES OF THE GULF MUSEUM,
PORT ISABEL, TEXAS.
viceroys, some of whom were good choices
while other unfortunate selections were
corrupt and incompetent. But under
Mendoza’s leadership, New Spain was
launched on an orderly course from which
grew the great colonial civilization of Mexico,
which is the foundation of the bicultural
heritage of the Rio Grande Valley.
THE GREAT SHIPWRECK
OFF PADRE ISLAND
On an early summer day in 1553, a fleet
stood at anchor by the waterfront of Veracruz.
Twenty vessels with 2,000 passengers,
among them some of the most illustrious
names in New Spain, were sailing for home,
loaded with gold and silver bars and casks of
precious cargo.
Finally all the cargo was loaded and
everything was in readiness, so the vessels set out
across the Gulf, docking at Havana for provisions
and visits with their New World friends.
When the time came for them to depart,
there was a fanfare of trumpets as the treasure
flotilla hauled up anchors and the travelers
waved their last farewells to friends on shore.
Among those on the ships were some of the
old conquistadores, merchants with their
families, colonists returning after years in
Mexico, and the beautiful Doña Juána Ponce
de León. Their savings, belongings, tax money
for the King, and tons of bulky cargo were
stuffed tight in the holds.
But the flotilla had lingered too long in
Havana, and when it prepared to sail the
hurricane season was well upon them. On the
second morning out of port, the first ominous
warnings of trouble were noted. By noon the
next day, heavy clouds blotted out the sun,
and rain closed in fast, drenching the deck
hands as they scrambled through their storm
preparations. The wind rose to a howling gale,
lashing the ships with awesome fury. Three of
the heavily laden vessels quickly floundered
and sank, losing all aboard. Five ships made it
to safety: one managed to return to Cuba,
three limped back to Spain six months later,
and one fought its way back to Veracruz. The
rest of the fleet, spars broken and sails carried
away, was driven swiftly across the Gulf of
Mexico and grounded on the sandbars off
Padre Island, somewhere between Corpus
Christi and Brazos Santiago Pass.
Only three hundred of those on board
reached shore and, as they thought, safety. The
rest drowned, a fate more kindly than the one
that awaited the survivors. The strongest swam
in and made their way through the breakers.
Some improvised rafts, and those too weak to
help themselves were washed in and pulled
from the surf by those on shore. There was not
an Indian village, not a living thing except the
white gulls overhead—only a sandy waste.
They did have one lucky break when cartons of
bacon and casks of sea biscuit washed in from
the ships, along with two good crossbows, five
quivers of arrows and several swords.
The 300 rested for six days on the beach
and saw no living soul, but on the seventh
morning they awoke to find themselves
surrounded by naked, hideously painted,
brown men of huge stature. They were
Karankawa Indians and were friendly at first,
but then started shooting arrows at them. The
Spaniards tried to fight back with their
crossbows, but were no match for their
tormentors. The wretched refugees then
moved along the beach, slipping from dune to
dune, hunted all the way down to the end of
the Island, tortured and finally killed by their
pursuers. A few of the Spaniards reached the
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
12

mouth of the Rio Grande, near Brownsville
and crossed over to the mainland, still
pursued by the savages.
Only two of the 300 survived the terrible
ordeal and lived to tell about it. Francisco
Vásquez, who had doubled back to the shipwrecks
under cover of darkness, stayed with
the broken ships. He survived by eating
seafood. He also found he could get fresh
water by digging with his hands or a piece of
driftwood, and this saved his life. He had
been at the docks when the valuable cargo
was loaded, and knew that eventually the
Spaniards would come looking for the
wrecks. It was half a year later that the salvage
ships came, and Vásquez was a great help to
them while they raised much of the cargo
with grappling hooks. His share made him a
wealthy man, and he enjoyed a long life.
Fray Marcos de Mena was the other survivor.
He had six arrows in his body, one in an
eye, but he pulled them out and struggled on
with the help of his companions. Finally,
when he could go no further, he begged his
friends to leave him to die. He lapsed into a
coma and his companions laid him in the
shade and covered him with sand, leaving
only his head exposed. When he awoke, he
followed the tracks of the others until he came
to their bodies. He trudged ahead for days
until he finally reached a stream near Panuco
where friendly Indians found him and took
him to their camp. They nursed him back to
strength, and eventually he was able to return
to his people to tell the sad story of the death
march of his companions.
THE SEARCH FOR INTRUDERS
coast. In 1684 the French nobleman, La Salle,
was driven westward by storms while searching
for the mouth of the Mississippi, where he
hoped to plant a colony. He landed on the
coast of Texas near Lavaca Bay, where he
established his fort, but it soon failed from
dissension among the men and raids by
Indians. Alonzo de León was sent from
Cadereyta to find the settlement, but he failed
to go far enough on his first three tries.
Finally, on his fourth expedition he succeeded
in locating the ruins of the French colony. The
Spaniards realized that the French were no
longer a threat, and another hundred years
would go by before they got serious about colonizing
the untamed area north of the Panuco
called Seno Mexicano.
THE ESCANDÓN
COLONIZATION
✧
At first the shipwreck survivors were treated
kindly by the Karankawa Indians, but soon
they began to torment the wretched refugees
until only 2 of 300 survived. This mural was
painted by Ramon Claudio in Raymondville.
COURTESY OF GLENN HARDING.
In 1638 rumors spread that a group of
strange men had landed on the coast to the
northeast, in what is now Texas. The Indians
reported that these intruders had blonde
beards and hair, wore red socks and steel plate
armor and had powerful guns. This alarmed
the rulers of both Spain and New Spain, but
search parties that were sent out to find
encroachers found nothing.
France gave the Spaniards their greatest
cause for alarm, and rumors of their activities
resulted in several expeditions to the Texas
It was 1743, or more than two hundred
years after the first viceroy came to Mexico
City, that Spain made plans to tame the long
ignored wild lands of northern Mexico. The
responsibility for selecting a leader for the subjugation
and settlement of these lands was delegated
to the Audiencia de México (the highest
court). The boundaries of the province, which
they named Nuevo Santander, were defined:
Tampico on the south; La Bahía del Espíritu
Santo at the mouth of the San Antonio River
on the north; the Gulf of Mexico on the east;
CHAPTER I
13

✧
Above: José de Escandón, count of Sierra
Gorda, the father of the Rio Grande Valley.
Below: Texas historical marker beside U.S.
281 west of Brownsville tells of the Alonzo
de León expeditions from 1686-1688 in
search of the French settlement of Fort St.
Louis in the Matagorda Bay area. The
remains were finally discovered and
destroyed. De León led an expedition into
Southeast Texas in 1690 that established the
area’s first Spanish mission, San Francisco
de los Tejas, and eventually led to Spain’s
great enterprise of colonizing Texas.
and the Sierra Madre Mountains on the west.
Thus it included the Rio Grande Valley.
Therefore, the organization of this province
is a major force in the history of the Rio
Grande Valley. Lands on both sides of the Rio
Grande were a part of Nuevo Santander from
1746 to 1821.
The Audiencia realized how important it
was to select just the right person for this
mammoth undertaking. Several leaders of the
frontier applied for the post and presented
plans for the colonization. In 1746 they found
their man, and by all records it was an
excellent choice.
He was José de Escandón, a native of Spain
born at Soto de Marina in 1700 into a
distinguished family. At fifteen he had left his
home, crossed the Atlantic, and enlisted in the
Spanish army as a cadet, serving first in the
Yucatán and then in Querétaro, where he married
into a noble family. He advanced through the
ranks to colonel, then was named conde (count)
de Sierra Gorda. He was especially noted for
subduing barbarous tribes of Indians and then
treating them with consideration, permitting no
outrages against them.
It was from Querétaro, his headquarters for
twenty years, that he organized his expedition
to subjugate the Indians and colonize the vast
reaches of Seno Mexicano, which became the
province of Nuevo Santander. It covered what
today includes Tamaulipas, part of Nuevo León,
and much of South Texas. An efficient colonizer
and strong leader, he inspired confidence and
respect in those he met. He spent almost two
years preparing a survey expedition, and in the
last months of 1746 completed preparations for
the journey. Escandón left Querétaro on
January 7, 1747 with a military detail of one
captain, two sergeants, ten soldiers, several
servants, a surgeon, two Spanish missionaries,
and a large amount of equipment and food. His
party traveled east and north toward the mouth
of the Rio Grande.
Meanwhile, seven divisions, consisting of a
total of 765 soldiers, proceeded from seven
points on the frontier, all bound for the
mouth of the Rio Grande, where they were
scheduled to meet about February 24, 1747.
Three divisions came out of the south and
three from the provinces on the west. One
came down from the mission of La Bahía del
Espíritu Santo at the northern edge of Seno
Mexicano, for they wanted to explore the
territory between San Antonio and the Nueces
and on to the Rio Grande. It is said that up to
that time, many thought the Nueces and the
Rio Grande were the same stream.
Escandón was to await his men somewhere
near the mouth of the Rio Grande, where they
would map the region and make future plans.
Indian chieftains along the way made friendly
advances to Escandón, who then employed
them as scouts for the expedition. One of
these, Chief Santiago, directed the party to a
campsite on the south bank of the Rio
Grande, where the colonizer spent several
weeks receiving his captains and studying
their findings.
Six of the scouting parties reached him
near the scheduled time. The group from the
north missed the route and crossed upstream
at El Cantaro Ford near Mier. Messengers
from Escandón’s headquarters accepted their
findings, and then had them return to their
base on the Texas coast. They reported that
the Nueces and the Rio Grande were two
rivers instead of one with a large expanse of
land in between, and that the Nueces flowed
into the Gulf nearly two hundred miles north
of the Rio Grande.
The captains of the other teams reported that
the three principal streams emptying into the
Rio Grande were the Salado, the Alamo, and the
San Juan. They recommended settlement sites
near the juncture of each of these with the Rio
Grande as there was the possibility of irrigating
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
14

adjacent lands. The Indian problem had
proven far less serious than anticipated, though
there were many tribes who spoke different
dialects, making communication difficult. The
native population in the vicinity of the Rio
Grande was estimated at approximately twentyfive
hundred.
Escandón had been gone from Querétaro
only three months when he returned, the survey
having gone smoothly with no loss of life. He
prepared his report for the viceroy and
requested adequate funding for the next stage of
the colonization. His plans called for
establishing fourteen settlements north of
Tampico within seven months. A great
promoter, Escandón spread the word about the
colonies in every established town along the
frontier, pointing out the advantages he found in
Nuevo Santander. He told of the free land, fertile
soil, agreeable climate, and an opportunity to
have a part in the making of a new country.
In establishing a villa or settlement, the first
step was to select a suitable site where a water
supply was assured. After the selection of a site,
the streets were marked off around the plaza,
which was one hundred and twenty-four varas
square—about three hundred and fifty feet.
Next to the villa were the common lands
designated for agriculture, and beyond these
were the pasturelands. Mission property for the
church was usually allocated. The towns
developed gradually. First the military camp
changed to a municipality; then many of the
solders married into the local families and
became attached to the locality, eventually
becoming permanent settlers.
The Spaniards, in their zeal to teach
Christianity to the Indians, sent their missionary
priests along with the first colonizers. They were
valuable in helping with the establishment of
villas and compiling the laws, as well as
gathering the Indians into their missions. In the
beginning, twelve priests were assigned to the
new colony of Nuevo Santander, all from the
College of Zacatecas. Initially, they were paid by
the government. Escandón cooperated with the
priests in urging community life to the Indians
and by pointing out the advantages of living
under the protection of priests and soldiers.
Because the new colony of Nuevo
Santander was so remote from the capital,
many decisions concerning its government
were made by Escandón, its governor and
capitán general, rather than waiting for royal
orders from the viceroy. In addition to the
ordinary concessions provided to the colonizer
by the Crown, the governor also benefited
from the opportunity to make money through
the commissary plan. Payment of soldiers was
made chiefly in provisions, purchased by
Escandón and his commanders and charged to
the soldiers at a profit. Thus the post of
governor was also that of merchant.
The first settlements in Nuevo Santander
were interior settlements in Mexico in what is
now Tamaulipas. These included Santander,
renamed Jiménez in 1827, which became the
capital of the new province and Escandón’s
headquarters. But the emigrants from Nuevo
León and Coahuila were more interested in the
Rio Grande country, which had been pictured
to them as a great fertile valley offering
wonderful opportunities for agriculture and
stock raising by those who had taken part in
the original survey expedition two years earlier.
THE FIRST RIO GRANDE
SETTLEMENT
José María de la Garza Falcón had been one
of the captains on the initial survey expedition.
A person of considerable influence in Nuevo
León, he had many family connections. He
persuaded his brother, Miguel, his father-in-law,
and other relatives to sign up with him for the
site near the juncture of the San Juan and the
✧
Querétaro, Escandón’s headquarters for
many years, was a well-developed colonial
city in the 1700s. It is famous for its
aqueduct, built between 1726 and 1738,
which brought water to the city from the
surrounding mountains.
CHAPTER I
15

✧
This Spanish map of the Seno Mexicano
region shows a 1792 date. All of the
Escandón settlements are shown, but the
many inaccuracies on the U.S. side show
that little exploration of the territory
had occurred.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
16
Rio Grande. He wanted to be named captain of
the villa, which carried a handsome salary and
double the land of an ordinary settler.
These colonists were a fine class of Spaniards,
but were accustomed to the hardships of the
frontier. They realized that to make a success in
this new country they would have an everyday
struggle for family, food, and land. Determined
to succeed, they insured their future by taking
with them into the new province their livestock,
consisting of cattle, horses, goats, and sheep,
and as many of their household goods as could
be carried. The women slipped in among the
necessary articles flower and fruit seed, valued
heirlooms, medicines, small pieces of
needlecraft, dishes and silver, common in the
rich mining districts of Nuevo León.
The party arrived at the site and awaited
Escandón and his group. While waiting, they
made a clearing, erected crude huts, dug a few
irrigation ditches and made other preparations
necessary to make a good showing for El Conde.
Escandón reached the campsite early in March,
and soon all were ready for the founding of the
first of the Rio Grande settlements, which they
decided to call Santa Ana de Camargo.
The priests wanted some semblance of a
church, and the men hurriedly erected an arbor
using poles from both sides of the Rio Grande.
On March 5, 1749, Villa Santa Ana de Camargo
was officially christened by Escandón and Blas
María de la Garza Falcón was successful in being
named captain. At the sounding of the drum,
the soldiers and settlers gathered in the open
plaza in front of the crude arbor. The church was
blessed, and Escandón addressed the captain,
administering to him the oath to defend the villa
and comfort and encourage the settlers. Mass
was then sung, a volley was discharged in honor
of the occasion, and the soldiers and settlers
went to their jacales. The captains and jefes
concluded the ceremony as they drank wine
from silver goblets to the health of their great
leader and gave him thanks.
Thus was born the first Spanish settlement
along the Rio Grande. A garrison was set up
and Captain de la Garza Falcón was left in
charge of the original settlers, forty families
from the province of Nuevo León. A mission
was established south of the villa on the Río
San Juan, with Fray Marquís left in charge.
Today, Camargo, located six miles south of
Rio Grande City, is still a thriving agricultural
community and home to several thousand
residents who take great pride in their town
and its history.
THE SETTLEMENT OF REYNOSA
Much the same procedure was used in the
establishment of succeeding settlements. The
second villa was established downstream,
Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Reynosa,
with Carlos Cantú as captain. The first forty
settlers came with him from Cadereyta and
other Nuevo León settlements. These settlers
received one hundred pesos as a subsidy for
each family and enough grain and other food

for their first year. A mission was established
nearby with Fray Agustín Fragoso in charge.
Reynosa was the last settlement made
toward the east, as the lands near the coast
were thought unsuitable for settlement since
the settlers would need to depend on agriculture
for a livelihood, and because hundreds of
Indians inhabited the coastal plains.
The original site chosen for Reynosa was
prone to flooding, so the town was moved to
its present site on higher land in 1802.
Reynosa was to become the largest of the
Escandón colonies, with a strong manufacturing,
agricultural, industrial, trade, and service
economy. It is a blend of old and new, an
interesting place to visit.
Within six months, counting those
settlements further south in Mexico,
Escandón had established thirteen villas and
missions in the region. Though the project
cost twice the amount budgeted, the
Audencia was quite pleased at the work of the
colonizer and he was encouraged to continue
with the settlements.
Though Escandón had planned to establish
two settlements north of the Rio Grande near
the Nueces, scouts who were sent out to see if
they could find suitable locations returned
after eight difficult months to report adversely
on the tentative sites chosen. As a result, plans
for further settlements in the upper portions
of the colony were abandoned.
The first settlement north of the Rio
Grande in what is now Texas was established
by Coahuila rancher José Vásquez Borrego,
who had a ranch upriver from Revilla and
wanted to establish a villa. In the late summer
of 1750, Borrego settled Nuestra Señora de los
Dolores with twelve families. It became more
a ranch headquarters than a town, and its
structure was very military and authoritarian.
It also was subject to raids from hostile tribes
of Indians. In the first decades of the
nineteenth century, Indians struck the
settlement repeatedly with a terrible fury.
People were killed, women and children
carried off as captives, cattle were taken, and
the raiders even killed Borrego’s oldest son,
who had charge of the place. Eventually the
settlement was abandoned and only its ruins
can be seen today.
REVILLA AND MIER
After establishing his headquarters and home
along the Río Santander at Jiménez, Escandón
again headed for the Rio Grande for another
colonization expedition in early 1750. He had
received a proposal from Vicente Guerra, a
rancher from the province of Coahuila, to settle
twenty-six families at Revilla, near the juncture
of the Salado and the Rio Grande. Guerra asked
only for the rights and title of a colonizer
without expense to the government. The villa of
Revilla (known since 1828 as Guerrero) was
established and its growth was rapid.
Within three years there were forty-three
families with thousands of cattle, goats, sheep
and horses pastured over the surrounding
country, which was much better adapted for
ranching than farming. Known for the attractive
architecture of its stone buildings, it prospered
well into the twentieth century. However, its
economy had declined, and its population had
dwindled to a few thousand by the time it was
abandoned in 1952, when it was partially
submerged by the construction of Falcon Dam
reservoir. Nuevo Guerrero, just across the
international crossing at Falcon Dam, was built
in the early 1950s to relocate the residents of
Guerrero Viejo. The bell from its historic
church by the old plaza now rings from the
church by the plaza at Nuevo Guerrero.
In recent years the ruins of Guerrero Viejo
have emerged from the waters of Falcon Lake,
✧
Above: Camargo’s well-preserved
Presidential Palace faces the plaza and is
occupied by city officials.
Below: The Catholic Church of Santa Ana
faces the plaza and is the oldest building
in Camargo. Built in the 1750s, the church
has been carefully restored and is used by
the citizenry.
CHAPTER I
17

✧
Reynosa, which had a population of only
two thousand in 1842, has grown to become
one of the largest cities along the border.
This well maintained Catholic church by the
main plaza was built in the 1800s and has
seen many renovations.
as they do any time the lake level drops. The
site has become a popular destination for
visitors from both sides of the Rio Grande.
In 1752, two years after Revilla was established,
Lugar de Mier was founded upstream
along the banks of the Alamo River near the
Rio Grande. José Florencio de Chapa was in
charge and thirty-eight families arrived from
Cerralvo, only sixty miles away.
Already there were nineteen families living
on ranches in the area, and they joined the
newcomers to establish the villa of Mier. Since
no priest was provided at this new settlement, it
was impossible to develop the work among the
Indians with only an occasional visit from a
circuit priest.
Mier was located near the best ford on the
lower Rio Grande, El Cantaro, which had already
been used extensively for crossing from the salt
lakes located to the north. Limestone was readily
available, so more permanent homes were erected
there than at most of the other settlements.
Today, a visit to Mier takes one back to
earlier days, as some of the old limestone walls
and buildings can be seen alongside modern
structures. Mier is a gem of an interior town,
with well-kept homes, churches and schools.
THE SETTLEMENT OF
CARNESTOLENDAS
In January 1753 Escandón made another
visit to the new settlements. The census was
encouraging, showing an increase in
population. While he was in the Valley, the
settlers made their first petition for the
individual allocations of lands, and some of the
people of Camargo asked for land on the north
side of the Rio Grande in a place known as
Carnestolendas, now Rio Grande City. Captain
Blas María de la Garza Falcón had chosen a high
hill overlooking the river for his ranch
headquarters and his herds roamed in the valley
north of the Rio Grande and over the hills and
plateau to the north. Don Nicolás de los Santos
Coy, his father-in-law, had established his ranch
to the west about nine miles and had named it
Guardado (now Garceño).
Don Nicolás was a very wealthy man, and
reports from the time show that he employed
more than a hundred men to work his two
ranches, the second one on the south side of the
river. Together, the de la Garza Falcón and de
los Santos Coy families were awarded one
hundred sitios (442,800 acres) of land north of
the river, with the provision that they settle
fifteen additional families on the land at their
own expense.
THE LAST OF THE COLONIES
Escandón established the last of the
colonies on the Rio Grande in May 1755. He
gave permission to Don Tomás Sánchez to
settle on a ranch about thirty-five miles
northwest of Dolores on the north bank of the
Rio Grande. Sánchez was born in 1709 near
Monterrey, and his early career began in the
military on the northern frontier. Later he was
a rancher in the province of Coahuila. Fifteen
leagues of land, about 66,000 acres, were
included in the Sánchez grant.
Sánchez was commissioned a captain, but no
military garrison was provided and the settlers
were to defend themselves, since the colony was
to be founded without any expense to the
government. The town became Laredo, and it is
the only one of Escandón’s colonies located
north of the Rio Grande that has survived.
When the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was
signed in 1848, the old Spanish villa became a
part of the United States and Texas.
By October 1755 Escandón was ready to
go to Mexico City to make his report on the
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
18

colonies of his province. He felt the conquest
about complete and that the colonization
work had been successful. He also believed
the settlers and missionaries could complete
the plans initiated and supervised by him for
eight years, though he realized that they
would have to be careful to keep the colonists
and Indians from having internal troubles.
One-half of all the expense of the
exploration and colonization of Nuevo
Santander had been paid by Escandón himself,
according to his agreement with the
government. He had taken time from his own
home, family and business to accomplish the
colonization of the land along the Rio Grande
and in the interior. He had established twentythree
colonies with a total population of 6,384
people. In his report to the viceroy, he
explained that he had not felt it was time for
the actual assignment of the lands, which were
held and worked in common until the land
grants were made. He ended his report on a
personal note:
successful of the Rio Grande settlements and
Reynosa the poorest at that time.
Cuervo made a detailed report and numerous
recommendations for the improvement
and progress of the province. Among them
was immediate allotment of land to individual
settlers, the division to be made on a fair and
equitable basis to Spaniards, respecting the
rights of the Indians.
I have sometimes been called crazy for
undertaking such a perilous expedition. But
what I have done in more than fifteen years in
the Sierra Gorda has been well spent, for it has
brought the pacification of many souls,
extended the main beliefs of the Catholic
Monarch, and I have gained the trust of Your
Excellency.
Nuevo Santander, August 8, 1755.
Don José de Escandón
About the time the colonizer was preparing
his report to Count Revilla Gigedo, viceroy of
Mexico, a change took place and the marquis
of Las Amarillas became the new viceroy. He
approved the report and recommendations,
but wanted to inspect the colonies before
completing the land grants. In March 1757,
he commissioned José Tienda de Cuervo to
inspect the colonies.
The Cuervo team visited each colony,
reporting on its general condition, the
number of families and individuals, and the
number of cattle, horses, sheep, goats and
hogs. Some colonies had prospered more than
others, with Camargo being the most
THE ASSIGNMENT OF LANDS
Cuervo’s report formed the basis for the
General Visit of the Royal Commission of 1767,
during which individual land grants were made.
More people kept moving into the colonies, and
the original settlers were getting restless for fear
there would not be enough land for all.
The Commission arrived in May and spent
four months surveying and assigning the
lands to the colonists, using as surveyors and
appraisers some of the oldest inhabitants.
The original settlers were given preference,
and great care was taken in the assignment of
the lands. The surveyors determined that all
assigned lands must have a watering place for
cattle or they would be useless. The land measurement
decided on took the shape of a long
quadrangle, with the width approximately
nine-thirteenths of a mile of river frontage, and
the length extending from eleven to sixteen
miles from the river. This was called a porción
(portion of land) and measures about the
equivalent of a square league (4,428.4 acres).
✧
Revilla, renamed Guerrero in 1828, grew to
a sizeable city and prospered into the early
1900s. It had dwindled to a few thousand
residents before it was abandoned in 1952
and partially submerged by the construction
of the Falcon Dam and Reservoir. Its
residents were relocated to new homes
downstream in Nuevo Guerrero. The ruins
of its church by the plaza, Nuestra Señora
del Refugio, emerge from the water in
times of drought, as do the ruins of its many
stone buildings.
CHAPTER I
19

✧
Top: Mier’s Purísima Concepción Church by
Plaza Juárez dates to 1780 and its
enormous tower to 1795. It has been
restored and its roof structure modernized.
The church is in excellent condition due to
the interest and care of its parishioners.
COURTESY OF BILL BELL.
Above: Mier’s San Juan Chapel by Plaza
Hidalgo was constructed in 1836-40 for the
private use of the de la Peña family who
founded the city. It was later abandoned but
eventually restored in the 1960s.
These porciónes are numbered and are now part
of the description of a large percentage of the
land in Hidalgo and Starr Counties.
An interesting ceremony was followed in the
actual delivery of these grants. The justice usually
took the applicant by the hand and led him
around the land. Both pulled grass and weeds and
threw stones as evidence of ownership and
possession of the land, and stones were placed at
the corners. Most of the settlers lived in or near
the villas on the south side of the river and did
their farming there, using the land on the north
side for grazing their stock.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848
recognized the porciónes as land rightfully
granted by the king of Spain to his subjects
and their heirs. Some ranch lands on the
north side of the river were abandoned due to
Indian raids, and other families lost their
lands in the aftermath of the U.S.-Mexican
War. However, many descendants from the
original owners of the porciónes still reside in
the Rio Grande Valley and are proud of their
ancestry.
His great colonization completed to his own
satisfaction and that of the Crown, Escandón
made his headquarters in Villa Cápital de
Santander, now known as Jiménez. There he
built a handsome estate and established two
ranches, which became quite profitable, as did
his other business ventures in the province. He
held the office of governor of Nuevo Santander
until his death in 1770, and the great
conquistador is honored on both sides of the Rio
Grande for taming the wild frontier.
The land beyond Reynosa and on down to
the Gulf, on the south bank of the Rio Grande,
was granted to his heirs in appreciation of his
colonization work. This tract is described as
“six hundred forty-two leagues,” equivalent to
2.85 million acres, with one hundred miles
river frontage, beginning at the mouth of the
Rio Grande. This was sold by the Escandón
heirs in later years.
THE LARGER
LAND GRANTS
At the time of the General Visit of 1767, no
grants had been made on the Rio Grande
below Reynosa. Some of those in the Reynosa
jurisdiction had accumulated large herds of
cattle, sheep and horses and had spread out
towards the Gulf, extending their holdings
without formal process of law. Several applications
were made for these lands, and large
grants were made by the Crown from 1777 to
1781. Some of these included from twentyfive
to one hundred leagues in each grant.
The purpose of these large grants was to
establish ranches and develop the lands
beyond the porciónes. Records show that these
large grants were made to influential citizens
of Camargo and Reynosa who agreed to stock
them with both cattle and sheep and to form
a settlement on each grant. The owners seldom
actually occupied these lands, but
employed foremen to supervise the ranches.
Some of the larger grants and the counties
and cities that now occupy them are: Espíritu
Santo—Brownsville and a large part of
Cameron County; Llano Grande—Mercedes
and Weslaco in Hidalgo County; La Feria in
Cameron County; Concepción de Carricitos
includes San Benito in Cameron County and
San Juan de Carricitos—Raymondville and
Lyford in Willacy County. Another large grant
was San Salvador del Tule, which had 21,410
acres in Hidalgo, 9,358 in Willacy, 71,955 in
Kenedy, and 21,768 acres in Brooks County.
All of these grants were incorporated into
the Jurisdiction of Reynosa, extending its
boundaries to the coast and making it the
largest of the five jurisdictions of the Rio
Grande colonization. Though the royal land
grants were recognized by the 1848 Treaty of
Guadalupe by both the United States and
Mexico, they also led to great personal
turmoil and legal complications that have
lasted over two hundred years.
The assignment of practically all river lands
was completed by 1781, and the settlements
prospered and grew. Many of the Indians were
congregated in the missions, where they received
small allotments of land to work, but at intervals
there continued to be raids in the settlements
north of the river. By 1800 there were fifteen
thousand people settled in the colony of Nuevo
Santander, with substantial groups in Camargo,
Reynosa, Mier and Revilla. Thousands of stock
roamed the floodplains and uplands on both
sides of the river, and the Rio Grande settlements
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
20

were considered among the most successful
accomplishments the Spaniards had undertaken.
The colonists who had come with José de
Escandón little realized the fate in store for
them—revolution, secession from the mother
country, and three new rulers, all within half
a century.
SALT OF THE KING
No history of the area would be complete
without an account of the area’s natural salt lakes.
Long before the Spaniards came, early trails
through South Texas and Northern Mexico led to
the rich natural salt deposits found at La Sal del
Rey (Salt of the King), also known as El Sal del
Rey, in northeastern Hidalgo County and La Sal
Vieja (Old Salt) in western Willacy County.
Though the origin of the salt lakes is
unknown, geologists believe the residual lakes
were cut off from the sea untold ages past as
the Rio Grande delta emerged from the ocean
floor. As water evaporated through eons of
time, salt crystallized in the natural depression.
Salt crystals ninety-eight percent pure rise
perpetually to the surface in layers two to four
feet deep.
Because salt is so important to both animals
and man for many purposes—flavoring, medicine,
meat preservation, water purification,
mining and steel smelting, the salt deposits
have been utilized and coveted by many.
Warring Indian tribes from north and
south of the Rio Grande harvested supplies of
salt to cure meats and tan hides, resuming
their battles only after they had left the area,
for the tribes did not attack each other while
on salt missions.
Spanish explorers claimed the lakes for the
king of Spain, for under Spanish law all of the
minerals belonged to the Crown. There is
much recorded history, both fact and legend,
about La Sal del Rey, which became the subject
of over a century of litigation in later
years. The lake covers approximately five
hundred acres and has no connection with
any other body of water.
According to Elouise Campbell, the last
private owner of the lake, salt blocks removed
from any spot in the lake are quickly
replenished, often in two to three days.
Engineers estimate that the lake can produce
four million tons of salt. The depth of the
water varies from completely dry to two feet
in dry periods to more than ten feet in times
of heavy rainfall. It is perhaps most interesting
when the lake is almost dry and resembles a
glistening field of ice crystals.
Salt was taken from it by the Spanish
colonists for forty years before it became part of
the San Salvador del Tule Grant given by the
Spanish King to Juan José Balli in 1794. During
those early days of Spanish colonization,
wooden ox carts made the long trek, as Indians
had done long before them, to haul salt from the
lake’s edge. Without the salt with which they
bartered for corn and beans and tools, the first
Spanish colonies along the Rio Grande would
not have survived. Indians who were coaxed to
live at the missions outside the protected
settlements often carried baskets of salt to the
padres and received rations of beans and corn.
The right of everyone to take salt was
never questioned, though on large loads onefifth
of the salt went to the Viceroy. The
soldiers who took part in Escandón’s sevenpronged
reconnaissance of the territory were
allowed to take salt back with them as a
reward for the hazardous mission. Riches
far greater than the small fee went into
the Royal Treasury after pack trains delivered
their burdens to distant mines in Mexico.
The mineral was used in quantity in the
process of extracting ore and the textile
manufacturers in Saltillo and other Mexican
✧
An ox cart team hauling salt from the El Sal
del Rey.
COURTESY OF GLENN HOUSLEY.
CHAPTER I
21

✧
In 1784 Charles III, king of Spain, gave
Captain Juan José Ballí a 315,000 acre land
grant known as San Salvador del Tule west
of Raymondville, which included the greatly
treasured salt lakes. The king said, “All
minerals belong to my royal crown.” The
Texas Constitution of 1867 gave the
mineral rights to the landowners, subject to
taxation. The oil and gas mineral wealth of
Texas is based on this revision of the
Spanish law. This scene was taken from a
mural by Ramon Claudio in Raymondville’s
Pocket Park.
COURTESY OF GLENN HARDING.
cities used salt as a fixative agent in some of
their dyes.
In “Footprints Across the Rio,” a chapter in
Gift of the Rio, Minnie Gilbert wrote about the
salt trade of the colonists as follows:
Remnants of the Old Salt Trail can be identified
on both sides of the border. Conan
Wood, Sr., of Mission has traced the circuitous
route followed by mule trains carrying salt
cargoes into Mexico. Around thirty animals
were in a pack train, each carrying about 250-
pound loads. Laguna Seca was the first
overnight stop. The second was near present
Rio Grande City. The river crossing, probably
chosen because the stream has a sandstone
base at that point, was where the San Juan
River empties into the Rio Grande.
At one time, Santos Coy of Camargo
employed 500 men and used 10,000 mules in
connection with the operation of the Salt
Train, which traveled as far as Durango and
Zacatecas in the interior and Veracruz on the
Gulf Coast. The nearby villas of Bravo and
China were famous for producing the sturdy
mules, used in relays. Distance between the
stations, from 24 to 30 miles, represented a
day’s journey. Sites with available water were
chosen and frequent detours to avoid desert
terrain etched a snake-like path.
In addition to Spaniards who came to the
lake were pioneers from other parts of what
would become the United States. They made
the long journey to camp by La Sal del Rey
until they filled their wagons with salt to
barter as they returned home, paying a onefifth
royalty to the king of Spain.
Ships from Spain, France, and England
returned to their European ports loaded with
salt after bringing supplies to their colonies in
the New World. Wagons with huge wheels
came in trains of 20 or 30 to haul salt, not just
toward Mexico, but north, east and west. Salt
was the Valley’s first export.
The salt deposits also were of great importance
during the Civil War. Although the U.S.-
Mexican War caused a great decline in the salt
traffic, the Civil War brought about a huge
increase. The Confederacy’s need for six million
bushels of salt a year caused the price to rise
from sixty cents to twenty dollars a bushel. The
great wagons that brought cotton to the port of
Bagdad for shipment to the mills of England
and Europe returned with loads of salt.
The Southern cause received a catastrophic
blow in 1863 when a detachment from the
Union Army destroyed the Sal del Rey salt
works. After that, smaller amounts of salt
were taken from the site. As salt became
abundant through other sources, it was no
longer mined from the old salt lakes.
Ownership of the minerals went from the
king of Spain to the Mexican government.
The Republic of Texas, as succeeding sovereign,
became owner of such mines and minerals
under international law. Then ownership
went to the State of Texas. Finally, in 1866,
Texas released to the state’s landowners the
mines and minerals under surface soil on
their property, and this provision was reaffirmed
in 1869 and again in 1876.
Litigation over the ownership of La Sal del
Rey began in 1804 and was finally settled in
1937, when the land and its minerals became
privately owned. It went through several owners
before the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife
Refuge acquired both La Sal del Rey and La Sal
Vieja in the late 1900s. No longer needed as a
source of salt, the lakes and surrounding areas
are now protected wildlife refuges. Instead of the
great wagons on the old Salt Trail, visitors may
follow a birding trail to see such birds as Whitetailed
Kites, Bobwhite, Harris and White-tailed
Hawks and Crested Caracara.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
22

PART OF FOUR NATIONS
THE END OF SPANISH RULE
Though the colonies along the lower Rio Grande were only around fifty years old when the
nineteenth century began, Spain had ruled their country for nearly three hundred years. The first
viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza (1535-50), who did such an outstanding job of organizing Spanish
rule, was succeeded by Luis de Velasco (1551-64), who is remembered as “the Liberator” because
of his emancipation of numerous Indian slaves. Some of the viceroys who followed them were
competent, but others displayed less integrity and the system became increasingly corrupt.
The Spanish government realized that reforms were needed, and in 1765 made administrative
changes and liberalized economic policies. This led to a rapid growth of prosperity, making the last
part of the eighteenth century the golden age of New Spain.
Population estimates as the nineteenth century began showed 2,685,000 mestizos, of Spanish
and Indian heritage, the largest group; two million indigenous people; one million creoles, born in
Mexico of Spanish heritage, and 80,000 peninsulares, who were Spanish-born. The natives and
other working classes continued to be poor and had no voice in government. The mestizos included
a few who had acquired wealth and education, but they had little political power.
The creoles could pursue military careers, hold municipal offices, and engage in artisan
occupations. The priesthood was open to them, but not the high ecclesiastical positions. Some were
professionals and small property holders, but they could not take part in the viceroy’s central
government. This was reserved for the peninsulares. This system was greatly resented by the creoles,
who felt they were quite able to govern themselves, as well as by the other social classes. Back in
Europe, Spain was having her own problems. In 1808 the once-great nation had come under the
control of Napoleon, who sent Spain’s King Ferdinand VII to live in France as a virtual prisoner and
established his brother Joseph as king of Spain. French rule was strongly opposed by the people of
Spain, and opposition to Napoleon’s rule spread throughout the Spanish Empire. This opened the door
to rebellion in the colonies. Creoles in Mexico City began talking about self-government, though they
continued to express loyalty to the legitimate Spanish king. However, the movement was quickly
suppressed by the royalist government, and its leaders were imprisoned.
✧
Querétaro’s Corregidora Garden has this
monument to Doña Josefa Ortiz, wife of
Mayor Miguel Dominguez, who sent a
message by a soldier to General Ignacio
Allende warning them that their plot had
been discovered, saving them from arrest.
This caused them to start their uprising on
September 16, 1810 instead of December 8,
1810, as had been planned.
CHAPTER II
23

✧
Above: Padre Miguel Hidalgo y Castillo was
a teacher and college administrator
in Valladolid before becoming a parish
priest at Dolores, where his home became
a literary, musical, and social activity
center. This portrait was taken from
Historia de Mexico.
Below: The city of Guanajuato is
surrounded by mountains and its historic
buildings are carefully preserved. The illequipped
insurgents numbered fifty
thousand when they arrived at Guanajuato,
which they captured in a bloodbath for
both sides.
Revolutionary ideas continued to spread. In
Querétaro a group of prominent creoles formed
a literary club, which soon became a place to
discuss grievances against the peninsular
government in Mexico City. Among the group
were Ignacio Allende and Juan Aldama, military
officers from San Miguel el Grande (now San
Miguel de Allende). One of the invited guests
was Padre Miguel Hidalgo y Castillo from the
town of Dolores.
Padre Hidalgo was born in 1753 on a
hacienda near Guanajuato to creole parents
whose ancestors had arrived in Michoacán in
the 1500s. He entered the secondary school of
San Francisco Xavier in Valladolid at age twelve.
There he was influenced by Jesuit scholars with
enlightened ideas who stressed rational learning
rather than learning based on accepted
authorities and who offered an expanded
curriculum that included empirical sciences,
modern language and history. Though the
association ended abruptly with the expulsion
of the Jesuits from the Spanish Empire in 1767,
his teachers had made a lasting impression on
the young student. He continued his studies at
the Colegio de San Nicolás Obispo in Valladolid
and was ordained a priest in 1778, two years
after he began his teaching career at the colegio.
Hidalgo stayed at the colegio as a teacher and
later as rector until 1792. In January 1793 he
became a parish priest, and soon was sent to the
pastorate of San Felipe, near Dolores in the
Guanajuato area. There he made his home a
literary, musical and social activity center. He
organized an orchestra that provided music for
the church, dances and concerts. These popular
activities attracted many followers, as did his
strong belief in equality of all classes. Times were
hard in the area, and he worked to develop a
better economy for the community by teaching
a variety of skills and encouraging the
production of additional agricultural products.
Though Hidalgo was not involved in the
initial discussions of the Quéteraro group, he
was well informed about them through his
contacts with Allende. In the late summer of
1810 he was invited to join the discussions
and became a strong advocate for change.
The group made contacts with sympathizers
in other cities and developed a plan that called
for setting up revolutionary juntas in the
principal towns to campaign against the
peninsulares, accusing them of being unable to
save Mexico from the French. Next they would
call for independence, expel the peninsulares,
and expropriate their property to finance the
independence cause. The first strike was set for
December 8, 1810, during the great fair at San
Juan de los Lagos where there would be many
people likely to join the movement. But word
got to the authorities in Mexico City about the
plans, with orders to arrest its perpetrators. A
message was sent to Hidalgo that their plans had
become known.
There was no turning back for Hidalgo and
the rebel leaders, for they knew that capture
would mean execution. The revolt that had
been planned for December 8 took place at
5:00 a.m. on September 16, 1810, in Dolores as
Padre Hidalgo proclaimed his Grito de Dolores,
the shout for independence. The priest was no
longer a pastor, but an insurgent commander, a
charismatic leader who attracted the masses.
The insurgents numbered 600 as they headed
southwest, growing to 25,000 as they captured
Celaya and 50,000 as the undisciplined and illequipped
army arrived at Guanajuato. They
captured the city in a bloodbath for both sides.
They moved on to Valladolid on October 17 with
an undisciplined army of 60,000 and took the
city without resistance. They left with eighty
thousand men, many armed only with machetes
and homemade spears.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
24

As they headed for Mexico City, they were
joined by Padre José Maria Moreles, a former
student at Colegio de San Nicolás when Hidalgo
was rector. He was made a lieutenant and sent to
lead the movement in the south of Mexico. As
the army neared Mexico City, Hidalgo decided
not to invade the city, but to retreat, possibly
fearing too much looting and bloodshed by his
followers. Allende and some others disagreed,
but the army turned back and continued to
other cities, including Guadalajara, where they
were successful.
With royalist resistance strengthening, the
tide soon turned against the insurgents. Cities
previously taken were regained by the royalists,
and the army dwindled to a few thousand. On
March 21, 1811, just six months after the revolt
began, the rebel army was ambushed at Baján,
near Monclova. Among the insurgents captured
were Hidalgo, Allende, and Aldama.
The Hidalgo revolt was over, and all that
remained was the trial of the leaders and their
execution. Hidalgo was found guilty of high
treason and murder, and he was excommunicated
from his church. He was sentenced to be executed
by firing squad after removing his clerical robes.
The sentence was carried out on the morning of
July 30, 1811, ending the life of the beloved parish
priest at the age of fifty-eight.
The disastrous end of the Hidalgo revolt did
not end the quest for independence, and the
Spanish authorities were in constant fear of
another Hidalgo movement. Though most of
the rebellion was far removed from the growing
settlements along the Rio Grande, José
Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara of Revilla was active
in promoting the insurgent cause in Nuevo
Santander. A fiery spirit, he met with Hidalgo
and Allende, who commissioned him a
lieutenant colonel and appointed him as
emissary to seek support for the revolution
from the United States. After they were
captured, Gutiérrez de Lara refused to see the
revolution abandoned and sought to carry out
his mission. He managed to get away unseen by
the royalists, cross the river, vanish into Texas,
and get to Washington, D.C.
There he met with officials from the State
Department, then with Secretary of State
James Monroe, who heard him with sympathy
but offered no support of men and arms. The
Secretary dismissed him kindly, urging him to
return home, pursue his plans, and assure his
associates that the United States regarded
their intentions favorably. He then helped
Gutiérrez de Lara make his way homeward,
where he continued to work for the cause.
Meanwhile, roving bands from the Hidalgo
movement roamed the countryside in the
northern provinces. The insurgency movement
of Padre Moreles south of Mexico City
continued until 1815, when he also met the fate
of his mentor. The independence movement
rapidly disintegrated, though Vicente Guerrero
and others continued to lead guerilla forces.
The final phase of the independence
movement began in 1820 when a change to a
more liberal government in Spain moved the
clergy and conservatives to favor independence.
Leadership was assumed by Agustín de Iturbide,
a creole who had formerly been an officer of
the viceregal army. He proposed the three-part
Plan of Iguala to which the dissident parties of
Mexico—clergy, people of property, and the
creoles—could rally. It proposed, first, the
continuation of the Catholic Church as the
established church of Mexico; second, the
establishment of an independent limited
monarchy, and third, equal rights for Spaniards
and creoles. Also, there was to be no confiscation
of property. Despite the conservative tendencies
of the plan, insurgent leader Vicente Guerrero
was persuaded to accept it.
Iturbide’s Plan of Iguala gathered support
wherever he went and soon had overwhelming
approval from most Mexicans. Not a shot was
fired. When the new viceroy, General
O’Donojú, arrived from Spain to quell the
rebellion, he realized that, unless he accepted
the fact of Mexican independence, a civil war of
fearful dimensions would come. On July 24,
1821, he signed away Spain’s dominion over
Mexico and all the outlands she embraced. The
grasp of Spain was broken at last! The
movement begun by Padre Hidalgo more than
ten years before had finally succeeded.
Every year on September 16, the Mexican
president commemorates the Grito de Dolores
from the presidential palace in Mexico City, and
spirited independence celebrations take place in
cities all over Mexico. Dieciséis de Septiembre is
also widely celebrated in the Rio Grande Valley.
✧
Though the Hidalgo revolt ended after only
six months, Padre Hidalgo is revered as the
“Father of Mexican Independence” and
there are many statues in his honor in both
Mexico and the U.S. This statue is in the
U.S. border city of Hidalgo, which was the
first county seat of Hidalgo County when it
was formed in 1852. Hidalgo was named
for the Mexican hero.
CHAPTER II
25

THE REPUBLIC OF MEXICO
✧
General Antonio López de Santa Anna
moved in and out of the presidency of
Mexico from 1833 to 1855 and was a key
figure in the Texas War for Independence.
The transition from being a Spanish colony
to establishing an independent nation was a
rough one. As his first step toward forming a
new government, Iturbide became president
of a council of regents and a congress was
elected. When conflicts developed, Iturbide
took the title of emperor with the dream of
establishing a monarchy, but rebellion in
March 1823 forced him to abdicate and he
went into exile. Returning in 1824 in the hope
of regaining power, he was promptly shot.
Meanwhile, the congress had proclaimed a
republic, but republican government was not
easy to establish among a people sharply
divided by class and race differences and
accustomed only to authoritarian rule.
A constitution closely modeled after that of
the United States was approved in 1824,
dividing Mexico into nineteen states and four
territories. Guadalupe Victoria, one of the
early leaders of the independence movement,
then became president and served a full fouryear
term, providing some stability. After his
presidency, changes came often as power
moved from the conservatives to the liberals
and back again. The early years of independence
were turbulent, with much power
belonging to the army. This was soon discovered
by the flamboyant and unscrupulous
General Antonio López de Santa Anna, who
moved in and out of military power and the
presidency itself from 1833 to 1855. The disorder
was intensified by continuing financial
crises. The mining industry, historically the
main source of tax revenue, had been wrecked
during the War of Independence, and the government
subsisted largely on loans.
It was during the brief presidency of the
liberal Vicente Guerrero (1828-29) that the
Escandón settlement of Revilla changed its
name to Guerrero in his honor. Though the
turmoil and intrigue of the new republic was
far removed from the settlements along the
lower Rio Grande, much of what was happening
to the north in Texas and to the south in
Mexico City would greatly affect their future.
In 1821 a group of settlers from Reynosa and
San Fernando petitioned the governor asking
that the settlement of Congregación del Refugio
be organized into a village. This was done and
the new town was named Matamoros. Two
years later, work was begun on a port around
the mouth of the Rio Grande, and within a
short time, Matamoros was one of the most
important settlements on the northern frontier.
Almost from its founding, Matamoros proved
the connecting link between the regions that are
now the states of Tamaulipas and Texas.
Under the 1824 constitution, Nuevo
Santander became the free and independent state
of Tamaulipas, with the same boundaries as the
former province. During the state’s early years
various villages were designated the capital. On
April 21, 1825, the village of Santa María de
Aguayo, settled in 1750 during the Escandón
colonization and located near the center of the
state, was named the permanent capital. Santa
María de Aguayo was renamed Ciudad Victoria in
honor of the first president of Mexico, Don
Guadalupe Victoria. After its first state
constitution of 1825, Tamaulipas adopted a
liberal colonization policy to settle the vacant
lands along the Rio Grande and to strengthen the
frontier towns. Those who had received authentic
grants by royal assignment and allocation were
protected by special laws of the Mexican courts.
The state government was anxious that all vacant
lands along the river be occupied. Among new
grants was Padre Island to Padre Nicolás Ballí and
his nephew, Juan José Ballí, about 1829.
At the time the larger grants below Reynosa
were made in the late 1770s, a large triangular
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
26

shaped piece of land with considerable frontage
on the north side of the Rio Grande had been
left vacant. These unassigned lands were sold in
1834, with each tract provided with ample river
frontage, narrowing with distance from the river
and intersecting the Llano Grande Grant at their
northern point. The present towns of Alamo and
Donna are located on these lands.
Meanwhile, a new wave of colonization was
under way in central Texas. At the beginning of
the 1800s, the population of Texas numbered
only about five thousand inhabitants, not
counting tribal and warlike Indians. They were
scattered in three main settlements and in
several military forts and mission outposts. By
far the largest town was San Antonio de Béjar
with twenty-five hundred people. Then came
Nacogdoches with around eight hundred
permanent inhabitants plus transients who were
constantly crossing back and forth across the
border between U.S. and Mexican territories. La
Bahía del Espíritu Santo (Goliad) with 600
inhabitants, including 200 mission Indians.
Though the Spanish government had tried
many times to establish additional colonies, the
efforts had not been successful. It had been
difficult, indeed impossible, for Spain to
administer this largely unoccupied land, and it
was just as difficult for independent Mexico.
The forts were charged with the responsibility
of keeping foreigners, especially would-be
settlers from the United States, out of their
territory. Several filibustering expeditions by
Anglos attempted to populate Texas and some
tried to declare it an independent country, but
without success.
Prior to the 1820s, all Anglos who entered
Texas did so illegally. Enter Moses Austin, a
businessman who had come first from
Connecticut, then Pennsylvania, and eventually
west of the Mississippi River to Missouri while
the territory yet belonged to Spain. He was
successful there, weathering political changes
while Missouri passed from the control of Spain
to France to the United States. When the hard
times of the Panic of 1819 drained his wealth
and left him in debt, he turned his eyes toward
Texas. As a Spanish subject when Missouri was
surrendered, Austin retained the privilege of
petitioning for admission to other territory
controlled by Spain.
Therefore, when Austin petitioned the
Spanish governor at San Antonio early in 1821
for permission to settle three hundred families
on Texas land, he received provisional
permission to do so. The grant was confirmed
by the Spanish viceroy in Mexico City. Moses
Austin died before he could lead the expedition,
and his son Stephen left his law studies in New
Orleans to continue with the project. The
Spanish terms were exceedingly generous:
unlimited grants of land anywhere in the
province for three hundred families in return for
an oath to defend the king and government and
a profession of the Catholic faith. Stephen F.
Austin selected a site on the Colorado River and
went to New Orleans to round up the colonists.
By the time they returned, the Spaniards
had been expelled and the political situation
was drastically changed. Austin was informed
that he would have to reconfirm his grant
with the Mexican Congress. He traveled by
land to Matamoros, then by sea to Veracruz,
and on to Mexico City with the applications of
colonists to present to the Mexican
government. In January 1823, one of the last
acts of Emperor Agustín I was to sign the
decree approving Austin’s request. Iturbide
abdicated on March 19, but the new
government under President Guadalupe
Victoria confirmed Austin’s grant. He had
been in Mexico 355 days and left with the
best intentions of adjusting completely to the
duties and obligations of a Mexican citizen.
✧
Matamoros was founded in 1821 and grew
rapidly. Here it is shown opposite
Brownsville. This illustration was taken
from Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper,
December 5, 1863.
CHAPTER II
27

✧
Stephen F. Austin headed the colonization
activities in Texas, begun under Spanish
rule and continued under the new
Republic of Mexico. Austin traveled to
Mexico City twice; first, to present the
applications of colonists and, second, to
seek a separate state for Texas, which was
originally combined with the Mexican state
of Coahuila.
COURTESY OF THE CENTER FOR AMERICAN HISTORY,
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN, TEXAS.
This was the beginning of U.S. migration
into Texas, a fateful step for both Texas and
Mexico. President Victoria’s administration
encouraged the entry of American immigrants
into Texas. The territory’s population estimates
in 1825 numbered between 7,000 and 7,500,
about evenly divided between Mexican citizens
and American settlers. By 1830 the number had
increased to around thirty thousand, with the
increased population almost totally colonists
and settlers from the north, while the Mexican
population was virtually unchanged.
Most of the new settlers from the United
States became Mexican citizens and a few
became nominal Catholics, but for the most part
they retained the English language, the
Protestant religion, and in general their United
States customs.
Alarmed by the growth of American
influence, Mexico passed a drastic measure to
get a firmer grip on Texas. The Law of April 6,
1830 forbade further colonization in Texas by
United States citizens, and those already in
Texas who had not yet received land grants
would not be permitted to receive them.
Mexican convicts would be sent to Texas as
colonists and European colonization was
encouraged. Restrictions were placed on trade
with U.S. entities and customs collectors were to
be stationed in Texas to direct trade toward
Mexico. These severe measures were directed at
what the government leaders felt was a crisis of
authority in Texas. Though this had not been
true previously, the decree created one.
When the new Republic of Mexico was
organized into states, Texas was combined
with the state of Coahuila to become Coahuila
y Texas, and the seat of government was at
Saltillo. It was an awkward arrangement, and
there was much exasperation among the
Texan colonists. The mails were uncertain, it
was almost impossible to get timely decisions,
and the Texans resisted bitterly the repressive
policies imposed on them, especially the one
prohibiting additional immigration.
The conservative General Anastasio
Bustamente came to power with the overthrow
of Vicente Guerrero in 1829 and held the
presidency until 1832. Texas mainly sought
two things from President Bustamente: The
Texans wanted the law set aside that prohibited
North American settlers from entering their
territory, and they wanted separation from
Coahuila with individual statehood for
themselves as a part of the Mexican federation.
President Bustamente was not responsive to
their requests, and it didn’t help that all of
Mexico was in political turmoil by 1832, still
only eleven years into independence.
The summer of 1832 passed with no sign of
interest in the Texans’ problems. On October 1,
the Texan aldermen of San Felipe de Austin on
the Brazos met to discuss how they could
achieve separate statehood. They agreed that
they must have separation from Coahuila; but
they did not seek separation from Mexico. They
drafted statements and petitions for changes in
the governance of Texas, for repeal of the Law of
April 6, 1830, and for separate statehood within
the Mexican government. Their petition was
returned by the head of the central government,
stationed in San Antonio, who reminded them
that they did not enjoy the rights of assembly
and petition under Mexican law.
Meanwhile, there was a new arrival on the
Texas scene—General Sam Houston, former
U.S. congressman and governor of Tennessee,
who would play an important role in the
future of the state and nation. Texas held its
second convention on April 1, 1833, the same
day that General Santa Anna was inaugurated
as president in Mexico City. The convention
drafted a state constitution, and the
committee assigned to this task was headed
by General Sam Houston. They also framed a
petition to the national government appealing
for statehood and appointed Stephen F. Austin
to take their case to Mexico City.
Again Austin made the twelve-hundredmile
trip to Mexico City. He made his way to
Matamoros and, at the mouth of the Rio
Grande, boarded a schooner for Veracruz. The
voyage, which usually took a week, took a
month, the last ten days on short rations, little
water and a bad case of seasickness. Finally
arriving in Mexico City, he learned that Santa
Anna was away putting down a civil war, so
he could only await his return.
Austin got along well with Santa Anna, who
promised to grant statehood to Texas just as
quickly as possible. Austin started home in
high spirits, but in Saltillo he was unexpectedly
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
28

arrested when Mexican officials learned he had
written home recommending the organization
of a state without waiting for the consent of the
Mexican congress. He spent the next ten
months in various jails, exhausting his money
and worrying about his colonists. Finally
granted amnesty and released, he arrived home
in July 1835 to find increasing unrest among
the Texas colonists.
Especially irritating to the colonists was
that Santa Anna had overthrown the
Constitution of 1824 and abolished the
Federalist system, which had allowed citizens
to control their local municipalities and districts.
With the institution of a Centralist
political system, local laws and customs
became subject to veto from Mexico City. The
Centralist government was determined to
enforce Mexican laws, and the rumble of discontent
among the Texans grew louder.
THE TEXAS REBELLION
Because of the rebellious attitude of the
Texans, Santa Anna ordered his brother-in-law,
General Martín Perfecto de Cos, to move an
army into position at Matamoros in September
1835. He loaded his army on small ships and
sailed up the Laguna Madre to Matagorda Bay,
where they landed. He marched his soldiers to
Goliad, where several pieces of artillery, rifles,
money in strongboxes, and plentiful supplies
were stored inside the old mission of Presidio
La Bahia. Leaving thirty soldiers to guard this
base, Cos marched the rest of his troops to San
Antonio, where they fought the sharpshooting
Texans in the streets. Badly defeated, three of
his companies marched out of town and
headed for the Rio Grande. Cos surrendered
and began his return to Laredo.
Meanwhile, on October 9, a small group of
colonists attacked and overwhelmed the
Mexican garrison of thirty men at Presidio la
Bahia at Goliad, taking their arms and supplies.
Santa Anna could not accept such defeats and
began to raise a force of ten thousand to quell
the rebellion. In turn, the Texans prepared to
send an expedition against Matamoros.
Santa Anna marched toward Laredo with six
thousand men. After a ball in Laredo held in his
honor, he and his men headed for San Antonio.
The following day General José de Urrea crossed
the river at Matamoros and started northward.
It was a viciously cold winter and a
miserable march for the Mexican troops as they
suffered from freezing northers, forded swollen
streams and struggled with mired vehicles in
the mud of drenching rains. At the end of their
bitter journey was the Alamo, manned by a
hardcore band of desperate Texans. Though
much of the former mission was in ruins, the
Alamo still had a great walled plaza, thick stone
rooms used as a jail, a corral, and a church
whose roof had fallen in. Texas’ citizen army
had readied the old mission for battle by
shoring up its walls and mounting cannons.
Led by Santa Anna himself, the siege of the
Alamo lasted for thirteen days, from February
23 to March 6, 1836, with the final assault
inside the old fort lasting only a few hours. The
Alamo’s defenders fell, fighting savagely before
giving up their lives. Then all was quiet.
Meanwhile, the Texas expedition that was
heading for Matamoros ran into General
Urrea’s forces and was soundly beaten. Several
hundred prisoners were marched to Goliad.
Santa Anna sent orders that they were to be
executed immediately. More than 300 of the
Texans were executed; twenty-seven managed
to escape. Santa Anna was pleased. He was
sure the rebellion was quashed.
While the fighting was going on in San
Antonio and Goliad, the Consultation met in
Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 1, 1836.
The fifty-nine delegates knew that the Alamo
✧
The siege of the Alamo lasted for thirteen
days from February 23 to March 6,
1836, though the final assault inside the old
fort lasted only a few hours. The Alamo’s
defenders fell, fighting savagely before giving
up their lives. This illustration was taken
from an issue of The Illustrated London
News published in 1836.
CHAPTER II
29

✧
It was just before Christmas 1842 that the
Texans advanced on Mier and fought their
way to within fifty yards of the main plaza.
The plaza and bandstand are used for more
peaceful celebrations now.
was under siege and that the outlook was grim.
The next day they produced a Declaration of
Independence that resembled in form and
substance the model provided in 1776 by
Thomas Jefferson. They asked Sam Houston to
lead their army and selected David G. Burnet as
interim president, with Lorenzo de Zavala as
vice president, and Thomas Jefferson Rusk was
appointed secretary of war. The group
continued in session until March 17 to write and
adopt a constitution for the Republic of Texas,
should they be able to establish an independent
government after the war. It would be
September before Sam Houston was elected
president by popular vote.
While reorganizing his troops, Santa Anna
heard that General Sam Houston was
retreating eastward with the remaining Texas
forces and immediately went in pursuit,
determined to put an end once and for all to
the rebels’ resistance. He caught up with
Houston and his men camped in an oak grove
on the banks of Buffalo Bayou. The water was
behind Houston, a couple of miles of prairie
lay in front, and behind that was the Bay of
San Jacinto. Between the Texans and the water
were Santa Anna and his Mexican army.
April 21, 1836, was a lazy, serene day along
the banks of the bayou. Sam Houston slept late
and was awakened by Erastus “Deaf” Smith at
nine o’clock. Smith brought word that General
Cos was arriving with fresh troops, bringing
the Mexican forces to thirteen hundred men.
The Mexican soldiers cared for their horses,
some cooked their favorite dishes over campfires,
and others bathed in the stream or slept. General
Santa Anna took an afternoon siesta in his silken
tent. It was half past four in the afternoon when
Mexican pickets noted a movement of Texas
cavalry advancing toward them. The Mexicans
opened fire, but the cavalry was only a diversion.
From another direction a steady line of Texas
infantry materialized out of a stretch of timber.
They moved swiftly, in complete silence, holding
their rifles at the ready.
What an army it was! There were English,
Irish, Scots, French, Germans, Italians, and even
Mexicans who sided with the Texans, for this was
their fight, too. Santa Anna’s men began firing
when the Texans were three hundred yards
distant, but the Texans did not return their fire,
just kept marching on. Then the Texan “Twin
Sister” cannons, donated to the cause by citizens
of Ohio, appeared and round after round of grape
and canister crashed into the Mexican ranks.
As the cannon spoke, a mighty roar broke
the silence of Houston’s advancing men:
“Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!”
They shouted in unison. Then, for the first
time, they fired their rifles. Taking no time to
reload, they clubbed their guns and swung
them like demons as they cracked the
Mexican lines. The camp was in utter confusion.
Men fought each other as they attempted
to escape the terrible human avalanche.
The battle itself lasted about eighteen minutes.
Of Santa Anna’s thirteen hundred men
who entered the fight, only forty escaped
death, battle wounds or capture. Two Texans
were killed and twenty-three wounded out of
a total force of around eight hundred.
After the battle, Santa Anna attempted to
escape by disguising himself as a common
soldier, but was rounded up the next day by
Texas scouts searching for fugitives and
dragged back to camp. Recognizing him, the
soldiers came to attention and saluted. “The
President!” they cried. “Santa Anna!” The wily
Mexican general and president was their
prisoner! Though he feared for his life, he was
treated humanely by his captors.
After his defeat at San Jacinto, Santa Anna
was taken to Velasco by President David G.
Burnet, where on May 14 a treaty of peace was
signed with the following provisions: All
hostilities would cease; Santa Anna would not
again take up arms against Texas; all Mexican
troops were to retire beyond the Rio Grande,
and all private property taken from Texans was
to be returned. The boundary was to be the Rio
Grande, rather than the Nueces, making the
disputed territory between the two rivers a part
of Texas. The new Texas government also
secretly agreed to send Santa Anna to Veracruz
at once in exchange for his promise to use his
influence in securing the recognition of the
independence of Texas by Mexico.
On hearing of the disaster at San Jacinto, the
generals commanding other units of the Mexican
army promptly withdrew their forces toward the
Rio Grande. By June the last of the Mexican
troops had crossed the river into Matamoros.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
30

THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS
The Rio Grande settlements were but
remotely affected by Texas’ struggle for
independence from Mexico, though the
question of the Rio Grande as the boundary line
was still unsettled for many years. Laredo was
still the only organized town in the disputed
area. Many settlers on the Rio Grande and those
living on the large ranches between the Rio
Grande and the Nueces abandoned their homes,
deserted their interests, and left thousands of
head of cattle and horses to roam over the
country. They fled with their families south of
the Rio Grande, where they sought temporary
refuge. The new republic was too concerned
with setting up a government and finding
money to run it to attempt to establish
jurisdiction south of the Nueces in the sparsely
settled area that had become known as the
“Wild Horse Desert.”
There were practically no Anglo-Americans
living in the newly defined frontier, and the
Spanish and Mexican landowners were not
sympathetic to the change in government,
preferring to remain as a part of Mexico. Also,
Texas was not prepared to undertake the task
that certainly would ensue if Mexican troops
were sent into the territory under dispute. In
refusing to recognize Texas’ independence, the
Mexican government was even less willing to
acknowledge the new boundary.
THE REPUBLIC OF
THE RIO GRANDE
Because of the unstable government in
Mexico, the unrest among the people of her
northern provinces, and the uncertainties of
the new Republic of Texas, it is natural that
some Texans would be open to other
approaches to government. Early in 1839,
some Texans, though not the government of
the new republic, became involved in a
movement which, if successful, would have
changed the course of Valley history entirely.
This was a plan for the organization of
Zacatecas, Durango, Coahuila, Tamaulipas to
the Nueces River, Nuevo León, Northern
Mexico, and the Californias into the Republic
of the Rio Grande.
The movement had gained enough support
for a convention to be held in Laredo and a
provisional government was organized. Juan
Cardenas, the political chief of Tamaulipas, was
named president; Antonio Canales, the
instigator of the new nation, was commanderin-chief
of the army, and Laredo was the capital.
The legislative council of eight members
remained at Guerrero because it had a printing
press, which turned out their official
newspaper, Correo del Río Bravo del Norte.
These revolutionists called themselves
Federalists, while the forces of the Mexican
government were known as Centralists. When
Canales came to Texas to seek aid, the Texas
government reacted negatively, but many
prominent Texans joined the new movement.
The Federalist forces fought their way as far as
Saltillo, but after several defeats they gave up
on November 6, 1840, never again to be
revived. The Republic had lasted 283 stormy,
turbulent days.
The sandstone and adobe building that
served as the capitol of the Republic of the Rio
Grande has been restored and is now a
historical museum located beside San Augustín
Plaza in Laredo.
MORE
HOSTILITIES
There was very little trouble between the
two countries during Sam Houston’s first term
as president. However, when President
Mirabeau B. Lamar succeeded Houston, he
was more aggressive toward Mexico and the
Indians. The Mexican government retaliated
by repudiating the treaty made by Santa Anna
and began sporadic raids into Texas.
In January 1842 the Mexican army crossed
the Rio Grande and took possession of San
Antonio, Goliad, Victoria, and Refugio. Houston,
again president, ordered out the militia, but the
Mexican raiders returned across the Rio Grande
to Mexico before it could assemble.
The Mexican army came again in September,
with fourteen hundred troops led by General
Adrián Woll. They temporarily captured San
Antonio, but after a battle with the Texas militia
they retreated back to the Rio Grande. A great
demonstration on the part of the Texans
followed General Woll’s invasion into that city.
✧
After the Texans reluctantly surrendered
at Mier, the wounded of both armies
were taken into this Catholic Church
for treatment.
CHAPTER II
31

✧
One of five boys taken prisoner at Mier was
John C. C. Hill, then fourteen, who had
joined his father and brother on the
expedition. He broke his treasured rifle
rather than let it be captured by Mexican
soldiers. Impressed by his bravery, Mexican
General Ampúdia sent him to Matamoros,
where he provided food, clothing and shelter
for him and sent him to school. Later, Santa
Anna had him sent to Mexico City, where
the boy lived with the president and, later,
with General José Maris Tornel, who had a
son about his age. Hill graduated from the
Minería as a mining engineer and
physician. Though he wrote his family, he
did not visit them until 1855, the same year
he married Austine Segrado, the sister of a
famous Mexican painter, and they had four
children. Hill rose to prominence in Mexico
and for years was chief engineer for C. P.
Huntington's Mexican railroad enterprise.
He visited in Texas many times and worked
for a while in the land office in Austin as a
translator in clearing land titles. The other
four boy prisoners were eventually returned
to their parents in Texas. By coincidence,
during the Battle of San Jacinto, a Mexican
fifer-boy, Joseph Méndez, was captured by
the Texans and refused to return to Mexico.
John Hill’s father adopted the boy and
reared him as his own. He became a useful
and respected citizen of Texas.
LILLIAN WEEMS BALDRIDGE HISTORICAL COLLECTION.
It was the second time that year that the city had
been plundered, and as an added outrage, the
officers of the District Court, then in session,
had been captured and taken away as prisoners.
THE MIER EXPEDITION
A phase of history of the Republic of Texas
era that affected South Texas and the Rio
Grande Valley was the ill-advised and tragic
Mier Expedition of 1842. Historians differ
radically over the events leading to and resulting
from this expedition, and much has been
written about it, including diaries and books
of its survivors.
In November 1842, in response to the
Mexican incursions, a ragged and undisciplined
army of 750 Texans left San Antonio
and headed for the Rio Grande under the
commend of Brigadier General Alexander
Somervell, a veteran of San Jacinto who had
become secretary of war in the Republic. Most
were volunteers who were not being paid, nor
were they accompanied by sufficient supplies
to sustain the expedition. When word reached
Laredo that the Texan army was coming, the
military commander decided to depart for the
safety of Guerrero, taking with him more than
a hundred frightened citizens. Not a rifle was
fired either in conquest or defiance as the
Texas army entered Laredo.
Short on supplies, Somervell wasted no time
in levying a requisition on the populace. It was
soon found that there was not enough food in
the town to ration the Texas army. When only a
small amount was delivered, many of the
Texans became angry, slipped out of camp
against General Somervell’s orders, and sacked
Laredo. Later they were made to return all
stolen articles, except absolute essentials, and
General Somervell apologized to the alcalde
(mayor) of Laredo for the actions of his men.
While camped at Laredo, a council of war
was called and the captains were asked to
decide whether they should continue or turn
back home. When they hesitated to assume
the responsibility, Somervell asked all soldiers
who were in favor of crossing the Rio Grande
to step to the right, and those who wanted to
return home to go to the left. Two hundred
passed to the left, and they were placed under
the command of Colonel Bennett to march to
San Antonio.
General Somervell led the remaining troops
toward Guerrero, where they camped opposite
the town. The following morning, the alcalde of
Guerrero appeared at the Texan camp with a
white flag. He said he would place his town at
their disposal if they would refrain from violence
and looting. Somervell promised to keep his men
out of Guerrero if they would provide five days’
rations for his army. Some of the officers were
allowed to visit Guerrero, where they found a
town of two thousand, considerably larger than
Laredo, with well-built houses arranged around
two plazas, well-kept gardens, and several groves
of orange trees.
A cold northwest wind blew into the soldiers’
campsite, bringing with it a deluge of rain.
General Somervell announced to the cold,
hungry men his intention of abandoning the
plan of pursuing the enemy into Mexico, and on
December 19 an order was read directing all to
prepare at once for a return home. Many were
perplexed as to the right course to take. Though
around two hundred decided to obey their
commander and return with him, the remainder
insisted they would stay and fight. After this
second division, General Somervell set off with
his men for San Antonio, evidently convinced
that the expedition could not succeed.
Those remaining had a strong spirit of
adventure and reckless courage and were
loathe to retrace their steps without a battle.
They elected Colonel William S. Fisher, a
veteran of San Jacinto, as their commander.
The Texans seized six barges and several small
boats, which they called their “navy,” and
headed down the river, stopping at various
ranches to confiscate supplies.
When word of the plundering of Laredo
had reached General Pedro de Ampúdia at
Matamoros, he began moving his army up the
river toward Mier and Guerrero. Some of the
Texans marched leisurely along the north
bank of the Rio Grande, unaware that General
Ampúdia was moving upriver with a large
Mexican army.
The Texans reached the vicinity of Mier on
December 21, 1842. They camped on the
west bank and, as they had done at Laredo
and Guerrero, a party of Texans went to the
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
32

town to demand supplies from the alcalde. On
Christmas Day 1842, news arrived in the
Texan camp that no supplies were forthcoming
from Mier. Furthermore, General
Ampúdia had arrived in Mier with an army of
over six hundred men and had seized the
goods that had been gathered for the Texans.
His infantry was on the rooftops of many of
the houses in Mier, his artillery was in place
on the main plaza, and his cavalry occupied a
small hill just east of town. Still determined to
fight the Mexican Army, the Texans advanced
on Mier. The Texans fought their way to within
fifty yards of the main plaza, where they
were thrown back, but did manage to silence
the artillery before the day ended. The
Mexicans launched a brave counterattack on
the morning of December 26, during which
the valor of the Texans was matched by the
bravery of the Mexican soldiers.
Hungry, pressed from all sides, and fatigued
after a long day of spirited fighting, most of the
Texans realized their situation was hopeless.
Fisher agreed to surrender, and the Texans
came in small groups to lay down their rifles,
pistols and swords. The Battle of Mier was over,
and Mexico had won a decisive victory. General
Ampúdia reported 248 Texans captured. Ten
had been killed, and twenty-five wounded
Americans were taken into the old Catholic
church for treatment. The Mexican casualties in
dead and wounded were much higher.
After the battle, General Ampúdia had sent
out a detachment to bring in the men, horses,
and camp furniture that had been left on the
east bank of the Rio Grande. He ordered the
Texans to surrender. The Texas soldier chosen
as interpreter to shout across the Rio Grande
and order the men to bring the supplies over
called out, instead, “Boys, we are all
prisoners…. Take all the good horses and go.”
All escaped.
As difficult as it was for the Texans to lose
the battle and give up their weapons, more
misery lay ahead. They were marched in pairs
through Camargo and Reynosa to Matamoros,
where they learned they were to be taken to
Mexico City. They retraced their steps to
Camargo, and from there they were marched
to Cerralvo and on to Monterrey. The men
were poorly equipped for such a march. Soon
their shoes were too worn to even tie on their
feet and it was with great difficulty that they
managed to walk at all. The rations were
insufficient and unsatisfying, though the few
who had money assisted the others and along
the route they were able to obtain eggs, milk,
cheese and tortillas.
By February 10 they had reached Salado,
south of Saltillo, where a plan for a break for
liberty was announced. Some strongly
opposed this move, but others believed it the
only way out of their misery. Captain Ewen
Cameron was elected to give the command at
the proper time and to lead the men in their
escape. He called out in English, “Now, boys,
we go it.” An attack was made on the Mexican
guard, and most of the Texans made their
✧
The prisoners who escaped execution after
the “Black Bean Lottery” were marched to
Mexico City, where they worked building a
road, and then to the Castle of Perote, a
prison built by the Spaniards in 1773
between Mexico City and Veracruz.
CHAPTER II
33

escape along with Cameron. They seized a
large amount of arms and a hundred horses.
The Texans soon became separated and
moved into the mountains, where they
became lost. After days of aimless
wandering, too weak to push on any farther,
they surrendered to a detachment of
Mexican cavalry whose camp they stumbled
upon. Some of the Texans had died of
starvation and thirst, but the majority were
recaptured and returned in irons, chained in
pairs, to Salado. Among the latter was their
captain, Ewen Cameron, a tall, twohundred-pound
Scotsman.
Santa Anna was furious when he learned of
the escape. He first sent word to kill all of the
survivors, but the Mexican officers delayed
carrying out the order. Then, on March 7,
1843, it was learned that an order had been
received from Mexico that every tenth man
should be executed.
What followed was the infamous “Black
Bean Incident.” Seventeen black beans were
placed in an earthen jar, along with 159 white
beans. The white ones signified exemption,
and the black death. Cameron’s name was the
first to be called, and he drew a white bean.
The process went on, one bean at a time, until
all of the black beans were drawn.
When the drawing was completed, the
ones who drew the black beans were executed
by firing squad. The execution of Ewen
Cameron was stayed only one month, for on
April 25, the second order for his execution
was sent out from Mexico City and was
carried out a hundred miles from the capitol.
Cameron County was named for him.
The prisoners who escaped execution were
eventually marched to Mexico City, where they
were put to work building a road, and then to
the Castle of Perote, a prison built by the
Spaniards in 1773 located between Mexico
City and Veracruz. There twenty-two died and
a few managed to escape and make their way
back to Texas. Finally, on September 14, 1844,
after a number of prominent Americans
pleaded for their freedom, 110 of the Texans
were released and returned to Texas.
The tales of the “Black Bean Lottery”
became known in every Texas household. In
1846, during the war with Mexico, an
American patrol entered the little ranch
settlement of Salado where the men were
buried. General Walter P. Lane, a member of
the Mier Expedition who had drawn a white
bean, secured permission to exhume the bones
of his dead comrades, and later they were
placed in a memorial near La Grange, Texas,
the home of many of the volunteer soldiers.
The site is visited often by history buffs.
ANNEXATION TO
THE UNITED STATES
Though Texas was operating as an
independent republic, no peace treaty had
been completed with Mexico. The one signed
at Velasco by Santa Anna when he was a
prisoner was never accepted by his country. A
treaty was proposed in early 1844 in which
the two countries agreed to retain the
territory they presently occupied. However, a
problem complicating relations between the
republics of Texas and Mexico was the desire
in Texas for annexation to the United States.
Annexation was opposed by some
members of the United States government
and citizens in the east, but others strongly
supported it. By 1844 the annexation of the
Lone Star Republic had become a major
political issue in the presidential campaign.
James K. Polk, running on an expansionist
platform that called for annexation, was
elected by a large majority.
Seeing the election as a clear mandate for
annexation, a joint resolution calling for Texas
to become part of the Union was maneuvered
through Congress and passed on March 1,
1845, exactly nine years after the Texans
declared their independence from Mexico at
Washington-on-the-Brazos. In a convention at
Austin on July 4, 1845, Texas gave her
approval of the measure and became part of the
United States.
This Texas convention also had for
consideration a proposal by Mexico that it would
recognize the independence of Texas on
condition that annexation to the United States be
rejected, but annexation rather than
independence was the preference of the Texans.
This caused Mexico to break diplomatic relations
with the United States.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
34

THE VALLEY TAKES SHAPE
THE U . S .-MEXICAN WAR — 1846-1848
The long-sought annexation to the United States brought a measure of security to Texas, but it did not
bring peace. In annexing Texas, the United States assumed the responsibility of protecting the boundaries
of its new state, which Texas claimed as the Rio Grande. Mexico said the boundary was the Nueces River,
and that the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Chihuahua met Texas further to the east and north at
the Nueces River, making the land between the Nueces and the Rio Grande a part of Mexico.
President Polk, known as an expansionist, first tried for a peaceful settlement to the dispute by
sending John Slidell of New Orleans as an envoy to Mexico City with a proposal to buy the disputed
territory of Texas for up to $20 million, plus a proposal to purchase additional western lands under
Mexican control. However, in January 1846, Polk learned that an indignant Mexico had rejected
Slidell’s diplomatic mission, and after several months the envoy returned to the United States.
Meanwhile, word was received in Washington that Mexico was organizing forces to defend its
claims to the disputed area. General Zachary Taylor was a seasoned officer serving at Fort Jessup,
Louisiana, when he received orders from President Polk and Secretary of War William Marcy to
move his troops to the small village of Corpus Christi by the Nueces River. As directed, Taylor
moved with fifteen hundred men by boat from Fort Jessup to Corpus Christi and set up camp on
the western bank of the Nueces, remaining there from August 1845 to March 1846.
The soldiers wrote home that the climate excelled that of Southern Italy, and hunting and fishing
relieved the boredom of the long hours of hard drill that General Taylor required of his men. Called
the “Army of Observation,” the number of soldiers grew to about four thousand as new recruits
arrived. The troops were healthy and there was plenty of food—fish, fresh beef, venison, and the
supplies they had with them.
“The sea breeze is so fine,” wrote one officer to his wife. “Everything goes smoothly and pleasantly.
The troops drill three hours each day and other little details keep them quite busily employed.”
In early March orders came for Taylor to move his troops to the Rio Grande. As they headed out on
March 11, 1846, the weather was fine, the troops well clad, well fed, well armed, well trained, and
✧
In the process of leading his troops to
Corpus Christi, General Zachary Taylor
and his soldiers crossed the “Wild Horse
Desert,” which, due to rain earlier in the
season, were fields of beautiful wild flowers.
“The thickets were alive with singing birds,”
wrote a soldier.
COURTESY OF GLENN HOUSLEY.
CHAPTER III
35

March 11, 1846, the weather was fine, the
troops well clad, well fed, well armed, well
trained, and impatient for service. Along with
the troops there were supply wagons to provide
food and necessities. The country was described
as “a prairie, level and monotonous with not a
single inhabitant between Corpus Christi and
Matamoros,” a distance of 150 miles. Soon they
entered the sandy area known as the Wild Horse
Desert, described in his memoirs by Ulysses
Grant, then a second lieutenant in Taylor’s army:
✧
Above: General Zachary Taylor, a
seasoned officer stationed in Louisiana,
received orders to move his troops to the
small village of Corpus Christi by the
Nueces River.
Below: Soldiers of a U.S. artillery unit near
Fort Brown show pride in their equipment
before they join the fighting in this painting
at the Port Isabel Historical Museum.
A few days out from Corpus Christi the
immense herds of wild horses were seen
directly in advance of the head of the column
and but a few miles off. The country was
prairie and as far as the eye could reach to our
right, the herd extended. To the left, it
extended equally. There was no estimating the
number of animals in it; I have no idea if they
could have been corralled in the state of
Rhode Island or Delaware at one time.
“There had been rains earlier in the season,
which brought out beautiful wild flowers. The
flowers during today’s march were gloriously
rich; conspicuous above all were the Texas
plume, a beautiful scarlet flower, the Mexican
poppy, and the indigo,” wrote a soldier. “The
thickets were alive with singing birds, and the
ground appeared alive with quail.”
As the army marched along the coast, a fleet
of supply ships steamed down the Gulf toward
Point Isabel, a little port nine miles up the coast
from the Rio Grande. There General Taylor
intended to establish his base of supplies.
Taylor arrived at Point Isabel with part of his
army and established a bastion, which became
Fort Polk, to guard his coastal supply base.
Taylor’s soldiers unloaded the four supply boats
that had arrived at the harbor and established a
supply depot in the small village the Mexican
people called El Frontón de Santa Isabel. After
providing protection for the supply depot,
Taylor joined General Worth, whom he had
dispatched toward the Rio Grande a few days
earlier. The two groups met up on March 28,
1846 and proceeded to the Rio Grande.
Taylor immediately set his troops to work
on Fort Texas on the north bank of the Rio
Grande just across from Matamoros. Taylor
called it the “Camp opposite Matamoros” and
“The camp on the Left Bank of the Rio Grande”
in his official reports. Later the fort was named
Fort Brown. Offshore, Commodore David
Connor’s ships blockaded the coast at the
mouth of the Rio Grande. Major Jacob Brown
was placed in charge of Fort Texas, which was
begun on April 8, 1846. As the fort began to
take shape, it resembled a giant snowflake, laid
out with six bastion fronts. It was large enough
to accommodate five regiments, and a tall
flagpole reached skyward from within the
massive earthen walls to fly the Stars and
Stripes of the United States.
Meanwhile, across the river the Mexicans
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
36

also began building earthen fortifications in
which they installed batteries of mortars.
Since affairs were still on a peaceful footing,
American troops took the opportunity to
become acquainted with the dozens of Mexican
families whose shacks were close to the fort. To
the soldiers it seemed that every family had a
goat in the house and a gamecock tied under
the bed. In gardens strung up and down the
river they grew lemons, oranges, figs, peaches
and vegetables. The owners of these small truck
farms were quick to bring chickens, milk and
produce to sell to the troops, and vendors from
Matamoros crossed the river with food and
trinkets to sell to the Americans.
Such friendly exchanges came to an
abrupt halt on April 23, when President
Paredes appeared before the Congress of
Mexico and declared that “from this day
defensive war begins.”
Soon General Mariano Arista arrived in
Matamoros to relieve General Pedro de Ampúdia
with orders to commence action immediately.
The Mexican government was not in a strong
position to respond to the challenge it faced.
Unlike the United States, a nation seventy years
old in 1846, Mexico had been a republic only
twenty-five years and still suffered from long and
costly struggles against colonialism. Lingering
political, social, and economic divisions made it
difficult for the central government to retain
control of its vast northern territories.
Mexican forces that did reach the Rio
Grande also faced disadvantages. The
country’s turmoil and political opportunism
on the part of some military leaders weakened
the command structure in the field. Its
weapons were antiquated, often left over from
the wars of independence. Many soldiers sent
to oppose the well-equipped United States
army were conscripts, pressed into service
against their will.
However, Mexico did match the United
States in its determination. The young
Republic had its own visions of greatness that
demanded protection of existing borders. The
Mexican public, dismayed by the loss of Texas,
opposed further expansion by its northern
neighbor. Even conscripts demonstrated a
courageous dedication to defense of their
homeland. The conflict of wills pushed the two
nations toward an armed clash.
THE BATTLE OF PALO ALTO
Meanwhile, the two armies continued
activity in the disputed territory. General Arista’s
“Army of the North” marched into the area
between Taylor’s two forts—Fort Polk at Point
Isabel and Fort Texas across from Matamoros—
in an attempt to split American lines of supply
and communication. On May 1, General Taylor
responded. Leaving five hundred men with
Major Brown to hold Fort Texas, Taylor led his
army on a daylong march to Fort Polk to obtain
supplies. These troops successfully evaded
Arista’s forces and reached the coast, but the
next morning before reveille the men could
hear a heavy cannonading and knew that Fort
Texas was under attack.
The war had begun. Among its first casualties
was Major Jacob Brown, who was wounded by
an exploding shell while inspecting the damage
to the fort and died the next day.
Using sailors from Commodore Conner’s
blockade fleet to strengthen defenses at Fort
Polk, Taylor prepared 2,300 troops, assembled
250 wagons full of supplies, and set out to the
aid of Fort Texas. On the morning of May 8,
1846, Taylor’s troops met about four thousand
Mexican soldiers on the plains of Palo Alto,
midway between Fort Polk and Fort Texas.
Arista’s forces formed a battle line to block the
✧
General Mariano Arista, commander of
Mexico’s “Army of the North.”
CHAPTER III
37

✧
The Battle of Palo Alto.
COURTESY OF BROWNSVILLE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
road and the U.S. forces deployed for combat
in similar formation.
Despite the Mexican advantage in numbers,
artillery would make the difference in the
coming battle. The Mexican army boasted about
twelve cannon, but many were old, as was the
ammunition. This was evident when they
opened battle with an artillery barrage from eight
hundred yards. The projectiles, mostly solid
cannon balls, approached so slowly that U.S.
soldiers could sidestep the incoming rounds.
Newly manufactured American cannons
fired farther and faster than the Mexican arms.
The U.S. forces employed a combination of two
eighteen-pound siege guns, one twelve-pound
howitzer, and seven light, highly mobile sixpound
smoothbores to fire a variety of shells,
explosive case projectiles, and canisters of
multiple shot. Instead of responding with an
infantry bayonet charge, General Taylor opened
with his heavy guns. The American shelling
devastated the Mexican forces, which
steadfastly held their positions. The rain of
metal also kept the Mexican infantry too distant
to threaten with their muskets.
General Arista then ordered a unit of Lancers
under General Anastacio Torrejón to strike
through the brush at the U.S. right flank in an
effort to change the course of battle by seizing
the U.S. supply train. The Fifth U.S. Infantry
repelled this cavalry charge. Marshy conditions
slowed the Mexican maneuver, allowing the
Americans to assume a hollow-square formation
that bristled on the outside with bayonets. A
close-range volley of musket fire halted the
charge, but Torrejón’s horsemen regrouped,
swung around and attempted to strike the
convoy farther to the rear. This time the Third
U.S. Infantry, with assistance from Major Samuel
Ringgold’s fast-moving field artillery, forced the
Lancers back to the Mexican lines.
About 4:00 p.m. the battle briefly halted.
Warm winds off the Gulf of Mexico fanned
smoldering cannon wadding, igniting the thick
grass and cloaking the battlefield in heavy smoke.
Both sides used the lull to collect dead and
wounded, fill canteens, issue ammunition, and
realign troops. Taylor pivoted the entire American
battle line forward toward the opposition. Arista
made similar changes, his troops now facing into
the bright, late afternoon sun.
When fighting resumed around 5:00 p.m.,
Mexican troops reclaimed the offensive,
increasing fire along the front while preparing
to envelop the American line from both ends.
Fighting was fierce. Then a battery of U.S.
horse-drawn artillery broke through the smoke
of battle, its intense, close-range cannon fire
causing immediate and massive destruction.
The battle ended when darkness came, and the
exhausted troops rested for the night.
General Taylor knew the Battle of Palo Alto
had injured but not eliminated the threat posed
by Arista’s army. American casualties numbered
only nine killed and forty-three injured, which
bolstered troop morale. Though estimates of
Arista’s losses ranged much higher, he still
retained a larger number of troops.
Mexican forces passed the night on the
southern edge of the battlefield after hurriedly
tending to the dead and wounded, and then
marched towards Matamoros. Taylor’s victorious
forces camped on the field, and in the morning
his troops buried the remaining Mexican dead in
mass graves and took measures to protect the
supply train from further attack, then marched
in pursuit of Arista’s army.
RESACA DE LA PALMA
The conflicting armies met again on May 9,
1846, five miles to the south along an old
bend of the Rio Grande. Mexican military
leaders had prepared defenses for a second
clash, choosing topography that neutralized
the superior American artillery.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
38

At the Battle of Resaca de la Palma, hand-tohand
combat and cavalry charges, not artillery,
carried the day. After harsh fighting, U.S. troops
routed the Mexican defenders and forced
Arista’s remaining troops to retreat across the
Rio Grande, discarding their equipment as they
went, and fleeing in panic for their lives.
Thus ended the first battles of the Mexican
War, the only encounters in the disputed area
between the Nueces and the Rio Grande.
It was on May 9, 1846, the day of the Resaca
de la Palma battle, that the Cabinet of the
United States met with President Polk to
consider the situation. Earlier, on April 25,
Mexican forces had encountered an American
patrol at Rancho de Carricitos, about twentyfive
miles upstream from Fort Texas, in which
several U.S. soldiers were killed. President Polk
called this attack an act of war. The President
prepared his war message, which was passed by
the House two days later, ratified by the Senate
the following day and signed by Polk on May
13. Meanwhile, Congress voted a war
appropriation of ten million dollars and gave
the President authorization to call for fifty
thousand volunteers.
This made the Rio Grande a household
word throughout the nation as families across
the land bade goodbye to their sons as they
left for the faraway war.
THE WAR MOVES TO MEXICO
Fort Texas was given the name of Fort
Brown in memory of its fallen commander.
Soon the town of Brownsville would build up
around it. Another casualty was Major Samuel
Ringgold, for whom Fort Ringgold of Rio
Grande City was named. Major Ringgold was
the hero of Palo Alto with his quick and
creative use of his “Flying Artillery,” and it was
at the Battle of Palo Alto where he was
wounded and would later die of his injury.
On May 18, 1846, Taylor began moving the
American forces across to Matamoros, using
captured boats and some Mexican ferries. They
did not meet opposition as General Arista and
his troops had moved inland. Because of a
shortage of water and forage, Taylor realized he
could not march troops into the interior from
Matamoros and sent back to the States for a
fleet of light draft steamers to transport 10,000
men, 4,000 animals, and all supplies upriver to
Camargo, from which they could march
against Monterrey, Saltillo, and Victoria. Soon
the vessels were steaming towards Brownsville.
The summer of 1846 found the U.S. troops
encamped in Matamoros, where they were
joined daily by new recruits from the states.
Volunteer camps were established on both sides
of the river from its mouth to Matamoros. Many
grew ill from dysentery, smallpox, measles and
intestinal disorders, and it is said some even
died of homesickness. On July 26, 1846, the
first detachment of troops proceeded by
steamer to Camargo, where many again came
down with illness. From there, his troops
moved into the interior, where the two armies
would meet again on battlefields with names
like Monterrey, La Angostura, and Buena Vista.
A larger U.S. invasion took several paths. As
General Taylor advanced the first front, General
Stephen Watts Kearny led another force into
New Mexico and California. Finally, in March
1847, an expeditionary force directed by General
Winfield Scott approached by sea and landed at
Veracruz. This army ultimately fought its way
overland to Mexico City, causing reluctant
Mexican officials to negotiate terms for peace.
RESULTS OF THE WAR
The U.S.-Mexican War resulted in
significant loss of life for both nations.
Combat and, more often, disease claimed the
lives of thirteen thousand American troops.
✧
A map of the Palo Alto and Resaca de la
Palma battlefields from Palo Alto
Battlefield, National Park Service, U.S.
Department of the Interior.
CHAPTER III
39

✧
Palo Alto Battlefield is now a National
Historic Site. The National Park Service
is to develop a comprehensive park around
the site. Presentations will acquaint visitors
with Mexican and American historical
perspectives.
Mexican civilian and military casualties
climbed much higher.
The U.S. State Department sent Nicholas P.
Trist to Mexico to work out terms of a peace
settlement. He wanted to secure the Rio Grande
as the boundary from its mouth to the thirtysecond
parallel, and thence west to the Pacific.
For all of New Mexico, which then included
Arizona, and upper California, he agreed to pay
fifteen million dollars, further pledging that the
United States would pay the claims of its
citizens against the Mexican government. On
February 2, 1848, a treaty was signed at
Guadalupe Hidalgo, a suburb of Mexico City,
and was soon ratified by both governments.
The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at last
established the southern border of Texas and the
United States at the Rio Grande. It also expanded
the United States by more than half a million
square miles. It completed the expansionist
vision of Manifest Destiny by adding California
and acquiring two of the best natural harbors in
North America, San Francisco and San Diego.
These lands provided a westward-looking nation
with riches, ports, a new frontier, and a push
toward international prominence. How the
United States acquired this vast additional
territory has often been forgotten.
The effect of the war on Mexico was much
more complex. Surrender of California and New
Mexico territories and the disputed border cost
Mexico half of its territory. The trauma of defeat
caused a surge of political and economic chaos
that opened the nation to a new series of
interventions. However, the loss also united a
divided nation with a desire to prevent another
defeat. Against future enemies, Mexicans
abandoned the in fighting and opportunism that
weakened defenses in 1846 and successfully
defended their borders. In time, Mexico
regained confidence, increased domestic unity
and developed national pride based on its
achievements. Nevertheless, the American
invasion has not been forgotten, and an
undertone of distrust lingers in Mexico’s
relations with the United States.
A NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
On June 23, 1992, an Act of Congress
authorized the creation of the Palo Alto
Battlefield National Historic Site at Brownsville
as a unit of the National Park Service. This law
calls for interpretation of the Battle of Palo Alto
and the U.S.-Mexican War, acquainting visitors
with Mexican and American historical
perspectives. Presentations are designed to
emphasize the political, diplomatic, military and
social causes and consequences of these events.
As the first battlefield of the war, Palo Alto
represents a rupture of relations between
neighboring countries that has taken a long time
to heal. As a national park that recalls that war,
Palo Alto Battlefield serves as a reminder that
respect and understanding—not war—is the
legacy toward which both nations must strive.
SOME HEROES & A HEROINE
Wars have a way of making heroes, and the
U.S.-Mexican War certainly had its share of
memorable people, both in and out of battle.
When the war began in 1846, there was
probably no more obscure spot in all the land
than the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Sparsely
populated, covered with thick brush, isolated
from the outside world, it was a most unlikely
place from which to launch a promising career.
Nevertheless, it was here that some of the most
prominent national figures of that century took
their first step toward fame and their niche in
America’s destiny.
General Zachary Taylor, who became known
as “Old Rough and Ready, the General who never
loses a battle,” was an experienced and highranking
officer when he was ordered to Texas. He
would have to be the first on the list of the war’s
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
40

heroes, for he fought with great strength and valor
in a war he did not quite approve of initially. His
conduct of the war pleased the American people
and they honored him by making him President.
General Winfield “Fuss and Feathers” Scott
also spent considerable time in the Brownsville
area before commanding the successful
seaborne invasion of Mexico. He was
particularly noted for his magnificent uniforms,
which were in sharp contrast to the “rough and
ready” attire preferred by Taylor. He was
commanding general of the U.S. Army from
1841 to 1861. At the outbreak of the Civil War
he commanded the U.S. Army until November
1861, when age forced his retirement.
General Robert E. Lee made his first trip to
the Valley in 1847 when he was forty years old.
Later he frequently visited Brownsville, including
a trip in 1860 when he was head of the U.S.
Army’s Texas Department to deal with the
Cortina raids. He became close friends with
Captain Richard King, and the Kings named a
son after him. A former superintendent of West
Point, he was an Army engineer, destined to
become the commanding general of the
Confederate forces in the Civil War.
In addition to these seasoned soldiers, a
legendary group of bright young officers, most
of them fresh from West Point, had their first
combat experience in the Mexican War, most of
it in the Brownsville sector. Two of them would
also become president: Franklin Pierce and
Ulysses S. Grant, destined to oppose Lee as head
of the Federal forces during the Civil War. Later,
in his memoirs, he described his experiences
when under fire for the first time during the
battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma.
George Gordon Meade, an engineer who
would also distinguish himself in the Civil War,
was instrumental in laying out the “Old Military
Highway” between Fort Brown and Fort
Ringgold. During the Mexican War he fought
alongside both Taylor and Scott. In 1863
General Meade was in command of the U.S.
Army of the Potomac when it repulsed Lee’s
Confederates at Gettysburg.
Jefferson Davis was another of General
Taylor’s bright young officers. He rose to
prominence later as president of the
Confederacy. A schoolmate of Lee at West
Point, he married General Taylor’s daughter.
General Lew Wallace visited the area several
times after his service with the military during
the Mexican War, the last time on March 11,
1865, to investigate the French occupation of
Mexico. Wallace later became governor of New
Mexico. He wrote extensively of the Brownsville
area, but is best remembered as the author of the
classic novel Ben Hur.
Another young man who became famous for
his work during this period was George Wilkins
Kendall, the nation’s first war correspondent. He
followed the army into its battles, and wrote
detailed, action-packed accounts of the battles.
Swift horsemen sped his reports across the
tangled brushland to Point Isabel, where they
were placed aboard a steamer bound for New
Orleans. He followed the troops on into Mexico,
where he rushed his stories by fast steamer to
New Orleans. His spicy articles made the New
Orleans Picayune one of the best known and
most frequently quoted papers in the country.
After the war he retired from reporting, bought
a ranch west of San Antonio, became a
cattleman, and had a county named for him.
But perhaps the most colorful figure to emerge
from this historic period was not an officer, not an
enlisted man, not a highly educated person, but a
most unusual woman determined to survive in a
man’s world. At that time, a few women would
travel with the armies in a semi-official capacity as
cooks and laundresses. They were usually wives
of soldiers, tough and self-reliant, and willing to
endure the hardships of army life.
Such a woman flashed across the pages of
history in the late summer of 1845 when she rode
her horse into General Taylor’s military camp at
Corpus Christi. Sarah Borginnis, as she was
known in those days, was a lusty woman with
grayish-blue eyes who stood over six feet tall and
was considered rather attractive despite her size.
She had been with Taylor’s forces in Florida
during battles with the Seminoles, and the Army
was her life. Even after her husband was killed in
action, she cast her lot with the soldiers.
Sarah became known throughout the ranks
as “The Great Western,” a nickname which
probably came from the huge steamer of that
name, the largest in the world in the 1830s and
the second steam vessel to cross the Atlantic
without using sails. Perhaps Sarah resembled
that ship under full steam. She was reputed to
✧
Top: Robert E. Lee.
Middle: Ulysses S. Grant.
Bottom: George Meade.
CHAPTER III
41

✧
The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
firmly established the Rio Grande as the
boundary between the United States and
Mexico. This recent map shows the location
of the cities founded by Escandón and major
U.S. cities established later along the border.
be able to lick any man of her size and weight
in the Army and, under provocation, often did.
She also was a motherly person who attained
a semi-official status with General Taylor’s army.
She laundered uniforms, she cooked for the men,
and in battle she maintained a delicate balance
between bravery and compassion, much admired
and respected by the men of Taylor’s command.
She was preparing breakfast when the firing
started at Fort Texas, later named Fort Brown,
and she continued about her business with shells
exploding on all sides. She served breakfast to all
officers and then carried steaming coffee to
artillerymen engaged in returning the enemy fire.
She cared for the sick and the wounded. During
the shelling that killed Major Brown and an
enlisted man, she had many narrow escapes, but
stayed in the open and tended her fires. She asked
for a musket and ammunition and swore to
defend herself to the end.
A couple of weeks after the battles of Palo
Alto and Resaca de la Palma, a delegation arrived
from Louisiana to present a sword to General
Taylor. A dinner was given for the visitors,
during which many toasts were proposed and
drunk. And then Lieutenant Braxton Bragg, an
artilleryman who had served inside the fort
during the bombardment and who became a
general in the Confederate Army, rose to his feet.
He proposed a toast to the “Heroine of Fort
Brown.” All jumped to their feet with loud
cheers to drink to the Great Western.
When Taylor moved his troops into Mexico,
the Great Western rode with him. Along with
her boundless energy, she was shrewd about
money. Somehow she found time to go into
business for herself in an alien land with which
her country was at war. She set up a hotel in
Saltillo, providing rooms, drinks, and good
cooking for the Army officers and other soldiers
looking for relief from their duties. Her fearless
behavior during the Battle of Buena Vista was
highly praised. It was said that Borginnis dressed
many wounded soldiers and even carried them
out of the thickest fighting.
When peace came, Sarah attached herself to
a cavalry unit headed out of Monterrey for
golden California. She got sick along the way
and never made it to the Golden State. After
much suffering and hardship, she ended up in
El Paso, where she opened another hotel
catering to the Forty-Niners. Later she made her
way to Fort Yuma, Arizona, a desolate, scorching
army post established in 1850. There she
married Albert Bowman, an upholsterer, opened
a restaurant in the raw settlement of Yuma, and
operated it until her death in 1866. She was
buried, with full military honors at Fort Yuma,
the only woman ever to be interred in the post
cemetery. After the Mexican War she had been
commissioned a colonel for her services and had
been made a pensioner of the government on
orders from General Winfield Scott.
Sarah’s death marked the end of an era, for
after the Great Western’s war, women were
never again officially permitted to accompany
their husbands into battle.
PART OF THE UNITED STATES
The military expedition and the results of the
war were important to the Rio Grande Valley for
many reasons. It gave the people of Texas and
other states their first accurate information of the
type of country over which the quarrel had raged
for so many years. The feasibility of navigation of
the Rio Grande was proven, and the new frontier
was opened to Anglo-Americans and to the
greater colonization which followed.
The provisions of the treaty between the
United States and Mexico as they relate to the
Lower Rio Grande Valley were: (1) that the
middle of the deepest channel of the river from
El Paso to the Gulf would be the boundary line
between the two republics; (2) that vessels of
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
42

oth countries should be entitled to navigation
rights; (3) that all citizens living in the territory
previously belonging to Mexico should retain
their property or, in case they wished to sell it,
they were free to remove the funds received from
same without tax or charge; (4) that those
citizens who preferred to remain in the territory
were given their preference of retaining their
Mexican citizenship, provided intention was
declared within one year, (5) or that they could
have the alternative of acquiring citizenship in
the United States with all its rights. Those who
declared no intention within a year were to be
considered United States citizens.
An estimated seventy-five thousand
Mexicans lived in the conquered territory in
1848, most of whom stayed to become U.S.
citizens. One hundred years had passed since
the founding of the first Spanish colony on the
Rio Grande. During this interim, the children,
grandchildren, and later generations of the
original grantee families sometimes became
separated by the great river on which their
homes and lives had been founded.
Although property rights and citizenship
choice were important considerations, the
private lives of the landowners in the old
Spanish jurisdictions living along the north
bank of the Rio Grande were deeply affected.
The settlers often made the property and
citizenship rights and many other decisions with
uncertainty, distrust and bitterness all around.
Accustomed to Spanish law and language, they
had to learn to function under new laws and a
new language. Should they remain on their land
or sell it? If they left it, where would they go
with their families? The year 1848 had to be a
heart-wrenching time for those who decided to
remain in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and to
rebuild their lives there.
Many property owners found themselves
enmeshed in a tangle of title and tax problems as
well as language difficulties. But through all of
their difficulties with language, law and politics,
the families of many of the old Spanish grantees
firmly held to their land, for the love of the land
for which their ancestors had labored was dear to
them. They learned the ways of the new
government and many studied the English
language, preparing themselves for participation
in affairs of the United States. Soon Mexican-
American leaders emerged to take part in the
leadership of the frontier. From Brownsville to
Laredo, descendants of old Spanish and Mexican
families still form a large part of the population.
Texans can point with pride to the work of
the early Spaniards on the Lower Rio Grande,
for the establishment of homes, churches and
schools, for experimentation with irrigation,
stockbreeding, horticulture, and agriculture
from 1748 to 1821.
COUNTIES ARE ORGANIZED
When Taylor’s forces arrived in Corpus
Christi, state officials realized that the Republic
✧
Left: The grandfather of South Texas
counties is San Patricio. From 1836 to
1846, the area had been loosely referred to
as part of San Patricio County, as no
political subdivisions had been established
for the area. While Taylor’s army was
encamped on the Rio Grande, work began
on new political subdivisions.
COURTESY OF THE CORPUS CHRISTI CALLER-TIMES.
Right: In 1846, all of San Patricio County
between the Nueces River and the Rio
Grande was incorporated as Nueces County,
reaching from Brownsville to Laredo.
Cameron and Starr Counties were formed
in 1848; then Cameron was divided and
Hidalgo County was established in 1852.
The first Willacy County was created from
Cameron County in 1911, then divided into
Willacy and Kenedy Counties in 1921 for
the present boundaries as shown.
COURTESY OF THE CORPUS CHRISTI CALLER-TIMES.
CHAPTER III
43

✧
Above: This Cameron County Courthouse in
Brownsville was built in 1883 and used
until 1913. It now serves as the Masonic
Lodge 81, A.F. & A.M. The original roof,
with its gables and central tower, was
removed during remodeling. Two
courthouses have been built since this one
was outgrown.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
Below: Hidalgo County Courthouse in
Hidalgo, c.1914. Built in 1886, it served
until the county seat was moved to Edinburg
in 1908.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
of Texas had made no effort to establish political
jurisdiction over the disputed territory. For ten
years the area had been loosely referred to as
part of San Patricio County. So, while Taylor’s
army was encamped on the Rio Grande, work
began on the creation of new political
subdivisions. On April 18, 1846, the Texas
Legislature passed a special act which provided
for the organization of one large county to take
care of Texas’ interest, to be known as Nueces
County. It was a massive area that included all
land between the Nueces and the Rio Grande
from Laredo to the Gulf of Mexico.
In the same month that the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo was ratified, special bills were
passed by the Texas Legislature to create three
counties on the lower Rio Grande, all to be taken
from the territory formerly included in Nueces
County. The first of these was Webb, approved on
January 28, 1848, with Laredo as its county seat.
It was named for James Webb, a judge who
moved from his native Virginia to Texas during its
Republic days and served as secretary of the
treasury and later secretary of state.
Starr County was established on February
10, 1848, with the county seat located at Rio
Grande City, which had been called
Carnestolendas and, after 1846, Davis
Landing. The county was named for Dr. James
Harper Starr, a land commissioner in
Nacogdoches County who became interested
in land ownership in Texas and gave up
doctoring to become a land agent.
Cameron County was established on February
12, 1848, and named for Captain Ewen Cameron
of the Mier Expedition. The first county seat was
the ranching town of Santa Rita, which had
prospered with the arrival of Taylor’s forces and is
considered the first English speaking settlement
in the county. However, the county seat was soon
moved to the fast-growing town of Brownsville.
Hidalgo County was created on January 24,
1852, from the western section of Cameron
County. Supporters of the new county, named in
honor of Father Hidalgo, hero of the Mexican
revolution, said the size of Cameron County
made it difficult to travel to Brownsville to
transact business. Among those who worked for
the new county was John Young, who had
established a town opposite Reynosa called
Edinburgh for his native Scotland. At first, the
county seat was at Edinburgh, which would
later become known as Hidalgo. The new, more
centrally located Edinburg (without the “h”)
would become the county seat on October 12,
1908. It was more than a half-century before
Willacy County was created on March 11, 1911,
from parts of Cameron and Hidalgo Counties,
with Sarita as the county seat. It was named for
John Willacy, who served in the Texas
Legislature and as state tax comptroller. On
April 12, 1921, the present Willacy County was
created from a narrow strip of old Willacy
County and parts of Cameron and Hidalgo
Counties, with Raymondville as the county seat.
At the same time, the larger part of old Willacy
County became present Kenedy County.
Once the counties were established, county
governments were organized and political
jurisdictions established. A new set of laws and
officials began the taming of the borderlands,
establishment of new communities, and the
continued development of the Rio Grande Valley.
Soon the Wild Horse Desert, called El
Desierto de los Muertos (the Desert of the Dead)
by the Mexicans who braved the land of wild
cattle and horses, marauding Indians and
wandering desperados would be no more.
THE EARLY DAYS OF
B ROWNSVILLE
Until Taylor’s forces established Fort Brown
across from Matamoros, there were only
scattered dwellings and small farms on the
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
44

northern bank of the Rio Grande. In anticipation
of United States possession, Americans had
begun to establish themselves on the Texan bank
of the river. To do this they began purchasing
tracts of land from the Mexican owners.
Immediately after the war, Charles Stillman,
an American merchant who lived in Matamoros,
saw a future for the land adjacent to Fort Brown.
Therefore, in June 1848 Stillman with partners
Samuel A. Belden and Simon Mussina, in an oral
agreement, formed a partnership named the
Brownsville Town Company. Stillman
commissioned George Lyons to survey a townsite
and lay out lots. The future town would be
named Brownsville in honor of Fort Brown. On
December 9, 1848, Stillman and his partners put
their verbal agreement into a written contract.
The following year there began a long series of
legal battles that would one day end in the
Supreme Court, for the Brownsville Town
Company had been shocked to learn that the
company had no legal titles to the land. They had
learned that the ayuntamiento of Matamoros was
without power to sell the ejidos and that María
Josefa Cavazos, a niece and heir of Francisca
Cavazos, had obtained a decree from the
Congress of Tamaulipas, declaring that Francisca
Cavazos had never been paid for her land taken
for ejidos and that her heirs were entitled to
repossess the land.
The citizens of the newly formed town of
Brownsville now sought relief from the State of
Texas, which had also claimed the land. The
Third Legislature of Texas passed a law on
January 24, 1850, incorporating the City of
Brownsville and relinquishing to the city all of
the state’s rights, title, and interest in the former
ejidos of Matamoros. The Fourth Legislature of
Texas then repealed this act of incorporation
effective April 1, 1852. Then in a special session
of the same legislature, it reincorporated the
city on February 7, 1853, which kindled a long
series of litigation in both state and federal
courts concerning the title to the land.
The dispute was settled by the United States
Supreme Court, which gave final title to the
original grantee. James Stillman, through various
conveyances, obtained the title to the larger part
of the lands in Brownsville, and his heirs then
conveyed their interests to the New York and
Brownsville Improvement Company in 1881.
Within a few months of its founding, the town
increased to over two thousand inhabitants, brick
store buildings were erected, and many residences
constructed. Elizabeth Street was named
for Stillman’s wife, Elizabeth Pamela Goodrich, a
native of Wetherfield, Connecticut. He was thirtyeight
when he went home in 1849 to visit his
mother and to marry Elizabeth, only twenty, a
gentle, educated, religious woman. He brought
her to the new home he built for her in the new
town in this wild and troubled area. She lived in
Brownsville until after their first two children
were born.
Since cholera and other diseases were
prevalent, she took the children, James and
Isabel, and left for the north. She never
returned, though Stillman spent some time
each year with his family and they had several
more children. By the end of the Civil War,
Stillman was ill and his trip north in 1865
ended his stay in the Rio Grande Valley.
However, he continued many of his business
interests in the area through his various
partners and later his son James.
Chauncey Stillman, his great-grandson,
who lived in New York, wrote in his book,
Charles Stillman, that “Captains of his
schooners, sailing between New York and
Brazos Santiago, were instructed to stow all
unused cargo space on board with ebony
chunks from the steamboat woodlots so that
the aging Don Carlos might enjoy the stored
energy of the Rio Grande sunshine.”
In 1958 Chauncey purchased the colonialstyle
Stillman home on Washington Street in
which his great-grandparents once lived, and
deeded it to the Brownsville Historical
Association. He also helped financially to
restore and furnish the four front rooms from
heirlooms given to him by his family. It is the
present Stillman House Museum.
In its early days, Brownsville had a population
of Spanish, French, and American merchants
who had been long established in Matamoros,
families who owned the land grants, and former
United States soldiers who had been stationed
there during the U.S.-Mexican War. The dregs of
society were also drawn to the border. They
included escaped criminals, deserters from both
armies of the recent war, gamblers, swindlers and
misfits. Fortunately, the hope of making their
✧
Charles Stillman, founder of Brownsville,
and his wife, Elizabeth Pamela Goodrich
Stillman. The photographs of the
Stillmans are taken from Charles Stillman
1810-1875 by H. Minat Pittman
COURTESY OF THE BROWNSVILLE
HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
CHAPTER III
45

✧
Above: William Neale, an English immigrant
to Matamoros in 1834, was the first Anglo
settler to move across the river to the future
site of Brownsville. His home was used
continuously by the Neale family until 1950,
when Mamie Neale Del Valle presented it as
a gift to the Brownsville Art League.
Below: “Kino” Camarillo has lived and
worked at Stillman House for sixty-five
years. In this picture he stands in front of a
pecan tree he planted soon after he and his
family moved into quarters by the courtyard.
There he raised two sons and two daughters,
some of whom now assist at the museum. He
also has worked for sixty years and helped
serve communion at the Immaculate
Conception Church, taking off during World
War II to march through Italy with the
Eighty-eighth Division of the Fifth Army.
fortune in the California gold rush soon lured the
undesirables westward.
The rush for gold also brought hundreds of
other Forty-Niners through Brownsville,
which became an outfitting point for their
move westward. They had sailed from the east
coast, and their route would take them via
river steamer to Camargo and then by horse
or foot through Mexico to California. Some
decided to stay in Brownsville because of the
climate and the promise of productive land.
Among leading merchants of the time, in
addition to Stillman, were José San Román, a
successful Spanish merchant in both Brownsville
and Matamoros, and Francisco Yturria, born of
Spanish parents in Matamoros. Yturria married
Felicitas Treviño, whose father had been
awarded the San Martín land grant by the
Mexican government. He established the Yturria
Bank in 1854 and had extensive land holdings in
five counties. His descendants remain prominent
in Brownsville’s business and community life
and in the Valley’s ranching industry.
Another familiar name from Brownsville’s early
history is William Neale, an English emigrant
who arrived in Mexico in 1821, settling in
Matamoros in 1834. He operated a stage line
between Matamoros and Bagdad at the mouth of
the river, and later between Brownsville and Point
Isabel. He is said to be the first Anglo settler to
move across the river to the future site of
Brownsville. He lived to age ninety, locally famous
as historian, raconteur, wit and genial host.
Neale’s Brownsville residence, which he built
around 1850, was made of the finest materials
and workmanship, and the one-story frame
building survived the hurricanes of 1867 and
1933. It was used continuously by members of
the Neale family until 1950, when Mamie Neale
del Valle presented it to the Brownsville Art
League. His grandson, also named William A.
Neale, who worked for the U.S. Customs Service
from 1909 to 1932, filled much the same place
in community life that his grandfather had filled
half a century before. He was “oldest inhabitant,”
historian and tester of the truth of old tales.
Brownsville’s early culture was cosmopolitan,
as English, French, German, and Spanish were
spoken. Americans absorbed Spanish customs
and culture as they participated together in the
social, civil, business and military affairs of the
community. Fort Brown played an important
role in the social and political activities of the
community, sharing dances, musicals, and
church entertainment with the citizenry. A
strong French influence also developed through
trade with New Orleans and the arrival of
Catholic priests and nuns from France. The city
was well developed by the beginning of the
1860s, during which it would play a pivotal role
in another great war.
RELIGION COMES TO
THE VALLEY
There were no churches, preachers or
priests to serve the people of Brownsville and
the far-flung ranches of the area. At the request
of Brownsville citizens, Bishop Jean Marie Odin
of Galveston went to Montreal in 1848 to see if
the relatively new religious order called the
Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate from
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
46

France would send priests for mission work.
His request was approved, and in 1849 he and
four Oblates started their journey from Canada
to South Texas. They traveled down the
Mississippi River to New Orleans and finally,
two months after they started their trip, they
arrived in Point Isabel on December 2, 1849.
They were welcomed by the townspeople
and given food to eat and a shed for sleeping.
They established a church in Brownsville and
began to visit the outlying ranches, facing disease,
rough terrain, rattlesnakes, and border
bandits. Most had to learn both Spanish and
English, since their native language was
French. The priests faced so many hardships
that they were recalled after a year and a half,
but returned in 1852. From that beginning
grew the Cavalry of Christ, a group of Oblate
priests who traveled by horseback to the
ranches scattered over hundreds of square
miles. A second mission was established in
Roma in 1866 to serve the upper Valley,
including Rio Grande City and west to San
Ignacio. A little chapel was built at La Lomita
Ranch south of Mission to serve as a meeting
place and way station.
Many stories have been told of the Oblates
as they rode their horses to distant ranches,
performing marriages, baptizing children,
preaching sermons, comforting the sick and
dying, and hearing confessions. It is said that,
in twenty-five years, two of the hardier
priests, Father Jules Piat and Father José
María Clos, covered at least 175,000 miles on
horseback, or a distance of seven times
around the earth at the equator.
Father Pierre (Peter) Keralum was an architect
in France before he became an Oblate
priest at age thirty-five. Because of his talents
as a designer and architect, in 1852 he was
sent with the group to Texas. He designed and
supervised the building of the Gothic-style
Immaculate Conception Church at
Brownsville, begun in 1854 and completed in
1859, still a city treasure. He also built a
church in Roma, of which the spire was preserved
when a new church was built, and
inspired several other Gothic style chapels
and churches in the area. But his main love
was serving the people on the ranches, and he
worked for twenty years with the greatest
devotion, visiting the seventy ranches of his
district at least three times a year.
Despite declining health and failing
eyesight, he continued to make his visits, and
on November 9, 1872 he started on horseback
from Brownsville through the mesquite jungle
to distant mission stations, planning to return
around the New Year. But this was his final
trip, as he became lost after leaving the
Tampacuas Ranch, four miles north of the
present city of Mercedes. His horse was found
three days later, but an intense search failed to
find the beloved Padre Pedrito. It was ten
years before two cowboys in search of some
cattle came upon his remains in the dense
brush. His chalice, cross, an altar bell and
other items were found nearby. Thus the
mystery of the beloved lost missionary was
solved. His mysterious death strengthened his
legacy, and he is honored and remembered in
historical publications and museums.
Other religions soon followed the Oblates,
with Presbyterian, Episcopal and Methodist
churches established by 1851. Reverend Hiram
Chamberlain arrived in 1849 and founded the
Presbyterian Church, the first Protestant Church
in the Valley. Moving to Brownsville with him
was his high-spirited young daughter, Henrietta,
who soon caught the eye of the rugged young
riverboat captain named Richard King. They
married four years later and together they
established their famous ranching empire.
✧
Girls from all over South Texas studied at
the Convent of the Incarnate Word and
Blessed Sacrament, which was blessed and
opened in December 1868 to replace the
second convent destroyed in the hurricane of
1867. The Sisters of the order once assisted
St. Joseph’s College by teaching small boys.
The building was razed in 1969.
CHAPTER III
47

✧
The Immaculate Conception Church was
designed by Father Peter Keralum, O.M.I.
When built by the Oblates in 1859, it was
considered the finest example of Gothic
architecture in America.
In addition to the need for churches, there
was also a desperate need for education in the
growing community. Responding to that need,
four Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed
Sacrament from Lyons, France, arrived in
January 1853 to establish the Incarnate Word
Academy for young women. In 1854 Reverend
Chamberlain opened a “male school.” Melinda
Rankin, founder of the Rio Grande Female
Institute, gave instructions in “English branches
of education” and in French, music, and
painting, and public education began in 1854.
Schools and churches meant that a city
was emerging.
STEAMBOATS ON
THE RIO GRANDE
The rapid growth of Brownsville was closely
tied to commercial steamboat navigation on the
river. Today the Rio Grande is a shallow, slowmoving
stream, except in times of heavy rains.
Criss-crossed with bridges and filled with
treacherous sandbars, it is difficult to imagine
that steamboats once moved upstream and
back, filled with people, mail and merchandise.
Yet, for several decades steamboats provided
the main transportation upriver to Rio Grande
City and Camargo, and on to Roma when the
river was high. First, they carried soldiers and
supplies for General Taylor’s army. Then they
carried staple goods and rare tobaccos, rough
lumber and fancy silks for overland transport
by carts and mule trains the rest of the way to
the people of the border and the mining towns
of northern Mexico.
Attempts were made to navigate the
river before the Mexican War, but existing boats
were not adapted for the shallow channels of
the Rio Grande. Neither did Matamoros
merchants encourage river navigation, for they
zealously guarded the lucrative trade with
northern Mexico supplied by trains of carts. It
was not until General Zachary Taylor decided to
use steamboats to take men and supplies
upriver to Camargo during the U.S.-Mexican
War that boats were used successfully.
The Corvette was the first boat brought in
for Taylor’s use—a luxury liner from the
Mississippi, and its skipper was Captain Mifflin
Kenedy. As many as ten steamboats were used
to shuttle men and supplies back and forth
during the war. The military maintained the
boats until the last soldiers had left northern
Mexico about November 1847. Taylor came
back from his famous victory at Buena Vista by
horseback to Camargo, and the steamer Colonel
Cross carried him downstream with young
Captain Richard King at the helm.
When the military mission ended, the
Quartermaster was left with eleven riverboats
of all shapes and sizes tied up in Brownsville,
and they were advertised for auction. The
Colonel Cross went to its former skipper for
$750, and other boats were purchased by
Charles Stillman, who saw a way to greater
wealth by shipping merchandise by boat.
Operating for profit in private ownership,
it soon became apparent that the boats were
not satisfactory on the Rio Grande. They
broke down too often and stuck aground, losing
revenue in delays and costly repairs. They
were not built sturdy enough for the rough
sea from Brazos Santiago to the river mouth
and their cranky engines lacked power.
With hard work, King made a reasonable
profit from his one boat, but the Stillman boats
were losing money. Stillman asked his friend
Mifflin Kenedy to become his partner and turn
the business into a profitable operation, to which
Kenedy agreed if Richard King would join them.
Thus, M. Kenedy & Company was organized in
1850, with the provision that Stillman would
finance the building of special boats for the
navigational hazards of the Rio Grande.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
48

King designed two kinds of boats—one a big
and stout brute side-wheeler to carry large loads
from Brazos Harbor to the river mouth and on
as far upstream as practical, and then an upriver
boat with powerful boilers that could “float in a
light sweat.” The boats were built on special
order in Pittsburgh, with the first ones named
the Grampus and the Comanche. The Grampus
took merchandise as far as it could navigate to
their terminal ten miles upriver or on to
Brownsville. Then goods were transferred to the
Comanche for the rest of the route. Other boats
were added, including the Ranchero.
It was a good system and they were blessed
with good luck when the Matamoros
merchants decided to use the steamboats to
transport their goods upriver and into Mexico.
Stillman withdrew after the Civil War and the
name became “King, Kenedy & Company.”
During twenty-four years of continuous
business, the two companies bought and
operated about twenty-six boats.
The Civil War years were turbulent ones
along the river. Just as the steamers were
beginning to move quantities of Confederate
cotton to the booming Mexican port of Bagdad
for shipment to Europe, one of Lincoln’s sloops
of war, the Portsmouth, with twenty-two guns,
arrived at Brazos Santiago. They were sure to
fire on the steamboats, sailing under the
Confederate flag.
The boats were pulled out of service, but not
for long. In a few days they were flying the neutral
flag of Mexico with a front of Mexican ownership
and registry, which placed titles in the names of
friends and business connections in Matamoros.
Without a change in crew or supervision, the
boats began a boomtime business hauling cotton
under the noses of the Union blockaders, lasting
from the spring of 1862, when cotton was sixteen
cents a pound, until the war’s end in 1865, when
the price ranged from sixty-eight cents to over a
dollar a pound.
They also supplied the Confederate forces
along the border with items that had passed
through “neutral” customs, such as cases of
Enfield rifles labeled “Hollow Ware,” barrels of
gunpowder branded “Bean Flour,” boxes of
percussion caps bearing the legend “Canned
Goods” and the like, as well as food and other
supplies. They emerged from the war with their
boats and fortunes reasonably intact. After
receiving presidential pardons for their rebel
activities, Kenedy and King again hauled
supplies for the U.S. Army quartermaster as they
took stock of the boats and reorganized for
peacetime business. Other companies also
operated steamboats during this period.
The boats became key factors in the economy
of the lower Rio Grande and a wide section of
✧
Above: A painting in the La Borde House
Restaurant in Rio Grande City depicts the
excitement of the townspeople when the
steamboats docked there. They brought
people, merchandise, and news of the
outside world.
Below: Memories of the steamboating days
are preserved in many ways. This painting
on tile of the Ranchero is in the home of
Laurier McDonald, an Edinburg attorney,
historian, and collector of early Rio Grande
Valley memorabilia.
CHAPTER III
49

✧
Above: This flier gives the schedule of
Bessie, the last steamboat on the Rio
Grande. After King and Kenedy turned
their attention to ranching, William Kelly
owned and operated the steamboat service.
COURTESY OF GLENN HOUSLEY.
Below: Merchandise is shown being
unloaded from the steamboat Bessie to
wagons at Rancho de Santa María. The
Bessie carried a four-hundred-pound bell
instead of a whistle. After its final trip on
the river in 1902, the bell had several
owners before it was moved to St. Joseph the
Worker Church in McAllen in 1975.
northeastern Mexico. They brought visible
changes along the river as towns and settlements
prospered. Although Rio Grande City was the
year-round head of steamboat navigation,
steamboats could travel to Roma and beyond for
at least the seven months from June to November.
Author-educator Florence Johnson Scott of
Rio Grande City, who did much research on the
steamboat era, said in a visit with the author in
1972: “Many of the businessmen have told me
that the boat whistle would sound at the landing
at Ringgold and no matter what time of the day
or night, everybody would drop what they were
doing and rush to greet it. The boat brought the
mail, the news of the outside world, and people.
They would look at everybody as they got off,
whether he was a gangster, officer, or whether he
was going to spend some money in the town.”
But changes were coming. The steamboat
business experienced a steady decline and by
June 1867 all but one of the steamers were tied
up, idle. In late 1867 the border suffered a
blow which put finishing touches to its already
well-developed postwar depression. A
hurricane roared in from the Gulf and ripped
at Brownsville and Matamoros, causing great
damage to both towns.
Wind and water destroyed the busy wartime
port of Bagdad in Mexico and Clarksville on the
U.S. side, and knocked flat most of the buildings
at Brazos Santiago and Port Isabel. The terminal
of the riverboat captains ten miles upriver was
destroyed and four steamboats were sunk.
The whole economy of the lower Rio Grande
staggered. King seems to have felt this damage
was a signal to quit the river and devote full
time to his ranch, and Kenedy also became a
rancher. Faced with the dwindling away of a
business that had seen golden days but saw
them no longer, the firm was sold to Captain
William Kelly, one of the company’s most able
skippers, who was backed by border
merchants. But the steamboats could not
compete with the Iron Horse.
The Rio Grande Railroad Company built
a narrow-gauge railroad from Port Isabel
to Brownsville in 1871 to carry merchandise
direct from the ships at Brazos Santiago
Pass to Brownsville, and by 1880 a railroad was
built from Corpus Christi to Laredo by the
Texas-Mexico Railroad. This changed the entire
importing system. Merchandise could be
unloaded at Corpus Christi and sent by train to
Laredo and into Mexico. Though efforts already
were under way to bring a railroad to the Valley,
it would be 1904 before the first train roared
into Brownsville.
The fleet of steamboats which had played
such a great role in the economic life of the
border finally dwindled to one small steamer
named the Bessie. It is said that the last boat ride
was taken about 1903 by a group of students
from Roma who chartered it to ride to
Brownsville to enter an academy and the Bessie
was never heard from again. However, the bell
that announced its arrival to stops along its river
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
50

TAMING A WILD COUNTRY
WILD CATTLE COUNTRY
The legendary Texas Longhorns had been roaming and multiplying in the wide expanses of the
Texas plains since the 1700s. They were the descendants of the Spanish breeds of cattle brought
first to the West Indies by Columbus, where they thrived and provided stock for export to the later
settlements of New Spain. Cattle also were brought directly from Spain to the haciendas of New
Spain by settlers, and on to the missions over Texas by the padres who hoped to Christianize the
Indians. The cattle provided food and helped make the missions self-sustaining. By the early
1800s, most of the missions had been abandoned and the cattle left to run wild when the padres
became discouraged and the Spanish government withdrew its financial support.
Spanish cattle also were among the possessions brought to the colonies established along the
Rio Grande Valley in the mid-1700s. Ranches were established on both sides of the river and some
of the land grantees built homes and corrals on the north side in what is now the United States,
living for a time on their ranches. However, when hostile Indians swept down and destroyed their
homes, families fled back across the river to the established towns. Again, cattle and sometimes
horses were left behind, which over time produced the wild mustangs of the Wild Horse Desert.
Wild, ownerless cattle of various shades and colors roamed the dry, lonely land looking for food
and water. Only the fittest survived, and they learned to live without the help of man. They thrived
and increased in numbers, becoming heavier and rangier than their forebears. Long-legged and
✧
Wild, ownerless cattle roamed the dry,
lonely land of the Wild Horse Desert. Only
the fittest survived, and they learned to live
without the help of man.
COURTESY OF THE PORT ISABEL HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
CHAPTER IV
51

✧
A Texas Historical Commission marker
near the Gateway International Bridge in
Brownsville was dedicated in 1995 to
commemorate the southernmost part of the
Chisholm Trail. The famous cattle trail,
named for trailblazer and trader Jessie
Chisholm, allowed Valley and Texas
ranchers to move large herds to the railroad
in Kansas and on to eastern markets.
long-walking as well as long-horned, they
could endure thirst and fight off wolves and
even bears. The curves of the horns, often
beautiful, were as varied as the colors of their
hair, and some older animals had spreads up
to eight or nine feet from tip to tip. Fast as a
deer, wild, and protective of their young, these
animals formed the basis of the cattle industry
of the Southwest.
After the Civil War, about the only thing
Texans found in abundance when returning
home, broke and destitute, were Longhorn
cattle. Though Texas had not been too badly
scarred by the military conflict, the state’s
economy was badly wrecked like that of the
rest of the Confederacy. The borders of Texas
were bulging with Longhorns, hundreds of
thousands without brand and ownerless, but
markets were as scarce as cattle were plentiful.
Outlets to the depressed South and Mexico
were limited, so Texans turned their eyes to
the beef-hungry North. Texas had no railroads
and few roads of any kind. When the Kansas
Pacific Railroad pushed westward across the
prairie and reached Abilene, Kansas, in the
spring of 1867, cattle dealers built a big
stockyard and a hotel and announced that
they wanted cows—lots of them. The word
traveled fast down the Gulf Coast and the
days of the big cattle drives along the storied
Chisholm Trail began, as did the legends
about them.
The journey took as long as ten months
and required the stamina of a strong and
durable animal. The raw-boned Longhorn
became king of the trail, for only this longlegged
beast could have tramped up that trail,
enduring the drought, floods and blizzards.
He could rustle his own living, battle swollen
rivers, and race from prairie fire.
A feeder route of the storied Chisholm Trail
that roughly paralleled U.S. Highway 281, took
many thousands of the Longhorns from the
Wild Horse Desert up the trail to Abilene.
In the spring of 1870, Richard King began
the first of his big cattle drives to Abilene,
eleven hundred miles away, across twenty
rivers, through the Oklahoma Territory, and
finally to Abilene. Most of the cattle arrived in
good condition and brought twenty gold
dollars a head. During the years of the trail
drives, more than 100,000 head of King
Ranch cattle headed up the trail to help feed a
beef-hungry nation and to help stock the
ranches of a new industry.
The long trail drives peaked in 1871 with
seven hundred thousand cattle. By 1886 the
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
52

THE VAST KING RANCH
cattle spree clearly showed signs of playing
out and the end of the trail was in sight.
Railroad transportation was expanding and
northern beef was available again. Times were
changing. By 1890, when the trails were
plowed under and fenced across, ten million
Longhorns had been driven out of Texas. As
rain beat out twenty years of prints from ten
million Longhorns and grass spread over the
three-hundred-mile-wide Chisholm Trail,
cowmen adjusted themselves to a new
economy of fenced ranches, improved cattle
breeds, and shipments by rail.
Longhorns were eventually nearly bred out
of existence in favor of meatier types, but a
few are preserved today in government and
private herds, and a select few are visible to
King Ranch visitors on their guided tours.
Today, few physical traces are left of the
Chisholm Trail, but it served the times well. It
had provided a market when ranchers were
overstocked with cattle and short of cash,
spurred settlement and stocking of northern
ranges, brought down the price of beef for the
housewife and helped make beef the chief meat
item on the dinner table. It had shown Texas
cowmen the need for improved breeds and
given them the means to bring in blooded
stock, as well as to improve their ranches. The
trail drives also gave thousands of young men
an opportunity for adventure and provided
subjects for epic literature, art, movies, and
television scripts.
With the steamboat business going well, in
1853 Captain Richard King accepted an invitation
to attend the Lone Star Fair in Corpus
Christi being promoted by the town’s swashbuckling
founder, Henry Lawrence Kinney.
The fair, over-promoted and under-supported,
proved disastrous for Kinney, but it had a
lasting effect on the area between the Nueces
and the Rio Grande and on the cattle industry
of Texas.
The steamboat business was prosperous
but hazardous, and King was thinking of
other investments, like land. He welcomed
the opportunity to explore the area between
Brownsville and Corpus Christi. The 165-mile
trip took four to five days on horseback
through country usually visited only by
Indians, hide peelers, mustangers and assorted
roaming cutthroats. No one had tried to
buy land in the heart of that desert for many
harsh years, but it appealed to King. Grass
grew almost knee high, with flexible golden
blades bent westward in big billows by the
wind, for only part of the land had been made
brushy by the wandering herds, which could
become the initial stock for a cattle operation.
King and his party came to a creek when
124 miles from Brownsville and still 45 miles
to Corpus Christi. It was called the Santa
Gertrudis, an oasis with cool, sweet water to
refresh the traveler and large mesquite trees
✧
Above: Captain Richard King.
Below: The Santa Gertrudis Creek Bridge.
According to tradition, the bridge dates
back to the Civil War years when wagons
loaded with Confederate cotton crossed
the creek.
CHAPTER IV
53

✧
Top: The King Ranch great house became
famous for its hospitality through periods of
war, bandits, droughts, good markets and
bad ones, a stopping place for wayfarers.
Above: Modern day cowboys take time out
to rest and tell tall tales. Several generations
of Los Kineños tended cattle and raised
their families on the King Ranch.
that provided protection from the sun. At the
fair, King and a friend, Texas Ranger Captain
Gideon “Legs” Lewis, formed a partnership to
establish and operate a livestock operation
with headquarters at the site on the creek.
The land was part of a 15,500 acre grant
known as the Rincon de Santa Gertrudis. King
purchased the property, paying the widow of
Juan Mendiola $300, then considered a fair
price, which came to two cents an acre. When
he set up his cow camp by the Santa Gertrudis,
it was the opening gambit of his bid to tame the
Wild Horse Desert, and a sign of his willingness
to do battle with the marauding Apaches from
the north, the bandits who raided from south of
the Rio Grande, and with the tough, intractable
land itself. It was the beginning of a dream he
would pursue for the rest of his life, as would
his family after him.
When King introduced his young
Presbyterian bride Henrietta to the rigors of
early ranch life in 1854, she loved it—danger,
hardships, and all. The Santa Gertrudis
became the headquarters ranch, and on the
spot by the creek where the land was high,
they built their home. The ranch became
famous for its hospitality through periods of
war, bandits, droughts, good markets and bad
ones, a stopping place for wayfarers, a sort of
city of refuge for all classes, presided over by
the gracious Henrietta.
In 1855, King lost his friend and partner,
“Legs” Lewis, to a bullet just as they were getting
organized, a loss keenly felt, but King was
committed to his dream. Soon his friend and
steamboat partner Mifflin Kenedy joined the
ranching enterprise, and they continued to
extend the ranch holdings. Land was cheap, but
it took time to find the owners, their heirs, and
get titles cleared. For this job King chose the
highly respected lawyer, Stephen Powers of
Brownsville. He had come from high posts in
Washington to head the New York Volunteers
during the Mexican War and stayed in
Brownsville to establish his law firm in 1850.
What began as a business relationship became a
friendship that lasted the rest of their lives.
With additional land, more stock was
needed, and they bought cattle from Camargo,
Mier, and other ranches in northern Mexico,
then in a long drought. One little hamlet
found itself without a livelihood after selling
its bony stock. The captain offered to settle the
entire community on the Santa Gertrudis, to
which they agreed. The resulting entrada had
more than a hundred men, women and
children, their belongings piled high on
rickety carretas and packsaddle burros.
The transplanted hamlet took root, furnishing
the seed for a tough, proud, special
breed of vaqueros called Los Kineños, the King
People. Some of their descendants continue to
work on the King Ranch today. Henrietta
established a primary school for the children
and encouraged them to continue their education
in Kingsville and beyond.
During the Civil War, the area between the
Nueces River and the Rio Grande was the
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
54

ack door to the Confederacy and a way
around the Union blockade of Confederate
ports. King Ranch became a depot on the
Cotton Road over which hundreds of thousands
of bales of cotton were shipped to
Matamoros. From there, the cotton was trundled
to ships of foreign registry and shipped
to European markets.
In 1868, King’s partner, Mifflin Kenedy,
decided to move his family to Corpus Christi,
and the partnership ended amicably. They
divided the cattle equally, and Kenedy
established a ranch on twenty-six leagues of
the Laureles grant just east of the Santa
Gertrudis that he acquired from the brother of
Charles Stillman.
Richard King died in 1885 with debts of
$500,000, as his fortune had gone into fences,
new land and better horses. His widow, with
son-in-law, Robert Kleberg, Sr., as ranch manager,
set about paying off the debts, improving
the cattle, increasing and consolidating the
ranchlands. Henrietta survived her husband
by forty years and left the ranch in good
financial condition in the hands of her son-inlaw
and his son, Robert Kleberg, Jr.
Kleberg found artesian wells that would
produce vital drinking water for the herds and
spearheaded the development of a special
breed of cattle that could function in hot,
humid and unfavorable environments. Called
Santa Gertrudis, the breed was developed by
crossing Indian Brahman with British
Shorthorn. In 1920 those matings produced a
particular bull calf, deep red in color, with
conformation that impressed everyone
involved. They called him “Monkey” and he
became the foundation sire of the first beef
breed that was recognized by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture as being developed
in the United States.
Meanwhile, the ranch had acquired considerable
debt, complicated by estate taxes
after the death of Henrietta King. While initial
oil exploration had been done on the ranch in
the 1920s, it was 1933 before a lease was
entered into with Humble Oil and serious
exploration began. The lease money from
Humble and income from oil and gas production
that began in May 1939 helped retire
debt and finance other activities.
In the ensuing years, the ranch has been a
bellwether of America’s ranching industry, a
producer of some of the all-time top running
and performance horses, and a source of
technology that has led to many significant
advances in livestock and wildlife production
and management.
By the year 2000, the King Ranch was
quite different from that cow camp by Santa
Gertrudis Creek. Still a vital part of the area’s
cattle industry, it sprawls across 825,000 acres
of South Texas land, an area larger than Rhode
Island. As the home of 60,000 cattle and 300
quarter horses, it is one of the largest ranches
in the world. Still owned by descendants of
✧
Above: The only Longhorns now seen on the
King Ranch are well-fed, pampered, and
accustomed to being ogled by visitors.
Below: The Santa Gertrudis breed developed
by the King Ranch was the first beef breed
recognized by the USDA as being developed
in the United States. Thousands of Santa
Gertrudis are spread over the King Ranch,
as well as other ranches in the U.S. and
other countries with an environment similar
to South Texas.
COURTESY OF THE SANTA GERTRUDIS BREEDERS
INTERNATIONAL, KINGSVILLE, TEXAS.
CHAPTER IV
55

Richard and Henrietta King, it is managed
from corporate offices in Houston. Guided
historical and agricultural tours are available
at the King Ranch near Kingsville.
FRANCISCO YTURRIA:
BANKER AND RANCHER
✧
Francisco Yturria in his later years.
COURTESY OF THE BROWNSVILLE
HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
Francisco Yturria, one of Brownsville’s
successful early merchants and its first
banker, also became a rancher. Born of
Spanish parents in Matamoros, Yturria
married Felicitas Treviño, whose father had
been awarded the San Martin land grant by
the Mexican government. He purchased lands
adjoining those of his wife’s inheritance, plus
additional acreage. The large Punta del Monte
Ranch in what is now Willacy County was the
headquarters of an 85,000-acre tract which
produced 2,000 steers per year. Though he
never lived on the ranch, Yturria built a
school and chapel for the families who lived
and worked there, as well as a large house for
the administrator.
Yturria often joined cattle drives with King
and Kenedy. The combined herds sometimes
required three hundred cowboys for the trip up
the Chisholm Trail to Kansas. He brought the
first Angus cattle to the region and contributed
to the building of the St. Louis, Brownsville,
and Mexican Railroad in the Valley.
After his death in 1912, the lands were
divided between Daniel Yturria and Isabel
Yturria Garcia, the two adopted children of
“Don Pancho” and Felicitas. In Willacy and
Kenedy Counties, the Garcia heirs received
properties west of the railroad and the Yturria
families received the lands east of the rail line.
Now divided into several properties on each
side, the Yturria descendants continue to
develop and operate the ranches, a lasting
legacy of “Don Pancho.” His great-grandson
and namesake, Francisco “Frank” Yturria, is
also a businessman and rancher. He raises
Santa Gertrudis and Beefmaster cattle, but no
Longhorns. Frank Yturria has set aside one
thousand acres of his ranch to provide habitat
for endangered species. In April 2000, Texas
Parks & Wildlife chose him as “Lone Star
Land Steward of the Year,” an award given to
ranchers who protect wildlife.
ROMA:
A NATIONAL HISTORIC
LANDMARK DISTRICT
Roma’s early history is rooted in the
Spanish colonial period. In 1746 José de
Escandón received permission from the
Spanish Crown to colonize Nuevo Santander,
which extended from the Sierra Madre
Oriental to the Gulf of Mexico and from the
rainforests of Tamaulipas northward beyond
the Rio Grande. By 1752 Escandón had
founded the towns of Camargo, Reynosa,
Revilla, and Mier south of the Rio Grande,
and Dolores on the north bank, followed by
Laredo in 1755.
Land was granted to families willing to
settle in these frontier outposts. By 1763 the
Saenz and Salinas families had established
Rancho de los Saenz north of the river on
lands belonging to Mier. The effort was shortlived,
but a second ranch, Rancho de Buena
Vista, was soon established nearby. By 1840
the rural settlement evolved into the village of
Garcías, and in the late 1840s, the name was
changed to Roma. The origin of the “Roma”
name is uncertain, but probably derived from
a ranch, San Pedro de Roma, across the river.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
56

A reminder of the Spanish Colonial legacy
remains in the name of Los Saenz, a small
community on the southeastern edge of Roma
in the area of the first ranch.
In the economic boom that followed the
end of the U.S.-Mexican War in 1848,
steamboats gave the river towns and adjacent
areas access to international trade. Shallow
water made passage to Laredo impractical,
and Roma evolved as the head of navigation
on the river, developing a vibrant economy.
Throughout the rest of the nineteenth century,
Roma prospered as goods bound for Mexico
from the Eastern U.S. and Europe passed
through its dock. By the end of the century,
railroads connected Laredo and large areas of
Northern Mexico to direct trade, making
steamboats unnecessary to transport goods to
the remote region.
Roma had the first post office west of
Brownsville and the Oblates of Mary
Immaculate, a French-Catholic order, chose
Roma as the site of one of their first churches in
the Rio Grande Valley. Our Lady of Refuge
Church was designed by Father Pierre Keralum,
a French architect-turned-priest, and built
under his supervision between 1854 and 1858.
It was one of several Valley churches designed
or influenced by Father Keralum. Though a
new church was constructed at the site in 1966,
the spire and entrances were preserved from the
original Gothic style church.
The layout of Roma reflects the Hispanic
tradition of a plaza, lined with continuous
structures with a church as a focal point. The
plaza is the traditional economic and social
center of Mexican villages, towns and cities.
In general, the structures are fronted by stone
or brick sidewalks and form walled compounds
with large courtyards in the
Hispanic/Moorish tradition. Nearly all of the
“merchant princes” of Roma, whose wealth
was generated from the steamboat trade, lived
on or near the plaza. This great public space
was originally unpaved and without vegetation,
providing a sweeping view of the lands
across the river.
In their variety, the structures of Roma
offer a mixture of architectural styles. Oneroom
native sandstone or caliche block
dwellings recall building traditions familiar to
the original Spanish settlers. Two-story sandstone
homes and businesses of molded brick
exhibit the sophistication of design and construction
techniques brought to the area during
Roma’s mid-to-late nineteenth century
prosperity. Exteriors are painted or plastered
in vibrant colors and roofs are lined with
brick, reflecting the Mexican tradition.
In 1971, the nine-square block area
around the Roma Plaza was designated a
National Historic Landmark District, the
highest designation for historic properties in
the United States.
The district contains over thirty-five
structures built before 1900. Each is a
monument to the courageous, pioneering spirit
✧
Above: Our Lady of Refuge Catholic Church
presides over the renovated plaza in Roma’s
National Historic Landmark District. The
church tower is the only remaining portion
of the church built in Roma in 1854 by the
Oblate missionaries.
Below: The Roma Plaza is the heart of the
city’s National Historic Landmark District.
A Walking Tour Guide pinpoints their
locations and gives historical and
architectural information about 35 buildings
in the nine square block area.
CHAPTER IV
57

✧
Above: This Old Roma Convent near the
plaza was built in the 1880s to serve as the
only convent between Brownsville and
Laredo. The Sisters of Mercy occupied the
property when it was closed in the late
1930s. It has been renovated and preserved
for use as a parish hall.
Below: The John Vale-Noah Cox House was
built by John Vale, a Swedish immigrant, in
1853. The building was later purchased by
Noah Cox, a lawyer from Ohio, and was
used as his residence and headquarters for
his extensive business and ranching interests
during the steamboat era.
of its early settlers and the decades of subsequent
prosperity as an important commercial center for
this area of the Texas/Mexico borderlands.
Historic-minded Roma citizens have
organized The Conservation Fund to preserve
and share the historical reminders of over two
centuries of Texas/Mexico borderlands heritage.
They have developed a walking guide for Roma’s
National Historical Landmark District. It gives
the location, a brief history and description of
thirty-five historic buildings, some of which are
described and pictured herein.
Many of these buildings bear the
distinctive mark of German-born Heinrich
“Enrique” Portscheller, who arrived in Mexico
about 1865 and settled in Roma in 1883,
where he established a brickyard and began
designing and building residential and
commercial structures. Known for his
intricate molded brick detailing and the use of
iron grillwork, Portscheller emerged as one of
the foremost builders in the borderlands. He
left Roma in 1894, spending the remainder of
his life in Laredo. Other examples of his work
can be seen in Monterrey, Laredo, Rio Grande
City, and Mier. One of the streets by the plaza
is appropriately named “Portscheller Street.”
The elegant Parish Hall built in the 1880s
originally housed the convent of the Sisters of
the Incarnate Word (1880s-1913) and the
Sisters of Mercy (1913-1940). A low wall
once surrounded the convent and parking
area. This building was the first of many
designed by Portscheller, whose architecture
dominates historic Roma.
The Roma Restoration Project in the
National Historic Landmark District currently
includes nine structures that reflect a crosssection
of the historic fabric of the community.
The project is intended to become a model
for other preservation projects along Los
Caminos del Rio (Roads of the River) Heritage
Corridor. This binational program for visitors
and residents is designed to bolster economic
activity through promotion and preservation
of the history and culture shared by Mexico
and the U.S. along the lower Rio Grande.
The two-story John Vale-Noah Cox House
was built in 1853 by Swedish immigrant John
Vale. Originally it had a flat roof, with the
hipped roof added in the 1880s. Noah Cox
purchased the property in 1856 and operated
a mercantile establishment on the first floor,
while living upstairs. The front elevation has
finely carved sandstone classical details in the
cornice. Portions of the stone walls that
enclosed the property may still be seen.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
58

One of the distinctive buildings by the plaza
that has been restored was built for Manuel
Guerra. Born in Mier, Guerra was educated in
Monterrey and Corpus Christi and returned
briefly to Mier in 1876 to engage in a
mercantile business. Mier was a thriving town
at that time, but Guerra decided to move across
the river to Roma to establish his business.
People came from miles around to trade with
Guerra for goods he personally secured in
Corpus Christi. In 1884 Guerra contracted
with Portscheller to build him a new store. The
store was on the first floor and the Guerra
residence was on the second floor. It was
vacant for many years before its was restored as
part of the Roma Restoration Project.
The Lino Ramirez Residence and Store was
also designed and built by Portscheller in the
1880s. A continuous wrought-iron balcony
once surrounded the second story. The faded
signs for “Cantina” and “Beer” were painted
on the building for the 1953 movie, Viva
Zapata, which was filmed on the Roma Plaza.
Many other buildings around the plaza are
of great interest for their architecture and
history. These include the first mission church
built in Roma about 1829 by priests from Mier,
later used as a dwelling, a library and a
museum; attorney Edward Hord’s 1853 twostory
sandstone office, later the Ramirez
Hospital, and the striking Pablo Ramirez House
that is now the Knights of Columbus Hall.
Along the river at the base of the bluff, the
busy Roma wharf received goods shipped
upriver from Brownsville and Matamoros on
steamboats and barges. The arriving goods
originated as far away as New Orleans, the
Eastern U.S. seaboard, and Europe. The docks
were at the foot of Juarez Street, which was
lined with warehouses and stores.
Another legacy is the Roma-Ciudad Miguel
Alemán suspension bridge across the river to
Miguel Alemán, built in 1928 and the last
remaining of five such bridges that spanned the
✧
Above: The Manuel Guerra Store was built
in 1884 by architect-builder Heinrich
Portscheller. The lower floor was used for
Guerra’s mercantile business and the second
story was the family’s residence. It stood
empty for many years before its exterior
was renovated as part of the Roma
Restoration Project.
Below: The Lino Ramírez Building, an
example of the highly developed brick
architecture attributed to Heinrich
Portscheller, was built in the 1880s. It was
used as “Rosita’s Cantina” when the movie
Viva Zapata was filmed in Roma in the
1950s with Marlon Brando.
CHAPTER IV
59

✧
Right: The Roma-Ciudad Miguel Alemán
suspension bridge, which stretches seven
hundred feet across the Rio Grande, was
built in 1928 and is the last remaining of
five such bridges that spanned the river in
the region. It is now a pedestrian only
crossing, standing alongside a newer span
now used for vehicles.
Below: The two hundred-mile stretch of the
Rio Grande from Laredo to Brownsville is
named Los Caminos del Rio (The Roads of
the River). The heritage corridor is rich in
natural and cultural legacies along the
Lower Rio Grande of Texas and Mexico. It
encompasses more than 230 historic sites
along its stretch of the Texas/Mexico border,
many of them in Roma, Rio Grande City,
and Brownsville.
COURTESY OF THE LOS CAMINOS DEL RIO PROJECT AND
THE TEXAS HISTORICAL COMMISSION.
Rio Grande in this region. It is to be restored
and used as a pedestrian crossing, while the
modern highway bridge that spans the river
nearby is now used for vehicular traffic.
Roma walking tour organizers also invite visitors
to explore the charming plazas, cobblestone
streets and beautiful churches across the
Rio Grande in Roma’s parent city, Mier. Located
on Mexico’s Highway 2, six miles upriver, Mier
is one of the best preserved historic towns along
the entire U.S.-Mexico border. Roma and the
nearby Mexican border towns share a distinct
heritage expressed through stunning architecture,
rich cultural traditions, and family ties that
extend two and one-half centuries into the past.
Today, Roma is still an important port of
entry for trade and tourism. Its bridge takes
eighteen-wheelers filled with merchandise, as
well as sightseeing travelers through Miguel
Alemán to Monterrey over excellent highways in
about two hours. Along with appreciation of its
past, citizens look to the future with targeted
business development, improved infrastructure,
and an invitation to visitors to enjoy dining,
shopping, and the international atmosphere that
is uniquely Roma, Texas.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE CITY
Rio Grande City brings a storied past filled
with tales of adventure. It was first known as
Carnestolendas Ranch when established in
1753 on a Spanish land grant awarded to
Captain José de la Garza Falcón. A
descendant, Francisco de la Garza Martínez,
was owner in the 1830s when a young man,
Henry Clay Davis of Kentucky, came to the
area as a volunteer with Texan forces in 1842.
In Camargo he met Maria Hilaria de la Garza,
Francisco’s granddaughter, and courted her
“in proper Spanish form.” They married in
1846, with the understanding that Henry
Clay would settle down across the river on
what was then known as the Garza Ranch.
First called Davis Landing, it became a
major trade center along the winding river
route. The distance by steamboat from
Brownsville to Davis Landing was 350 miles;
overland it was only 125 miles, but at that time
the steamboats provided the best means of
moving merchandise and people to and from
the area. In 1848, soon after Starr County was
created, Davis and Captain Forbes Britton laid
out the town to begin the selling of lots, named
it “Rio Grande,” which became “Rio Grande
City” in 1926. Soon it became the county seat.
The town did not boom as expected and
Captain Britton moved on, but the plaza in the
center of the town bears his name.
Also in 1848, Fort Ringgold, first known as
Ringgold Barracks, was established as an army
post following the Treaty of Guadalupe
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
60

Hidalgo for protection of U.S. citizens from
Indian forays and border bandits. Named
after Major Samuel Ringgold, Fourth Artillery,
who was killed early in the U.S.-Mexican War
at Palo Alto, it was one of the chain of forts of
the system of defense adopted on the western
frontier. Robert E. Lee spent a month at the
fort on court-martial duties in 1856,
remembered by the Lee House in the fort
complex. The fort was rebuilt after the Civil
War and figured greatly in the history of the
area for a hundred years. It was deactivated in
1944 and is now part of the Rio Grande City
Independent School District, which has
renovated several of the buildings for use by
the school system.
Between the Mexican and Civil Wars, Rio
Grande City was the base from which several
revolutionary activities were launched in
Mexico as the people of Northeastern Mexico
did not hold their Central Government in
high esteem. Along the border were gathered
many adventurers lately discharged from the
army that had invaded Mexico and others that
had simply “gone to Texas.” All had a
profound lack of interest in wrestling a plow
or any sweat-producing effort. They were a
picturesque, irresponsible crew ready for a
filibustering expedition, cattle rustling, or a
bit of smuggling.
In March of 1861, with the beginning of
the Civil War, Federal troops withdrew from
Fort Ringgold and it remained in Confederate
hands until near the end of the war. When
hostilities ended, the U.S. government moved
large forces to the border to discourage the
army of Emperor Maximilian in Mexico and
offer aid to the Juarista government. A small
but very decisive battle was fought across the
border near Camargo at a point called Santa
Gertrudis, about ten miles southeast of Rio
Grande City on June 16, 1866. Quite a
number of Americans fought on both sides,
the ex-Confederates favoring Maximilian,
whose troops were soundly defeated. The
battle marked the beginning of the end of his
short reign. A small obelisk on top of one of
the highest hills around Camargo marks the
site of the battle.
Rio Grande City has many interesting
buildings dating from the mid to late 1800s.
Some have been restored and are in use today;
others bear the ravages of time. The most
striking restoration project is the La Borde
House on Main Street. The unusual hotel
owes its origin to an event remote from the
Valley—the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.
Francois Laborde (the original family
spelling) was one of several Frenchmen who
came to this country following the fall of
Alsace and Lorraine to the Prussians. They
fled their homelands to avoid serving in the
army of the victors.
By the time Laborde arrived in Rio Grande
City, other French families had already
settled, including Ernest Marks and his
daughter Eva. Francois and Eva married and
he established a bustling trade importing
kidskins and other goods from Mexico.
✧
Top: Fort Ringgold was established in 1848,
rebuilt after the Civil War, and deactivated
in 1944. It is now utilized by the Rio
Grande City Independent School District,
which has modernized many of its buildings.
This entrance is now used by Rio Grande
City’s schoolchildren.
Above: The Robert E. Lee House is where
Lee stayed when troubleshooting in the
border area prior to the Civil War. In
poor condition, it still stands in the Fort
Ringgold area.
CHAPTER IV
61

✧
Above: From its beginning and into the
1900s until the railroad came, ox carts were
an important mode of transportation in Rio
Grande City, as well as all parts of the Rio
Grande Valley.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
Below: The Silverio de la Peña building,
built in 1886, is typical of the late 1800s
architecture found in the area. Owners
included druggist Silverio de la Peña and
Juan H. Hinojosa, who served as county
tax assessor, U.S. customs officer, and
bank director. It once served as the city’s
post office.
During their frequent trips into Mexico, they
admired the brilliantly colored bougainvillea
bush and brought some back to plant around
their home. Friends took cuttings, and soon
the colorful shrubs were growing up and
down the Valley.
A French architect was hired to design a
home for the Labordes, which was completed
in 1899. The architecture is said to be “a mixture
of French, Spanish, and Victorian
Gingerbread.” Later they added a second story
and converted it into a hotel. In 1978, the
aging landmark was purchased by Larry
Sheerin of San Antonio, who farmed extensively
in Starr County. In a magnificent
restoration, he had the hotel completely renovated
and brought up to date, but retained the
original balconies, trim and color. Listed in
the National Register of Historic Places, the La
Borde House now provides distinctive hotel
accommodations plus offices for the Starr
County Industrial Foundation, the Rio
Grande City Chamber of Commerce, and
other community organizations.
The Immaculate Conception School and
Church have served the citizens of Rio Grande
City for well over a century. A replica of the
Grotto of Lourdes in France was built on the
church grounds in the 1920s by Father Gustavo
Goldback, using rocks and petrified wood found
in the county. Dedicated in 1928, two of its statues
came from the Loomis Studio in Paris.
When banker Emory Owen Scott brought
his young wife Florence to Rio Grande City in
1919, she protested that, “I don’t like this
little old town,” but he assured her it was only
for a year. She lived there for over sixty years,
becoming a school superintendent for thirty
years. She brought in teachers for the growing
schools and encouraged them to continue
their education, as she did herself.
She also became a writer. Her first and
best-known book, Historical Heritage of the
Lower Rio Grande, first published in 1937, was
based on her University of Texas master’s thesis
on the Spanish colonization of the area.
This book became required reading in the
area of mineral and water rights at many law
schools. In her later years, scholars came from
near and far to get historical information,
often at her home on Sunday afternoons, and
she was widely sought as a speaker for both
men’s and women’s organizations.
Florence Johnson Scott’s legacy, in addition
to the many lives she touched, includes her
books about the heritage of the Rio Grande
Valley and Northern Mexico. Her Historical
Heritage of the Lower Rio Grande was expanded
and reprinted in 1966. Old Rough and Ready
(1935 and 1969) is a story of General Zachary
Taylor, and Royal Land Grants North of the Rio
Grande: 1777-1821 was published in 1969.
From the Civil War until the railroad finally
came in 1925 and oil was discovered in 1929,
Rio Grande City remained a quiet ranching
town with an occasional political feud. In the
decades since, its isolation has ended and its
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
62

economy has diversified. Irrigated farms add
vegetables and melons to the agricultural
economy, and industrial activity is increasing.
Descendants of some of the early Spanish
settlers have lived on their land in Starr
County for many generations, and their
names can be found in business, education,
the professions, and political offices throughout
the Valley and beyond.
Rio Grande City’s future, as its past, is
consigned to the river and the promise of
commerce that it holds, linking families,
friendships and economics with a special kind
of friendly hospitality and cultural continuity.
THE BORDER CITY OF HIDALGO
The earliest settlement in what is now
Hidalgo County, and the only town in the
county until the railroad roared into the Valley
in 1904, dates back to the early Spanish
settlers. A mission was established by the José
de Escandón colonists in 1749 on the site
where Hidalgo now stands. It soon grew into a
town called La Habitación, with a ferry
operating across the river. After Hidalgo
County was established in 1852, the town was
designated the county seat and given the name
of Edinburgh (with an “h”) by John Young, a
Scotsman who operated a trading post in the
county with E. D. Smith and John McAllen.
The name was changed to Hidalgo in 1876.
The flooding waters of the Rio Grande swept
away the town more than once. Each time the
residents returned and rebuilt it. To replace two
smaller, earlier structures, a new courthouse and
jail built of brick were completed in December
1886 at a cost of $20,000. In 1893, Lieutenant
W. H. Chatfield, after completing a tour of duty
at Fort Brown, wrote in his Twin Cities of the
Border and the Country of the Rio Grande:
and everything about it is complete and tasty.
(The second floor and cupola were later
destroyed by fire and were not replaced.)
Census figures of 1890 showed Hidalgo
with 389 people. In addition to the fanfare of
county business from small settlements and
ranches, Hidalgo had two churches, at least
one general store, and more than one private
school. There was a U.S. Customs Service
station on this side of the Reynosa ferry,
which served the neighboring villages. Also,
the U.S. Army kept a small staff of soldiers to
help maintain a telegraph line that connected
Fort Brown and Fort Ringgold. The county’s
first telephone system was installed in
✧
Above: The La Borde House was completed
in 1899 as a home for the Laborde family
and later was enlarged and converted into a
hotel. Carefully restored in 1978, it serves
as a hotel and provides offices for several
community organizations.
Below: The Grotto of Lourdes by the
Immaculate Conception Church that faces
the plaza is a replica of the Grotto of
Lourdes in France. It was built in the 1920s
using rocks and petrified wood found in
the county.
The county courthouse is a handsome
brick building. A neat iron fence extends
around the grounds, which embrace two
acres, seeded with grass, trees and shrubs. The
interior of the courthouse is handsomely finished
in hardwoods; the spacious rooms and
very high ceilings are thoroughly lighted and
ventilated by large windows and doors. A
symmetrical cupola surmounts the building
CHAPTER IV
63

✧
Above: Transportation between Reynosa and
Hidalgo was by canoe, boat or ferry until
the first bridge was built in 1926. In this
photo a launcha or rowboat brings visitors
to Hidalgo from Reynosa.
COURTESY OF THE CITY OF HIDALGO.
Below: People wait their turn to do business
at the Customs House in Hidalgo about
1915. Note the activity on river bank
on the left.
COURTESY OF THE CITY OF HIDALGO.
Hidalgo, connecting the county seat with
neighboring ranches and plantations. Hidalgo
County census totals showed 4,437 in 1880
and 6,534 in 1890.
Many events of historic significance
happened in the fifty-six years that Hidalgo
was the government center: lawlessness,
Indian raids and at least one hanging in the
jail. One year the office of sheriff was held by
seven different men. However, times were
more peaceful and the area had a more
progressive outlook by 1908.
Concerned that continued flooding would
destroy county records and needing a more
central location for the county seat, a special
election was held on October 10, 1908, to
decide whether to move the county seat to the
new town of Chapin. Despite the fact that
there were no buildings in Chapin, only tents
with wooden sides, it was chosen as the new
county seat.
Many county residents were upset by the
election and talk soon grew violent. By dawn
the next day, the county records had been
hurriedly packed up and loaded into a wagon
train. Armed guards escorted the train, which
also carried bricks to build a vault. Chapin
soon changed its name to Edinburg “(without
the “h”), which grew very fast and continues
to serve as the seat of county government.
The old brick jail and courthouse fell into
disrepair. In 1963, when the first historical
medallion placed by the Hidalgo County
Historical Commission was put on the old
courthouse, it was being used to store hay. The
adjacent Border Bank, now the Texas State Bank,
acquired the buildings and launched restoration
plans. The buildings were beautifully restored
and official Texas Historical Markers dedicated
in 1983. The hardwoods mentioned by
Chatfield are there again, and the handmade
bricks that were dirty and/or broken were
scraped and cleaned or replaced by others made
in the same factory as the originals in Reynosa.
The bank utilizes some of the space and the
restored courthouse serves as headquarters for
the Hidalgo County Historical Commission and
the Hidalgo County Historical Society.
Of special historical interest is the Hidalgo
Pumphouse Heritage and Discovery Park. This
first-class museum in the restored pumphouse,
the only one remaining of some thirty such
installations, shows how the Valley was turned
from brushland to lush farmland by irrigation.
The Louisiana-Rio Grande Canal Company
installed the first steam-powered pump in
1909, and by 1912 four steam pumps were in
operation distributing water to the McAllen,
Pharr, San Juan, and Alamo areas through a
well-designed canal system providing water
both for irrigation and domestic use.
The first steam boilers were fired with
mesquite wood from newly cleared land,
requiring up to two hundred laborers to
provide wood and operate the system. By
the early 1920s, crude oil, and later,
natural gas, became the fuel. Originally
constructed to irrigate forty thousand acres,
the system is now operated by Hidalgo
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
64

County Irrigation District No. 2 to supply
water to seventy-two thousand acres. The
plant was abandoned in 1983 in favor of an
all electric unit a mile downstream and was
partially dismantled. Then, heeding the pleas
of preservationists, it was donated to the City
of Hidalgo for renovation as a museum and
agricultural heritage park.
Now visitors can stroll along catwalks to
the recorded roar of the old steam engines and
gaze thirty-five feet down at monstrous
engines that could draw 350,000 gallons of
water per minute from the Rio Grande at full
capacity. Its Robert E. Norton Visitor Center
has a model steam engine among its many
interactive exhibits.
The center’s grand opening on April 18, 1999
culminated seventeen years of work by
volunteers and the cooperation of many
organizations. Bob Norton, president of the
Heritage Foundation of Hidalgo County, said,
“The thirty or so pumphouses built along the
river in the early 1900s were instrumental in
changing the Rio Grande Valley from arid
brushland where cattle grazed to a lush
agricultural hub. The early enterprises with fruit
and vegetables and the shipping industry laid the
foundation for the Valley as we know it today.”
As an important gateway to Mexico
through the busy McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa
International Bridge, customs houses and
cambios (currency exchanges) are major
businesses in Hidalgo today. Several produce
companies have packing sheds there, and some
large Reynosa maquiladoras (manufacturers)
have their U.S. headquarters in the growing
city of Hidalgo.
THE STORIED CITY BY
THE SEA: PORT ISABEL
The attractions of sun and sea drew early
Spanish colonists to what is now Port Isabel in
the late 1700s for recreation and travel to the
outside world. In 1828 a ranch settlement was
formed on the narrow peninsula extending
into the Laguna Madre on a Mexican land
grant awarded to Don Rafael García. The thirty
thousand acres of land was called El Frontón
de Santa Isabel (bluff of Saint Isabel) and
included the present site of Port Isabel.
Legend has it that many French, English
and Portugese pirates used the serene harbor
and its inlets as a safe refuge to hold their
rendezvous and divide their spoils from their
forays on Spanish shipping. Though they left
no written records, a rich fund of legendary
lore has been handed down, embellished by
each narrator.
After they were forced out of New Orleans
in 1817 and then booted out of Galveston in
1821, the swashbuckling pirate Jean Lafitte
and his brother Pierre used the port as a base
to raid Spanish commerce sailing out of
Veracruz. Port Isabel was ideal for their
purpose. The Laguna Madre made a perfect
refuge for the shallow-draft pirate vessels
while fleeing the larger men-of-war, for they
could slip through the Brazos Santiago Pass
✧
Top: The old two-story Hidalgo County Jail
was carefully restored by Border Bank, now
Texas State Bank, in 1983 and is used by
the bank for special purposes.
Above: The 1886 Hidalgo County
Courthouse, which lost its second story in a
storm and was never replaced, was also
restored by the bank in 1983. It now
serves as headquarters for the Hidalgo
County Historical Commission.
COURTESY OF CHUCK SNYDER.
CHAPTER IV
65

✧
Above: The Hidalgo Pumphouse Heritage
and Discovery Park owned and operated by
the City of Hidalgo is a first-class museum,
complete with the recorded roar of old
steam engines. The restored pumphouse is
the only one remaining of around thirty
such installations built in the Valley by
the 1920s.
COURTESY OF CHUCK SNYDER.
Below: The new Hidalgo City Hall
provides additional space for this growing
border city, just a bridge away from big,
bustling Reynosa.
and drop anchor off what is now Laguna
Vista. There they dug a well and found fresh
water, still known as “Lafitte’s Well.”
Under Spanish rule, citizens were
permitted to trade only with Spain through
the Port of Veracruz, but under Mexican rule
Matamoros commerce began to utilize the
excellent harbor of the Port of Matamoros in
1824. A Mexican Customs Station was located
there in 1844, a year before General Zachary
Taylor and his men marched down from
Corpus Christi. There were some substantial
buildings, which the Mexicans attempted to
burn before deserting the town, but the
troops arrived in time to save most of them.
Taylor established Fort Polk, named in
honor of the U.S. president, as his supply port
to receive soldiers and supplies. Since the
civilians were not allowed to remain close to
the port, they established their village around
the fort and adopted the name of Point Isabel.
The little seaport town played an important
role in the history of the Southwest since it
was the key to the army’s whole campaign
during the Mexican War as the port of entry
for replacements of men and material.
Among those who settled in the new
village after the war were five brothers of the
Champion family, who came from the
seacoast village of Rovigno in the Italian
province of Istria. They were in New Orleans
in 1846 when that city became the
embarkation point for a tremendous
movement of troops and war materials being
shipped across the Gulf to Fort Polk.
Experienced through their years at sea, the
brothers aided in operating a great fleet of
chartered transports. After the war, the
Champions purchased lots, married, and
entered various businesses in the area. There
are many Champions in the Valley who can
trace their roots to these seamen from Italy.
Commerce through the port continued
after the U.S.-Mexican War ended in 1848.
Because of the heavy shipping traffic through
Brazos Santiago Pass, a navigational light was
needed, and a lighthouse was authorized by
Congress during the Taylor presidency. The
brick tower, begun in 1851 and completed
two years later, was topped by a stationary
white light that could be seen for almost
sixteen miles. In 1859 an estimated $10
million in export and import goods passed
through Point Isabel, and customs records
show that from fifty to a hundred vessels were
anchored at a time in Brazos Pass off the
sandbar that often impeded shipping, or tied
up at Point Isabel on the mainland.
The Civil War period was a difficult one for
the area, with a federal garrison on Brazos
Island to try to enforce the blockade on the
South’s cotton and the Confederates in control
on the mainland until 1863, when the area
fell to Union troops. Confederate Colonel
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
66

“Rip” Ford hid the lamp lenses from the
lighthouse for the rest of the war so it could
not guide Union ships into the harbor.
Though the Confederates regained control of
the mainland in 1864, the blockade of the
port and occupation of Brazos Island
continued until peace finally came in 1865.
In 1866, the lighthouse was repaired and
relit, and its beacon guided large numbers of
commercial vessels to the port. Until 1904 the
Port of Brazos de Santiago was the only avenue
of commerce to the Rio Grande country except
the stage line from Brownsville to Alice. The
Morgan Line steamships made regular runs
down from New Orleans and Galveston. They
delivered their goods to lighters, open barges
that could move through the shallow waters,
for transport across the sandbar and the bay to
Port Isabel. For a time goods moved upriver
on steamboats to Brownsville, and then freight
teams of oxen and mules delivered the goods
to interior Texas and Mexico. Then Simon
Celaya, Joseph Kleiber, and other investors
from Brownsville built the narrow-gauge Rio
Grande Railroad from Port Isabel to
Brownsville in 1872 in response to public
demand. It did a thriving business, chugging
back and forth every day.
In 1975, Ramona Valente Barrientos, then
ninety-two, reminisced about her youth in Point
Isabel with Teresa Chapa Alamia of Edinburg, in
“Queen of the Waterfront” in Valley Byliners’
Roots by the River. Ramona’s father, Antonio
Valente, came from Palermo, Italy in 1884,
married Ramona Dominguez of Corpus Christi,
and Ramona was the oldest of their six children.
Everything had to be brought from
Brownsville on the famous little train that
everyone knows about. So, the most
important events of every day were the arrival
of the train at 10 a.m. and its departure at 3
p.m. Everybody would gather around to wait
for fresh bread, the mail, workers, visitors,
supplies, everything. The supplies that came
for the Champion Store, the one and only
store, were certainly the most important.
In 1899 Charles Champion built the
Champion Building and operated a large
mercantile store that he named “The Key to
the Gulf.” It faced the terminus of the Rio
Grande Railroad and was adjacent to the
depot. “It had every kind of merchandise
from baby nipples to stoves, food, kerosene
lamps, yard goods and lace,” recalled
Ramona. “The long, long counter extended
the length of the store, and I remember
walking up and down until somebody waited
on me. Don Carlos Champion, whose family
also came from Italy, was the tall, handsome
owner of the two-story structure.”
Champion commissioned a mural showing
area marine life on the storefront. Artist, José
Moreles García, who had lost his left arm
entirely and had only four fingers on his right
hand, painted the mural directly onto the
brick. The renovated Champion Building,
complete with the restored mural, is now the
excellent Port Isabel Historical Museum with
outstanding exhibits of the history of Port
Isabel and the entire Rio Grande Valley. In May
2000 the Treasures of the Gulf Museum
opened in an adjacent building to form the
Museums of Port Isabel.
During the 1890s and early years of the
twentieth century, the Brownsville-to-Point
Isabel train continued to run, but with
decreasing success. It transported less and less
cargo, although it was a very popular
excursion train for vacationers and summer
visitors from Brownsville. In 1904, however,
Brownsville was linked by rail to Corpus
Christi, and Point Isabel was almost
completely bypassed by the maritime trade.
✧
Above: Legends abound about early
day pirates who slipped through the
Brazos Santiago Pass and preyed on
Spanish shipping.
Below: The Port Isabel Lighthouse guided
ships to the coast for many years after it
was built in 1852. It was abandoned in
1903, then restored and opened as a state
park in 1952 and closed again in 1997.
After a $1-million restoration by Parks and
Wildlife and the Texas Department of
Transportation, it reopened with a grand
celebration in October 2000. Its light again
glows at night and the popular landmark
now serves as a beacon for visitors.
CHAPTER IV
67

✧
Above: Charles Champion, whose sailing
ancestors came from Italy during the U.S.-
Mexican War, established The Key to the
Gulf General Store in 1894. Together with
his friend, Judge James B. Wells of
Brownsville, Champion purchased the
townsite of Port Isabel and refused to zone
or to collect rent from poor fishermen.
Champion lived with his wife and six
children above the Champion Store, long the
focal point of the community.
COURTESY OF THE PORT ISABEL HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
Modern development began in 1926 when
the Port Isabel Townsite Company acquired
the townsite, leveled the bluff, and made
elaborate plans for “Building a city where a
city belongs,” but the depression came along
and disrupted their plans. The name was
changed officially from Point Isabel to Port
Isabel on March 13, 1928. Then came paved
streets, modern utilities, a yacht basin, and a
deepwater port.
The lighthouse, which was abandoned in
1903 after shipping traffic declined, was
renovated and opened as a state park in 1952.
Completely restored to its 1880s appearance
in 2000, it is now a beacon for visitors.
Traditionally, Port Isabel has held to its
seafaring heritage. Shrimping continues to be
an important industry, with the catch of its
shrimp fleet sold fresh and through its freezer
plants. It also has a reputation for excellent
sports fishing. Dr. J. A. Hockaday initiated the
Texas International Fishing Tournament in
1934 to draw attention to the area’s great
fishing, and the annual mid-summer T.I.F.T.
continues to draw fishing enthusiasts from
across the nation to Port Isabel and South
Padre Island.
A factor that has contributed much to the
importance of both Port Isabel and Port
Brownsville is their connection with the
Intracoastal Waterway, the inland water route
that gave the coast of Texas direct water
transportation to Chicago and the Great Lakes
region. It also connects with the Mississippi River
and all of its tributaries and continues through to
the Atlantic Seaboard to form over thirty
thousand miles of navigable inland waterways.
Only private boats and ferry service
provided access to Padre Island until 1952,
when the first causeway was built by Cameron
County and development of the island as a
vacation destination began. The first
causeway was replaced in 1974 with the new
Queen Isabella Causeway. The longest bridge
in Texas, it soars 88 feet into the sky and
spans 12,510 feet across the blue Laguna
Madre and the Intracoastal Waterway to
Right: The little Rio Grande Railroad
chugged back and forth between Port Isabel
and Brownsville for three decades until the
St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railroad
arrived at Brownsville on July 4, 1904.
COURTESY OF MARION MOYER.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
68

connect Port Isabel to the world-class resort
of South Padre Island.
Port Isabel’s excellent port facilities,
extensive shrimping fleet, splendid recreational
fishing, outstanding schools, and its citizens’
pride in its historical sites highlight the “Storied
City by the Sea” of today.
EARLY FOOTSTEPS ON
PADRE’ S SANDS
Many people left their footprints on the
sands of South Padre Island for a brief time
before the shifting dunes and onrushing tides
erased them. Its first known inhabitants were
the fierce Karankawa Indians, who roamed
the dunes and beaches of Padre and fished
along its shores long before Columbus discovered
the New World. The tragic shipwreck of
twenty Spanish galleons in 1553 is described
earlier in this book in “The Great Shipwreck
off Padre Island.”
It was about 1829 that the island was
granted to Padre Nicolás Ballí by Mexico.
With his nephew, he established a ranch
known as Santa Cruz about twenty-six miles
north of the mile-long granite jetties that now
border historic Brazos Santiago Pass. Their
cattle thrived on the sea oats and varied plant
life of the rugged dunes for a time before the
ranch was abandoned, and it was from Padre
Ballí that the island got its name.
Another shipwreck brought a couple of
wealth and influence from the East to become
one of Padre’s most famous families. John
Singer and his wife Johanna were headed for
Port Isabel to establish a shipping business
when a storm wrecked their schooner on a
stretch of the island near the old Padre Ballí
ranch. After living for two weeks in a tent they
made from one of the schooner sails, they
decided to stay on the island. They built their
first home from driftwood, acquired cattle,
and engaged in various enterprises. The
Singers worked hard, as did their children
when they were old enough.
The Singers’ island empire ended with the
Civil War and the approach of Union troops.
The family departed hurriedly at night, planning
to return after hostilities ceased to
retrieve their fortune. They left their cattle
behind, providing an easy answer to the food
supply problem for the Union forces. For over
a year after the war, they looked for the treasure
they had buried but could never find it.
Johanna died in 1866, and John Singer left
Padre, never to return. Many treasure hunters
have searched for the Singer fortune since,
but it has never been found.
Other adventurers trod the sands after the
Civil War. Among them was Pat Dunn of the
Corpus Christi area, who emerged in 1879 to
claim it for his own and to run cattle on its
dunes until 1926. Among the first to envision
Padre as a playground was San Benito founder
Colonel Sam Robertson, who turned his
attention to the island in 1926. He operated
ferries at both the northern and southern
ends, together with picturesque wooden
✧
Top: The Key to the Gulf store in the early
1900s, showing its distinctive marine life
murals painted by one-armed artist José
Moreles García in the early 1900s.
COURTESY OF THE PORT ISABEL HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
Above: The Port Isabel Historical Museum
is housed in the carefully renovated
Champion Store with its marine murals
restored. Inside, exhibits present the history
of the Rio Grande Valley and the coastal
area in paintings, photographs and exhibits.
A walk through the courtyard takes visitors
to the Treasures of the Gulf Museum,
opened in mid-2000.
CHAPTER IV
69

✧
Below: A statue of Padre Nicolás Ballí, for
whom the island is named, welcomes
visitors to South Padre Island.
hotels at each landing. When a hurricane
destroyed the hotel on South Padre in the
depression year of 1933, dreams of developing
the island as a resort were shelved. It was
not until 1952 that the long-awaited causeway
brought its dunes and beaches within
easy reach of motorists. Hotels and motels
were built, private lots were sold, and the
island soon became a favorite vacation spot.
The Town of South Padre Island was
formally established at the southern tip in
1973, and the island now has a growing
community of permanent residents who have
put down roots in the shifting sands. Its
hotels and motels, restaurants, natural and
man-made attractions, and specialized
businesses rival those of any resort in the
country. They welcome a constant stream of
visitors who come to enjoy the sun, sand, sea
and legends, as well as the modern facilities.
TWO LEADERS DURING
VIOLENT TIMES
Hero or villain? Patriot or bandit? Violent
times breed violent men, and the unsettled
times along the border from the 1830s to the
1870s were filled with violence that bred heroes
and villains, and some who were both heroes
and villains. Sometimes they fought against
each other—and sometimes they befriended
each other. In examining the history of the Rio
Grande Valley, two such men reappear over
several decades: John Salmon “Rip” Ford and
Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, both products of
their times. Several books have been written
about each of them, and Ford wrote his own
version of his life and times in Rip Ford’s Texas.
A South Carolina native, Ford moved to
Texas in 1836 at age twenty-one and served in
the Texas army until 1838, then settled in San
Augustine. He had “read medicine” and
practiced medicine there until 1844, when he
was elected to the House of the Ninth Texas
Congress, where he introduced the resolution
to accept the terms of annexation to the
United States. His next move was to Austin as
editor of the Austin Texas Democrat, a career
he returned to from time to time in later years.
During the Mexican War, Ford was in
command of a spy company, during which he
acquired the lasting nickname of “Rip.” When
officially sending out notices of deaths, he kindly
included at the first of the message, “Rest in
Peace.” Later, under the press of battle
conditions, this message was shortened to “R.I.P.”
Later he became a captain in the Texas
Rangers, where he had numerous Indian fights.
He was sent to the Rio Grande in 1859 to
match wits with Cortina and his followers, who
had terrorized the Brownsville area for several
months and kept eluding local authorities.
With the help of another Ranger company and
troops from the U.S. Army, Cortina and his
men were driven across the river at Rio Grande
City and they stayed in Mexico—for a while.
In 1861 Ford served as a member of the
Secession Convention, was elected colonel of
the Second Texas Cavalry, and placed in
command of the Rio Grande District. It was
his suggestion that led to the registration of
steamboats under the Mexican flag so they
could transport Confederate cotton to the
port of Bagdad and onto ships headed for the
cotton mills of Europe. In 1862 Ford was
moved to Austin as commandant of new
recruits, still keeping an eye on border
operations protecting Confederate-Mexican
trade. He led a group of Confederates to take
Brownsville back from Union forces in 1864,
and in 1865 led Confederate forces in the
battle of Palmito Ranch, the last battle of the
Civil War.
After the war, he made his peace with the
U.S. forces and was placed as commissioner of
paroles for the Confederate troops in the area.
He was a great aid in establishing peaceable
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
70

elations between the beaten Confederates and
the victorious Yankee forces.
Ford was in and out of Brownsville for many
years, as editor of the Brownsville Sentinel, as a
cattle and hide inspector in 1873, and, in 1874,
he was mayor of Brownsville. He served in the
Texas Senate from 1876-79, where he urged the
promotion of immigration to Texas and popular
education, supported in part from the sale of
public lands. He spent his later years writing
reminiscences and historical articles, and lived
to be a charter member of the Texas State
Historical Association before his eventful life
ended at age 82 in San Antonio in 1897.
Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, nicknamed
“Cheno,” was one of the most colorful and
controversial figures of the Rio Grande Valley.
He was from a respected, established family
which had held high offices in Camargo under
Spanish and Mexican rule. His mother, Dona
Refugio Cavazos, was the grandchild of José
Salvador de la Garza, the original grantee of the
Espíritu Santo grant, which included
Brownsville. Cortina served in the Mexican
army during the U.S.- Mexican War, after which
his mother moved the family to her ranch about
seven miles north of Brownsville. All members
of the family became U.S. citizens.
Cortina preferred the outdoor life and did
not become educated like others in his family.
Though he did not learn to read and write, he
was a natural leader and became a champion
of the tejanos, who often felt powerless and
disenfranchised under their new rulers. He
resented the way some of the newcomers to
Brownsville acquired their land and the legal
entanglements that resulted, and he felt that
the courts and politics favored the newcomers.
His anger grew and, as the result of an incident
involving a former employee, Cortina and a
large mob of tejanos and mexicanos raided
Brownsville on September 28, 1859. “Viva
Cheno Cortina! Mueran los Gringos! Viva la
Republica de Mexico!” the mob shouted. They
held the city for three days and five citizens
were killed.
Thus began the “Cortina War on the Rio
Grande.” Many of the economically deprived
and politically disenfranchised from both
Brownsville and Matamoros hastened to join
the rebel leader until he had a force of five to
six hundred. Two companies of Texas Rangers
came, the first headed by Captain W. G. Tobin,
and then Captain Rip Ford and his Rangers
arrived. Raids and skirmishes continued for
five months until the U.S. Army was called in.
Upon arriving in Brownsville, Major Samuel
Heintzelman reported, “The whole country from
Brownsville to Rio Grande City, 120 miles, and
back to the Arroyo Colorado has been laid waste,
the citizens driven out, their horses and cattle
driven across the Rio Grande into Mexico.”
Finally, after a series of battles along the
Military Road and back and forth across the
river, the hostilities ended with Cortina’s
expulsion from Texas at Rio Grande City by
the Texas Rangers and U.S. Army forces. In the
lull following the fight at Rio Grande City, the
steamboat Ranchero tried to make its way from
Rio Grande City to the mouth of the river with
a valuable cargo, including $60,000 in gold
and silver coins.
La Bolsa Bend, which lies about thirty-five
miles above Brownsville, was a great loop in
the river, with the open part facing Mexico. On
the Mexican side was the rancheria of La Bolsa,
and there Cortina established himself with an
estimated two to four hundred men to attack
and raid the Ranchero. Ford and his Texas
Rangers arrived, along with another group of
Rangers under Captain Tobin. A violent, noisy
skirmish ensued. The Ranchero managed to
escape intact, the Rangers won the battle, and
Cortina and his men fled into the mountains.
As Cortina was in retreat, Colonel Robert
E. Lee assumed command of the military
Department of Texas and set out for the Rio
Grande, arriving at Ringgold Barracks in
April 1860. He witnessed the damage done to
the people and the countryside, noting that
many ranches had been destroyed or
abandoned. He sent letters to officials in
Reynosa and Tamaulipas with ominous
overtones of what would happen if the
“banditry” along the river continued. As
peace came to the Rio Grande frontier, Lee
rode north to San Antonio, soon to be
engulfed in events of greater importance.
Cortina took refuge in the Burgos Mountains
near Ciudad Victoria and became active in the
military and political life of Mexico. He actively
supported the Juarista government, which was
✧
Top: John Salmon “Rip” Ford.
COURTESY OF THE BARKER TEXAS HISTORY CENTER,
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN, TEXAS.
Above: Juan Nepomuceno Cortina.
COURTESY OF THE BROWNSVILLE
HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
CHAPTER IV
71

✧
Above: During the Civil War, Juan Cortina
became governor and military commandant
of Tamaulipas. This drawing depicts a fight
between the forces of Cortina and Manuel
Ruiz in the streets of Matamoros. This
illustration was taken from Leslie’s
Illustrated Newspaper, February 20, 1864.
Below: The Battle of La Bolsa occurred at
La Bolsa Bend about thirty-five miles
upriver from Brownsville. The fight occurred
around the steamer Ranchero, which was
carrying a valuable cargo, including gold
and silver.
COURTESY OF GLENN HOUSLEY.
involved in a civil war of its own with the
supporters of Emperor Maximilian.
Through a series of revolts, imprisonments,
and shootings, Cortina proclaimed himself
governor and military commandant of
Tamaulipas in 1864. Because of his loyalty and
his control of the Matamoros customs house,
the Juárez government recognized him and
promoted him to general. For a time, he
controlled all roads in and out of Matamoros,
which was deeply involved in the cotton trade.
In a presentation, “The Civil War Years in the
Valley” made to the Lower Rio Grande Valley
Historical Society in January 1960, Brownsville
historian John H. Hunter said:
All agree that Juan N. Cortina was a
remarkable man both physically and mentally,
although he was completely without formal
education. He was a man who loved Mexico
and who came to hate most Americans. He
was a very practical man in his day-to-day
operations and had a shrewd eye for a chance
to turn a profit. In the summer of 1864, Ford
appraised Cortina as follows:
“We were receiving supplies through
Matamoros, where General Cortina was in
command. He was known to be friendly to the
Union men; yet, he was not averse to allowing
his friends to make an honest living by
supplying Confederates. He did, however,
object to delivering supplies any nearer to
Matamoros than Reynosa.”
After the Civil War ended, Cortina
continued to live in Mexico. Trouble surfaced
again in the early 1870s, when a series of
cattle raids upset area ranchers and farmers.
At the time there was a heavy demand for beef
by the Cuban market, so Mexican cattle
rustlers rounded up thousands of cattle and
drove them across the river to ship to Cuba.
At the center of the controversy was none
other than Juan N. Cortina, who was accused
of being the mastermind of the raids, some of
which struck as far north as Corpus Christi. It
was not until July 1875, after Cortina’s arrest
by presidential order, that the raids subsided.
Under guard near Mexico City, Cortina was
imprisoned until his escape and triumphal
return to Matamoros in 1876. However, an
old enemy, Servando Canales, was then
military governor of Tamaulipas. He arrested
Cortina and condemned him to be shot, but
Cortina’s old opponent, “Rip” Ford, went to
Canales and persuaded him to spare his life.
Cortina was turned over to the new president,
Porfirio Díaz, and kept under house arrest in
Mexico City, where he died in 1892 and was
buried with military honors.
There were many other heroes and patriots,
villains, and bandits during those violent times,
but few of them lasted as long, fought as hard
for their beliefs, or have been the subject of as
many stories as Colonel John Salmon Ford and
General Juan Nepomuceno Cortina. May they
Rest In Peace!
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
72

THE CIVIL WAR TO 1900
THE CIVIL WAR ON THE RIO GRANDE
By the end of 1860, the rumblings of a much broader war than the one sparked by Cortina
reached the Rio Grande. Though only fourteen slaves were reported in all of the Rio Grande Valley
in the 1860 census, the people of the area favored the South. The Texas Secession Convention met
in Austin on January 28, 1861 and voted to secede from the Federal Union. A secessionist ordinance
presented to the voters of Texas a few weeks later was approved by a statewide vote of
46,129 to 14,697. Along the Rio Grande, the measure was approved overwhelmingly by a vote of
600 to 37 in Cameron County. In Hidalgo County, still sparsely populated, the vote was 62 to 10
for secession, and in Starr County the vote was 180 to 2. Willacy County was still a part of
Cameron County at that time.
So, only a dozen years after Texas became a part of the United States, it chose a new mother
country—the Confederacy. After the secessionist ordinance was passed, Fort Brown and other U.S.
military posts in Texas were surrendered to agents of Texas and, within fifteen days, the Federal
troops on the border had furled their flags and marched for the coast. Texas volunteers then took
possession of all garrisons along the Rio Grande and were placed under the command of Colonel
John S. “Rip” Ford and Colonel P. N. Puckett.
The border area was in a strategic position during the Civil War from 1861 to 1865, resulting
in a period of both turbulence and prosperity for both Brownsville and Matamoros. The Union
army had blockaded most of the Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports of the Confederacy, but they had no
control over the Rio Grande, an international stream with free access to the vessels and citizens of
both the United States and Mexico.
The Confederacy looked to this area for a neutral port from which they could ship cotton to
Europe and receive from them ammunition, guns, medicine, and other supplies of war. Cotton was
✧
Union troops moved in and out of the coastal
area during the Civil War, trying to enforce
the blockade, but they had no control over
the Rio Grande, an international stream.
Here, the Daniel Webster departs from
Point Isabel with U.S. troops on board. This
illustration was taken from Harper’s
Weekly, April 13, 1861.
CHAPTER V
73

✧
Above: At the mouth of the Rio Grande, the
port of Bagdad was on the Mexican side and
Clarksville was on the U.S. side. Here,
Clarksville is seen in the background as
European ships wait to be loaded with
cotton.
COURTESY OF GLENN HOUSLEY.
Below: The interior of Matamoros as seen
from the church tower during the Civil War
era. This illustration was taken from
Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, December
5, 1863.
transported from the Southern states in huge
wagons and carried across the Rio Grande by
ferry to Bagdad, Mexico for shipment to
Europe. At first, cotton flowed freely to
Brownsville and on to Bagdad until the blockade
became effective at Brazos Island in
February 1862. In a move that greatly frustrated
the Union, the King and Kenedy ships
were transferred to Mexican registry, and the
cotton trade continued.
When the war began, cotton could be
bought for six to ten cents per pound
Confederate currency all over the growing
regions of Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. As
early as August 1862, it was bringing 16 cents,
and late in 1862 in went to 25 cents. In 1863,
the going price was thirty-six cents per pound,
and the price escalated to almost a dollar a
pound at its peak. European mills needed the
cotton, and the Confederacy needed the
supplies that could be bought with its sale.
Before the war, Bagdad was a small fishing
village that served as a customs house port of
entry for all goods destined for Mexico through
Matamoros. From 1862 to 1865 it grew from a
collection of a few fishermen’s huts to a sandy
townsite of fifteen thousand people. It had
dwellings of every description, as were its
citizens, all attracted there by the lure of gold.
From 100 to 200 vessels were constantly
anchored there, receiving or discharging cargo.
The ships brought supplies desperately
needed by the Confederacy: arms and ammunition,
coffee, foodstuffs, even silks and linens
and European wines. Initially, supplies were
unloaded and cargo transported to Point
Isabel, then carried by wagon to Brownsville.
After Union forces arrived to try to enforce the
blockade, the traffic moved to Bagdad, and
incoming goods were carried to Brownsville
on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.
A few hundred yards away, on the other
side of the Rio Grande, was the little town of
Clarksville, which had a pilot’s station,
wharves, repair shops and warehouses, and a
customs house. It also had one hotel, general
stores and other businesses, and a few homes.
The little town led a precarious existence
during the war as Federal and Confederate
forces surged back and forth, advancing and
retreating along the north bank of the Rio
Grande with Clarksville in between.
In January 1863, General H. P. Bee took
command of the Confederacy along the border,
including Fort Brown and other garrisons that
had been taken over by Texas volunteers. In
November 1863 General Bee received word that
Federal gunboats and transports had anchored
near Brazos Santiago Pass, and the next day
Federal troops started toward Brownsville to
capture Fort Brown. Outnumbered a hundred to
one, General Bee evacuated Fort Brown, but
prior to his departure he set fire to all of the
government buildings and to 200 bales of cotton
stored in the garrison. He dumped the
remaining bales into the river, along with his
siege guns, and then fled.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
74

To make matters worse, eight thousand
pounds of gunpowder stored in Fort Brown
exploded in a great roar, spreading the flames
to the town. Before the fires were brought
under control, Fort Brown had been
completely destroyed, and extensive damage
done to Brownsville. The small Confederate
force moved northward, leaving the citizens
to fend for themselves. But that didn’t end the
cotton trade. Bales were delivered to Rio
Grande City and Roma, and sent downriver to
Bagdad by the steamboats plying the river
under international registry.
Colonel Ford, who had been moved to San
Antonio with the Confederacy in 1862,
started a drive to recapture the border forts.
He gathered troops and marched south, first
occupying Ringgold Barracks at Rio Grande
City. From there he gathered information on
the size of the Union Army at Brownsville.
Though the Federals were estimated at seven
thousand, Ford was determined to force a
confrontation with his fifteen thousand
Texans. On July 30, 1864, a Rebel patrol
under Colonel Ford rode into Brownsville to
find that the Federals had evacuated the city
two days earlier, retreating toward the coast.
Ford attacked their rear guard and Rebel
forces later drove the Federals from Point
Isabel to their fortifications on Brazos Island,
where they stayed until the end of the war.
Ford occupied Brownsville in July 1864, and
it remained in Confederate hands until the
end of the war.
The cotton trade returned to Brownsville
after the Union evacuation, but the volume was
smaller, partly because of unsettled conditions
in Matamoros. Merchants became overstocked
with supplies and cotton prices fell with the
impending end of the Civil War. The great days
of wheeling and dealing along the border were
coming to an end.
THE LAST BATTLE OF
THE CIVIL WAR
The Civil War ended when General Lee
surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, 1865,
but it was May 18 before word reached the
Union troops at Brazos Island, which had a
garrison of twelve hundred men. There,
Colonel Theodore H. Barrett, who had failed
to see much active duty during the war, was
determined to make one last effort to end the
cotton trade.
On the evening of May 11, 1865, in a
blinding rainstorm, Colonel Barrett and a force
of three hundred soldiers from the Union
garrison on Brazos Island moved to the
mainland and began marching on Brownsville.
Early the next morning, they clashed with
Confederates at Palmito Ranch and, after an
exchange of fire, the Federals drove the Rebels
back and set fire to the ranch.
On the afternoon of May 13, Colonel Ford
arrived from Brownsville with Rebel
reinforcements. Though the indomitable Ford
had heard of the surrender, he was not about to
let the Yankees get his friends’ cotton. He
ordered his infantry to assault the Federal left
flank while his artillery shelled the main
Federal line. Three times the Federal forces
tried to make a stand against the advancing
Rebels, but were unsuccessful. Ford’s pursuit
continued until the Federal forces were driven
back to Brazos Island. Thus, Palmito Ranch
became the last battle of the Civil War on May
13, 1865, five weeks after Lee’s surrender.
Only one Confederate soldier was killed at
Palmito Ranch and another died five weeks later.
They were John Jefferson William from
Company B of the Thirty-fourth Infantry, and Bill
✧
In November 1863 word came that Federal
troops were on their way to Brownsville.
Here, the Confederates are shown
evacuating Brownsville in advance of the
troops. Many Brownsville citizens took
refuge in Matamoros until Colonel Rip Ford
recaptured the city for the Confederates in
July 1864. This illustration appeared in the
January 9, 1864, issue of The Illustrated
London News.
CHAPTER V
75

✧
Above: Though most of the Civil War
activity centered around Brownsville, Fort
Ringgold at the other end of the Valley also
played an important role.
Below: The old Cavalry Building was among
Fort Brown buildings rebuilt after the Civil
War. Now it houses classrooms and offices
for UT-Brownsville/Texas Southmost College.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
76
Redman, a nineteen-year-old black soldier,
who died five weeks later from his wounds.
Early Confederate writers wanted only to
glorify the victory and claimed there were many
more fatalities.
The victory gave Ford and the Confederate
officials time to put their affairs in order. A
Matamoros merchant had a large amount of
Confederate silver on deposit. In return for his
services in protecting the cotton clean-out, Ford
convinced the merchant to give him $20,000 in
gold. He then took the money and paid off the
men in his command before formally
disbanding them. They are said to be the only
Confederate forces to be paid off in hard money.
Ford and his associates crossed into
Mexico to await developments. Soon, Federal
forces under General Phil Sheridan took
control of Brownsville, and the reconstruction
began. King and Kenedy reorganized as an
American company and took contracts to
supply U.S. troops and transport supplies up
the river. Ford made his peace with General
Sheridan on the basis of one old soldier to
another and became commissioner of paroles
for the Confederate troops of the area. The
Civil War was over and it was time for the
healing to begin.
The great hurricane of 1867 almost washed
away the once-bustling Port of Bagdad and
Clarksville on the U.S. side at the mouth of
the river. A hurricane in 1874 completed
destruction of both Clarksville and Bagdad. In
a few years, the ever-blowing sands left little
trace of where these towns had stood, and
nothing remains at the sites today as a
reminder of the part they played in the cotton
trade during the Civil War.
AFTER THE CIVIL WAR
The South was devastated by the Civil War,
and Texas was no exception. In addition to
the adjustments of reconstruction, a series of
disasters and misfortunes struck the region,
beginning with a deadly cholera epidemic in
1866. The winter of 1866-67 was the worst
on record, with snow falling for the first time
since 1835. The summer of 1867 brought
an outbreak of yellow fever, which took the
lives of an estimated one-third of the citizens
of the area.
During the war, many of the merchants
and speculators in Brownsville had made
fortunes. However, the losses of the
readjustment years cost them dearly. The
Confederate quartermaster corps ceased to
operate in May of 1865, leaving many
merchants with huge inventories for which
there was no market. Some dealers in cotton
lost thousands of dollars because of failure to
receive delivery or to resell before the price
dropped, which was almost overnight.
The occupation of Brownsville under
General Sheridan was difficult for the civilians.
The homes of many who had taken
refuge in Matamoros during the war period
were appropriated by the military as abandoned
property, and Sheridan’s commanders
were reluctant to release the residences, even
after officials had cleared their owners for
return. Colonel Rip Ford, respected by the
Unionists as a military officer, was appointed
Commissioner of Paroles for the Confederate
troops still in the area, and his contact with
the Union officers helped many of his
Confederate friends get resettled.
As if these were not enough problems, a
major hurricane hit South Texas on October
8, 1867, destroying Bagdad and Clarksville
and doing great damage to the Brownsville/
Matamoros area. The Incarnate Word Convent
and other church buildings were damaged or
destroyed, and most of the Mexican jacales
were flattened. In the countryside the damage
was just as great. Ranch buildings went down,
crops were destroyed, and cattle scattered.

In October and November 1870, there was a
yellow fever scare all along the Gulf Coast,
and the area was quarantined, with no one
allowed to enter Cameron County for a time.
As a result of the fire of 1863 and the
hurricane of 1867, Fort Brown had to be
reconstructed. Seventy buildings were built
and the Quartermaster’s Fence was rebuilt of
brick. Construction was finished in 1869, and
the post served infantry, cavalry, and artillery
units, continuing its role in the community
well into the next century. As they did after
the U.S.-Mexican War, some of those stationed
on the border during the Civil War
stayed or returned to make their lives in the
Rio Grande Valley.
These buildings are now part of the campus
of the University of Texas-Brownsville/
Texas Southmost College. It was at the Fort
Brown post hospital in 1882 that Major
William C. Gorgas performed autopsies on
yellow fever victims and eventually traced the
cause to a mosquito, which led to the ultimate
conquest of the disease.
Contact with the outside world was still
limited to transportation supplied by horses
or horse-drawn vehicles and steamboats.
Determined to improve transportation to and
from the area, a contract was made between a
group of Brownsville merchants and the
Celaya brothers to build the Rio Grande
Railroad from Point Isabel to Brownsville. By
1872 it was operating with two locomotives;
twelve boxcars and twelve flat cars, one
service car; two lighters (barges for unloading
merchandise from the ships), two terminal
depots, a roundhouse and shop at
Brownsville, and a wharf that extended into
Laguna Madre at Point Isabel. The narrow
gauge road carried freight and sometimes
people back and forth until after the turn of
the century.
Though King and Kenedy transferred their
main interests from steamboats to ranching,
King still often plunged into other lines of
endeavor. He built and put into operation the
first really modern ice plant to be installed in
Brownsville. He bought the mail and stage
line which ran from Corpus Christi to Laredo
and from Brownsville to San Antonio,
purchased new equipment and fast horses,
and saw that a dependable schedule was
maintained. The new coaches, built in
Concord, New Hampshire, were roomy,
carrying eighteen passengers, with room for
trunks and other heavy luggage. In spite of its
fine equipment, the stage line never made a
profit and soon the railroads made the
stagecoach obsolete.
Steamship service to the Valley was
established shortly after the Civil War ended,
first by the Morgan Line from New Orleans to
Brazos by way of Indianola or Galveston. It
carried passengers, mail, silver and gold
coins, and general cargo on a regular
schedule. American vessels entering Brazos
came mostly from Mexico and Cuba, with
most of the foreign vessels coming directly
from Europe, especially from English and
French ports. This commerce gradually
increased, and soon all of it was moving
through Brazos, encouraged by the new
facilities which the Rio Grande Railroad
offered for the transportation of cargoes to
Brownsville and on to Matamoros.
In 1882 the completion of a narrow gauge
railroad from Corpus Christi to Laredo, the
standard gauge International and Great
Northern from San Antonio to Laredo soon
after, and of the Nuevo Laredo to Monterrey
section of the Mexican National Railway in 1883
ended the northern Mexico trade for Cameron
County. The carts and wagons traveling over the
old road to Monterrey could not compete with
the iron horse, and the Valley once again became
✧
The Army Post Hospital at Fort Brown was
built in 1868 with a floor area of 16,500
square feet at a cost of $27,820, and used
more than one million bricks, which were
purchased up and down both sides of the Rio
Grande. It has been carefully maintained
and renovated to house the UT-
Brownsville/Texas Southmost College
administrative offices.
CHAPTER V
77

✧
Ranch family in a typical jacale. The walls
were made of upright mesquite posts, held
together by interwoven poles of willow. The
roofs were made of grass and the floors were
hard-tamped earth.
COURTESY OF HCHC ARCHIVES.
an isolated region. The area’s population
dwindled by 1890, but the hardy ones remained
to lay the groundwork for the changes to come.
Early ventures in farming and irrigation began,
which will be explored in a later chapter.
The most serious threat to international peace
along the border during the decade following the
Civil War came from the raids made by armed
bands of Mexicans who crossed the Rio Grande
to drive large numbers of cattle and horses from
the ranching country into Tamaulipas. In
Mexico, the stolen cattle were sold in the hide
markets of Matamoros and also in the markets of
Monterrey and Saltillo, where both hides and
meat were used. Some groups moved about the
country killing stock on the range, skinned
them, and hauled the hides off to market.
These depredations all along the river got
so bad that the Texas Rangers were called in
again in 1875, when as many as 200,000 head
of cattle were being siphoned across the Rio
Grande each year. Isolated ranches were
raided, the people shot and often tortured,
their homes burned.
CAPTAIN MCNELLY’ S RANGERS
A topnotch young officer named L. H.
McNelly, a former Confederate, was named
captain of the re-established Texas Rangers and
given the task of enlisting a company of men
for duty along the lower Rio Grande. In May
1875 he led his rangers into Brownsville. A
brilliant leader, he had the respect of the fifty
men who served with him, who met his
requirements of unflinching bravery, disregard
of hardship, and skill with firearms and horses.
The McNelly rangers brought a quick change
to the outlawry on the border, and the formerly
attractive pursuit of stealing cattle from Texas
lost its appeal. His most famous clash with the
bandits came at Las Cuevas Ranch, near today’s
Los Ebanos Ferry crossing, on November 19,
1875. After violent clashes between the rangers
and the bandits’ supporters in Mexico, and
threats from both sides, some of the cattle were
returned across the river to Rio Grande City. For
a time conditions were quieter in the Valley.
In less than a year McNelly broke the back of
the brigand forces that had been terrorizing the
border for years, but in his dedication to the task
he exhausted himself completely. Sick with
tuberculosis, the legendary Texas Ranger Captain
spent his declining months in Washington
County and died in 1877 at thirty-four.
A STABLE RANCHING ECONOMY
Despite the bandit troubles and the area’s
isolation, a stable ranching economy
developed in the area during the last half of
the century. Although some of the ranches
were still owned by descendants of the
original Spanish and Mexican grantees, much
of the land had been acquired by others. The
prosperity of the ranchers was affected by the
bandit raids, droughts, wars, the lack of
adequate transportation, and other obstacles.
Still, stock raising was for many years the
region’s most important occupation—and is
still of great importance in parts of all four
Valley counties. In addition to cattle and
horses, essential for transportation as well as
for working the cattle, sheep were important
as their wool provided an important cash
crop. Hogs also were grown, though not in
great numbers.
In Ranch Life in Hidalgo County After 1850,
Emilia Schunior Ramírez of Edinburg described
how the people lived and worked on the
county’s 40 to 45 scattered ranches:
The ranches were of two types. Along the
river they were villages, or little towns. Most
of the inhabitants of these villages were the
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
78

owners of plots of land short distances from
the village. The others worked on the farms of
the landowners. Farther into the interior of
the county, where the pasturelands were, the
ranches were of a different sort. The family of
the landowner had the ‘Big House’ on the
ranch. There were small dwellings where the
workers lived. On these ranches, the activities
centered around the interests of the owner of
the ranch. In the villages near the river there
was greater independence of pursuit.
Nevertheless, among the families in both
types of ranches the ties of friendship and of
family were close, so that the home life was
about the same in all the ranches. Everyone
knew everyone else, and though the means of
communication and transportation were
scarce, there was a feeling of kinship and
unity among the early settlers.
The home consisted of at least two
structures, one forming the bedrooms, the other
the kitchen-dining room. Between these there
was usually a portal or roof, which served to
provide shade which also protected the family
against rain and sun when they went back and
forth from one part of the home to the other.
The houses, called jacales or huts, were
constructed very substantially. The walls were
made of upright mesquite posts, held together
by interwoven poles of willow–quite long and
flexible–and made solid by a filling of mud and
small gravel. The surface was smoothed and
whitewashed. The roofs were made of grass,
tied neatly into bundles of uniform size with the
fiber of the yucca leaf. The floors were of hardtamped
earth, the smooth surface sprinkled
with water and then swept. Later they were
made of tipichil, a concrete-like composition of
cement and small gravel. Usually there were two
windows and one door in each building.
There were also houses made of limestone
blocks, obtained locally and cut in the
primitive manner. These were built on the
same plan as the jacales. Later, frame houses
were built with front and back porches. All
three types of houses were very sturdy.
She told how the women managed the
cooking and other household chores and
described the ranch work of the men. The
religious holidays of Easter and Christmas
were celebrated, as were weddings and other
family events, all observed with the same
wholehearted abandon.
In his introduction to the booklet in 1971,
her son, Alfonso R. Ramírez wrote, “It was my
mother’s wish that we would not forget this part
of our heritage and that an authentic record
could be preserved for other generations.”
The rugged ranch life of the late 1800s
would soon fade into the past as the twentieth
century pioneers began to transform much of
the dry brushland into productive farms
through the magic of irrigation.
✧
A tejano family is shown grinding corn,
then and now a staple in their diet. Most
every ranch had small patches of corn for
family use.
COURTESY OF HCHC ARCHIVES.
CHAPTER V
79

✧
Above: Benito Juárez, a Zapotec Indian from
Oaxaca who became a lawyer and president
of Mexico, was the dominant figure in
Mexican history from 1855 to 1872. He
was responsible for many reforms and is
honored as one of the country’s major
heroes. This portrait appeared in Historia
de Mexico.
Below: After the French defeat at Puebla,
Napoleon III sent twenty-eight thousand
troops to Mexico. Shown is an encampment
of French troops on the main plaza at
Tampico in November 1862. This
illustration is from L’Illustration, January
10, 1863.
JUÁREZ, MAXIMILIAN
DÍAZ IN M EXICO
Throughout the Civil War in the United
States, opposing forces fought each other in
Mexico, with much of the action just across the
border. Benito Juárez, a Zapotec Indian from
Oaxaca who became a lawyer, was the dominant
figure in Mexican history from 1855 to 1872. He
joined Juan Álvarez and Ignacio Comonfort,
who shared his liberal political and economic
ideas, to oust Santa Anna from power in 1855.
They proposed to establish constitutional
government, abolish the privileges of the clergy
and the military, and stimulate economic
progress by putting the property of the church
in circulation. As minister of justice under
Álvarez, Juárez inaugurated the Reform with the
Juárez Law to put an end to the judicial
immunities enjoyed by the clergy and the
military in purely civil cases.
Opposition to this and other reforms was so
intense that the stage was set for the bitter civil
war of 1856-61. By 1861 the conservatives had
been defeated and Juárez was elected president.
However, the War of the Reform had wrecked
the economy. The government was completely
without funds and owed a huge foreign debt.
Juárez saw no way to pay the debts and sought
to defer payments for two years. His major
creditors, Spain, England, and France,
attempted to force payment by landing troops
at Veracruz. Their goal was the customs house,
which they knew had export/import monies
&
that could provide partial payment on Mexico’s
debts to them.
France was then ruled by Napoleon III and
the Empress Eugenie, who had plans to add
Mexico to their empire. They had been led to
believe by influential Mexican conservatives,
who were enjoying exile in Europe, that the
Mexicans would welcome a foreign monarch
and expected an easy victory. Soon after learning
of this plan, Spain and England withdrew
from the scene, leaving the French in control.
The United States was too embroiled in its
own internal problems to do anything except
gnash its teeth in Washington about European
forces on the North American continent.
The French infantry, six thousand strong
and feeling very superior to the Mexicans,
marched inland with little opposition until
they got to Puebla on May 5, 1862. There the
Mexicans under General Ignacio Zaragosa
made their stand, defeating the French
soldiers, who were caught in a crossfire and
then a downpour. After their bugles sounded
retreat, they withdrew to stand together and
softly sing La Marseillaise.
In Puebla, Mexican bands blared and men
rejoiced. Young General Porfirio Díaz
ventured out onto the plain that night, not
believing it possible that Mexico had defeated
France. The victory is still celebrated as Cinco
de Mayo, a national holiday.
Angry at the defeat, Napoleon III sent
twenty-eight thousand troops to Mexico and
soon captured the Mexican capital. President
Juárez fled north with his cabinet and a band
of loyal followers.
Meanwhile, the emperor of France was
busy choosing a ruler for the addition to his
empire. Of several young European princes
who were “unemployed,” he and Princess
Eugenie settled on Ferdinand Maximilian,
brother of the emperor of Austria, Francis
Joseph, House of Hapsburg. He had a pleasing
personality and many interests, none too
serious, with a dream of helping, leading,
serving, and being at the heart of events.
He had married young Belgian Princess
Carlota, the daughter of King Leopold I, at the
Royal Palace of Brussels in July 1857. At first
he reigned over the Austrian provinces of
Italy, but in 1859 France took the provinces
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
80

from Austria, and Maximilian found himself
with no position and no prospects. He then
took his bride to his home beside the sea, the
beautiful castle of Miramar on the shore at
Trieste, Italy. Though Max had some
misgivings when approached by a delegation
of Mexican émigrés to become emperor of
Mexico, he felt the offer to be his destiny and
soon accepted. The new emperor was 31, his
empress 24, both elegant, untrained, and
accustomed to wealth. The happy young
monarchs practiced their Spanish on the trip
over and Max wrote many pages of
regulations for his court, such as lists of
liquors to be served at the Imperial dinners.
Veracruz was in the midst of a yellow fever
epidemic when they arrived, and nobody was
there to meet them. They journeyed on to the
capital, dismayed at the conditions and
inconveniences they found everywhere. France
supplied them with soldiers under the
command of General Francois Achille Bazaine, a
seasoned officer of the French army, and money
for their expenses. Max’s sweet smile and loving
manner brought hope for peace to the Mexicans
so starved for it, including General Tomás Mejía,
newly allied with the French.
Longing for the luxury left behind at
Miramar, they discovered Chapultepec Palace,
built by the Spaniards not far from the Zócalo
and the National Palace in Mexico City. Soon
every available construction worker was
employed creating a home for Max and Carlota.
In October 1865 Napoleon III and Bazaine
maneuvered Maximilian into signing a decree
which was the death warrant for anyone
opposed to the empire. Mexico ran with blood.
The Juaristas moved ever northward, into
Chihuahua and what is now Ciudad Juárez.
Though a representative of the Pope visited
Mexico City with orders to return all the
Juárez-confiscated church property and to
cease any government control of the Church,
Maximilian decreed that the Church lands not
be returned, but remain in the possession of
those who had purchased them, thereby
hoping to gain support among the rising
middle class and intellectuals of Mexico.
But his regime was getting shaky as
opposition by Juárez forces continued. The
Imperialist troops were soundly defeated at the
Battle of Santa Gertrudis near Camargo and Rio
Grande City on June 16, 1866, which began
his downward spiral. In Paris, Napoleon and
his ministers grew restless. The anticipated
profit from the Mexican venture seemed very
long in coming. Carlota and Maximilian,
ignoring France’s involvement in European
upheavals, wrote for yet more troops and
financial support. Finally, Napoleon lost all
patience and ordered Bazaine and the French
army out of Mexico without even informing
Maximilian. Bazaine felt compelled to inform
him about France’s abandonment. Those who
were there wrote that Maximilian took the
news calmly, but Carlota flew into a frenzy.
✧
Top: Juárez had taken his government to
Querétaro during the French occupation.
The city's main plaza today is a busy
gathering place, as it has been for more
than three centuries.
Above: Querértaro’s plaza is surrounded by
Spanish Colonial buildings and those built
during later regimes, with little evidence of
the intrigue and violence that has occupied
the city at intervals.
CHAPTER V
81

✧
Above: After his defeat by Juárez, Maximilian
was tried and condemned to death. His
execution took place on the Hill of Bells
outside Querétaro on June 19, 1867. This
painting appeared in Historia de México.
Below: General Porfirio Díaz was Mexico’s
president for three decades, beginning in
1877. He brought political stability and
economic growth to Mexico, but he did so
at the expense of individual freedom and
independence. This portrait appeared in
Historia de México.
Determined to save the collapsing empire, she
left at once for France to plead with Napoleon,
then with Empress Eugenie and finally with the
Pope, becoming more erratic each day. She
became totally insane and believed everyone was
trying to poison her. Convinced she was close to
death, she wrote a touching farewell note to
Maximilian, whom she called her “dearly
beloved treasure.” Finally, her brother Phillipe,
the count of Flanders, came and took her to
Miramar, where she was confined to a barred
room in the garden pavilion.
The wonder of the age, the new interoceanic
cable, brought the news of Carlota’s illness to
Maximilian in Mexico City. He packed his
personal treasures, planning to abdicate as
advised by the French, but others persuaded him
to stay and fight. All over Mexico, French citizens
packed and fled, as did Bazaine and the French
army, departing en masse on February 5, 1867.
Gathering an irregular army of nine thousand
men, he left the capital city one week after the
French army sailed for France. They marched to
Quéretaro, and the emperor set up his
headquarters on the small Hill of the Bells on the
city’s edge. The Liberal army of Benito Juárez,
forty thousand strong, surrounded the town.
Maximilian and his troops held out until May 15,
1867, when Liberal forces broke through a wall
and captured Maximilian’s army. After a military
trial, Maximilian was sentenced to death by a
firing squad. He folded his hands over his heart
and in a clear, ringing voice said, “I forgive
everybody. I pray that everyone may also forgive
me, and I wish that my blood, which is now to be
shed, may be for the good of the country. Long
live Mexico, long live independence!” The Empire
was no more. Carlota remained in her insane
world until 1927, dying at age eighty-seven.
Juárez returned to Mexico City in July 1867
and was re-elected president. As he undertook
the difficult task of reconstruction, his rule was
handicapped by uprisings and factional
opposition. Juárez died on July 18, 1872. He
tried to make Mexico into a democratic federal
republic and to save the nation from its internal
and foreign enemies. While he did not
completely achieve his objectives, he is respected
and honored as one of Mexico’s greatest leaders.
Revolution again swept Mexico in early
1876. An uprising against the government of
Sebastián Lerdo de Tejado was led by an
astute and tough young general, Porfirio Díaz,
who plotted his revolution while living in
exile in Brownsville. While he was plotting in
Brownsville, the town’s citizens raised funds
for his cause in return for his promise to rid
the border of the infamous General Cortina.
When he came into power, Díaz fulfilled his
promise by forcing Cortina to live in the capital,
under surveillance, for the rest of his life.
The years that followed brought great change
to Mexico, much of which had a bearing on the
Rio Grande Valley. A Mixtec Indian from a poor
agrarian family in Oaxaca, Díaz had been a law
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
82

student of Juárez. When he came to power, he
attempted to bring his country into the
company of modern world powers. His
economic policies were strikingly successful. He
built hundreds of miles of railroads, encouraged
foreign investments, and American investors
increased their stake in Mexico’s economy.
In return for cooperation along the border
and mildness in protesting United States pursuit
of bandits and Indians across the frontier, he
gained recognition for his regime. To appease
domestic enemies he distributed economic
benefits and public offices to the various political
and military factions. For the old conservatives
and Catholics he did not strictly enforce the
anticlerical legislation of the Juárez years.
Díaz brought political stability and economic
growth to Mexico, but he did so at the expense
of individual freedom and independence.
During his time, Mexico’s natural wealth was in
the hands of some three percent of the
population. The lower classes benefited only
slightly, and when they protested they were
brutally suppressed. Toward the end of the
regime, political and economic opportunities
were closed off for some upper and middle-class
groups as well.
At the end of the century, relations between
the U.S. and Mexico were excellent, but the
Mexican people were hungering for more
control of their land, more freedom, and greater
economic opportunities. This would lead to
another revolution in the next century, which
again would greatly affect the borderlands.
EARLY PLANTATIONS &
EXPERIMENTS IN IRRIGATION
Closner’s San Juan Plantation south of Pharr, the
daughter of its foreman, W. L. Lipscomb and Ada
Dougherty, who had come from Brownsville to
teach school on the plantation.
THE SANTA ANITA GRANT &
MCALLEN RANCH
In the northwest corner of Hidalgo County
northwest of Edinburg, the McAllen Ranch,
part of the Santa Anita grant, has been in the
same family since 1790. In 1980, when it was
awarded membership in the Texas Department
of Agriculture’s Family Land Heritage
Program, which honors those families that
have owned and continuously operated a farm
or ranch for one hundred years or more, the
McAllen Ranch was the oldest in the Family
Land Heritage Registry.
Awarded to José Manuel Gómez in 1790, the
ranch of about ninety-five thousand acres raised
herds of cattle, sheep, goats and horses. He
married Gregoria Ballí Dominguez, a widow
with two sons; they had no more children.
Salomé Ballí, great-granddaughter of Gregoria
Ballí, inherited all of Santa Anita. She married
John Young in 1848, who helped her manage
and expand the ranch, and they had a son, also
named John. The senior Young died in 1859,
leaving half of his estate to his wife and half to
his son. She asked his young business associate,
John McAllen, to help manage her holdings.
They married in 1861 and had a son, James.
✧
Above: John McAllen around 1900.
Below: Though he spent time on the ranch,
John McAllen lived mostly in Brownsville in
his later years. A hunting group is shown
around 1915 in front of the ranch house he
built, which has been home to five
generations of McAllens. His grandson
Argyle and wife Margaret made their home
there and were prime movers in establishing
and supporting the Hidalgo County
Historical Museum. His great-grandson,
James McAllen, now operates the ranch.
COURTESY OF ROBERT A. MCALLEN.
Though José de Escandón’s early dream for
the region had included the magic of water
transported to grow crops, irrigation efforts of
the Spanish colonists were unsuccessful.
Through the years, many people recognized the
fertility of the soil—if only irrigation were
available. While ranching continued as the main
agricultural activity, the late 1800s saw
movement toward a more diversified agriculture.
Some of the major enterprises are described by
Hidalgo County educator-historian Anne L.
Magee in “Old Plantations in the Rio Grande
Valley” in Gift of the Rio. She was born on John
CHAPTER V
83

✧
Above: When Our Lady of Visitation Chapel
was dedicated on June 29, 1882, Santa
María was the only town between
Brownsville and Hidalgo. The quiet chapel is
one of the few visible reminders of early
Catholic horseback missionaries who rode the
river trail between Brownsville and Roma.
Below: La Casa Blanca at Rancho de Santa
María was built in 1870 by Judge L. J.
Hynes and has been through several
owners, names, and renovations. A stop on
the steamboat line in its early days, the
home was always kept in readiness for
friends or wayfarers who traveled that way.
This is how it looked in 1970.
When Salomé McAllen died in 1898, the
ranch was divided between her sons and her
husband. The Santa Anita was partitioned, and
the western half became the San Juanito, later
named the McAllen Ranch. The McAllens
upgraded the livestock from Longhorn to
Hereford cattle and experimented with several
species of exotic plants, including many
varieties of grapes, citrus fruits, figs, olives,
date palms and ornamentals. John McAllen
lived until 1913 to see a new city built on part
of his ranch and named for him. The ranch
passed on to James McAllen’s descendants,
who have pursued wild game management and
conservation along with raising Beefmaster
cattle. Various exotic species of game animals
are bred and managed on the ranch, and there
is an effective program to breed and improve
white-tailed deer.
SANTA MARÍA WAS A
RIVER PORT
Though the river is now quite a distance
south of Santa María, during the steamboat
era the Rio Grande flowed by Rancho de Santa
María, one of the few early settlements north
of the Rio Grande. General Taylor had a
headquarters building just west of the ranch
during the U.S.-Mexican War, and in 1850 the
U.S. Cavalry established a substation of Fort
Brown and Fort Ringgold there.
In 1870, Judge L. J. Hynes acquired the
ranch and built a large compound, including
a spacious white ranch-type home that faced
the riverboat landing and shipping wharf.
The home was always kept in readiness for
any friends or wayfarers who traveled that way.
In addition to stables and dairy buildings,
there were a small barracks, an ammunition
building, and a stage depot. Crops included
vegetables, cotton, corn and other grains. In
1880 Hynes donated land for a chapel named
Our Lady of Visitation Catholic Church across
the Military Road, a miniature copy of the
Gothic-style Immaculate Conception Church
in Brownsville that was designed by Father
Pierre Keralum.
At the beginning of the 1890s, Santa María
had a population of 300 and was the third
largest town in Cameron County after
Brownsville, with 7,000 people, and Port
Isabel, with 500, according to Lieutenant W.
H. Chatfield in his remarkable 1893
publication, The Twin Cities of the Border and
the Country of the Rio Grande, published after
he completed a tour of duty at Fort Brown.
Here is his description of Santa María:
There are two small collections of
buildings about half a mile apart. The upper
village contains the residence of Col. J. G.
Tucker, which is delightfully situated amid a
grove of spreading trees and has a beautiful
green lawn. Across the way are the
customhouse and two general stores,
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
84

elonging to Dr. Smith and Mr. Champion,
who have been engaged in various pursuits on
this border for many years. The post office is
located in Smith’s store. A number of jacales
glistening with whitewash line the single
street and make a pleasant picture.
Col. Tucker has inaugurated a development
of the resources of this section which will
undoubtedly revolutionize the present methods
of agriculture, and open up possibilities for the
future which are simply grand in their scope
and will prove as profitable as they are
extensive. He is endeavoring to form syndicates
for the culture of Havana tobacco, sea-island
cotton and sugar cane on a large scale, all of
which products he is raising on his ranch.
In the lower village there is another general
store, which was owned for many years by
Judge L. J. Hynes, but was recently sold to
Messrs. Frank Rabb and Fred Starck of
Brownsville, together with a large tract of land.
The steamboat landing is at the foot of a
splendidly cultivated cornfield, stretching
away from the house to the river. The sub-post
of Santa María, which is situated just outside of
the ranch, is garrisoned by a small detachment
of United States troops from Fort Brown. The
troops are changed every month, their military
duties consisting of scouting up and down the
river and repairing the military telegraph line
connecting Fort Brown and Fort Ringgold.
1870 he purchased a thousand acres from the
Agostadero del Espíritu grant near
Brownsville for $2,000. He dug canals and
experimented with simple irrigation techniques.
First he planted cotton, soon changing
to sugarcane. Using the techniques of the
Louisiana sugar industry, he began with a
small mill using open kettles. In 1876 he
installed a small pump for irrigating the cane
and made the sugar into that best loved of
Mexican confections—piloncillos, which he
sold for ten cents a pound.
✧
Above: The old sugar mill at the Brulay
Plantation near Brownsville. George Brulay,
who came from France, obtained the first
permit for irrigation from the Rio Grande
and began to produce sugar in 1876. His
sugarcane industry flourished until 1905.
COURTESY OF LEE LANGFORD.
Below: A remnant of the dense native Sabal
Texana palm groves that once lined the Rio
Grande is preserved by the National
Audubon Society at its Sabal Palm Refuge
adjacent to the old Palm Grove Plantation.
After the steamboats stopped plying the
river and other towns were settled, Santa
María declined. La Casa Blanca fell into
disrepair and was severely damaged by the
1933 hurricane. It was lovingly restored by
Mr. and Mrs. K. L. Tanner in the 1950s, who
made it their home for many years. Still
beautiful, it can be seen from U.S. 281 amidst
level fields, well cultivated by the present
owners. Both the ranch and chapel have Texas
historical makers.
THE BRULAY PLANTATION
AT BROWNSVILLE
The first real success in irrigation can be
traced to a Valley pioneer from France, George
Brulay, who obtained the first permit for irrigation
from the Rio Grande. In February of
CHAPTER V
85

✧
This elegant two-story mansion at the Palm
Grove Plantation seven miles east of
Brownsville was built in the late 1800s by
Frank Rabb, who cultivated cotton, corn
and all types of vegetables on 3,000 acres
by the river. The home was a center for
entertaining by Rabb and his wife Lillian.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
86
Brulay went to New Orleans to buy newer
and better equipment. The machinery was
brought to Brazos Santiago by boat, lightered
to Port Isabel, and then shipped on the Rio
Grande Railroad to Brownsville. Brown sugar
was in great demand at the time, and the business
became very profitable. Brulay’s first mill,
of frame construction, was built in 1873.
After it burned down, he built a large new
mill from bricks made on the plantation and
installed the very latest machinery for refining
sugar. Hundreds of laborers were employed in
the work of cutting, transporting the cane on
the string of small railcars that ran from the
fields, and processing the sugar through various
stages in the mill.
His sugarcane industry remained Brulay’s
chief interest, and it flourished until his death
in 1905. Later, water was allowed to stand too
long in the fields and salt, which ravaged
lands in the coastal area, covered the ground
and the family sold the plantation in 1911.
The great brick building where “machinery
whirled and industry sang” long stood empty
and some of the walls and graceful arches still
stand as monuments to the energy, pluck and
industry of one of the Valley’s great pioneers.
THE PALM GROVE PLANTATION
The Palm Grove Plantation-Ranch seven
miles east of Brownsville was still in its wild
state with beautiful native palm groves lining
the river when Frank Rabb bought it in the
late 1800s. At one time he had about 3,000
acres, the soil rich and productive as a result
of the yearly overflow of the river. Rabb built
canals and cultivated cotton, corn, other
grains, and all types of vegetables. He was also
interested in building canals and railroads in
different parts of the Valley.
Rabb married Lillian M. Starck from a
prominent Brownsville family and built an
elegant two-story mansion in a beautiful
setting that was a center for entertaining in
the early days. In 1957 Ben F. Vaughan of
Corpus Christi bought the property from the
Rabb estate and did a magnificent historical
restoration. It can be seen today next to the
National Audubon Society’s Sabal Palm
Refuge, which acquired the remaining patch
of native Sabal Texana in the United States
and protects it as a bird sanctuary.
THE VELAS OF LAGUNA SECA
One of the Valley’s best-known ranches is
Laguna Seca, named for a dry lake on the land.
It was established by Macedonio and Mercedes
Vela of Reynosa in 1867 on a 4,428 acre tract
of brushland he bought from John and Salome
Ballí McAllen about twenty miles northwest of
Edinburg. Some of the first citrus trees in the
Valley were planted by daughter Carlota in
1871. A priest, making his periodic rounds of
the ranches, brought oranges as a gift to the
family and he helped plant the seeds in young
Carlota’s garden. Seven trees sprouted and
flourished for seventy years, a forerunner of
the citrus industry in the Valley.
The four Vela sons helped their father
expand the ranch until it covered over 80,000
acres, and as many as fifty families once lived
there. One of the first Catholic churches in the
area was built on the ranch. A tiny post office
called Delfina was established at Laguna Seca,
and a school was built. A big bell that hung in
front of the schoolhouse was used to call in the
children from every part of the ranch. There
were many weddings, some uniting the Vela
family with other ranching families, including
the Chapas, who established San Manuel.
It had been the custom of the descendants
of Macedonio Vela to have a large family

eunion every five years when, in 1984, they
decided to go back a generation and invite
descendants of the other five children of
Macedonio’s parents, Salvador and Leonor
Vela. The preparations took nearly a year, and
about fifteen hundred registered. They came
from everywhere—Texas and California,
Arizona and Colorado, Pennsylvania and
Florida, West Germany and Australia. There
were many festivities during the celebration,
with the main event a huge barbecue at
Laguna Seca Ranch. Velas of all ages met for
the first time and studied their genealogy.
Skits were performed that portrayed stories of
the hard life on the ranch, cattle, and romance
of the land of the Rio Grande.
The ranch has a lake fed by an artesian well
that is stocked with fish, and there are deer,
turkey and quail as well as cattle.
THE WEBBER RANCH
John F. Webber came from Vermont to
Texas and received land in 1832 as one of
Stephen F. Austin’s colonists. He settled about
sixteen miles below present-day Austin. There
he built a fort as a protection against Indians
and the place developed into a sizeable
frontier village known as Webber’s Prairie. He
was married to a former slave, Silvia Hector,
who was emancipated, along with her three
children, by John Cryer in 1834. Webber took
Silvia’s children as his own and they had eight
more children. Beginning in the 1840s,
newcomers from the Deep South resented
Webber’s racially mixed marriage. The couple
was ostracized and their children barred from
public school. When they brought in a tutor
to teach their children, the citizens threatened
to kill the teacher.
In 1851, Webber moved his family to the
Rio Grande Valley to start a new life in this
rugged, but friendly, border country. In 1853
he purchased two leagues (8,856 acres) in the
Agostadero del Gato Grant and established his
ranch headquarters on the Rio Grande near
where the Donna pumps are now located. He
also purchased property in the La Blanca
Grant and operated a public ferry. Sympathetic
to the Union cause during the Civil War, he
took his family into Mexico to avoid trouble
during the Confederate occupation of the area.
Fondly called “Juan Fernando” by his
Mexican neighbors, he was known as a very
kind person, eager and willing to help any
passerby in need of food or shelter. Webber
sold the northern half of his ranch to Edward
Dougherty in 1877. Most of the property had
been sold by his heirs to the Alamo Land and
Sugar Company by 1918. Much of it has been
recombined and is now part of Krenmuller
Farms of San Juan.
THE TOLUCA RANCH
AT PROGRESO
The Toluca Ranch, about a half-mile from
the Progreso International Bridge, was
established in 1880 by Don Florencio Saenz,
a Spaniard from Matamoros, on five thousand
acres that extended from the banks of the Rio
Grande to what is now the Edcouch-Elsa area.
His wife Sostenes was the daughter of Antonio
and Mauricia Cano, owners of Rancho
Tampacuas, present-day Mercedes, which was
sold in 1902 to the American Land and
Irrigation Company. The Saenz’ adopted
daughter, Manuela, married Amador
Fernández in 1908, and their children
inherited the ranch. Much smaller now, it has
✧
Top, left: Relampago Ranch was near
Progreso. A sizeable community named
Relampago is still there today.
COURTESY OF GLENN HOUSLEY.
Top, right: Don Florencio Saenz of
Toluca Ranch.
CHAPTER V
87

✧
Above: Don Florencio Saenz established
Toluca Ranch in 1880. In addition to this
spacious ranch house, there was a ranch
store, schoolhouse, and church.
Bottom, left: Toluca Ranch owner Florencio
Saenz built St. Joseph’s Church for those
who lived on his ranch, as was the custom
of the early dons. Dedicated July 30, 1899,
it was built in the architectural style of the
early Oblate churches.
Bottom, right: The widely admired interior
of St. Joseph’s Church on Toluca Ranch
near Progreso.
COURTESY OF GLENN HOUSLEY.
been home to five generations and is still
farmed by Fernández family members.
The headquarters complex consists of the
Church of St. Joseph, the spacious ranch
house, ranch store and schoolhouse, all
constructed of yellow brick produced on the
ranch. The house and chapel can be seen by
looking east from FM 1015 as the international
bridge at Progreso is approached.
Saenz used one of the first hand-operated
pumps in the river to raise a bumper crop of
sugarcane and also brought the first herd of
domestic cattle to the area. The need for a
sweet water well was apparent as the crops,
cattle herd and ranch population grew. The
first building on the homestead was the
mission chapel of St. Joseph, a result of the
search for good water. Saenz promised that,
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
88

should he find water, he would build a church
beside the well. At sixty feet, good, sweet
water was struck and the well remains in use
today. The chapel, dedicated in 1899, was
built along the architectural style of Father
Peter Keralum, though constructed long after
he became lost and perished north of
Mercedes. The beautiful chapel with its white
walls and blue-veiled ceiling was carefully
restored in 1995 by family members.
THE SAN JUAN PLANTATION
Another pioneer who saw the land’s great
potential was John Closner, who came to
Texas from Wisconsin in 1871. He hauled
freight, sustained several illnesses and
personal tragedies, and worked in railroad
construction around Galveston and in
Mexico, but the company went broke and he
lost the money he had invested. He and his
family arrived in Rio Grande City with $15 in
their pockets, and in 1883 he signed with
López and Oxboro, who ran a two-horse stage
line, to drive the mail by stagecoach for $75 a
month. Soon he moved his family to Hidalgo.
He had saved up enough money to purchase a
tract of land, the quiet beginning of what
would become the San Juan Plantation.
Closner was once again out of a job when
the competing Brownsville-Alice Stage Line
started, and in 1884 he was named deputy
sheriff of Hidalgo County by Sheriff James L.
Dougherty. He would continue as deputy and
later as sheriff for many years during a lawless
time when people drew their guns and shot—
and asked questions later. Meanwhile, he
continued to acquire land, which ranged in
price from twenty-five cents to one dollar per
acre until his holdings came to forty-five
thousand acres in Hidalgo County.
Because annual rainfall was insufficient,
irrigation was a necessity. Closner installed a
river pumping plant and a system of canals
and laterals. In 1895 he got a centrifugal
pump and a portable steam engine from New
York with a capacity sufficient to irrigate 200
acres. In the early years he raised many kinds
of crops—corn, alfalfa, sorghum, melons,
onions, squash, tomatoes, beans, cabbage,
cotton and tobacco, along with fruits such as
peaches, plums, bananas, and grapes. But the
product that brought worldwide acclaim to
this area was sugarcane. In 1895 Closner
began experimenting with it, crossing hybrid
cane seed from Mexico with seed from topranking
plantations in Louisiana. He
developed a cane yielding far more tons per
acre than Louisiana cane fields. Like Brulay,
first he produced piloncillos, cones of hard,
brown, unrefined sugar for which there was a
local demand, but they were hard to ship and
keep commercially.
Closner ordered sugar mill equipment and
began the production of refined sugar
processed by a 250-ton mill. Each January
and February he would hire experienced
sugar mill operators from Louisiana to do the
refining and mill work. For the Louisiana
Purchase Centennial Exposition at St. Louis in
1904, Closner entered a display of samples of
cane cut at random from his crop, some seventeen
feet tall. He won first prize over all
competitors, including Cuba and Hawaii. This
publicity spurred further interest in sugar in
the Valley, encouraging outside capital to
invest in that and other farming activities in
the area.
By 1908, the sugar industry developed
problems, requiring a lot of irrigation and
drainage. Salt buildup damaged the land,
making this crop unsuitable. In 1909 Closner
sold the San Juan Plantation, continuing
his other activities in community service and
land development
Closner installed the county’s first telephone,
which connected the plantation with his office
✧
Above: John Closner.
Below: The sugar mill on John Closner’s
San Juan Plantation. Closner began
experimenting with sugarcane in 1895 and
samples, some seventeen feet tall, won first
prize at the Louisiana Purchase Centennial
Exposition at St. Louis in 1904.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
CHAPTER V
89

✧
Above: The ranch house at La Coma Ranch,
bought by William F. Sprague of Rhode
Island from the King Ranch in 1883.
Sprague built the first cotton gin in Hidalgo
County in 1898 and was one of the
founders of Edinburg. La Coma is now
owned by Calvin Bentsen.
COURTESY OF THE HIDALGO COUNTY
HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
Below: The Landrum Plantation south of
San Benito was established in 1893. James
Landrum built a kiln on the plantation and
made the bricks for the two-story brick
home. He devised a way of irrigating the
land and grew cotton, vegetables, hay,
and grain.
COURTESY OF GLENN HOUSLEY.
in Hidalgo, and he provided financial backing
to build the railroad spur from Harlingen
west past Mission to Sam Fordyce in 1904.
He also founded the town of San Juan, which
was named for him, and was one of the
founders of Chapin, which became Edinburg.
After founding of the towns and retiring from
law enforcement, he turned full-time rancher
with headquarters in Brownsville, living there
until 1934.
LA COMA RANCH
Another famous ranch in Hidalgo County
is La Coma Ranch, better known as Red Gate
for its colorful entrance fifteen miles north of
Edinburg. It was twice owned by the King
Ranch, which first sold it to William
Frederick Sprague in 1883, bought it back in
1919, and then sold it to Elmer and Lloyd
Bentsen in 1943. Sprague, from a wealthy,
influential family in Rhode Island that
included governors and U.S. senators, fell in
love with the Wild West atmosphere of 1880s
South Texas and settled down to control land
holdings of 200,000 acres, a spread onefourth
the size of Rhode Island. He also fell in
love with Florence Kenedy, niece of Captain
Mifflin Kenedy, Richard King’s steamboating
partner, and they were married in Brownsville
in 1900. The bricks for their new home,
which has walls three bricks thick and
towering ceilings a dozen feet high, were
brought to La Coma by oxcart.
Sprague ranched his extensive properties,
raising horses, sheep (briefly), and cattle. He
also pioneered dryland cotton farming and
built the county’s first cotton gin at La Coma
Ranch in 1898. The cotton yield was good, but
he had a problem with getting it to market. As
late as 1900 he shipped one thousand bales of
cotton by mule wagons to Hebbronville’s
railroad in order to connect with outside
buyers. A major street is named for Sprague in
Edinburg, a city he helped to build.
Now owned by Elmer Bentsen’s son Calvin,
the ranch house has been renovated and La
Coma Ranch is famous for its rich history and
for the dozens of species of exotic animals that
have joined domestic animals on the ranch.
THE LANDRUM PLANTATION
Another notable Cameron County place
was the Landrum Plantation, El Rancho
Ciprés, south of San Benito. After the U.S.-
Mexican War ended, among those who settled
in Brownsville was Judge Stephen Powers, an
attorney who specialized in land matters. He
was employed by descendants of brothers
Eugenio and Bartolo Fernández, Spanish
noblemen who had been awarded the
seventy-five-thousand-acre Concepción de
Carricitos grant by Spain in 1793, to confirm
their title. Judge Powers secured confirmation
of the title from the Texas Supreme Court and
the legislature, and received about one-half of
the grant for his services. At that time the land
was worth about ten cents an acre.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
90

Powers’ daughter Frances married James L.
Landrum in 1893 and went to live on the ranch
in a rambling seven-room adobe dwelling.
They immediately started to make plans for the
fine two-story brick home that still stands.
Landrum built a kiln on the plantation and
made the bricks for the house. All the lumber
used inside and out was cypress shipped by
boat from New Orleans and landed at the
plantation river dock behind the house.
Meantime, in order to be able to have
income off the land, he planted crops and
devised a way of irrigating the land. He built
cypress-wood flumes and a crosswise canvas
device with a canvas sail. With a little wind and
some priming, the water flowed into the small
ditches he had dug. Thus his early crops of
cotton, vegetables and hay were grown; later he
also raised grain. Landrum contributed much
to progress with his plantation.
Years later, Colonel Sam Robertson, founder
of San Benito, told about visiting the Landrums:
In 1904 it was my good fortune and
privilege to be a guest at the Landrum home
on the Military Road. This was the most
delightful, hospitable home it was ever my
privilege to enter.
In forty years he never had a lock on his
home or storehouse. No traveler ever passed
Rancho Cypress who was not invited to rest,
feed his horse in the corral, and dine with the
family. There were flowers, good music,
splendid food, soft beds, and a royal welcome
for all.
✧
Some forty miles from Ciudad Mante in
southern Tamaulipas are the ruins of
Castillo de la Nueva Apolonia, of which a
portion is shown (above). The original
hacienda built during Spanish Colonial
times was greatly enlarged and decorated
during the Díaz years by its wealthy owner
from Spain. The huge castle has long been
abandoned. Now a cactus grows from one of
the turrets (left).
These are just a few of the large ranches
that were active at the end of the nineteenth
century, but great changes would soon transform
the Rio Grande Valley.
MEXICO EXPLODES IN
REVOLUTION
In 1900 the Rio Grande region was still a
wind-swept, border frontier. Its ranching
economy and its society of Hispanic and non-
Hispanic people lived in relative peace and
tolerance. Some two hundred miles of arid
country to the north, south and west reinforced
the centuries-old isolation of this
region. Within two decades, however, the
people and their way of life would be changed
forever. On the U.S. side, this change would
come with the advent of the railroads, irrigation
of the land, and Anglo-American
colonists from the North. On the Mexican
side, the change would come through a tenyear
revolution.
Though relations between the U.S. and
Mexico had been stable under the Díaz regime,
thirty-six years of his iron-fisted rule ended in
the revolution of 1910, which disrupted the
country until 1920. While many grievances
CHAPTER V
91

helped ignite the Mexican Revolution, the key
factor was land. By 1910, ninety percent of the
country’s land and resources was controlled by
some three percent of the people—Mexican
aristocrats and, particularly, foreigners. Threefourths
of the population were rural peasants—
Indians and mestizos, looked upon as subhuman
by many in the ruling class. Most were
bound to plantations or haciendas, where they
worked in perpetual, inherited debt.
The feudal-like estates ranged in size from
20,000 to over 250,000 acres. Activities included
agriculture, mining, timber, and livestock. The
growth of these plantations deprived thousands
of peasant farmers of their ancestral lands. Most
became hacienda laborers, earning very low
wages. Others, deprived of their land and way of
life, drifted to cities in search of work.
Similarly, many villages lost their age-old
public lands or ejidos, previously set aside for
communal farming and grazing, to the
haciendas. Thus, over one-half of Mexico’s
rural populace became displaced, trapped in
uneducated poverty at the bottom of the
country’s economic and social ladder. By
1910, their anger was ready to erupt like a
volcano, and from their ranks would come the
bulk of the revolutionary armies.
In 1910 years of rumblings and mounting
anger boiled over. Francisco Madero, a
northern idealist, led a successful grass-roots
movement against the government. Díaz was
exiled, and Madero became president in 1911.
The revolution seemed over. But later, a general
named Victoriano Huerta, a Díaz supporter,
staged a counter-revolt and installed himself as
dictator. Madero was shot—at the order, many
believed, of Huerta himself. Fearing a return to
the old regime, Mexicans began to rally behind
“strong men” who opposed Huerta. A rebellion
against him in early 1913 marked the
beginning of civil war.
Many leaders rose and fell during the
revolution, but four principal figures emerged to
dominate it. They were: Venustiano Carranza,
Francisco Villa, Emiliano Zapata, and Álvaro
Obregón. Their roots lay in different regions,
and a power struggle ensued. Marching on
Mexico City in mid-1914, they drove Huerta
out. Carranza, by general agreement, became
“First Chief”—in effect, the president. But his
administration proved unable to deliver its
promises of reform.
Bloody civil warfare wracked Mexico for
the rest of the decade to 1920. The population
was decimated; the area was devastated.
✧
This poster was part of the Pancho Villa
exhibit at the Hidalgo County Historical
Museum in 1999.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
92

Most fighting occurred in the north, including
the border regions. Battles in border cities sent
bullets and shells flying into Brownsville, El
Paso, and other places. The turmoil in the far
northeast also unleashed the “bandit raids” into
the Rio Grande Valley, putting further strain on
relations with the United States.
Basically, there were three types of bandits.
First, there were Mexicans who had been
forced from their homes by the revolution,
were penniless and homeless, and stole simply
to stay alive, killing only when necessary.
Second were those who took part in savage
bandit raids to avenge private grudges, more
interested in killing than stealing. The third
category of bandits, unlike the others, were
well organized and well armed, some with
German rifles and ammunition. Some of the
attacks were said to be part of a German plot
to incite a war between Mexico and the United
States to keep American forces from entering
the war in Europe.
Meanwhile, the Wilson administration,
through diplomacy, intrigue, and arms sales,
sought to influence the revolution’s outcome.
The idealistic President Wilson, determined to
see democracy established in Mexico, had
opposed Huerta, and for a time backed Villa as
the likely winner. But after several disastrous
defeats, “Pancho” no longer seemed invincible,
and U.S. support swung cautiously to
Carranza. An angry Villa then attacked
Columbus, New Mexico. His raid in March
1916 prompted the U.S. Army’s “Punitive
Expedition” under General John J. Pershing,
with the aim of dispersing Villa’s forces.
Tension mounted between Washington
and Mexico City. War seemed possible, and by
mid-1916, thousands of Army and state
troops were sent to protect the border and to
be available if it became necessary to invade
Mexico. But, slowly, Carranza and Obregón
gained control, and by early 1917 tensions
eased. When Obregón became president in
1920, the civil warfare largely ended, and
Mexico began to stabilize.
✧
Above: Four future military geniuses met
under friendly circumstances in El Paso in
1914: From left, Alvaro Obregón, who
defeated Villa and became president of
Mexico in 1920; Pancho Villa, leader of the
feared division of the North; John “Black
Jack” Pershing, sent to the border to
disperse Villa’s forces in 1916 and who later
became Commanding General of the
American Expeditionary Forces in France in
World War I 1917-1918, and Pershing’s
aide, a very young George “Blood and Guts”
Patton, who led the Third Army in World
War II, 1941-1945.
COURTESY OF GLENN HOUSLEY.
Below: The Mexican bridge guard at the
Brownsville-Matamoros Bridge in 1916.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
CHAPTER V
93

✧
Above: Troops were stationed over the Valley
from Mission to Brownsville. Shown in
review are thirteen thousand troops
stationed at Camp Llano Grande in 1916
on the site now occupied by the Texas A&M
Research Center between Mercedes and
Weslaco. National Guard units from
Indiana, Nebraska, Minnesota, and North
Dakota were among those at the camp.
COURTESY OF GLENN HOUSLEY.
Below: The hospital at Camp Llano Grande
was converted from the former Casa Blanca
Hotel built to house potential buyers of
farmland. About 30 Red Cross nurses from
the Midwest treated the soldiers. Heat,
insects, contaminated water, and diseases
such as pneumonia and measles caused
much illness among the guardsmen.
COURTESY OF GLENN HOUSLEY.
The years-long process of implementing the
revolution’s reforms began a process that many
in Mexico feel still goes on today. The reforms
were spelled out in the new Constitution
adopted in February 1917 by a constitutional
convention that included representatives of all
major revolutionary factions. It called for
protection of men and women in the labor
force; improved education, the creation of
small land-holdings, thus breaking up the
large haciendas; placing of all waters, rivers,
lakes, and subsoil resources, including
petroleum, under national control, and
imposing restrictions on foreign economic
operations in the country.
Since 1920 disputes between the two
countries have been approached through
diplomatic channels rather than military
intervention. As the new millennium begins,
Mexico and the United States are vitally
important friends and trading partners.
Meanwhile, on the U.S. side the railroads
had finally come, massive irrigation systems
were being established, and land developers
had discovered a new frontier they called the
“Magic Valley of the Rio Grande.”
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
94

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY DAWNS
AT LAST! CONNECTED BY RAIL TO THE WORLD
When the twentieth century dawned on the Rio Grande Valley, it was still cut off from the rest
of Texas and the world.
From 1850 to 1900, numerous attempts were made to construct a railroad to connect the Valley
to Corpus Christi and/or San Antonio. Firms were chartered, investors found, and some lines
begun with great promise. Then the money would run out. The Rio Grande Railroad Company did
succeed in building a narrow gauge road twenty-two miles from Brownsville to Port Isabel in 1872,
which moved freight back and forth from Brazos Santiago to Brownsville. However, all attempts to
build a railroad to connect the Valley with the outside world had failed.
Brownsville was sitting isolated near the mouth of the river. Goods reached the city by sea or
by overland hauling. Passengers bound for other parts of the state were ferried across the river to
Matamoros, took the Mexican National Railway up the river to Laredo, then crossed back into
Texas to take another train.
Though some railroad people were not convinced there was a profit to be made in running a line
across the Wild Horse Desert, a railroad builder named Uriah Lott finally got things moving. He had
succeeded in building a line from Corpus Christi to Laredo in 1876 after raising money from Richard
King, Mifflin Kenedy, and many others for the necessary investment. In 1899 he came up with a new plan
to bring a railroad into the Rio Grande Valley. He got the attention of B. F. Yoakum, chairman of the board
of the Rock Island-Frisco Lines. Yoakum liked the fact that Lott was working to secure a land bonus of
more than 100,000 acres, free right-of-way and terminal grounds, plus at least $75,000 in cash.
✧
Hundreds of men were employed to lay
railroad tracks to Brownsville, then west
from Harlingen to Sam Fordyce. The San
Juan to Edinburg line came a few years
later after Edinburg was established as the
Hidalgo County seat.
COURTESY OF THE HIDALGO COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
CHAPTER VI
95

✧
The first train arrived in Brownsville on July
4, 1904, in a heavy rain and was met with
great fanfare, floats, banners, and fireworks
as every conveyance in town brought
residents to greet the railroad officials.
COURTESY OF THE BROWNSVILLE
HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
Lots of money was needed to build
railroads, and Lott was clever at coaxing
money out of people’s pockets for his ventures.
He was full of vigor and enthusiasm for the
project. Area ranchers and other citizens of the
Valley were anxious to help, providing the
land and cash required. Lott had to go to St.
Louis for financial backing, as his eastern
connections were not interested in the far-off
tip of Texas. On January 12, 1903, a state
charter was issued to the St. Louis,
Brownsville, and Mexico Railroad to construct
a rail line from Sinton to Brownsville.
The incorporators included Robert Driscoll,
Sr., Robert Driscoll, Jr., Robert J. Kleberg,
Caesar Kleberg, A. E. Spohn, Richard King II,
John G. Kenedy, James B. Wells, Francisco
Yturria, John B. Armstrong, and Uriah Lott as
president. A contract was signed with the
Johnson Brothers of St. Elmo, Illinois, successful
railroad builders, on July 1, 1903. The cost
was set at $12,500 per mile. Additional
expenses of $2,000 per mile would go to pay
for the line’s equipment, which included locomotives
as well as freight and passenger cars.
Work began on July 28, 1903, near
Robstown, named for Robert Driscoll, owner of
the Driscoll Ranch. Sam A. Robertson, a civil
engineer from Missouri who was known for
taking on dangerous assignments and
completing them, was given the subcontract for
laying the track, surfacing, and building the
trestle bridges. Robertson was interested in the
Valley beyond his work on the railroad. He was
a strong believer in the possibilities of irrigation,
and he saw an opportunity to look for land that
could be purchased to raise crops.
Robertson formed the Southern Contracting
Company and employed able assistants. His
crew of four hundred men worked with
astonishing speed. Since he was operating on
borrowed money, he had to buy the cheapest
work locomotives he could get. This explains
why two wrecks on the same day in 1904
nearly brought his struggle to build the railroad
to an abrupt end.
The first train wreck dumped nine cars of
bridge timbers and tie rails in the bottom of a
creek bed at Santa Gertrudis. The sixteen-car
train was hauling supplies to his camp at the
end of the line. Robertson received word
through a telephone call to the Kleberg Ranch
from Corpus Christi and immediately started
north to the wreck scene with Engine Four,
accompanied by engineer F. P. Read. Near
Kingsville their engine ran into a cocked
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
96

switch which derailed the engine, tender and
two cars and catapulted Robertson to the
ground with a compound leg fracture and
several broken ribs.
Robertson’s physical condition was bad,
but his financial condition was worse. Doctors
said he couldn’t work for months, but after a
few days in a Corpus Christi hospital he was
back, overseeing the job as he lay on a
stretcher on a moving flatcar. He spent
months on crutches and soon became expert
in their use. He was able to catch a train
moving eight to ten miles an hour and, once
aboard, he would hop from car to car. He
trained his white cow pony to lie down so he
could mount and fasten his crutches to the
saddlehorn. Robertson was still on crutches
when the railroad was completed.
The line reached the area of Raymondville
on April 3, 1904. The tracks moved toward
what would become Harlingen, then San
Benito as the workers continued toward
Brownsville.
The first train, with many dignitaries and
railroad officials, reached Brownsville on July
4, 1904. It arrived during a heavy rain after an
eleven hour and forty minute run from
Corpus Christi, and virtually the whole town
turned out for the occasion. Every conveyance
in town came out through the mud and rain
with floats, banners and fireworks to meet the
train and escort Lott and the visitors into
town. On that day, the Rio Grande Valley
joined the world!
Meanwhile, work had begun on the
extension westward through Mission to Sam
Fordyce, named for the chairman of the
executive committee of the St. Louis,
Brownsville, and Mexico Railroad. It moved
across land that would later be developed as
townsites. It reached what is now Mission in
August 1904, and then Sam Fordyce on
December 19, 1904. Now little more than a
signpost on busy U.S. 83, Sam Fordyce began
with great fanfare. There were several brick
business buildings, a hotel and post office,
but it failed to develop as a town.
The railroad ended at Sam Fordyce until
1925 when construction was resumed to Rio
Grande City, arriving there in August of 1925
about the same time a state highway was
completed. An excursion train packed with
cheering, yelling passengers moved from
Brownsville through Sam Fordyce and on to
Rio Grande City, where a huge celebration
was held to welcome the long-awaited
railroad and highway.
The railroad started a chain reaction that
brought the Rio Grande Valley to the attention
of investors, land developers, and others who
✧
The Southern Pacific Railroad arrived in
Brownsville in October 1927, and its
handsome station was a center of activity
until service was discontinued and it fell
into disrepair.
CHAPTER VI
97

✧
With the support of the Brownsville
Historical Association and others, the
Southern Pacific Railroad Station was
carefully renovated in the 1980s and
converted into the excellent Historic
Brownsville Museum.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
98
wanted to explore the nation’s last frontier.
Dozens of new communities sprang up all
along its route.
Other branch lines were built, including
what became known as the “Spiderweb” line
to connect the smaller communities with the
main line, until about 210 miles of railroad
tracks were in service. There were no farm to
market roads in the early days, so the
railroads were essential to haul the everincreasing
loads of produce out of the Valley.
All of the various branch lines, including the
St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico, were
absorbed by the Missouri Pacific System in 1925.
The other major line to build into the
Valley was the Southern Pacific, which had
first eyed the territory before Yoakum and
Lott started their construction. They began
work south out of Alice in September of 1903,
but ran into problems with the Texas Railroad
Commission and stopped construction at
Falfurrias. They took no further action until
May 1925, when they received permission to
extend their railroad into the Valley. The line
reached Edinburg on January 11, 1927,
McAllen on January 22, Harlingen on
February 8 via a route along present state
highway 107, and arrived in Brownsville on
October 22, 1927.
An estimated four hundred miles of rail
lines crisscrossed the Valley during their
heyday. As cities developed, a network of
paved highways followed to accommodate the
increasing number of private automobiles. By
the 1960s, trucks were hauling much of the
produce and the use of rail freight declined.
Passenger service was discontinued in the
1960s, and train depots were closed.
Some of those beautiful railroad depots are
now restored for other uses. The Historic
Brownsville Museum occupies the renovated
Southern Pacific depot in Brownsville, and in
Edinburg the Chamber of Commerce and
Economic Development Corporation have
found a home in the carefully restored
Southern Pacific Depot. In McAllen the law
firm of Cardenas, Whitis & Stephen restored
the old Southern Pacific Depot for their offices.
The Union Pacific Railroad acquired both
the Missouri Pacific and Southern Pacific lines
and now serves the railroad needs of the
Valley with service to Mexico through
Brownsville. Rail service often takes longer
than trucks but is cheaper, and is seeing a
resurgence, largely due to the North American
Free Trade Agreement. The Valley-owned
Border Pacific Railroad provides shuttle service
at the rail yards and freight service from
Mission to Rio Grande City.
IRRIGATION COLORS
THE VALLEY GREEN
The prospect of fast transportation to
markets by railroad stimulated great interest in
entrepreneurs from other parts of Texas and the

United States. They could envision year-round
agricultural production in the subtropical
climate, since the river water was available for
irrigation. Once an irrigation system was
assured, the land could be sold in small blocks
to prospective growers at a great profit.
The land was flat and sloped gently to the
northeast away from the river. The riverbanks
were at a higher elevation than the land and,
once the water was pumped out of the river, it
could be distributed by gravity through open
canals to the point of use. Some of the terrain
would require a second pumping of the water
about ten miles north of the river for delivery
of the water to the outermost limits of the area.
Landowners along the river readily
irrigated their fields using private pumps, but
it took huge investments and complex
systems of pumping stations and canals to
move the water inland.
Beginning in 1904, irrigation companies
were formed by land developers. Generally,
investors purchased a large tract of land with
river frontage. Water filings were made in the
county clerk’s office, an engineer was employed,
and the canals, laterals and pumping plants
were constructed. The cost of the construction
and operation of these irrigation systems was
paid by the developers through the sale of land
and a charge for delivering water to the land.
The first irrigation system for community use
was built by Donna pioneers A. F. Hester and
T. J. Hooks through their La Blanca Agricultural
Company. They first farmed by the river and
then moved to higher land around Donna.
The largest irrigation district was the
American Rio Grande Land and Irrigation
Company formed in 1905 by a group of St.
Louis investors for development of the
“barren Valley land” to turn the area into one
productive in sugarcane, winter vegetables
and other crops. While building the plant
they ran into a problem.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that
ended the U.S.-Mexican War (1846-48)
designated the main channel of the Rio Grande
as the U.S.-Mexico boundary. Disputes arising
from frequent changes in the river’s course led
to the Treaty of 1884, which recognized only
those river diversions resulting from natural
occurrences. The International Boundary and
Water Commission was established in 1889 to
administer the Treaty of 1884.
When the river started to change its course
in 1906, the irrigation company gave nature a
hand by digging their own cutoff to make sure
the river would continue to flow by the
pumping station. This left a 413-acre banco
called El Horcón (crooked stick). Had this
been a natural cutoff, the tract would have
gone to Mexico. But since it was not a natural
flow, it was U.S. land. Although still U.S.
territory, the tract and the popular gambling
and resort community of Rio Rico, which
flourished there during the 1920s and 1930s,
became increasingly subject to Mexican
administration and jurisdiction.
After the U.S. granted Mexico territorial
rights over El Horcón Tract and Rio Rico in
1970, a native of Rio Rico sued the U.S.
government to guarantee his U.S. citizenship.
This lawsuit began an eight-year legal battle that
✧
Above: Water in the Rio Grande was
plentiful when the developers began to build
the early irrigation systems. The land was
flat and sloped gently to the northeast away
from the river, allowing water to flow by
gravity through open canals to the point
of use.
Below: In 1906 the river started to change
its channel south of Mercedes and cut off a
loop on which the American Land and
Irrigation Company was building a large
pumping station south of Mercedes. They
gave nature a hand by digging their own
cutoff to make sure the river would continue
to flow by the pumping station.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
CHAPTER VI
99

✧
Above: Workers prepare to deliver water to
a field being readied for planting around
1980. Research is ongoing to find ways to
stretch water supplies to meet farm and
domestic needs.
Below: The complexity of irrigation systems
and the size of the huge pumps required to
deliver water from the Rio Grande to the
newly cleared farms can be seen in the
restored Hidalgo Pumphouse Heritage and
Discovery Park.
COURTESY OF CHUCK SNYDER.
eventually led to U.S. citizenship for about two
hundred people born in Rio Rico prior to 1970.
Meanwhile, the Mercedes pumping station
was completed and operated effectively,
channeling water to area farms. Purchased by
farmers served by the system in 1929, it still
operates from its longtime Mercedes
headquarters as Hidalgo and Cameron County
Water Control and Improvement District No. 9.
It serves seventy-two thousand acres and
provides the irrigation and domestic needs of
the Mercedes-Weslaco area.
Other irrigation systems were established up
and down the river. Some developers soon
encountered financial difficulties, and their
irrigation systems were not properly maintained.
To secure an adequate supply of water, farmers
organized irrigation districts and purchased the
systems from the developers. By 1920 only four
privately owned systems remained.
Today, the irrigated lands of the Valley are
divided into local water districts, each with taxing
authority and administered by boards of
directors with managers and necessary
employees at convenient locations. In 2000
there were twenty-six water districts in the four
Valley counties. Among the staff members are
“ditch riders” who check the canals and open
“gates” to let water into the distribution system
for individual farmers.
The system of irrigation and allocation of
the water changed greatly over the years,
especially after Falcon Dam was completed in
1953 and Amistad Dam upriver several years
later. A watermaster was established by the
Texas Water Rights Commission in 1971 after
many years of litigation of water rights.
Headquartered in Harlingen, the watermaster
has overall jurisdiction over the water
allocated to the U.S. from Falcon and Amistad
Dams and works with each of the water
districts to see that supplies are available as
needed. Landowners pay a tax per acre for
water rights, plus a fixed amount per acre-foot
when irrigation water is used. An acre-foot is
the quantity of water that covers an area of
one acre one foot deep.
Approximately 1.4 million acres of land are
being farmed in the Valley, about half of which
has irrigation rights. Through the years the
irrigation districts have changed many canals to
either concrete lined or concrete pipes
underground. Though land was uneven in the
early days, most land has now been leveled with
a “fall” of an inch per one hundred feet to aid
the water flow. New methods of irrigation are
constantly being studied and implemented
where they would conserve water. The water
supply will continue to be one of the Valley’s
major concerns as more and more demands are
made on the waters of the Rio Grande for
irrigation and domestic use by both the U.S.
and Mexico.
Preserving the history of irrigation in the
Valley is the Hidalgo Pumphouse Heritage and
Discovery Park near the river at Hidalgo.
Carefully restored and opened as an interactive
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
100

museum in April 1999, the pumphouse was
built in 1909 by the Louisiana-Rio Grande
Canal Company to irrigate forty thousand acres.
The pumphouse, initially steam-powered by
mesquite wood from the newly cleared land, is
typical of about thirty pumping stations in the
Valley whose waters transformed the arid
territory to a garden paradise.
LAND DEVELOPERS
SPREAD THE WORD
With the railroad in operation and irrigation
a reality, the Valley was ready for its second
major colonization, which lasted about two
decades until around 1930. A pattern soon
developed that was followed in varying degrees.
The developer was a man of great vision and
optimism, sold on the land and its possibilities,
and with his eye on the profits that could be
made from the virgin soil. He purchased land at
the going price, around one to three dollars per
acre, usually in plots running into thousands of
acres. After clearing the native brush he built
irrigation systems with the help of wellqualified
engineers and then planted
“showplace” plots of farm crops and later of
citrus groves. Some built large guesthouses for
the land parties they would bring to the area.
Salesmen would be dispatched over the
nation, especially the farming areas and towns
of the North and Midwest, and prospective
buyers were brought in by excursion trains. On
the southward trip, the salesman’s enthusiastic
forecasts of the glowing future helped to
further prepare the traveler-prospects for
signatures on land contracts. Then, on arrival,
the “Homeseekers” as they were called, found
mild, sunny winters with fields of fresh
vegetables growing, and later the intoxicating
scents of citrus blossoms.
After roads were built, a caravan of luxurytype
automobiles greeted the visitors when the
train arrived at its Valley destination. Usually,
the drivers were prosperous farmers who had
come earlier on similar trips and now were
ready to share the blessings of their new life.
Busy days followed as the prospects were
driven to see thriving farms where beautiful
new homes were further evidence of success.
The developers were careful that their
prospects saw only the successful examples,
and there are many tales of how they kept
prospective buyers from seeing lands that were
temporarily flooded or that could discourage
prospective buyers.
These prospects were usually successful
farmers and others who wanted to start a new
life in a new frontier, educated for their time
and with enough money to invest in the land,
much of it still in brush. Though many of the
homeseekers experienced great hardships in
their early years, for the most part the new
farmers did prosper. Demands for their
✧
A trainload of homeseekers is met by an
automobile caravan for a tour of the land
that the developer has for sale. This tactic
was repeated throughout the Valley as
new communities were established along
the railroad.
COURTESY OF THE HIDALGO COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
CHAPTER VI
101

✧
Above: After citrus orchards became
successful in the 1920s, homeseekers would
be taken to a producing orchard and told
of the money-making possibilities that
awaited them.
COURTESY OF THE HIDALGO COUNTY HISTORICAL
COMMISSION ARCHIVES.
Right: Lillian Weems Baldridge arrived at
Combes in 1905 as a teenager with her
engineer father before the clearing began.
She taught school, observed, and wrote
about the Valley's metamorphosis with
affection and humor for seven decades.
Excerpts from her writings that were
published in the Valley Chamber’s Tip-O-
Texan magazine in the late 1960s and early
1970s enliven this book.
agricultural products grew as the nation’s
economy and population grew. As each tract of
land was cleared and settled, nearby
communities sprang up to provide schools,
churches, trade, and local governments.
One of the engineers who worked on
building canals was W. Z. Weems, who settled
in Combes in 1905. His daughter, educatorwriter
Lillian Weems Baldridge, told about
those early days in October 1967 in “Before the
Clearing Began” in the Tip-O-Texan magazine:
It was soon after the railroad came that my
mother and dad joined the early ‘Homeseekers’
to settle near Combes, my sister, brother and I,
all lively teenagers, with them.
Driving up the Valley to Edinburg this past
summer in an air-conditioned car over a
beautiful network of highways, landscaped
with stately palms, bougainvillea, oleander,
bananas and other tropical flowers, the citrus
orchards and cotton fields, grain field after
grain field, made me think of the land before
the clearing began.
There was nothing but brush, senderos, and
later one narrow road cut through the deep
sand, with pockets far apart for a passing car or
cart to draw into while the other fellow passed.
It was hard labor and the sweat of the brow
that made the dreams come true. At night the
camps of the Mexican clearers reminded one of
a scene from some opera with gypsy camps.
Burning trees, dogs barking, women cooking,
sending up odors of boiling coffee, tortillas and
beans; songs, twanging guitars and maybe an
accordion filled the air. Looking at the reddened
skies we could tell when a new townsite
or homesite was being cleared, and many times
we would turn our horses towards the new
development. It was a full and satisfying life.
Our Anglo pioneers brought with them their
axe, hoes, adze and other implements. Here
were found the hacha, asadón, talache, and
ever-useful machete, that wicked-looking cane
knife that serves so many purposes even today.
The Homeseekers who settled among us
are now welcoming our thousands of winter
visitors. Many of them are buying homes and
learning to enjoy the relaxed way of life of our
sunny climate. Sure, the rains come…but the
sun always returns, the palms sway in our
Gulf breezes and, even as we reminisce, we’re
glad so many now share our Magic Land.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
102

CITIES GROW ALONG THE RAILROAD
RAYMONDVILLE & NEARBY TOWNS
The completion of the railroad meant the establishment of new towns, and no time was lost in
preparing townsites and railroad stations for the long-awaited trains. On April 3, 1904, the rails
completed their long stretch through the King Ranch to what would become Raymondville in the
present Willacy County.
Edward B. Raymond was one of those already on the scene when the railroads brought
opportunities for new development. Raised in Austin, he became acquainted in the early 1870s with
the ranching people of the Valley when he drove cattle to market in Dodge City, Kansas. He was
broke and disillusioned when he met L. H. McNelly, the famous Texas Ranger. McNelly was
instrumental in getting Raymond hired by Captain Richard King to open the El Sauz division of the
King Ranch, which he managed for thirty-seven years. A small community of ranch employees
developed at El Sauz ranch headquarters where Raymond served as postmaster and telegraph
operator. The little settlement also had a school and commissary.
Raymond acquired about twenty-four thousand acres of his own, which he called Las Majadas
(Sheepfold) Ranch, on which he raised cattle and sheep and experimented with all types of
vegetables and oranges. Joining other ranchers in deeding right of way for the railway, he also
donated a station site near his ranch. Railway officials named the station Raymondville in his honor.
He organized the Raymondville Town and Improvement Company in 1904 and lost no time in
getting the new townsite platted. He also established the area’s first cotton gin in 1904, became
president of the Raymondville State Bank in 1907, and set up a telephone exchange.
The farming was good and the area prospered as families moved down to clear the land and
establish homes. Raymondville was incorporated in 1912, but it was not until 1921 that what is
✧
A road grader is shown in front of the
Raymondville railroad station in the town’s
early days. At the right is the Davidson
(later named Lundberg) Hotel, completed in
1907, which soon became the center of the
area’s social life.
COURTESY OF GLENN HARDING.
CHAPTER VII
103

✧
Above: Edward B. Raymond, for whom
Raymondville was named.
Below: The Willacy County Courthouse
was completed in 1922 and is still in use.
Citizens gather in front of the Veterans
Memorial shown in the foreground for July
Fourth and Memorial Day services.
now Willacy County was formed from parts of
Cameron and Hidalgo Counties, and
Raymondville was named county seat. During
the depression, Raymondville was the only
town in the Valley with no bank failures, with
two banks operating since 1925, when the
First National Bank opened its doors.
When the old Davidson Hotel (later the
Lundberg Hotel) was completed in 1907, a twoand-a-half-story
building with eighteen rooms,
fancy Oriental rugs, and brass beds, it was called
an “oasis of luxury in a desert of brush,” and
soon became the center of the area’s social life.
The Willacy County Courthouse, completed
in 1922, is still in use, remodeled and airconditioned.
The Reber Memorial Library was
built in 1951 as a gift to the people of Willacy
County from the Reber family, John O. and his
sisters, Winnie and Lou Emma Reber, who
came in 1914 from Illinois.
Raymondville, the center of a large farm
and ranching area, is the gateway to the Rio
Grande Valley from the north on Highway 77.
Its citizens are proud of their city today and
their heritage, which is preserved in the
Raymondville Historical Center, housed in the
old red brick high school built in 1924.
“When they were going to tear the old
school down in 1967, we begged them to let
us make it a museum,” said Stanley
Addington, a member of the old school’s first
graduating class, who worked with others to
establish the center. It opened in 1969, and he
served as its volunteer curator and
enthusiastic supporter for the rest of his life.
W. A. Harding and A. A. Lindahl organized
the Harding-Lindahl Land Company and sold
land near Raymondville. Later the company
cleared and sold land in the Las Mesteñas
tract west of Raymondville. These companies
brought excursion parties from other states,
housing their guests at the Delta Orchard
Clubhouse located at the reservoir that is now
called Delta Lake.
Other Willacy County townsites were
platted. San Perlita was developed by Charles R.
Johnson, taking in Santa Margarita, an earlier
community. Willamar was named for William
A. Harding and S. Lamar Gill, developers. New
towns established later on the Edinburg rail
extension were Lasara, named for Mrs. W. A.
Harding (Laura) and Mrs. Lamar Gill (Sarah);
and Hargill for both Harding and Gill. The
community named for the Hardings’ son, Rollo,
was later renamed Monte Alto.
After Raymondville, the next railroad stop
was Lyford, named for William Lyford,
general counsel of the Chicago and Illinois
Railroad. The new town of Lyford had the
honor of receiving the first commercial load of
freight run on the St. Louis, Brownsville and
Mexico line—sugar mill machinery for John
Closner’s mill on the San Juan Plantation. The
machinery was hauled the remainder of the
distance in wagons drawn by oxen.
The town of Stillman, named for Charles
Stillman, founder of Brownsville, was
launched in April 1904. Its name was later
changed to Sebastian in honor of John
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
104

Sebastian, third vice-president of the Rock
Island Lines. Neither William Lyford nor John
Sebastian ever lived in the Valley.
PORT
MANSFIELD
A newer Willacy County community has
grown up around Port Mansfield on the coast
some twenty miles east of Raymondville. A
port and fishing community on the Laguna
Madre, it was formerly a small fishing camp
known as Red Fish Landing. The port was
opened in 1950 by the United States Army
Corps of Engineers, which wanted a harbor
between Corpus Christi and Brownsville. It
was named for U.S. Representative Joseph J.
Mansfield, who introduced the Mansfield Bill
authorizing the extension of the Gulf
Intracoastal Waterway from Corpus Christi to
the Rio Grande, completed in 1949.
The Port Mansfield “cut” was completed
across Padre Island in 1962. This brought a
tidal exchange between the Gulf of Mexico
and the Laguna Madre that produced an
abundant population of redfish, brown
shrimp, and flounder and greatly expanded
the sport and commercial fish economy of
Port Mansfield. Its claim to being “the best little
fishing spot on the Texas Coast” is borne
out at the Port Mansfield Annual Fishing
Tournament held in late July each year, a
highlight of the Valley’s summer season.
COMBES: SETTLED BY
JAMES DISHMAN
In search of a new home, James Dishman
left Kaufman County, Texas in 1893. He
selected a section in northwestern Cameron
County, which he described as “a land of vast
richness.” At that time there was no highway
running north and south, nor even a town
closer than Brownsville—just good, rich land
covered with mesquite and cactus.
Dishman bought cattle to start his herd,
added another section, and leased a third. He
was one of the first settlers to irrigate his crops
of cotton, corn, vegetables, grain, and sugarcane
from wells. He took a great interest in the
development of the Valley and contributed two
hundred acres to the building of the railroad.
Living conditions were primitive. The
nearest post office was fifteen miles away and
often a week would pass before someone
could pick up the mail. Lists of supplies needed
were carefully kept for the monthly wagon
trip to Brownsville. The only bank in the area
was at Brownsville, as was the one newspaper,
the Brownsville Herald.
The lack of medical service always
concerned early settlers, the nearest facility
being a day’s journey to Brownsville. In the
spring of 1897, several thefts of stock had been
reported, and Dishman went with a young
deputy in search of the thieves. They were
attacked by the suspected thieves and Dishman
was severely wounded, a bullet penetrating his
left forearm and entering his left lung, with
another bullet wound in the back.
A rider was sent to Brownsville by
horseback for a doctor, and Dr. Fred Combes
arrived just thirty-six hours after the shooting.
✧
Top: A land party is shown in front of the
Lamar Gill home in Raymondville. Standing
at far left are S. L. Gill, W. A. Harding, and
Ernest Pless. Seated eighth from left are Laura
Harding and Sarah Gill. Harding and Gill
developed several tracts around Raymondville
and Monte Alto, where they built the Delta
Orchard Clubhouse to house and entertain
land parties. In 1999 the Harding Foundation,
established by W. A. and Laura Harding,
celebrated its fiftieth anniversary of giving
donations to charities, local projects, and
tuition to ministerial students worldwide.
COURTESY OF GLENN HARDING.
Above: This Old Country Store near
Combes is typical of stores that existed in
the new communities that sprang up along
the railroad. Now residents do most of their
shopping in nearby cities.
CHAPTER VII
105

Harlingen, with well-kept homes, churches, small
businesses, and a steadily increasing population.
HARLINGEN & ITS FOUNDER
✧
Above: Harlingen founder Lon C. Hill beat
the railroad to the Valley the hard way,
moving his household in ten covered wagons
in 1903. He is shown at left with his driver
and the “Grey Ghost” after a fifteen-mile
trip in mud and rain. This automobile was
said to be the first one in Harlingen.
COURTESY OF RIO GRANDE VALLEY MUSEUM.
Below: The Hill family built Harlingen’s first
home, now preserved as part of the Rio
Grande Valley Museum complex near the
airport. Personal items from Lon Hill and
the era help add to the rustic authenticity of
days gone by.
He cleansed and dressed the wounds, then
returned to Brownsville and sent his brother,
Dr. Joe Combes, to care for the critically ill
man. After a month, the patient was taken in a
wagon converted into a makeshift ambulance
to the Army hospital in Brownsville, where
surgery was performed to remove the bullets,
and Dishman recovered from his wounds.
When the first passenger train came by his
land in 1904, Dishman laid out a new
community which he named “Combes” in
gratitude to the doctors who saved his life. He
donated land for a cemetery, three churches,
and the school that bears his name.
Combes was incorporated in the 1950s.
Nowadays, it is a bedroom community of
It was July 4, 1904 when the first train
reached what was known as “Lon C. Hill’s
Town.” Hill was among those who had helped
with the railroad by providing land and
money and convincing others to do the same.
He had started buying land in 1898, when a
court case brought him to Brownsville, and
had acquired several large holdings. In 1903
he left a thriving law practice in Beeville to
stake all on developing a parched, rattlesnakeinfested
wilderness.
Hill beat the railroad to the Valley the hard
way, moving his household and family of nine
children in ten covered wagons, with special
wide tires for desert sand. The caravan
included two other families. They had a
chuck wagon, a three-seated hack called the
ambulance where the girls rode, and a buggy
for Mrs. Hill and the baby, George.
It took them thirteen days to travel from
Beeville, a trip of two days and nights by the
only other land transportation, the stage from
Alice. The journey along wild land and
through the King, Kenedy, Yturria and
Armstrong Ranches was especially exciting to
the Hill children. The boys on horseback
drove sixty head of livestock, and a pack of
hounds followed. For the Hill family,
however, the first year and a half after their
big move brought hardship and tragedy. They
camped in a warehouse at Point Isabel, but
had to flee at the threat of a hurricane, and a
yellow fever rumor prompted them to vacate
their first headquarters in Brownsville.
Hill and his sons camped by the Arroyo
Colorado as they prepared their new home
and town. Hill envisioned a system of irrigation
canals and a barge canal connected to the
Arroyo Colorado. He chose the name
Harlingen because it suggested canals like
those in the City of Harlingen, Holland, the
home of his friend Uriah Lott’s grandmother.
While the rest of the family was living in
Brownsville, typhoid struck, and Lon Hill lost
his beloved wife Eustacia and baby George.
The oldest daughter, Miss Paul Hill, then
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
106

twenty-one, bravely took over the household
responsibilities and care of the younger
children. The family moved into their new
home, built by carpenters from Austin, in
January 1905. It is now preserved as
Harlingen’s first home in the Rio Grande
Valley Museum complex near the airport.
Hill’s greatest project at the time was a set
of irrigation canals, built with the help of a
partner, W. Z. Weems. Digging started in May
1907, and by November 26, miles of canals
were ready to operate, capable of irrigating
seventy-five thousand acres, all with only one
pump on the Rio Grande. With the assurance
of water, he began to sell land near cost to
encourage settlers. He built the first brick
building in town in 1908, which housed a
post office, bank and newspaper office. In
1910, when Harlingen had about three
hundred residents, the town was officially
incorporated.
Hill also planted crops on his land. Cotton,
alfalfa, corn and truck vegetables flourished,
as did sugarcane, but the sugar mill he built
was burned down by bandits in 1917. In his
later years, Hill worked for flood control and
other legislation, and a barge canal to Port
Harlingen on the Arroyo connected with the
Gulf Intracoastal Canal System, which finally
became a reality in 1952. A legend in his own
time, he was honored on his seventieth
birthday in 1932 at a Founders’ Day program.
“The Rio Grande Valley of Texas is a manmade
miracle,” said Hill. “Nature provided
the raw materials—fertile soil, water and
climate. Men of vision mixed these with
brains, energy, sweat and tears to create the
magic of our Magic Valley. I have watched the
Valley grow from small beginnings. I know
the people who have made it, and have faith
in their ability to achieve still greater things.
The future depends upon the efforts of all
the Valley people, their ability to make the
most of their abundant natural advantages,
and continued opportunity to prosper in a
free economy.”
A major change came to Harlingen in 1941
when the efforts of Harlingen business leaders to
secure an air base were successful. The city
provided 960 acres of land, the government
approved a training program for thirty thousand
troops a year, and construction began in July
1941 on Harlingen Air Gunnery School (HAGS).
Plans were expedited after the December 7, 1941
attack on Pearl Harbor and by January 1942 over
eighty truckloads of troops rolled through its
gates. It was only a short time before airplanes
were flying across the brilliant blue sky and the
acrid smells of gunsmoke and flight fuel were
mingled with the fragrance of citrus blossoms.
Air gunnery training continued until the end of
World War II.
The air base spawned Valley Transit
Company, which began with a converted milk
delivery truck, to transport workers and
service personnel to and from the base. Under
the guidance of co-founder Vance D. Raimond,
it grew into a full-fledged bus system
✧
Above: Harlingen rapidly grew into a
business and retail center as shown on
Jackson Street in the late 1930s.
COURTESY OF THE RIO GRANDE VALLEY MUSEUM.
Below: The first Valley Transit Company bus
was a converted delivery wagon to transport
workers and service personnel to and from
the new military base. It soon grew to serve
the Valley and northern Mexico with its fleet
of modern buses, later expanding service to
Corpus Christi, San Antonio, and beyond.
COURTESY OF ROBERT FARRIS.
CHAPTER VII
107

✧
Right: The Rio Grande Valley Museum
complex occupies a part of the former air
base. Behind this showcase museum around
a landscaped courtyard are the Paso Real
Stagecoach Inn, the Historical Museum that
chronicles early Valley life and Texas
history, Harlingen’s first hospital, and the
Lon C. Hill home.
Below: The Iwo Jima Memorial on the
campus of Harlingen’s Marine Military
Academy was the original mold fashioned
from a photo of U.S. Marines planting the
flag on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on
February 23, 1945. It was used to cast the
famous monument in Arlington, Virginia.
One of those raising the flag was Harlon
Block, a young Weslaco Marine who was
killed in the Iwo Jima fighting six days after
the famed photo was taken. He is honored
in his hometown by a park that bears his
name and an exhibit at the Weslaco
Bicultural Museum. His remains now rest at
the base of this memorial.
operating through the Valley and beyond that
is still operated by family members.
The Harlingen Air Base was closed in 1946.
After extensive renovations it reopened as the
Harlingen Air Force Base in 1952 as an
observer-navigator school to train navigators
during the Korean War. By March 1960 over
ten thousand navigators had graduated from
this training program. Hundreds of civilian
workers were employed at the air base in
addition to an estimated four thousand service
personnel. The base buzzed with action.
Then there was stunned silence. In 1961
word came that the base was ordered closed.
The airmen were transferred and more than
700 civilian jobs ended. “For Sale” signs stood
in the yards of about 1,400 homes in
Harlingen. Harlingen residents were greatly
concerned about the economy. A plan evolved
to advertise the homes to retirees in the North
and Midwest, offering affordable homes in a
warm climate. Success was visible as, one by
one, the “For Sale” signs came down as new
residents moved in to become a vital part of
the community.
And what to do with the base itself? Mayor
Mike Hodes felt it should be used for
educational institutions. After much red tape,
the city acquired ownership of much of the
base. When the city’s money ran out, H. E.
Butt of Corpus Christi, founder of the H-E-B
stores, and Lewis Boggus and Art Hauseman
of Harlingen made large purchases at the
auction and then made these facilities
available for city development purposes.
The results can be seen today. The former
base is home to Valley International Airport,
Texas State Technical College, the Marine
Military Academy, the Iwo Jima Monument
and Visitor Center, the Rio Grande Valley
Museum complex, major industrial firms, and
related businesses.
Though agriculture does not dominate the
economy as it once did, cotton is still an
important factor in Harlingen’s economy. The
first bale harvested in the nation each year is
welcomed by the Harlingen Chamber and
business community with great fanfare and
prizes. Cotton buyers are centered here, as are
cottonseed processing firms, suppliers, and
cotton gins.
Harlingen’s healthcare institutions spread
their influence over the area. Their
centerpiece is Valley Baptist Health System,
which celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary
in 2000. The new Regional Academic Health
Center (RAHC), approved by Texas
legislators, is being built near the huge Valley
Baptist complex, which is surrounded by
clinics and medical offices.
Harlingen also has built a strong tourism
industry. To its strong Winter Texan base it has
added a year-round emphasis on ecotourism.
The sixth Annual Rio Grande Valley Birding
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
108

Festival in November 2000 attracted thousands
of ecotourists. The city is linking parks with
walking and biking trails along the Arroyo
Colorado and a forty-acre thicket has been
acquired as a satellite of the World Birding
Center headquartered in Mission. The city’s
annual RioFest, a celebration of the arts that is
held in April, targets both residents and tourists.
Harlingen’s strategic location has helped it
grow into a trade and transportation hub. It
also is poised for increased international trade
through its Mexico connection, the Free Trade
Bridge at Los Indios, which it shares with San
Benito. In addition to its many fine modern
buildings and facilities for citizens and
tourists, some of its remarkable old buildings
have been restored to new life as homes and
offices, shops, banks and cafes in its
flourishing downtown section. Even its
founder would be amazed at what the town he
established has become.
SAN BENITO: THE RESACA CITY
In May 1904 the railroad crew reached
what would become San Benito, called “The
Resaca City” because of the beautiful resaca,
or oxbow, formed from a long-ago channel of
the Rio Grande, that winds through it. When
the railroad work party arrived there with
Colonel Sam Robertson heading the crew, he
knew he had found the land for which he had
been searching.
Robertson was fully aware of the potential
of the alluvial soil under irrigation. He
borrowed money to buy thirteen thousand
acres from James F. Landrum and Oliver Hicks
of the Stephen Powers estate and platted the
town. First it was named “Bessie” in 1904 in
honor of railroad financier B. F. Yoakum’s
daughter, and the depot was known as “Bessie”
until 1907, when Robertson applied for a post
office and discovered that Gaines County
already had a post office named Bessie. Then
Robertson platted the town as “Diaz” for
Mexico’s longtime president and applied for a
post office in that name, which was approved
on April 2,1907 with Robertson as postmaster.
However, that name ran into trouble with
Mercedes, whose founders had first decided to
name that new town “Diaz.”
“San Benito” was suggested by a cook in
Robertson’s surveyors’ camp. Rafael Moreno,
who had been a cabin boy during the heyday of
steamboating on the Rio Grande, wanted to
honor his former benefactor, Benjamin Hicks.
The name of San Benito was approved by the
post office on May 11, 1907, and both the
railroad station and post office have used the
name since that time. The first baby born there
was named San Benito Montalvo in honor of
the new town. An election for incorporation
was held on June 27, 1911, and the City of San
Benito was duly incorporated on July 3, 1911.
Meanwhile, Robertson talked a group of
investors into organizing the San Benito Land
and Water Company with $500,000 capital
from several partners and a district embracing
sixty-eight thousand acres. Water pumped
from the Rio Grande flowed into the old
resaca, now San Benito’s main canal. Built
with a system of locks, it was up to 250 feet
wide and 37 miles long, including a short
man-made channel connecting with the river.
He worked on the canal system from 1906 to
1913, investing all the money he had made on
the railroad to Brownsville and other projects,
plus the proceeds of town lots and thousands of
acres of land, using every dollar of the money in
developing the San Benito project. A 1909
report of the company said, in part:
The town is well supplied with general
merchandise stores; it has a good bank with
deposits of about $100,000, churches, a
✧
Above: Colonel Sam A. Robertson, founder
of San Benito, builder of railroads and
canals, and visionary of a world class resort
on South Padre Island.
COURTESY OF THE SAN BENITO HISTORICAL COMMISSION.
Below: In 1911, Robertson built his spacious
home on San Benito’s main street like a
fortress, and it has lasted well to this day. It
is now the home and office of attorney
Jeffrey Jackson.
CHAPTER VII
109

difference, and landseekers flocked to the
area, sometimes chartering a train all the way
down from Chicago. Robertson’s agents once
signed up four thousand acres in small tracts
within a single two-week period.
In 1910 and 1911, to encourage land sales,
Robertson built what became known as the
Spiderweb Railroad to serve the smaller communities
so they could get their produce to
market. He later sold it at a profit, but lost it
all in the San Benito canal project.
The San Benito News for February 27, 1961
reminisced that,
✧
Above: The San Benito Land and Water
Company built an irrigation system to serve
sixty-eight thousand acres. Begun in 1906,
it still operates from this headquarters.
Below: The San Benito Irrigation District
office today. Though farming conditions and
the availability of water have changed
greatly since the system was built, the
district still works with area farmers to
supply their water needs.
schoolhouse and a cotton gin which ginned
something like 1,000 bales of cotton this year.
Several substantial buildings are now being
erected and the company will immediately
erect a desirable office building. In addition to
the present school facilities, funds have
been provided for the erection of a
commodious and modern structure to cost
not less than $20,000.
Provision has also been made for the
installation of suitable electric light and
waterworks plants, sidewalks and other
conveniences. In fact, the community has all
the appearances of progress and enterprise
and is destined to increase in size and
importance with the development of the Rio
Grande country.
By 1908 construction had reached a point
where water could be turned into the canal
and the resaca began to fill. Water made the
San Benito thrived and became a busy hub
of shipping and trading. The vegetable output
was higher than any other town in the Rio
Grande Valley, and postal receipts more than
doubled that first year from $249 in October
1909 to $530 in October 1910. Freight
receipts almost tripled, jumping from $3,314
to $8,751 in the same year’s time. The largest
sugar mill in South Texas had reached the last
planning stage and an ice factory was being
built. The electric plant had doubled its
capacity, and a canning factory had made
commitments for coming to San Benito.
From that same edition:
The first school in San Benito was a
traditional one-room schoolhouse. When
school convened on December 7, 1908, there
were forty-eight students representing five
nationalities: Americans, non-English speaking
Germans, Bohemians, Spaniards, and
Mexicans. The first teacher was Mrs. Scott
Brown, who was then Miss Kate Purvis.
From Charles Robinson III in A History of
San Benito: “The Escuela Guadalupe, a
parochial school, was opened in 1912. Many
Spanish-speaking residents received their only
education at the school under the direction of
Mrs. Carmen Martinez.”
San Benito developed quickly and became
the produce center of the area during its early
years, shipping more fruit and vegetable
tonnage than any other city. The Stonewall
Jackson Hotel, built by public subscription,
was called “one of the most up-to-date hotels
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
110

in South Texas” in 1928 and for many years
was a center of business and social activity.
From Robinson’s A History of San Benito:
In 1931 the San Benito Airport was
dedicated, accompanied by an air show that
would still be considered spectacular. There
were luncheons and banquets in the Stonewall
Jackson Hotel, air races and a formal ball.
Flying clubs came from as far away as Houston.
For regular entertainment, the city boasted any
number of activities. The Bohemian Club held
dances on the roof of the Aztec Building,
obtaining some of the best bands in Texas.
There were three movie houses, the Rivoli, the
Palace and the Ruenes, the latter particularly
noted for its lavish appointments.
Yet much of the glitter was superficial.
Underneath, the citizenry suffered from the
hardships of the Great Depression as much as
any other area of the country. While the San
Benito Bank and Trust managed to hold out,
the Farmer’s State and the Arroyo State failed.
The great heyday, the time of unlimited
optimism in San Benito was over. It remained
for nature to provide the final blow. On
September 3, 1933, a hurricane devastated the
Valley and marked the end of Old San Benito.
Sam Robertson had created it, and he had
lived to see it pass. He died in Brownsville on
August 22, 1938 at the age of 71.
The sugar mill that was begun with such
great promise never did manufacture sugar, but
the structure became the first large power plant
operated by Central Power and Light Company,
and the city served as CPL’s district headquarters
for many years. Agriculture continued as its
mainstay until diversification brought new
manufacturing and service industries.
The Dolly Vinsant Memorial Hospital, built
by community subscription in 1949, was named
for a San Benito nurse killed in World War II
while flying over Germany on a mercy mission.
It has been enlarged many times and continues
to serve the area under its present ownership.
In the 1930s, Narciso Martinez began to
bring attention to San Benito with his accordion.
He became known as El Huracán del Valle or the
Hurricane of the Valley and is regarded as the
father of Conjunto Music. San Benito’s Narciso
Martinez Cultural Arts Center promotes the
region’s Hispanic heritage through art, music,
theater, film, dance, and literary programs.
The Valley’s only celebrity to be honored with
a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is
western and Tejano singer Freddy Fender who
grew up in San Benito and has never forgotten
his roots. He visits his home city often and has
established a foundation to provide scholarships
for students across the Valley.
Other famous San Benitians include Elfego
Esparza, world famous opera singer born and
raised in El Ranchito, a 1948 San Benito High
School graduate, and Carlos D. Conde,
nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, a 1954
graduate who served in the Nixon White House.
T. R. Fehrenbach, author of eighteen nonfiction
books and past chairman of the Texas Historical
Commission, was born in San Benito in the Sam
Robertson house. Dr. James C. Dobson, founder
✧
Above: The sugar mill begun by Sam
Robertson became the first large power
plant operated by Central Power and Light
Company in the area. This picture shows
the power plant around 1970.
Below: The Dolly Vinsant Memorial
Hospital was built by public subscription in
1949 and named in honor of a nurse killed
in World War II. The hospital has been
updated and enlarged several times and
continues to serve the San Benito area.
CHAPTER VII
111

San Benito has always been a good place to
live, with beautiful homes built along its
winding resaca, friendly merchants and
townspeople, and an outstanding school system.
With its excellent Mexico connection
through the Free Trade Bridge at Los Indios, it
is primed for healthy growth.
LOS FRESNOS:
NAMED FOR ASH TREES
✧
Top: The Los Fresnos State Bank was
established in 1928 to serve the community.
It survived the crash of 1929 and the
ensuing depression, and continues to serve
the area as part of the Wells Fargo system.
Above: An early Los Fresnos settler, Harry
Whipple, funded a library in memory of his
wife, Ethel. The library is the centerpiece of
a city park.
and president of Focus on the Family, graduated
in 1954, as did Bobby Morrow, three-time
Olympic gold medallist.
San Benito leaders received good news in
December 1999 when they landed the
Challenger Learning Center, a multi-million
dollar facility packed with space-science educational
tools billed as the latest vehicle in the
teaching of math, science, engineering and
technology for students in South Texas and
northern Mexico. It includes a space shuttle
simulator for students to conduct simulated
space flights.
The new millennium is bringing many
changes to San Benito. Two new hotels were
announced early in 2000. The state’s largest
RV park is located in San Benito, adding more
than three thousand residents during the
winter season. A large transportation and
warehouse facility opened in 2000 to serve
nearby maquiladoras in Mexico.
Ten years after the railroad opened the
Valley to the world, towns had been established
alongside its route as it was extended
west. Clearing had begun in the new settlements
and irrigation systems were pumping
water from the Rio Grande to fields of vegetables.
However, much of the land was still covered
with cactus and thorny brush, including
what was to become Los Fresnos, roughly ten
miles north of Brownsville and ten miles
southeast of San Benito. A ranch had existed
there since 1770, where open range grazing,
especially of sheep, was conducted until after
the Mexican War.
There were four settlements in the area: Las
Yescas, for the yesca plant that burns freely
and was used as a lighter for cigarettes; Agua
Negra for “Black Water;” Charco Hondo,
which means a large dry resaca bed with one
deep waterhole, and Tres Norias, “Three
Wells.” Residents grew corn and beans for
their own use but did not grow crops for sale.
These communities became part of the new
settlement and the people found jobs on the
new irrigated farms, so they no longer had to
travel by horse and wagon to Corpus Christi
each year to pick cotton.
Harlingen developer Lon C. Hill had
purchased the Los Fresnos tract from Mexican
owners of the Espíritu Santo grant. Lon C.
“Mose” Hill, Jr., and others formed a
development company to sell the land. They
established a townsite on the old Alice
stagecoach road, first calling it “Moseville,”
then Los Fresnos, Spanish for “The Ash” for the
many ash trees that grew there. Work began on
an irrigation system, and partner Thomas Lee
of St. Louis contacted prospective buyers.
Among early arrivals was the Swann family,
E. C. and his wife Susie, and their children,
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
112

Frances, Eunice, James, and Miriam, who
came on October 20, 1915, from Centralia,
Missouri. He was a Methodist minister who
had been bitten by the Valley land bug on an
earlier trip with the developers, and the
family augmented its income by providing
meals for the homeseekers. Daughter Miriam
became Miriam Chattelle and spent most of
her life living, teaching, and raising her two
sons in the Rio Grande Valley. In 1948 she
wrote about the early days of Los Fresnos in a
delightful book, For We Love Our Valley Home:
Sightseeing trips were made by train to the
Valley when a sizeable number of buyers were
ready to see first-hand this veritable land of
Eden. The waiting list was long for many
people desired to visit the land on the Rio
Grande; the very name sounded romantic
and appealing.
Men feel a deep urge to pioneer, exulting
in hardships in the creating of new homes and
creating towns from brushland. Especially did
the description of the fertility of this land and
tropical climate beckon to many.
Purchases were made by several families as
quickly as houses could be built and land
cleared…the Smiths, Donaldsons, Luptons,
Whipples and Palmers, to name just a few. As
more land was cleared, other people came.
First a Community House was built and used
for all religions and civic purposes. When it
was damaged beyond repair by the 1933
hurricane, four churches were established in
as many years. In 1920 the Woman’s Service
Club was organized to provide a social service
club for the women of the community.
The land yielded wonderful crops of vegetables
and cane, and later potatoes were grown
on a large scale. In response to a request for
crop yield information by the new Chamber of
Commerce, Harry Whipple wrote in 1929:
My average returns from year to year are
good, and so far ahead of anything ever heard
of in the state where I lived before moving to
the Valley that it is hard for my friends back
there to believe. I have had potato crops which
ran over $1,000 per acre. I had three acres of
cabbage which made $2,600, or an average of
$866.66 per acre. One year, I had one acre of
beans which came up volunteer from the
season before, which brought me $500.
Many years later, he helped establish a city
library, the Whipple Memorial Library named
in memory of his wife.
When the Southern Pacific Railroad built
its new line to Brownsville in 1927 through
Los Fresnos, the townsite began to grow
around the depot. A new school building was
built, its bond issue having passed by vote of
27 for and 26 against. The “aginners” vowed
the community would never grow enough to
fill such a large school. But it did and was
bursting at the seams by the 1950s, when
another bond issue passed to build a modern
elementary school, soon followed by a new
high school plant. More new schools have
been added in recent years to make room for
students in the large school district, recognized
over the state for its excellent schools.
Businesses came and went with the times
as agriculture experienced its ups and downs.
✧
The new Los Fresnos High School spreads
over a large campus by a picturesque
resaca. It is one of several new facilities in
the school district.
CHAPTER VII
113

development program, including new
businesses and attractive residential
subdivisions. The brush is gone, the streets
are paved, the palms sway in the sunshine,
and the soil still yields a good harvest for
those who farm wisely. Though Brownsville’s
city limits keep moving closer, Los Fresnos
maintains its own personality and identity as
it heads into the new century.
✧
Above: The old Paso Real Ferry crossing on
the Arroyo Colorado near Rio Hondo was
on the main stagecoach route between
Brownsville and Corpus Christi. The Inn is
shown atop the hill in the background.
COURTESY OF GLENN HOUSLEY.
Below: The Paso Real Stagecoach Inn
originally on the banks of the Arroyo
Colorado is now part of the Rio Grande
Valley Museum complex at Harlingen. It
gives a view of life about 1870, when travel
was by horse and wagon, and it took three
days to journey eighty miles.
Its businesses and citizens were served
through more than six decades by the Los
Fresnos State Bank, established in 1928 by
A. N. Tandy and his sons, Cleve and Clyde
Tandy. Later, Ura Breedlove headed the bank
for many years, and in 1975 his son Cleve
became its president. The bank still serves Los
Fresnos and its active farming community as
part of the Wells Fargo system. Tandy Hall on
the campus of UT-Brownsville/Texas
Southmost College was named in honor of the
Tandy family.
The community works together to produce
the Los Fresnos PRCA Rodeo in early
February each year which draws cowboys
from the national circuit, plus a youth show
and arts and crafts exhibition. The event
attracts a wide audience from area residents
and Winter Texans.
Recent years have brought positive changes
to Los Fresnos through its active economic
RIO HONDO MEANS
“ DEEP RIVER”
Rio Hondo was part of the thorny jungle in
1911 when W. H. Smith and the Reverend
William H. Morrison bought a thousand acres
of land from Sam A. Robertson, developer of
the San Benito tract. Engineer Alfred Tamm
made the survey for the townsite northeast of
Harlingen on the east bank of the Arroyo
Colorado, a former channel of the Rio
Grande. J. R. George was the first settler, and
his wife is credited with naming the new town
Rio Hondo (Deep River). George operated a
general store and served as the first
postmaster when the post office was
established in 1911. The San Benito and Rio
Grande Valley Railroad was completed past
Rio Hondo in June 1911.
Before Rio Hondo was founded, the nearby
ferry crossing at Paso Real played an
important part in Valley history. It was known
for years as “General Taylor’s Crossing on the
Arroyo Colorado” as his army marched
through there on its way to Brownsville and
Port Isabel. Later it was a way station on the
Alice-Brownsville stagecoach route. The
village of Arroyo formed around it and
became the mail distribution point for north
Cameron County for two decades until
Harlingen got its own post office. The old
Paso Real Stagecoach Inn was moved from its
original site to Harlingen and completely
reconstructed as part of the Rio Grande Valley
Museum complex.
A year after its founding, a sales brochure
emphasized the potential of “RIO HONDO—
The New Resort Town and Playground of the
Rio Grande Valley.” In addition to its farming
potential, it was called a “Sportsman’s
Paradise” with its good hunting, fishing, and
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
114

favorable location by the Arroyo. Though
some of those early dreams may not have
materialized, it did become a friendly and
prosperous agricultural community near the
Port of Harlingen, located on the Gulf
Intracoastal Waterway. As in other parts of the
Valley, farming activity started with vegetables
and now has mostly grain, cotton and cattle.
The Arroyo, wide, deep, and free from
pollution, was perfect for water sports in the
early days. Outing parties came from miles
around, traveling by buggy, horseback, and
automobile, and the Fourth of July picnic was
a gala all-day affair. Now many Valley residents
have getaway homes along the Arroyo, and it
has become a popular fishing and boating
area. The Arroyo has been dredged and is
navigable to barges from the Gulf Intracoastal
Waterway to the Port of Harlingen. Nature
lovers enjoy its rugged bankside vegetation,
thorn forests and marshes that shelter many
native birds and animals. The final reaches of
the Arroyo pass through Laguna Atascosa
National Wildlife Refuge.
The Texas Air Museum, located one mile
east of Rio Hondo, shows the history of
aviation from World War I through the
Vietnam War. Their display of aircraft
includes foreign as well as U.S. planes. There
is also a library that is available for research
on many aviation-related subjects.
BROWNSVILLE
REVISITED
Brownsville, the Valley’s oldest and largest
city, entered the twentieth century with less
than ten thousand people. Its friendship and
commerce with Matamoros were intact, and
its public buildings were conveniently
located. Its cosmopolitan population enjoyed
social refinements and educational
opportunities that were established in
wealthier times. However, the outside world
was still limited to steamships serving Point
Isabel, the narrow gauge Rio Grande Railroad,
the stagecoach line to Alice and Corpus
Christi, and telegraphic connections.
This all changed on July 4, 1904 when the
first passenger train of the St. Louis,
Brownsville, and Mexico Railroad arrived in
Brownsville, and the relaxing afternoon siesta
became a thing of the past. By 1909 the first
Brownsville-Matamoros International Bridge
was under construction, with new stores and
businesses being built.
Its economy was still based on agriculture
and trade with Mexico, but now products
could be shipped to other parts of the country
by rail. The railroad and its access to national
markets gave Brownsville the incentive to
further explore the agricultural possibilities of
this fertile delta region.
Brownsville participated in the agricultural
bonanza that changed the area from brushland
to irrigated farms, first with the growing of
rice, which soon salted up the land, then
sugarcane, which did the same. Vegetables
and citrus were more productive, but there
was no way to get the area’s products into
world markets. Again, Brownsville looked to
✧
Above: The International Bridge between
Brownsville and Matamoros, shown around
1916, was a great improvement over
the ferries and rowboats that had been
used earlier.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
Below: The 1912 Cameron County
Courthouse was the second built for that
purpose. The brown brick and terra cotta
building occupied an entire city block. The
building has a Texas state historic marker
and is listed in the National Register of
Historic Places. It was replaced by the
present Cameron County Hall of Justice
in 1978.
COURTESY OF THE WIEGAND FAMILY.
CHAPTER VII
115

✧
Above: Louis Cobolini, known as the
“Father of Deep Water.”
Below: People from over the Valley joined
Brownsville in 1936 to celebrate the opening
of the port, making it the largest gathering
the city had ever entertained to that time.
the sea. Without water transportation, export
commerce was limited.
The Rio Grande Valley needed deepwater
transportation to develop its potential.
Commodore Louis Cobolini, a native of Trieste,
Italy, established a fleet of fishing boats at Point
Isabel and became one of the largest shippers
of marine products on the Texas coast. He saw
the need for a deep water port for the Valley,
and labored for twenty years to make it
happen, providing technical expertise and
working with army engineers and local leaders.
His labors earned for him the name “Father of
Deep Water” for the Rio Grande Valley.
When Cobolini died at age eighty-four in
1928, others took up the challenge. The
Brownsville Navigation District was formed on
December 22, 1928. It contained 201,668
acres in Cameron County and was empowered
to levy taxes and develop port facilities. In
1930 attorney R. B. Rentfro was sent to
Washington to present a petition to Congress
asking them to authorize the Navigation
District. While in the capital pushing his
proposal through the legislative bodies,
Rentfro was elected mayor of Brownsville, a
post he held for the next ten years.
President Hoover signed the Rivers and
Harbors Bill that formally authorized the
Brownsville Deepwater Project on July 4, 1930.
Judge H. L. Yates had been sent to Washington
in early September 1933 to negotiate with the
Public Works Administration for funds to help
pay for the project. An expenditure of $2.6
million was approved, and the channel was
dug from Brazos Santiago Pass to the new
Brownsville turning basin. Seventeen miles
long, the Brownsville ship channel is an almost
straight, unobstructed channel connecting the
harbor with the Gulf of Mexico, where the
entrance is protected by rock jetties. By its
opening date, $5.6 million had been spent to
bring the port into being.
At the port’s opening celebration on May
16, 1936, Brownsville played host to the
largest gathering the city had ever entertained.
When the festivities closed that day, the deepwater
port was open for business. F. W. “Fritz”
Hofmokel directed operations at the port during
its first three decades, bringing it to
national prominence.
At the Port of Brownsville today, ships move
cargo from the U.S. and Mexico to all parts of
the world. It is also the southern terminus of
the Gulf Intracoastal Canal through which
cargo moves by barges to the great river ports
of the Mississippi-Ohio-Illinois System and
even into Canada. The port is a major center of
industrial development with some 250
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
116

companies doing business there. These
businesses range from offshore drilling rigs and
ship dismantling to grain handling and storage.
At Fort Brown in 1900, soldiers came and
went, taking part in the city’s social and civic
life. In the spring of 1906, the First Battalion,
Twenty-fifth Infantry (black) replaced the
Twenty-sixth Infantry (white). Most of the
170 men in Companies B, C and D were
career regulars, and discipline was generally
excellent, but local residents resented the idea
of black troops and tensions developed.
After a shooting incident on August 13,
1906 that resulted in the death and wounding
of several Brownsville residents, irate citizens
wired President Theodore Roosevelt
demanding the withdrawal of the troops. He
withdrew the soldiers from Fort Brown and
dismissed all three companies from the service
without honor. Controversy about the incident
continued for many years, and in 1973 the
two surviving troopers of the ill-fated battalion
were given honorable discharges.
Following this 1906 incident, Fort Brown
was closed until 1913, when bandit troubles
erupted again and troops were stationed there
once more to protect the border. The fort
remained active as a Cavalry post until 1944,
after which it was declared surplus. It is now
the campus of University of Texas-
Brownsville/Texas Southmost College. While
many new buildings have been added, some
of the old buildings are quite unique and are
used extensively for administrative purposes
for the rapidly growing university. The former
base hospital, where Dr. William Gorgas discovered
the cause of yellow fever, is now the
Gorgas Administration Building.
Brownsville honored its 150th birthday in
1998 with a yearlong celebration that
included parades, concerts, reenactments of
historic events and other activities. One
reenactment recalled Pan American pilot
Charles Lindbergh carrying the first airmail
between Mexico City and the U.S. The new
Brownsville Municipal Airport, the first
aviation facility in South Texas, was dedicated
on March 10, 1929. Famed aviatrix Amelia
Earhart was also on hand for the dedication.
With modern progress coming to
Brownsville, its people saw many of the
customs and much of the color of the Old
Border disappearing, so they decided to revive
and perpetuate them in a gay fiesta. Charro
Days was the result. This extravaganza began
in 1938, a four-day pre-Lenten festival held
the last weekend of February that has grown
to a mammoth celebration for the twin cities
of Brownsville and Matamoros.
The spirit of Charro Days, when the
Mexican cowboy rode into town to spend his
earnings and see his sweetheart prevails.
Colorful traditional costumes typical of Latin
America are worn, and activities include three
✧
Above: F. W. “Fritz” Hofmokel directed
operations at the port its first three decades.
Below: By the 1980s the Port of Brownsville
had become a major center of industrial
development as it welcomed ships from all
over the world. It continues to grow and
expand its facilities and services.
COURTESY OF THE PORT OF BROWNSVILLE.
CHAPTER VII
117

The nation’s first Hispanic district judge,
Judge Reynaldo Garza, is a Brownsville
resident, whose son, Ygnacio Garza, served as
mayor of Brownsville from 1987 to 1991.
Brownsville, the Valley’s oldest and largest
city, enters the new millennium with around
140,000 people. In both 1999 and 2000 it had
unprecedented residential and commercial
building activity. It is a port of entry by rail, sea,
air, and highway over three international
bridges. Its port is of major importance to
industry and international trade, enhanced by
its Foreign Trade Zone on the U.S./Mexico
border. Its manufacturing sector works in
conjunction with more than a hundred
maquiladoras (manufacturing, processing and
assembly plants) across the border in
Matamoros. Its malls and other retail businesses
draw many customers from both sides of the
border, and it is a major tourist area with its
proximity to Mexico and South Padre Island.
Out of its historic past Brownsville has
assumed its present role of international
commercial center without loss of the
tradition and charm of its mingled Latin-
American culture.
THE FIRST STOP WEST:
STUART P LACE
✧
Top: The former Fort Brown hospital now
serves as the UTB/TSC Gorgas
Administration Building.
Above: Built in 1867 adjacent to the
hospital, the Fort Brown medical lab has
been restored and named Champion Hall in
honor of A. A. Champion, longtime
Brownsville resident and historian.
parades, roving mariachis, Mexican dancing,
and much fun and frolic. Because it shows
how different cultures can exist side by side on
such a friendly basis, Charro Days has been
the subject of many documentary movies,
magazine articles, radio, and TV programs.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Brownsville
residents saw a wide range of construction
and civic projects, many of them funded
through the Earl C. Sams Foundation. A
partner and chairman of the board of the
JCPenney Company, Sams used his fortune to
establish the foundation bearing his name.
His daughters, Gladys Sams Porter and
Camille Sams Lightner lived in Brownsville,
and their love for the area resulted in the
foundation’s gifts of facilities for Dean Porter
Park, Camille Playhouse, Lula Sams Girl
Scout Camp, Sams Stadium, and the Gladys
Porter Zoo. Established in 1971, the zoo is
one of the Valley’s major attractions.
As the railroad tracks moved westward out
of Harlingen, some towns were developed
immediately and others would wait a few
years. In mid-1904, the railroad reached what
would become Stuart Place, named for
developers Robert and C. E. Stuart. Several
years later, Mose Hill (Lon C. Jr.) and Thomas
F. Lee built the white-columned Leeland-
Stuart Place Clubhouse just west of Harlingen
for the hundreds of homeseekers brought in
by trainloads by Lee and the Stuart Brothers.
“If the clubhouse could talk, it would tell
delightful tales of the community entertainments
and get-togethers of those landseekers,”
remembered Lillian Weems Baldridge in “A
Salute to the Leeland-Stuart Place Clubhouse” in
Tip-O-Texan magazine in September 1967.
“Later, there were many events through its years
as a community center—romances, weddings,
and friendships formed that have withstood the
test of almost a half-century.”
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
118

She was a young educator who taught
Spanish in public schools at the time, and Lee
asked her to teach a Spanish class in “Farm
Spanish-Mexican” to the homeseekers. They
wanted to know how to say, “farming
implements, water the mules, harness and
unharness the mules, irrigate, plow, rake,
disc,” etc.
“My vocabulary was non-existent along
those lines, so I visited Mr. Santos Lozano, Sr.,
at his mercantile establishment in Harlingen.
He painstakingly and patiently wrote out
what I had to teach, and I worked with the
new farmers until they could give instructions
to their Mexican workers.”
After the land development days, the large
clubhouse was home to a variety of
commercial firms and private owners. Still an
attractive landmark on Business Highway 83
just west of Harlingen, it is a reminder of the
free-wheeling days of the early 1900s when
Midwestern farmers were lured to the Valley
by land developers with promises of a
fabulous future in a virgin land.
LA FERIA:
AN INDIAN FAIRGROUND
When the railroad reached the site of La Feria
near the Hidalgo County line in 1904, no
provision had been made for a town. Today’s La
Feria had its beginnings in 1909, though
tradition says that centuries earlier Spanish
explorers wandered up the Rio Grande and
heard music coming from a celebration. What
they found was a group of friendly Indians
having a party. The explorers, according to
popular history, joined the celebration and the
following day left the newly named Los Llanos de
la Feria—The Plains of the Fairgrounds without
incident or trouble. Like the efficient explorers
that they were, the Spaniards charted the area
and sent the maps to Mexico City where they
were officially recorded. The name stuck.
In 1790 the La Feria Grant was conveyed
by Spain to Doña Rosa María Hinojosa de
Ballí, matriarch of a pioneer Reynosa family,
which was awarded several large grants. In
1841 Yrineo Longoria bought twenty-four
square leagues of land from the Ballí family,
and he and his descendants ranched in the
area. One of his descendants, Rosalio Ponce
Longoria, built the first house in La Feria in
1909, which was dedicated with a Texas
Historical Building Medallion in 1974. The
Longoria land included what is now Santa
Rosa, La Feria, and Bluetown.
Ranches dotted the area, and it is said that
horse racing and fiestas were held in September
of each year until about 1900. There were no
palm trees, flowering shrubs, vegetables,
cotton, grain and citrus orchards as there are
today. There were cacti, mesquite, and grass
enough for goats, sheep, and Longhorn cattle.
All of that changed when a group of
developers from Minneapolis, Minnesota, led
✧
Above: The Leeland-Stuart Place
Clubhouse, pictured in 1967, has been
through many reincarnations and owners
since early homeseekers were entertained
there. It is still an impressive landmark.
Below: The La Feria Hotel built in 1910 by
pioneer developer S. J. Schnorenberg
became a community gathering place.
COURTESY OF THE DUNLAP FAMILY.
CHAPTER VII
119

✧
Right: Standing in front of La Feria’s first
bank in 1920 are (from left to right) Bailey
H. Dunlap, Sr., president; Laura Wehmeyer,
bookkeeper; Freda Wehmeyer, secretary, and
Dave W. Sigler, cashier.
COURTESY OF THE DUNLAP FAMILY.
Below: A. F. “Al” Parker established the Al
Parker Securities Company and sold many
thousands of acres of land and citrus groves,
entertaining land parties at his clubhouse on
La Feria’s Parker Road. It was purchased in
1946 by McHenry Tichenor, who lived there
for fifty years. While he lived there,
Tichenor established KGBT Radio and TV.
He also saw the Tichenor Media System,
now based in Dallas, grow to over thirty
radio stations throughout the U.S., including
three in the Valley.
by S. J. Schnorenberg bought a six thousandacre
strip of land one half-mile wide and
extending north eighteen miles from the Rio
Grande. In 1909, they formed the La Feria
Townsite Company, sold lots, and the town
began to develop. But there was a problem
with a whistlestop named Bixby about two
miles west, named for W. H. Bixby, a St. Louis
multi-millionaire who owned a lot of stock in
the railroad. The settlement had little but a
depot, but all legal means failed to get the
railroad to move the depot to La Feria.
From a story in a May 1987 issue of La
Feria News by Eddie Gathings McNail:
In July 1912, on a hot, sultry night, a
group of prominent men stole the Bixby
Station while the town folk of La Feria and
Bixby were fast asleep. Men operated heavy
jacks, raising Bixby’s new depot off the
foundation, letting the building down on
rollers on a makeshift platform and rolling it
to a flat car on the tracks of the railroad. The
men talked in whispers as they worked on this
moonless night, and other men stood on the
dusty road to keep watch for travelers who
might interrupt the business at hand.
After loading the new depot, two teams of
horses were hitched to the flat car and pulled
it east two miles to La Feria, where the depot
was unloaded. Only the word “Bixby” had to
be changed to ‘La Feria’ and our town had a
permanent stop for all trains, passenger and
freight. Before that time, a mailbag was hung
out on a high post and removed by a member
of the train’s crew, but no stop was made for
passengers or freight.
Once it had a depot, town lots and farms
sold rapidly. Citrus groves, vegetable farms,
shipping and packing plants were established.
Schnorenberg built the fourteen-room La
Feria Hotel in 1910, and Bailey H. Dunlap
and others established the Guaranty Fund
Bank of La Feria in 1913.
Dunlap, who became the first mayor when
the town was incorporated in 1915, is
remembered by the Bailey H. Dunlap
Memorial Library, and his descendants
continue to be community leaders.
La Feria and the Valley bloomed big, but
then came the depression, which slowed
things down. Freezing weather wiped out
millions of dollars worth of citrus and
vegetables in 1949 and 1951, then again in
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
120

1962, leaving processing plants empty.
Hurricanes in 1933 and 1967 did their
damage with high winds and floodwaters.
Setbacks, surely, but recovery came and
brought with it diversification and new
business activity.
Today, La Feria is blooming again. Winter
visitors are changing their status to Valley
residents and young couples are settling in the
area as in bygone years. Its central location
and elevation make it ideal for the location of
television and radio towers, which dot the
landscape. Its school district is regarded as one
of the finest in south Texas. Residents enjoy its
quiet streets, well-manicured parks, active
church and social clubs, central location,
stable city government, friendly people, and
the advantages of small town living.
SANTA ROSA:
THE LITTLE CITY ON A HILL
Santa Rosa is 6.8 miles north of La Feria
where there is a slight rise in elevation to 50.6
feet. The name comes from the old Santa Rosa
Ranch that was established there in the 1860s.
The present community began in 1913 with
a population of one. William Foster hoofed his
way north from La Feria on the five-foot wide
trail through brush and the slush of Tio Cano
Lake, which long ago disappeared. When he
reached the summit of the climb, he was so
taken with the fertile soil and the scenic beauty,
or perhaps he was so tired, that he threw out
his anchor to make it his home. He spread the
word and soon the population numbered three
when he was joined by friends Tom Sibson and
Lew Priest. More hardy pioneers followed,
including the McAllister family. To save the
fourteen-mile round trip walk to La Feria, Mrs.
McAllister opened a grocery and market in the
front room of her residence and other stores
soon followed.
In 1914 a one-room school was established
for the younger students, but the older
students were sent to Mercedes, where they
boarded on a weekly basis. On Mondays they
crossed Tio Cano Lake by boat, then walked
to La Feria, where they caught the train to
Mercedes for the week. Friday afternoon
found them making the same trip home by
train, foot, and boat. In 1915 Methodists built
a one-room building that was used for
church, public school and all community
meetings. The Southern Pacific Railroad came
through Santa Rosa in 1927, built a depot in
the town, and soon produce sheds were built
alongside the tracks for the vegetables grown
by area farmers.
The La Feria Water District’s irrigation
system supplied water to farmers lured to the
area by the Al Parker Land Company that
settled La Feria. Three and four crops of
vegetables per year were growing on the
farms, and the first issue of the Santa Rosa
Signal appeared in 1927, edited with wit and
wisdom by Tom Phillips until 1938.
A double celebration was held on March
12, 1928 for the dedication of the new Santa
Rosa High School and the opening of the
✧
Above: This Santa Rosa High School was
dedicated in 1928, and the school had a
Valleywide championship football team that
same year. A new high school was built in
recent years and this school now houses
younger students.
COURTESY OF THE WIEGAND FAMILY.
Below: By 1930 the Wilcoxon Grocery and
four other stores occupied a city block, all
damaged by the 1933 hurricane. Tom
Sibson, one of Santa Rosa’s founding citizens
and its first mayor, built a two-story hotel so
schoolteachers would have a place to stay,
which has been renovated and turned into
the Sun Deck Apartments.
COURTESY OF THE WIEGAND FAMILY.
CHAPTER VII
121

✧
Above: American Rio Grande Land and
Irrigation Co. office is shown in the early
days of building the Mid-Valley’s irrigation
system and selling land.
COURTESY OF HCHC ARCHIVES.
Below: The Frederick George Karle family,
early Mercedes area pioneers are shown in
a horse-drawn surrey around 1910 in
downtown Mercedes. His grandson, Fred
Karle of McAllen, is a longtime volunteer
with the steer division at the Rio Grande
Valley Livestock Show.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
Santa Rosa to La Feria highway. The high
school had a Valleywide champion football
team in 1928, and the schools have continued
their upward climb through the years.
Santa Rosa was incorporated in 1929 with
Tom Sibson, one of its founding citizens, as its
first mayor. He also had established its first
vegetable canning plant in 1915 and later built
a two-story hotel. Other business buildings
were constructed, and packing sheds took
over the north side of the Southern Pacific
tracks. At one time Santa Rosa had ten packing
sheds, but the 1933 hurricane reduced the
number to three. In 1940, C. A. Ripley opened
a large vegetable packing shed from which
over twenty-six hundred carloads of
vegetables were shipped in its peak year.
Santa Rosa citizens boast that the first
telephone dial service in the Valley was
installed in their town in December 1944.
When Mayor Albert Thompson and others
saw the need of a sewer system in 1958 and
consulted an engineer about how to proceed,
they were told it couldn’t be done. But the
mayor and his supporters thought it could,
and on April 20, 1963, a celebration was held
to mark the completion of the town’s water
and sewer service.
Santa Rosa remains the center of an
extensive farming community with its local
government, schools, churches and other
institutions firmly in place. It is near the Rio
Grande Valley Sugar Growers big sugar mill,
which is a major employer. There have been
great changes in agriculture since the early
days of three and four vegetable crops a year.
Now the fertile farmland is covered with level
fields of cotton, grain sorghum, corn, and
sugarcane. If William Foster were around
today, he probably would still cast his lot with
the “little city on a hill.”
MERCEDES:
FIRST ON BRANCH LINE
On July 8, 1904, the railroad was
completed to the present location of Mercedes,
which was the first town to be built on the
branch line. Lon C. Hill, developer of
Harlingen, had bought the forty-fivethousand-acre
Capisallo Ranch from Jim Wells
of Brownsville and organized the Capisallo
Town and Improvement Company. He laid out
the townsite of Capisallo, soon renamed it
Lonsboro, and in 1905 sold the land to a
group of St. Louis investors. They were B. F.
Yoakum, Sam Fordyce, Duval West, and S. P.
Silver, who organized the American Rio
Grande Land and Irrigation Company, bought
more land, and developed 110,000 acres.
The new owners decided to move the
townsite two miles to the west and the name
Lonsboro was changed to Mercedes. Though
many accounts say it was named for the wife
of Mexican President Porfirio Díaz, neither of
his two wives was named Mercedes, so the
origin of the name is unknown.
In 1905 the company began construction on
the main canal—145 feet wide and 15 to 20 feet
deep. By 1908 the big canal was completed from
the river to six miles north of Mercedes, along
with laterals to deliver water to the farms. At first
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
122

the center of the town was at the tracks, where a
string of boxcars served as headquarters for the
company management and engineers. Soon,
houses and businesses were built and within a
year the population was one thousand. The city
was incorporated on March 6, 1909. The yearold
Hidalgo County Bank had $100,000 in
deposits, there was a weekly newspaper, The
Tribune, later combined with the Mercedes
Enterprise, which is still published, plus many
new homes and businesses.
The new settlers, many of them from the
hog and corn country of the Midwest, had to
learn when to plant tomatoes, cabbage, carrots,
broomcorn, and later citrus and cotton, plus
the different methods of cultivation and insect
control. Somehow they weathered the
hardships and the new town grew and
prospered. It became a center for packing and
shipping the agricultural products raised on
the virgin land of the newly cleared farms.
The original irrigation company continued
to function until January 1930, when the
landowners voted to purchase the system with
a bond issue of $3.5 million. Now the Hidalgo
and Cameron County Water Control and
Improvement District No. 9, it is the largest
district in the Valley. It serves eighty-two
thousand acres in the Mercedes, Weslaco,
Edcouch-Elsa, and La Villa areas from its
historic headquarters in Mercedes. Concretelined
canals and underground pipelines have
replaced most earthen canals.
Livestock and related products are important
to Mercedes. It is the home of one of the
state’s top ten livestock shows, the Rio Grande
Valley Livestock Show, established in 1940. It
takes more than one thousand volunteers to
put on the show in March each year and
attracts over 160,000 visitors. The weeklong
celebration provides a yearlong educational
program and showplace for 4-H and FFA
youngsters of the four Valley counties. It also
provides entertainment for both young people
and adults. Its Sixty-first Annual Rio Grande
Valley Livestock Show in March 2000 broke
all records for its auction, with the Grande
Champion Steer bringing $21,000.
Scholarships totaling $31,100 were awarded
to students by its Champs for Champions
program and the show board.
Nationally honored H&H Foods, which has
operated successfully in Mercedes since 1947,
has positioned itself on the cutting edge of
technology for producing and distributing its
quality meats and prepared foods. Founded by
Salvador M. Hinojosa and still family-owned,
H&H is the city’s largest private employer.
Rubén Hinojosa, one of Salvador’s sons, has
served as U.S. congressman from the Fifteenth
District since 1996.
Mercedes is also known for its bootmakers.
The largest is Rios of Mercedes, which has
provided handmade boots to famous people
from Dwight Yoakum to Dwight Eisenhower
as well as to working cowboys. The boots are
works of proud craftsmen with years of
experience, using only the best materials.
Many other Mercedes businesses are into the
second and third generation of family
ownership, such as Borderland Hardware and
Bill Bunton Auto Supply and Machine, Inc.
Additional businesses are calling its new fiftyacre
Mercedes Industrial Park home.
Just west of town is the headquarters of
Magic Valley Electric Cooperative, which
✧
Above: Since it began in 1940, the Rio
Grande Valley Livestock Show has focused
on youth education in livestock activities. Its
2000 Grand Champion Steer was shown by
Raul Villarreal, Jr., of San Isidro FFA. It was
purchased by James L. Barrett of Oklahoma
City, owner of Stars Drive-In Restaurants,
for $21,000, which broke all previous
records. Shown in this picture are (from left
to right) Valley Stars managers Ruben
Garza; Joe Vargas, and wife Sylvia; and Leo
Garza, Jr.; Villarreal, and Cover Girl Second
Runner-up Sara Mae Alvarez, San Isidro.
COURTESY OF THE RIO GRANDE VALLEY LIVESTOCK SHOW.
Below: H&H Foods was founded by
Salvador M. Hinojosa, who came with his
family from Reynosa as a young boy during
the Mexican upheaval of 1910-20. He
founded H&H as a small meat processing
company in 1947. Still family-owned,
H&H meats are widely distributed in the
U.S., Mexico, and other countries.
CHAPTER VII
123

✧
Above: Borderland Hardware of Mercedes,
founded in 1919 by E. E. "Jack" Johnson,
soon became the largest store in town. Now
owned by Robert Eilers and son Kenneth, it
recently moved to its new home on a busy
Mercedes corner. Johnson also established
Borderland Hardware of Weslaco, now
operated by his grandson, David Whitley.
Below: Before there was a post office at
Mercedes or Weslaco, there was one at
Progreso. The Progreso Post Office (1903-
1910) was located on Toluca Ranch close to
the Rio Grande and was constructed like
many contemporary Mexican homes. A.
Newman Smith was the postmaster. It was
razed because of potential attacks during
the bandit wars and it was later
reestablished in the town of Progreso.
COURTESY OF THE WESLACO BICULTURAL MUSEUM.
provides electric power to rural areas of the
Valley’s four counties. Also a mile to the west
are two of the Valley’s magnet schools, the
South Texas Independent School District’s
School for Health Professions and its School
for Math and Sciences, which attract students
from over the Valley. Mercedes has many
attractive neighborhoods, excellent schools
and beautiful churches, two 18-hole golf
courses, and just five miles south is the tourist
haven of Nuevo Progreso, Mexico.
Though the city’s growth slowed for several
decades after its early years of feverish activity,
Mercedes enters the new millennium strong
and competitive with vigorous leadership, an
aggressive business environment, and a
diverse culture.
WESLACO IN THE MID- VALLEY
The railroad reached the future site of
Weslaco on July 20, 1904, but it would be
nearly sixteen years before the town was
established. Mercedes and Donna were
bustling cities by 1919 when W. E. Stewart of
Tyler, who had a land office in Kansas City,
Missouri, purchased a large tract from the
Llano Grande Grant. He built a beautiful
clubhouse on Llano Grande Lake to house and
entertain land excursion parties while selling
the uncleared, brush-covered farmland. Four
men—Ed C. Couch, his brothers Dan R. and
R. C., and a brother-in-law, R. L. Reeves—
purchased a block of Stewart’s holdings for a
new town and named their new town for him,
using the first letters that made up the W. E.
Stewart Land Company-Weslaco.
Two of the developers, Dan and R. C.
Couch, gave up the venture as a bad
investment and returned to their homes,
telling the others that they “would keep the
home fires burning while you go broke down
here.” But Ed C. Couch and Reeves put down
roots in Weslaco and helped to build their
new community.
A surveying crew staked out business and
residential lots and an all-day auction was
held on December 10, 1919. The lots were
tagged, with prices ranging from $50 to about
$400 a lot. By the end of the day, many of the
lots had been sold and the new town was
launched. The founders reserved land for
churches and parks, schools, and a city hall.
Offices of the Weslaco Townsite were set
up in the first Reeves home less than two
months after the lot sale. In later years, Mrs.
Reeves liked to tell how she sat alone on a nail
keg by a campfire her first night in Weslaco
while her husband went to Mercedes to bring
back their household goods to their newly
completed home. When the post office
opened a few months later, she became the
town’s first postmaster, and she served her
adopted home in many ways throughout her
long life.
The Couch home was completed one week
later and was the focal point for much of the
town’s early development. Ed Couch was
president of the city’s first financial institution,
the Guaranty State Bank, and helped organize
the Chamber of Commerce that year.
Meanwhile, others came to try their luck
in the new town which lacked electricity,
churches, and schools. Life was primitive as far
as modern-day conveniences were concerned.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
124

✧
Top, left: Robert L. Reeves, co-founder of
Weslaco, put down roots in his new town
and helped it grow. Later he was active in
real estate and insurance partnerships.
COURTESY OF THE WESLACO BICULTURAL MUSEUM.
Residents bought water from men hauling
barrels of water from the canal on burro-drawn
tank carts. Yet, the young came to find a place to
begin their working lives, and older ones came to
meet new challenges in a warmer environment.
Weslaco was only a few weeks old when the
S. M. Mattar family bought a site and opened
the first store in the new town, called “The
People’s Store,” later known as “Mattar’s Store
for Men.” They continued as merchants
through two generations. Soon A. G. “Tony”
Valdes, Sr., opened the Model Drug Store, and
his grandson, Hector “Buddy” de la Rosa
continues to operate pharmacies in Weslaco
and nearby cities.
By 1922 the town was booming and its
school population growing. Carpenters,
plasterers and painters were working on the
new high school. Young science teacher Olga
Arnold arrived in September 1922 to teach at
the new school that had been scheduled for
completion in September, but it rained so much
that it was not finished until the next February.
Many years later, an older Olga
remembered that mud, thick, deep, black and
sticky, was everywhere on the unpaved streets.
And it was a cold winter, with no heat in the
old Weslaco Hotel where she was staying or in
the classrooms. She moved to the Reeves
home, which was across the street from the
Walter H. Baxter family. Soon she met Walter
Jr., and the mud was forgotten, the new school
completed, and her name changed to Baxter.
He established the Baxter Seed Company,
which is still providing seed for the Valley’s
vegetable growers.
The four-story Cortez Hotel was opened with
great fanfare on December 31, 1928, to become
the area’s showplace and center of social
activities. One year, the Ipana Troubadours
played for a gala dance in its spacious secondfloor
ballroom.
In December 1929 the young city held its
first big birthday party, a tradition that
continued into the 1960s except during World
War II. Elaborate floats, marching bands, and
many novel entries sparked its parades, and its
nationally recognized “Fruit, Vegetable and
Flower Show” kept organizations busy for
months preparing the elaborate costumes made
of Valley products.
In its early days, the city’s activities centered
around agriculture and the marketing of the
crops raised on the fertile soil. The produce
business lured many entrepreneurs like
Mississippian J. S. McManus, whose produce
company still operates from Weslaco, and Joe
Stephens from Ohio, who began a crusade
to beautify the city while mayor from 1963
to 1971.
Top, right: Weslaco co-founder Ed C. Couch
and Reeves organized the auction to sell the
townsite lots on December 10, 1919. A
banker, Couch was active in several area
banks as well as in public life. He also was
the founder of the town of Edcouch in 1927.
COURTESY OF THE WESLACO BICULTURAL MUSEUM.
Below: Almeda Couch Reeves, originally
from Abilene, was the wife of Weslaco cofounder
Robert L. Reeves. She became the
town’s first postmaster and served the
community in many other ways.
COURTESY OF THE WESLACO BICULTURAL MUSEUM.
CHAPTER VII
125

✧
Above: The Weslaco Hotel was built in 1920
by R. L. Clark, who operated it until it was
sold to Porter Doss, who donated money for
the city’s first library. Torn down in 1971, it
was replaced by a new bank building, now
the home of City National Bank.
COURTESY OF THE WESLACO BICULTURAL MUSEUM.
Below: Texsun Citrus Corporation, which
started as the Rio Grande Valley Citrus
Exchange to market fresh fruit, grew into
the huge Texsun plant, once the world’s
largest citrus juice canning plant. It was a
major employer, operating for several
decades before repeated freezes ended its
fruit supply.
The former Texsun citrus canning complex,
which had ten acres under roof during the
years of heavy citrus production, was a major
industry for many years. When the plant
closed after a series of freezes left little citrus
for it to process, the land and buildings were
purchased by the City of Weslaco. It is now the
home of the city’s International Venture Center
and the Mid-Valley campus of South Texas
Community College.
Knapp is a name that has spread over the
Valley from Weslaco. Everett Knapp came first
from Calvert, Texas, to establish a car
dealership. His brothers and sisters followed,
and soon the Knapps had car dealerships in
several Valley cities. They formed the Knapp
Family Foundation to launch the onehundred-bed
Knapp Medical Center in the
early1960s, now grown to 233 private rooms
and the centerpiece for scores of clinics and
medical offices. Also built in the 1960s was the
big retirement center first known as Wesley
Manor and now named John Knox Village
which attracts retirees from over the nation.
Ed Payne started the Payne Motor
Company; now his sons’ Payne Dealer Group
has dealerships over the Valley. Dale Davis, a
third generation realtor who learned real
estate development skills during several years
in Dallas, returned to the family firm to bring
Luby’s Cafeteria, a Super K-Mart, Weslaco
Town Center offices, and Fairfield Marriott
Hotel in recent years. Larry and Patti
Dittburner have changed the face of the city
with their renovation of the aging Cortez
Hotel into the distinctive Villa de Cortez and
their transformation of other old downtown
buildings from eyesores to assets.
The Miguel Benitez family operated
theaters from Weslaco from the 1920s to the
1970s. Beginning with “The Iris” and “The
Nacional” in Weslaco, they showed Spanish
language films in Benitez theaters and driveins
throughout the Valley and South Texas.
During the Mexican Cinema’s “Golden Age”
they brought famous actors and actresses to
the Valley for premiere showings.
Many businesses have come and gone along
Weslaco’s Texas Avenue. One that came and
stayed is La Perla Florería and Yerbería. It began
when Reducindo Olivarez and his wife moved
from Camargo and opened a bakery and
tortilleria. In the 1930s, with daughter Ophelia
and her husband, Guadalupe Hinojosa, they
moved to their present North Texas location
and added other items. The family store is now
operated by Ophelia Hinojosa and daughter
Olga H. Lopez.
Weslaco is home to the Texas A&M
Experiment Station, Texas A&M-Kingsville
Citrus Center, and the USDA’s Kika de la
Garza Subtropical Research Center. Many new
agricultural breakthroughs and varieties of
fruits, vegetables, cotton, sugarcane, and
ornamental plants have been developed and
tested at the big research complex, staffed by
more than a hundred research scientists.
Weslaco also is home to KRGV-TV, South
Texas Better Business Bureau, the Texas
National Guard Super Armory, and the
Weslaco Mid-Valley Airport that serves the
needs of private and corporate entities. The Rio
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
126

Grande Valley Partnership has called Weslaco
home since it was organized as the Lower Rio
Grande Valley Planning Board in 1944 by
Lloyd Bentsen, Sr. and others. It became the
Rio Grande Valley Chamber of Commerce and
then the Partnership. It has sponsored many
projects and activities through the years in the
Valley and Mexico.
The area’s agricultural heritage is celebrated
in April each year with the Texas Rio
Grande Valley Onion Festival at Weslaco’s
Harlon Block Park with an arts and crafts
show, onion eating contest, food booths, and
entertainment for visitors of all ages. The
Weslaco Public Library is widely used by
adults and has many educational and recreational
programs for children.
The Weslaco Bicultural Museum preserves
Weslaco’s history. It has an extensive collection
of artifacts, written documents, photographs,
household items and vintage clothing.
Its exhibits emphasize the area’s farming
history, and its special programs are popular
with children and adults. The museum is
transitioning to the Agriculture Discovery
Center to be built adjacent to USDA headquarters
in the research complex.
As Weslaco’s population has grown, so have
its churches, schools, social services, and health
care facilities. It is a major winter resort, hosting
several thousand Winter Texans in its hotels,
apartments, mobile home and RV parks, and
two golf courses attract golfers from over the
Valley. Nuevo Progreso offers the Mexico
experience just seven miles south across the
Progreso International Bridge. The city is part of
the World Birding Center and birdwatchers will
find three sites on the Great Texas Birding Trail.
Now the largest city in the Mid-Valley, Weslaco’s
stable government and vibrant business
community have fostered rapid growth while
retaining a small-town atmosphere.
✧
Top, left: Knapp Medical Center has
grown from the hundred-bed, one-story
Knapp Memorial Methodist Hospital to
the present Knapp Medical Center. The
present multi-story hospital has 233 private
rooms plus out-patient, emergency, and
related facilities.
Above: The two-story Weslaco City Hall
was built in 1928. It was designed by
architect Newell Waters, who dropped the
casts for the stone sculpture designs into
the Rio Grande to avoid having the work
duplicated. Remodeled in 1951, it still
contains some of the city offices and a
fire station.
Below: John Knox Village retirement center
began in the 1960s as Wesley Manor under
the sponsorship of the Methodist Church. As
John Knox Village it has added a medical
center for its residents and continues to add
cottages. Its residents come from all over the
Valley and around the nation.
CHAPTER VII
127

THE SETTLEMENT OF RUN
✧
Above: Thomas James Handy, originally
from Wisconsin, came to the area after the
Civil War as a mail carrier for the Union
Occupation Forces and married Angelita
Cavazos. They are shown with their first
child, Chauncey Handy, in the late 1860s
at Azadores Ranch. Generations later,
Donna has many Handy descendants,
including Hidalgo County Commissioner
Sylvia Handy.
COURTESY OF DONNA HOOKS FLETCHER
HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
Below: Co-founder T. J. Hooks and his
family lived in Brownsville until their home
was built in Run, later moving to Donna,
pictured about 1914. Hooks had four sons
and four daughters, including Donna Hooks
Fletcher, for whom Donna was named.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
When the railroad arrived at the Donna
townsite in July 1904, a settlement was
already under development six miles south by
the Rio Grande. A. F. Hester, Sr., and T. J.
Hooks, rice farmers and community leaders in
Village Mills near Beaumont, first visited the
Brownsville area in the late 1890s and
believed the region had great potential.
Though sparsely settled, there were
established ranching families in the area.
Some were descendants of the original
grantee, Lino Cavazos of Reynosa, who was
awarded the La Blanca Tract by the State of
Tamaulipas in 1834 for $150. One of these
was Angelita Cavazos Gallegos, who married
Thomas J. Handy, a Wisconsin native who
served in the Union Occupation Forces as a
mail carrier in the Valley. Many Handy
descendants still live in the Donna area.
The Beaumont group returned in 1898 to
seek land for possible development, bringing
with them several friends and investors: Dr.
W. G. Collier, W. W. Cruse, W. H. Turner, and
family physician Dr. J. B. Roberts. They
traveled by rail to Alice, then hired a coach to
take them to Brownsville through the sands of
the old Alice to Brownsville Stagecoach Road
and across the Arroyo Colorado by way of a
hand drawn ferry at Paso Real. They spent the
nights at ranches and way stations. In
Brownsville the group was joined by Lon C.
Hill, who had been buying land on business
trips to the Valley and knew his way around.
It took them two days to travel by horseback
through dense growth the fifty or so miles to
the San Juan Plantation owned by John
Closner, who had options on much of the
surrounding land.
The developers liked the lands of the La
Blanca and Llano Grande Tracts along the
river and formed the La Blanca Agricultural
Company to acquire acreage. The land
extended about two miles east and two miles
west of the present site of Donna and eighteen
miles northward to the present site of La
Blanca. The price averaged $1.25 per acre. At
the time, the area had been in a severe
drought for seven years, and food was scarce
for the scattered ranch families. The first act
of the new owners upon their return to East
Texas was to ship back two carloads of rice by
rail to Galveston, boat to Point Isabel, narrowgauge
railway to Brownsville, and oxcart up
the Military Road. This kindness created a
lasting bond of friendship with those already
living on the land.
It was March 1902 by the time deeds were
prepared to convey some 30,000 acres to the
company, plus some acreage for each family’s
individual property. Hooks moved his family,
with four sons and four daughters, to
Brownsville in 1901, shipping household goods
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
128

in the roundabout manner described above, as
did the Hesters and their five children a year
later. The Milton Holloway family, who had
purchased four hundred acres adjacent to the
La Blanca Tract, met the Hesters on the rough
two-week voyage on the Manteo freight steamer
that brought them from Galveston to
Brownsville. The three families lived in
Brownsville, where there were schools and
other facilities, and the men lived in jacales on
their land while clearing the brush for farming
and building suitable homes for their families.
The only road was the old Military Road, a
trail often labeled on old maps as the “Military
Telegraph Road.” It had been carved out of
the brush by General Zachary Taylor’s army
during the Mexican-American War. Later a
telegraph line was stretched from Rio Grande
City to Brownsville, linking Fort Ringgold to
Fort Brown.
George and Ed Ruthven, engineers who
had been working in the Valley for several
years, brought their families from Lexington
to the settlement, which was named “Run,” a
contraction formed by the first two letters and
the last letter of the Ruthven name. The
settlement is also spelled “Runn,” and the
school shows that version of the name.
George was responsible for installing
irrigation pumps and keeping them working.
Ed established the first store in 1904 a halfmile
west of the current school and was
named the first postmaster.
The newcomers and the earlier residents
shared in the development of the community.
The Salinas family had a U.S. charter to
operate a ferry at the Rio Grande crossing near
the Donna irrigation pumps, according to a
descendant, Alonzo Salinas, father of Daniel
Salinas II, for whom Donna’s Daniel Salinas
Boulevard is named. Both father and son were
graduates of U.S. military academies. The
Dionicio Muñoz family came to live on the
Azadores Ranch around 1850. Their
descendants have been a vital part of the area
throughout its development and continue to
take an active part in its educational
institutions, business and community life.
Severiano and Manuela Avila came to a ranch
just south of Donna from Yorktown, Texas before
1890 to establish a home near the river. The
family included seven boys and three girls. The
sons told of hunting in the Donna area with their
father. They camped close to where the depot
was built later and hunted small lions, deer,
tigres (small jaguars), and javelina. When the
1909 floodwater rose to the top of the window in
their new home on Rancho Parajito, they left it to
buy ten acres in East Donna. They brought two
teams of mules, five cows, and some sheep with
them. In East Donna there were a few jacales and
much brush when the Avilas built a two-story
home. Many descendants of the Avila family still
reside in Donna.
Other early residents of Run included
Andrew Champion, Sr., and his wife Ellen,
who had moved from Point Isabel to Santa
María, where they had operated a general
store for several years. When Ed Ruthven
moved to Donna in 1906, Hester and Hooks
asked the Champions to move to Run to serve
as postmaster and operate its only grocery
store. He and his son, Andrew Champion, Jr.,
and other descendants have been active in
Donna through the years.
✧
Top: This community well at Run provided
water for area residents for many years.
COURTESY OF DONNA HOOKS FLETCHER
HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
Above: The Andrew Champion, Sr. store and
post office at Run in 1909.
COURTESY OF DONNA HOOKS FLETCHER
HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
CHAPTER VII
129

fired in a kiln using mesquite wood. A. F.
Hester built the next home, a large frame
house with a porch all around the structure,
using lumber brought in from East Texas.
They moved from Brownsville to their new
homes in 1904.
The new farms were productive, especially
for growing vegetables, for which there was a
good market. Though rice had been the initial
reason for the move, little rice was grown and
attention shifted to other crops.
School began in Run in 1904 in a room of
the Hester home a mile south of the present
Run school buildings. The Hesters’ eldest
daughter, Mary, had completed her training at
Texas Christian University and was the first
teacher. A school built in 1908 was soon
destroyed by the 1909 flood, but a new
building soon replaced it.
✧
Above: Several decades after they left
Beaumont for Run and Donna, co-founder A.
F. Hester., Sr. and his wife, Mary Richardson
Hester, seated at center, are surrounded by
children, in-laws, and grandchildren.
COURTESY OF DONNA HOOKS FLETCHER
HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
Below: The present elementary school at
Runn (originally spelled Run) is part of the
Donna Independent School District. Its
campus has multiple buildings and
individual garden plots that help students
learn about growing vegetables and flowers.
The members of the La Blanca Agricultural
Company immediately set to work clearing the
brush and cactus from their land, employing a
great number of men. They encountered
rattlesnakes, tarantulas, scorpions, and wild
cats. Mule teams began digging a network of
canals and ditches for what was to be the Valley’s
first irrigation system built for community use.
A pump and boiler had been hauled by oxen
from the boat landing in Point Isabel.
The coming of the railroad made building
materials available. T. J. Hooks built the first
house of the new Run settlers, a two-story
structure of brick made from river sand and
THE
1909 FLOOD
In the early 1900s, the river was much
different from today. Before the dams were built
upriver, it usually overflowed once or twice a
year. The largest flood ever known to occur on
the lower Rio Grande struck in 1909. It was due
to abnormally heavy rains falling in the
watershed, coupled with a water spout
dropping large amounts of water in Nuevo León
in the watershed of the San Juan River, the last
tributary that flows into the Rio Grande. This
flood was said to have exceeded the 1802 flood
that destroyed Reynosa and resulted in that city
being rebuilt on higher ground.
When the floodwaters reached the Run
area, the water rapidly rose to the top of the
poles carrying the telegraph lines between
Fort Ringgold and Fort Brown. A. F. Hester
had obtained permission to tap into this communication
line and had advance warning of
the impending flood and that the crest could
soon be expected in Run. He sent sons Forrest
and Tom to warn the neighbors. As the waters
continued to rise, they took a boat and began
to rescue many of their neighbors that were
stranded on the tops of houses, barns and
trees. They took refuge in Donna, which had
several buildings by that time and was the
only area with any appreciable land not flooded.
The flood damaged or destroyed many of
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
130

Run’s homes and buildings, destroyed livestock,
and spurred the move to the new
Donna townsite. By 1914 most of the new settlers
had relocated to homes in Donna where
they began new businesses and continued
their farming activities.
Today, there is little evidence of the original
settlement at Run. The fertile land is well farmed
and the area is dotted with newer homes. The
Run School, which was soon rebuilt after the
first one was destroyed by the 1909 flood, has a
historical marker showing the school was first
established in 1904. Several new buildings have
been added to the school campus in recent
years. In 2000 the Run School received national
recognition for its academic excellence and
innovative programs, including individual
garden plots that help students learn about
growing vegetables and flowers.
DONNA GREW AROUND
THE RAILROAD
Soon after the railroad was built through
the present site of Donna in 1904, developers
A. F. Hester, Sr., and T. J. Hooks, with railroad
builder Uriah Lott, Harlingen founder Lon
Hill, and others, formed the Lott Town and
Improvement Company. The developers
provided 1,000 acres for a townsite and
deeded 1,600 acres to the St. Louis,
Brownsville, and Mexico Railroad, assuring the
promise of a station, which was built in 1907.
The new town needed a name. Lott
suggested the name of “Donna” in honor of
Hooks’ eldest daughter, Donna Hooks Fletcher,
who was visiting in Beaumont at the time.
When she returned on the new railroad for the
first time, she was amazed to see her name
painted on the shelter at the train stop as she
reached her destination. This enterprising lady
was to leave her mark on the new community
in more ways than her name. She built the first
office building, opened a small general store,
operated a rooming house, and served for
many years as the town’s postmistress. The
Donna Hooks Fletcher Historical Museum
features local and pioneer memorabilia dating
back to the 1800s. It is located on Main Street
in the oldest American Legion Hall in the
world, a Texas historical landmark.
The town was slow to develop at first
because of its lack of good drinking water, but
when this was solved in 1908 with a water
tower and filtration plant, the town took off.
Farmland was sold to homeseekers from the
north and businesses were quickly established
in the town. Ed Ruthven opened a general
store in 1908. In June 1910 Hester and Dr. J.
B. Roberts announced that work was to begin
on a large two story brick building for around
$7,000. In June 1911 a telephone exchange
was installed on its second floor by H. H.
Ranking. Through the years the building
would house many businesses, including
✧
Above: Donna Hooks Fletcher, for whom the
city of Donna was named.
Below: Hotel Donna was a favorite
gathering place in Donna’s early days. It
was later named the Plaza and then the
Parkview Hotel before it was razed to make
way for the Donna H-E-B store in the
center of town.
COURTESY OF THE WESLACO BICULTURAL MUSEUM.
CHAPTER VII
131

✧
Above: The Donna Sugar Mill began
operation in November 1912 and was the
last of the early Valley sugar mills to close
in 1922 when insects and low prices made
the crop unprofitable.
COURTESY OF DONNA HOOKS FLETCHER
HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
Below: School buses are pictured lined up in
Donna in 1927.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
grocery and drug stores. Walter W. Weaver, Sr.,
had his law office there, and around 1923 it
became the E. Manautou Dry Goods business.
Also in 1910, the La Blanca Agricultural
Company began construction on the twostory,
26-room Plaza Hotel, with a bank and
offices on the first floor. The old hotel played
a significant part in the development of the
area, operating under the names of Donna
Hotel, Plaza Hotel, and the Parkview. During
the bandit raids of 1915-16, the women and
children of the area spent sleepless nights in
the hotel behind barricaded doors.
Dionicio Muñoz delivered mail to the
scattered residents of the Donna and Run
communities. His son Candelario was the only
veteran of Mexican-American heritage who was
a charter member of Donna American Legion
Border Post 107 when it was formed in 1919
by World War I veterans, and he had the first
silent movie theater in Donna.
Hester, Hooks and others had formed the
Arroyo Canal Company in 1903, later named
the La Donna Canal Company, with $250,000
in capital. It was irrigating twenty-five
thousand acres by 1908, and canals continued
to be built to serve more acreage. In 1914 area
farmers formed the Donna Hidalgo County No.
1 Irrigation District to purchase its canals,
plants, and equipment. The district has
modernized through the years and still serves
the irrigation and domestic water needs of the
farms and cities of its area.
Sugarcane was a major crop for a time, as it
was in several of the Valley communities.
The Donna Sugar Mill was started in
November 1912 and operated longer than any
other sugar mill in the Valley, finally closing in
1922 when insects and low prices made the
crop unprofitable.
The revolution in Mexico that began after
President Porfirio Díaz fled to Spain in 1910
affected the young town. U.S. Cavalry troops
were sent in 1911 to protect the citizens from
bandit raids and remained until late 1916.
They made the people of the community feel
safer, and some returned, such as Corporal E.
A. Capen, to make their lives in the Valley.
By 1923 there had been a great deal of
growth in its population and commerce, with
two banks, auto dealers, retail stores,
hardware stores and lumber companies, as
well as packing and processing plants. At one
time Donna had three cotton gins to handle
its cotton acreage.
Beginning in 1911 the newly organized
Donna Women’s Club undertook such
projects as the construction of a city park, a
public library, and a new cemetery. Churches
were organized.
Donna’s first school was organized by
Walter Snow, formerly of Texas Christian
University, his daughter, and brother. In 1913
Donna boasted the first state certified high
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
132

school in the Valley, and the Donna
Independent School District’s staff and
educational facilities have kept pace with
other modern developments.
In 1952, when Hidalgo County celebrated
its Centennial, the town was called “a prosperous
community of 8,000 persons nestled
in the heart of the Lower Rio Grande Valley of
Texas” by Mayor Dale Washburn and
Commissioners P. R. Avila and A. F. Taormina.
In 2000, Donna has a population of
around 15,000 and has 3,000 mobile home
and RV spaces in 45-plus parks to serve
Winter Texans. The city is working to build a
new international bridge across the Rio
Grande to Río Bravo, Mexico to increase its
international trade and tourism.
The Donna Hooks Fletcher Historical
Museum has extensive displays of pictures
and other memorabilia of the area’s early days,
numerous exhibits, and programs for youth
and adults.
Many descendants of its founders and
other early pioneers still live in Donna. They
take great pride in the vision of their forefathers
and are deeply devoted to their city, its
heritage, and its future.
ALAMO: NAMED FOR
COTTONWOOD TREES
In the Spanish era, the eastern part of
Porción 72 was known to José María Ballí and
his heirs as Agostedero del Àlamo or The
Pasture of the Alamo, the Spanish word for
cottonwood. Along the Rio Grande these giant
trees spread their cooling shade in the early
days, but long before Alamo was settled they
had been destroyed by floods. The city of
Alamo was located on these lands and derives
its name from the once famous trees.
The Alamo of today began in 1902 when
Peter Ebenezer Blalock and George T. Hawkins
of Hattiesburg, Mississippi bought a tract of
thirty-two thousand acres. It extended from
the Rio Grande on the south to the eastern
limits of San Juan on the west, to what is today
called Border Road on the east. Blalock and
Hawkins first dreamed of a great cattle ranch
to rival the Santa Anita Ranch of the Youngs or
the San Juanito Ranch of the McAllens in
northwestern Hidalgo County. While they
were waiting for the courts to establish their
land titles, they built cattle loading facilities
and a railroad station at a spot they named
Ebenezer located on the new rail line.
Then in 1909 John T. Beamer of
Washington, Iowa and backers bought the
land. They chartered the Alamo Land and
Sugar Company, but before they could finish
clearing the land titles (1909-1912), the
bottom fell out of the sugar market and
prospects for the sugar industry in the Valley
were uncertain. The company then contracted
with the old Louisiana-Rio Grande Canal
Company, now Hidalgo Water District No. 2,
to supply water to their lands.
✧
Above: The Donna Hooks Fletcher Historical
Museum celebrated Mexican Independence
Day, Dieciséis de Septiembre 2000 with art
exhibits, music, and a reception. Joe
Hernandez, Jr., McAllen muralist and artist
(center), tells Laura Lincoln, museum
director and curator, and historian David
Champion about his paintings.
Below: Dr. Mannering and a friend venture
into the crunchy white snow in downtown
Alamo during a 1925 freeze. It has snowed
a few times since, but this one stayed on the
ground long enough to be photographed.
COURTESY OF KEITH HACKLAND.
CHAPTER VII
133

them to keep the preferred name. The town
was incorporated in April 1924.
In 1972, Dorothy Lee Pope, a young
schoolteacher and fourth generation citizen of
Alamo, wrote of the early days of Alamo in
Rainbow Era on the Rio Grande. She called the
years 1910-1930 the “Rainbow Era,” as those
were the years of the land developers, excursion
trains, implementation of irrigation, and
development of towns.
A 1921 advertisement by the Swallow
Company, which operated out of Kansas City,
Missouri before moving its office to Alamo,
promised:
✧
Above: Downtown Alamo around 1935.
This is one of many historic photos that can
be seen in the old Alamo Land and Sugar
Company headquarters in downtown
Alamo. The historic building has been
carefully restored by Keith Hackland as the
Alamo Inn Bed and Breakfast, with a
meeting room and guest suites.
COURTESY OF KEITH HACKLAND.
Below: The First State Bank of Alamo
opened its doors as a community bank in
1920. Now the Alamo Bank of Texas, it has
established branch banks in several cities
over the Valley while maintaining
its headquarters in downtown Alamo,
where historic photographs of early Alamo
are displayed.
Early in 1915 the water began to flow in the
area canals, and trainloads of homeseekers were
brought in to the Ebenezer station, where
barracks-type facilities were built to house and
entertain them. Soon the country roads were
dotted with the homes of farmers whose skill
was directed to raising winter vegetables, citrus
and cotton. Leading developers were Nick
Doffing, Charles T. Knapp, R. B. Creager, S. C.
Hawthorne, and C. H. Swallow, who managed
the company for many years. His son, F. A.
Swallow, helped clear and sell the land.
In 1918 the company abandoned Ebenezer
and moved a short distance eastward to a higher
and well-drained site to locate their new city
of Alamo. The Alamo Townsite Company was
formed by C. H. Swallow and R. B. Creager,
and soon most of the lots were sold. There was
some confusion about the name. When Alamo
applied for a post office, that department felt
“Alamo” would be confused with the historic
Alamo of San Antonio. So the name went from
“Ebenezer” to “Forum” to “Swallow” and back
to “Alamo” when the postal authorities allowed
Health and Happiness await you in the Rio
Grande Valley at Alamo, Texas.
Would you care to pass the winter in a land
fragrant with perfume of flowers and melodious
with songs of birds?
Would you care for a home in a land that
yields a crop every month in the year?
Join our next excursion to the Rio Grande
Valley and see this wonderful country. It will
be worth your while. Farmers in that favored
section are now marketing their roasting ears,
spring vegetables, etc., which are bringing
unusually large profits this year. Others are
cultivating their cotton, broomcorn, sorghum,
etc., which crops have made the Valley famous
and the growers rich.
Don’t fail to see the Rio Grande Valley. It
will be well worth your while. Any Swallow
agent will be glad to give you all information
as to movement of our special excursion
trains, length of time each excursion remains
in the Valley, cost of trip, etc.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
134

Every two weeks we take a trainload of
farmers, merchants, investors, down to this
wonderful land. They start in doubt, they
return convinced. Often every man in the
train buys. So it must be good.
This message was typical of the advertising
campaigns of developers over the area, and the
advertisements were effective. Land agents
invaded the middle western states and recited
the virtues of the Rio Grande Valley. October
through February were prime excursion months.
The excursions took a tremendous amount of
organization and were very expensive. The
agents sometimes collected whatever fare they
deemed possible from the homeseekers, but
usually far from what the actual trip cost. The
homeseekers were fed and entertained, and
along the way they sang songs with words put to
popular tunes about “the promised land.”
Meanwhile, the community grew. The First
State Bank of Alamo opened its doors in 1920,
and the town’s first hotel, and large business
buildings were constructed the same year.
Citrus plantings were under way, and cotton
began its rise in the agricultural market.
Among early buildings was the Alamo
Community Church. It began in the old
Ebenezer Camp, then had its own building by
1920, built a new church in 1929, and almost
four decades later built its present church.
Meanwhile, other churches were being
established. Schools were built, soon to become
part of the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo School District.
The Alamo News began publication in 1918 and
operated for many years to provide community
information and serve the town’s printing needs.
When the 1930s began, most of the land
excursions had ended. Those who had sung
the boastful tunes of a “Farmer’s Paradise” and
purchased land settled down to raise their
crops and children. As the years passed, they
stayed through the depression years of the
1930s, the hurricanes of 1933 and 1967, the
ups and downs in farm markets, World War
II, and the expansion years that followed.
“They stayed to tell the rising generation of
land excursions and showplaces, to recall the
days when mesquite smoke filled the sunny
days, and to reminisce about a way of life that is
as much a part of the past as the acres of brush
that once covered the land,” concluded author
Dorothy Lee Pope.
“Although no one can choose his particular
period of history in which to live, I regret I
missed the Rainbow Era by a decade or so.”
Some of the Valley’s choice retirement
developments and mobile home and RV parks
are located in Alamo. They draw thousands of
Winter Texans from the North and Midwest to
spend their winters in the area and participate
in all aspects of community life.
Alamo is still a friendly city where its citizens
enjoy life and are more concerned about each
other than accumulating great riches. With a
progressive banking and business community,
loyal citizenry, and a thriving population of
Winter Texans and year-round retirees, Alamo
enters the new century with pride in its heritage,
faith in its future, and a determination to keep
the town “a good place to live.”
✧
Above: Now one of many churches in the
city, the Alamo Community Church still
invites residents and visitors to “A Place
Your Family Can Call Home.”
Below: Shaded picnic areas in Alamo’s
Central Park invite people to stop and
stay awhile and to enjoy the park’s
Butterfly Garden.
CHAPTER VII
135

✧
Above: The St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico
Railroad came through what would be San
Juan in late 1904, so it was there when John
Closner sold land to the San Juan Townsite
Company for a new town. However, there was
no rail line north to the town being planned by
D. B. Chapin. With the help of William
Sprague of La Coma Ranch, they built a spur
to Chapin, later named Edinburg. Its engine
was named Old Flossie.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
Below: The San Juan Hotel, completed in
1920, hosted newcomers on land-buying
excursions and became the social center of
the area. It is shown here in the 1960s. After
it was restored in 1983 by Glenn and Mary
Sigle and their son David, it was named a
Texas Historical Site.
SAN JUAN: NAMED FOR
ITS FOUNDER
San Juan, next stop on the railroad as it
moved westward, was established in 1910
when John Closner sold 406.4 acres out of his
San Juan Plantation to the San Juan Townsite
Company. Originally from Wisconsin, Closner
was sheriff of Hidalgo County for many years
and also had a large plantation. His employees
revered him and called him “San Juan” so the
city inherited a most appropriate Spanish
name, though it originated with a man from
the North.
The city was laid out with commercial lots
alongside the railroad. The north-south
streets were named after states most familiar
to Northern buyers and entrepreneurs.
Nebraska Street continues to be the city’s
main north-south street. With the building of
the Robert L. Savage Mercantile Store, the
beginnings of a new city were set in motion.
The first frame hotel was built of materials
furnished by the San Juan Plantation for
$1,200 and named the San Juan Hotel.
Soon the townsite became the property of
Ralph R. Langley of Omaha, Nebraska, who
managed the development and sales of lots
and land. The townsite was sold again in
1916 to banker F. C. Platt. San Juan was
incorporated in 1917, and in 1919 developer
A. J. McColl became the owner of the unsold
portion of the townsite. A Chamber of
Commerce was formed to encourage
businesses to call San Juan home.
Meanwhile, Closner and partner D. B.
Chapin were deeply involved in another pet
project—a railroad spur to the new townsite
of Chapin, later named Edinburg. San Juan
was the site of the juncture of a railway
branch that was to move 7.79 miles north to
Chapin and on to La Coma Ranch owned by
William Sprague, who helped finance the
project. Sam Robertson was hired to build the
line, which reached Chapin and the Sprague
Ranch in 1909.
The train became known as the “Old
Rattler Limited” and its engine was called
Flossie. There was no easy access to the main
SLB&M system. Freight had to be offloaded
from the boxcars and hauled over to the
awaiting train to Chapin. Since there was no
roundhouse in Chapin, Flossie had to travel
to Chapin pointing forward, then back up all
the way to San Juan. The train only had two
boxcars, and one was used as a combination
passenger, freight, express, baggage, mail and
livestock car. The passengers sat on boards
that formed seats, while cows, mules and hogs
were at the other end of the car. Still, it served
its purpose, and the railroad delivered the
building materials to Chapin for a new
Hidalgo County Courthouse in 1910. The
railroad became part of the SLB&M system in
1912.
In 1911 steam plants and pumps were
erected on the river to bring the all-important
irrigation water that made the land valuable for
cropping and salable. The same system served
Pharr and, later, part of McAllen. The water
district office was later moved to San Juan.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
136

The handsome San Juan Hotel of Spanish
Colonial design was completed in 1920, with
22 rooms, a large courtyard and two patios. It
was built on the same site as the original
frame San Juan Hotel, which was moved to
another location and converted to other uses.
For the next two decades the hotel hosted
newcomers on land-buying excursions and
became the social center of the area. Later,
one of the town’s most famous citizens, super
Texas Ranger and longtime lawman Tom
Mayfield, made his home there. He was a
beloved and trusted peace officer for more
than sixty years.
What was probably Mayfield’s most famous
arrest came in January 1915, when he was
deputy sheriff of Hidalgo County and arrested
a man named Basilio Ramos in McAllen.
Ramos had in his possession documents, letters,
money, and a flag, all of which exposed
an organized plot against the United States.
The letters and documents contained names
of other people involved in the plot, which
was known as the Plan of San Diego because
it had supposedly originated in San Diego,
Texas. This plot was a plan for Mexicans to
rise against the United States and reclaim
Texas, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and
California, which they felt had been taken
unfairly from Mexico by the United States.
The Plan of San Diego never materialized, but
many amazing stories have been told about it
through the years.
As the years passed, San Juan Hotel went
through many owners and fell on hard times,
then was damaged by fire and vandals. It was
beautifully restored in 1983 by Glenn and
Mary Sigle and their son David, who is a graduate
in architectural history from the
University of Virginia. It was named a Texas
Historical Site, and the Sigles operated it for
several years. The historic hotel is again in
transition with high hopes that the famous
landmark will soon be back in business.
Some businesses came to San Juan early
and stayed a long time. The Martinez
Mercantile Store was operated by Manuel and
Victoria Martinez from 1919 to 1977 and “sold
everything from food to Stetson hats.” The old
Martin Drug Store was one of the centers of
activity as late as the 1940s. Bill Borman came
in 1941 and had not one, but “Two hardware
stores in the same family in the same town,” as
he put it in an advertising message in “San
Juan - 75th Anniversary of Founding - 1910-
1985,” Advance Newspapers’ Souvenir Issue.
Borman served as mayor of San Juan for
fourteen years, during which he promoted the
city as “prosperous and proudly debt-free.”
The first Protestant church services were
held in the original San Juan Hotel in 1911,
which led to the formation of The San Juan
People’s Church. Their first church was built
in 1912 for $1,100, an outside shell with
rough timbers inside, crude benches and
camp chairs for seats. Quickly the women
organized the Dorcas Society, which proved to
be full of good works and made many
contributions to the young community.
The hurricane of 1933 hit San Juan with a
storm that was “like a wave of the sea driven
with the wind and tossed.” The People’s
Church was badly damaged, and its members
✧
Left: One of the Valley’s best known and
respected lawmen was Tom Mayfield, shown
third from left with other lawmen in 1919.
He began his service in 1901 as a deputy
for Sheriff John Closner at the San Juan
Plantation. He was a Texas Ranger for a
time, then worked for an oil company near
Tampico from 1921-1941. Thereafter, he
returned to the Valley and was constable of
the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo precinct until
1963. He lived out his retirement years at
the San Juan Hotel, where he kept many
souvenirs of his colorful career.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
Below: The Missouri Pacific Depot in San
Juan in 1937.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
CHAPTER VII
137

✧
Above: The first Virgen de San Juan del Valle
Shrine was dedicated in 1954 and was
destroyed by fire in 1970 after a pilot
crashed into the structure. Though the
sanctuary was destroyed, no one was injured.
Below: The new Shrine was dedicated in April
1980 with a great celebration. Thousands of
pilgrims visit the Shrine each year and it is
the site of many regular and special religious
programs, meetings and retreats.
felt this might be a sign for them to build a new
church, which they did. The People’s Church
remains an integral part of the community.
The Virgen de San Juan del Valle Shrine
brings thousands of worshipers and pilgrims to
San Juan each week from across the United States
and Mexico. It had its beginning when Father
Joseph Azpiazu, OMI, moved to San Juan to
establish a new parish in the city, which had no
Catholic church. In 1949, aware of the devotion
of the Mexican-American Catholic community to
Mary and wanting to bring the new parish of San
Juan together, he placed a replica of the statue of
La Virgen de San Juan de los Lagos in his parish
church of St. John the Baptist.
As visitors from South Texas started streaming
in to visit La Virgen, a large Gothic style Church
was dedicated in 1954 and became known as the
Virgen de San Juan del Valle Shrine.
The generous offerings of the pilgrims made
possible the rapid expansion of the Shrine’s
buildings and services. The original Gothicstyle
building was destroyed by fire in 1970
after a pilot crashed into the structure. Though
the sanctuary was in ruins, no one was injured
and no harm befell the revered statuette.
The dream of a new Shrine, spacious and
modern, was realized when the new Shrine was
dedicated with a great celebration April 19-25,
1980. The contemporary Texas-style architecture
of the fan-shaped building includes arches and
walkway around the total perimeter. Its capacity
is 1,800 seated and 3,000 standing. Initially, the
exterior wall facing Expressway 83 was without
decoration. In late 1994, three artists from Italy
began work on the largest mosaic in southwest
Texas. The mosaic is visible day and night and
can be seen from Expressway 83.
San Juan describes itself as “A Friendly
City” with many fine churches, dedicated
health professionals, moderately priced
homes and fine RV parks in which to enjoy
quiet, casual living in an atmosphere of yearround
hospitality.
PHARR ON THE RISE
John C. Kelly of Waco, Texas, and
Huntsville, Alabama, came to the Valley in
1907 as an investor. He was said to have
ridden horseback over much of what is now
Pharr and the surrounding area and was
impressed by the fertility of the soil. He and a
friend, Frank Hammond, bought sixteen
thousand acres in Porción 67 that extended
from Edinburg to the river.
Kelly was introduced to Henry N. Pharr at the
Miller Hotel in Brownsville. Pharr was from New
Iberia, Louisiana, where he and his brother
owned several sugarcane plantations. He had
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
138

heard of the Kelly’s success with his first
sugarcane crop and came down to check it out.
They saw great possibilities in the area, and a
partnership resulted in the formation of the
Louisiana Rio Grande Sugar Cane Company. After
Hammond realized the need for a water plan and
the expense involved, he became discouraged
with their purchase and sold his interest to Pharr.
Kelly and Pharr engaged engineers to plat
the Kelly-Pharr subdivision for the townsite,
and Kelly registered the new town in the name
of Pharr to honor his partner. In 1916 the
townsite was incorporated as the City of Pharr.
Meanwhile, engineers were brought in to lay
out an irrigation system, and construction of
the Pharr Canal System was begun. This later
became the present water district, also serving
San Juan and part of McAllen.
Though it was sugarcane that brought the
founders together, the sugar industry was
short-lived. After the first successful year, when
the cane had good height and satisfactory sugar
content, the cane did not develop and the
sugar content was low because of an excess of
alkali in the soil. So the new settlers turned to
other products—alfalfa, vegetables, then to
citrus and cotton.
When the sugarcane industry failed, Pharr
sold out his interests in the area, which he is
said to have later regretted. Kelly and his family
remained in Pharr and one of its streets bears
his name. Part of the Kelly land is still kept in
agriculture by his daughter-in-law, Anna Mae
Kelly, widow of John C. Kelly, Jr., who
provided information about Pharr’s early days.
By 1911, a number of families had moved to
Pharr and a school for their children became
necessary, so a two-story building of Spanish
Colonial design was built in north Pharr. Later
used for various purposes, the building still
stands and is now owned by the city. Pharr and
San Juan organized a school district in 1915
and the students were transferred to the new
school on Highway 83. Later the two cities
would join with Alamo to form the large Pharr-
San Juan-Alamo Independent School District
that operates today. W. E. Cage established the
Rio Grande Clarion newspaper and the National
Theatre around the time Pharr incorporated in
1916, and the main north-south thoroughfare
carries his name.
In the February 1968 Tip-O-Texan
magazine, Lillian Weems Baldridge, then
seventy-nine, wrote “A Salute to Pharr,” in
which she remembered when both she and the
city were young:
While teaching at McAllen and boarding at
the O. P. Archer Hotel, I had the pleasure of
meeting both Mr. Henry N. Pharr and his
nephew of Morgan City, Louisiana. No streets
were paved and the sand was deep.
Windstorms came daily and cars were new. To
be safe, one stopped until he could see where
he was going and who was coming. It took men
of far vision, fortitude and integrity to dream of
and set in motion our lush Valley of today.
A new hotel called the “Gem of the Valley”
was built, and the young people from all
nearby ranches and embryo towns gave it a
warming-up party with a big dance. Music
was by a wandering Mexican orchestra. Coffee
and sandwiches were served at midnight. We
could dance as long after that as we could
persuade the musicians to play, but when they
played ‘La Golondrina,’ that was equivalent to
our Gringo ‘Home Sweet Home.’ We said our
adios and wished Pharr a happy future.
Driving through modern Pharr, circa 1968,
there is a tinge of nostalgia for the happy,
carefree days when we didn’t realize that
pioneering was so rough. We felt sorry for the
city people who were moving in and the
womenfolk missing the city luxuries. Not all,
✧
The St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico
railroad depot in Pharr in 1916. After
1925 the line became part of the Missouri
Pacific system.
COURTESY OF THE HIDALGO COUNTY
HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
CHAPTER VII
139

✧
Above: The Gem of the Valley Hotel, where
young people from the nearby ranches and
new towns danced until the band played La
Golondrina, burned in 1933, leaving Pharr
without a hotel for fifteen years.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
Below: The Texan Hotel opened in 1951 and
for several decades was the center of
business and social activity.
but some, considered we were living a rather
underprivileged life under such primitive
conditions. However, many of the women
loved the newness of it and, with their
husbands, put their shoulder to the wheel and
helped build the Valley of today. They, too,
learned to love and respect the cactus, the
trees that grew such vengeful thorns, to ride
horseback and, when lost, trust to the good
sense of their horse to get them home.
So, to the lovely City of Pharr, gateway
to romantic Old Mexico, gateway to your
county seat, Edinburg, and out into the wide
world, I salute you on your growth and
accomplishments in just over fifty years of
existence. Your boys and girls will never realize
the exquisite growing pains, the depths of
despair or the heights of splendor you reached
while on your way up and out of the primitive
and into our Atomic Age of today.
But you have that old Spanish blessing:
Vaya con Dios.
grew as Pharr grew, becoming a part of Wells
Fargo Bank in 1998. Then in 1951 the Texan
Hotel opened for business with fifty-four
rooms, a modern coffee shop and banquet
room, and five stores. For several decades it was
the center of business and social activity, but
has given way to newer facilities in recent years.
Pharr had twenty-two fruit and vegetable
shippers and processing plants by the 1950s,
and the agribusinesses that served farmers and
shippers flourished. Though the area has
become more urban and the economy more
diversified through the years, some of the
Valley’s major shippers still operate from Pharr.
In 1935, just after he graduated from
journalism school, Lloyd Glover became
publisher of the Pharr Press and recorded the
city’s ups and downs for over four decades.
The Advance News Journal began its weekly
community coverage in 1978.
The combined Pharr-San Juan-Alamo
School District was established in 1919 with
Between the days of the early 1900s recalled
by Mrs. Baldridge and the 1940s, Pharr had
some good times…and some bad ones. For years
it seemed that somebody was trying to burn the
town down as major fires destroyed a large alfalfa
dryer, a big feed mill, and whole sections of
downtown streets. Even the “Gem of the Valley”
hotel burned in 1933, and the town was hotelless
for some years, then bank-less after its First
National Bank closed during the depression.
Better times were on their way by 1941,
when Security State Bank opened its doors and
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
140

headquarters at Pharr and is among the
Valley’s largest, covering forty-seven square
miles and adding new schools and students
each year. Its many teachers and support
personnel make it the area’s largest employer.
Pharr also has several private and parochial
schools plus a vo-tech school.
The Texas Department of Transportation’s
district headquarters is in Pharr, close to the
intersection of U.S. 281 and Expressway 83. The
city has become a major trucking center, with
truck brokerages serving as clearinghouses to
match up truckers and shippers. However, the
all-important railroad, along which the string of
Valley towns developed, still hauls some
products. The six-lane interchange of these two
highways, completed in December 1993,
provides a smooth traffic flow for this busy
Valley intersection.
These highways bring thousands of Winter
Texans to Pharr for four to six months each
year, where they enjoy the amenities offered by
its mobile home and RV parks and the
programs provided for them. Tourism has
become a major contributor to the economy of
the city, as it has to the entire Rio Grande
Valley. Special attractions include Smitty’s
Jukebox Museum and Ye Old Clock Museum.
Industrial activity and international trade
have greatly increased since the North
American Free Trade Agreement went into
effect in 1994 and the Pharr-Reynosa
International Bridge was completed in January
1995. The bridge provides a direct link from
the Pharr Industrial Park to Reynosa’s maquila
plants. It also provides easy access to Mexico
for tourists who want to visit the interior cities
of Mexico since it links directly with the
Autopista, the fastest route to Monterrey.
MCALLEN CONTINUES TO GROW
In August 1904, the St. Louis, Brownsville,
and Mexico Railroad reached the site that would
become McAllen, and in December 1904, the
McAllen Townsite Company was established on
four hundred acres donated by rancher John
McAllen. A depot was built by the railroad, a
road was constructed to the county seat of
Hidalgo, and it seemed the little town was on its
way. Not so. Buildings did not spring up, streets
were never even laid out, and only three years
after its beginning the townsite disbanded.
Meanwhile, William Briggs of Briggs and
Smith, Lake Charles, Louisiana, purchased
eight thousand acres east of McAllen’s townsite
and started East McAllen, with the original
townsite referred to as West McAllen. East
McAllen promoters paid for their own depot
and post office and built a two-story frame hotel
to accommodate potential investors and land
purchasers. Families building new homes often
stayed in “boarding houses,” more accurately
known as tents, and meals consisted of wild
game, beans, tortillas, and strong coffee.
In March 1908 the Río Bravo Irrigation
Company completed its main canal, which
brought the promise of enough water to
✧
Above: The Pharr-Reynosa International
Bridge, which opened in 1995, provides a
direct link from the Pharr Industrial Park to
and from Reynosa’s maquiladora plants. It
also provides easy access to tourists who
want to visit Mexico’s interior.
Below: Pharr businessman Jim Shawn
collected clocks until he had so many he
built a building to house them, then turned
it into Ye Olde Clock Museum. He is shown
about 1970 winding one of the clocks in the
collection that numbers over a thousand.
The Shawn family continues to maintain the
museum which is open to the public on
weekday afternoons.
CHAPTER VII
141

✧
Above: The promoters of McAllen built a
two-story hotel soon after the depot and
post office were established to accommodate
potential investors and land purchasers. The
first automobile in McAllen was this REO
touring car owned by John Closner.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
Below: McAllen's annual Fourth of July
Celebration began early. Shown here is
the young city’s Fourth of July Celebration
in 1910.
COURTESY OF THE HIDALGO COUNTY
HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
irrigate twenty-seven thousand acres of land.
As the original townsite passed quietly out of
existence, the new townsite, which became
known simply as McAllen, began to build and
expand. By 1910, the new town boasted
almost a thousand inhabitants, who saw the
need to incorporate so an effective city
government could be established. The
election for incorporation was held February
18, 1911. Each voter was to write “For
Commission” or “Against Commission.”
Forty-five votes were cast, all “For
Commission,” and forty-five votes each were
cast for Frank G. Crow as mayor and O. P.
Archer and H. L. Givens as the two
commissioners. The city prospered nicely
under the Texas general rule form of
government until the early 1920s, when a
new charter was formed and the commission
enlarged to four members under home rule.
Since then changes in city government have
been made to keep up with the times and the
city’s phenomenal growth.
McAllen’s earliest population boom came
as a result of the bandit raids during the
Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. First, the
Texas Rangers and the Texas National Guard
came and provided some protection, but by
1915 there were raids somewhere in the
Valley most every day. In 1916 Federal troops
began arriving to protect the border and to
conduct training exercises, with as many as
12,000 in McAllen alone. Squadron A of the
New York Guard arrived in McAllen on July
12, 1916. Known as a “rich man’s outfit,” it
even included Colonel Cornelius Vanderbilt.
As the New York guardsmen arrived in the
“Magic Valley,” they found land nothing like
the grassy hills and tall forests back home.
One soldier described the area as:
…a land flat as the ocean bottom, which it
once formed; where every bush and tree prick
with the sting of a snake; where every bug
likes a bite and where you hear the occasional
rattle of an old diamond-back as you ride
across the country; where the coyotes come
near at midnight, and the pack yelps and
snarls as it tears its prey to pieces; where
buzzards sail lazily overhead at mid-day,
waiting and watching; where doves perched
overhead in the moss-hung trees of the river
jungle carry on their incessant cooing; where
tarantulas and scorpions hide in your blankets
and mosquitoes swarm after sunset; where
distance has no bounds and a human being is
but an atom in the scheme of things.
As the soldiers tried to adapt to their new
surroundings, the citizens welcomed the
protection and included them in community
activities. However, the young city was
unprepared to accommodate so many more
people. Business establishments were packed
day and night. A rush of orders was sent to
wholesale houses for grocery staples and
other necessities. Most businesses were very
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
142

profitable during this time, mainly because
the soldiers had money to spend.
Not only did retail sales increase, but many
of the downtown buildings were also
constructed during this period, and the
number of homes and churches also increased.
When Squadron A and other soldiers stationed
along the border left the Valley, World War I
was about to erupt, and they went on to other,
more dangerous assignments. The training
received in the Valley would serve them well.
As in previous border conflicts, some of these
soldiers returned to make their lives in what
indeed would become “The Magic Valley.”
Meanwhile, business leaders decided that
the growing community needed an outstanding
social and business center, a place for
businessmen to gather, for fashionable affairs,
and for dining. R. E. Horn, founder and president
of First State Bank & Trust Co. in
McAllen, and Mayor O. P. Archer were leaders
in the movement to obtain a modern hotel for
the community.
The Spanish-style Casa de Palmas designed
by M. L. Waller, an architect from Fort Worth,
was opened in 1918, a three-story white stucco
structure with a red tile roof built around a
center patio, with fifty-seven guest rooms. The
famous landmark has been through several
owners and many renovations, and a major fire
caused by lightning when it was almost rebuilt
and about to reopen in 1973. It was rebuilt,
and yet another major renovation and
expansion program was recently completed,
turning it into the beautiful Renaissance-Casa
de Palmas. Many other modern hotels have
been built in recent decades to accommodate
✧
Top, left: R. E. Horn was founder and
president of First State Bank & Trust
Company of McAllen, pictured here around
1922-23. The First State Bank was an
integral part of the business community
through many changes.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
Top, right: The new Texas State Bank tower
on busy North Tenth Street is headquarters
for the bank’s network of around thirty
branch banks in the Valley.
Below: McAllen’s Main Street, shown
looking south in 2000, still attracts many
customers, both local residents and shoppers
from Mexico. So do the malls and shopping
centers that flourish in other sections of the
city, making McAllen a major retail center.
CHAPTER VII
143

✧
Right: Sam Miller, longtime banker, investor,
and donor of the land for McAllen-Miller
International Airport, and his wife Marjorie
fell in love with English architecture during
a 1927 trip to England. In 1937 they
commissioned architect/ builders Harry
Biggers and Jack Langley of San Juan to
design this house on North Fifteenth Street.
Now listed in the National Register of
Historic Places, it is carefully maintained by
its present owner, Rick DeJulio, an organizer
of Futuro McAllen.
Below: McAllen International Museum is an
arts and science museum that has frequent
educational programs, a gift shop, a
butterfly garden, and Rioscape, an
interactive learning park that focuses on the
history of the Valley. In August 2000 work
began on a $2.4-million addition that will
more than double its size. The addition is
part of a $5.5-million new millennium
expansion and endowment program that
will add many new exhibits, including a
model of the Rio Grande watershed.
today’s visitors from all across the U.S., Mexico,
and beyond.
In 1930 Sam Miller donated 109 acres to
build Miller Municipal Airport, which served
early aviators from a simple airstrip and has
grown to today’s active international airport.
By 1940 McAllen had a population of around
12,000 and called itself the “City of Palms.”
Its economy was based on farming and petroleum.
There were 430 businesses, of which
249 were stores, and local retail receipts
totaled over $6.2 million that year.
In 1941 a suspension bridge replaced the
old privately owned bridge to Reynosa. The
new toll bridge was later purchased by the
city and was called the McAllen-Hidalgo-
Reynosa International Bridge. This resulted in
an increased tourist trade that made the area a
winter resort and major port of entry to
Mexico. The city’s population grew to 20,000
by 1950 and to 33,000 by 1960.
McAllen was an agricultural, oil and tourist
center by 1970. By then, it had a two-hundredbed
hospital and a new air-conditioned high
school, the first school in the nation featuring
on-site power generated by natural-gaspowered
turbines. In 2000 its school district
had three high schools to take care of the
burgeoning student population. Its expanded
medical institutions now include a medical
complex that covers several city blocks, plus
facilities throughout the city.
Growth continued during the 1980s and
1990s with an increase in light industries.
Much of the growth was prompted by
Mexico’s maquiladora program, which has
attracted hundreds of manufacturing firms to
border cities. Many of these have twin plants
on the U.S. side, as well as transportation and
supply operations. Another growth factor is
the active McAllen Foreign Trade Zone, which
allows goods to be stored and assembled
without payment of customs duties and tariffs
until shipped out of the zone.
Along with its growth has come the
construction of many new homes and beautiful
neighborhoods where the mesquite and cactus
used to grow. No longer do the “coyotes come
near at midnight,” nor do “tarantulas and
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
144

scorpions hide in your blankets and extra
breeches.” Public buildings, schools, churches,
cultural and recreational facilities have also grown
to meet the needs of its citizens. An organization,
Futuro McAllen, is working to preserve the city’s
heritage and restore some of its older residential
neighborhoods. Residential and commercial
construction in McAllen totaled $179,087,659
n 2000.
With a population of over 110,000, a
strong economy, a booming retail trade
boosted by product-hungry Mexican
shoppers, and year-round tourism, the city
enters the new millennium with the promise
of continued growth and progress.
MISSION:
HOME OF THE FAMOUS
Although the railroad reached the site of
Mission in August 1904, it would be five years
before the town was established. John J.
Conway of Minnesota first visited the area in
1906 and stayed at the guest house of the La
Lomita Mission established by the Oblate
missionaries by the horseback-riding priests of
the Cavalry of Christ. The La Lomita Grant was
originally awarded by Spain to José Antonio
Cantú of Reynosa. After various transactions,
the land was bequeathed to the Missionary
Oblates of Mary Immaculate in 1874. The
Oblate Fathers decided in 1906 to sell some of
the lands they received through the bequest.
Conway came with experience and capital
accumulated through successful land trading
in Minnesota and South Dakota and was
always alert to new worlds to conquer. He saw
in the vast expanse of brushland possibilities
stretching far into a bright future. He could tell
the soil was rich from the scattered farms that
already existed. All that was needed to fulfill
his dream was water—and he believed he
could provide irrigation water from the river.
Convinced he had found the land he
wanted, Conway and his partner, J. W. Hoit of
Minnesota, purchased 17,000 acres from the
Oblates and soon added 10,000 acres from
others. They established the La Lomita Land
Company in 1906, and in the next four years
spent at least a million dollars in improvements,
mostly irrigation.
In 1908 Conway persuaded the railroad to
establish a station near the center of the new
development. That stop became “Mission” in
honor of the little Oblate Mission at the
suggestion of Mrs. Charles Volz who, with her
husband, experimented with early vegetable,
flower and citrus plantings. Conway
encouraged any development that would
improve the quality of life in the new town,
gave land to any group that wanted to build a
church, and for parks and a cemetery.
His vigorous, imaginative promotion
emphasized the rich soil, the mild temperatures
that made year-round production possible, and
the availability of irrigation and railway
transportation for products. Hundreds of
people came, saw, and settled.
Undoubtedly the most famous person
lured to Mission was William Jennings Bryan,
who selected a site for a winter home near the
river. Before construction could start,
✧
Above: La Lomita Mission, the little adobe
chapel built by the Oblate Fathers in 1865
from which Mission got its name.
Below: St. Peter’s Novitiate, which stands on
high ground overlooking the countryside
south of Mission, was built by the Order of
the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in 1912 as
a retreat where novitiates could reflect on
their spiritual calling before taking their
vows for the priesthood. In 1972 it was
vacated by the Oblates and was used until
1998 by the Tropical Texas Center MHMR.
The Catholic Diocese of Brownsville bought
the historic building in 1999 as the site for
its new junior college seminary.
CHAPTER VII
145

✧
Top, left: William Jennings Bryan, orator,
author and candidate for the U.S.
presidency, lived in this home on 160 acres
of the La Lomita tract between 1909 and
1912. His home was a popular gathering
place when he was in the Valley.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
Top, right: Mission’s own Cleo Dawson,
author and educator, made her home in
Kentucky after her young years in Mission.
There she became friends with the
“Kentucky Colonel” who established the
famous chain of Kentucky Fried Chicken
restaurants. This picture was taken during a
visit to the Valley in the 1970s.
however, his tract was inundated by the flood
of 1909. Conway traded a tract in another
location, where Bryan built what is still
referred to as “the Bryan Home.” He spent
time there from 1909 to 1912, when the old
fascination of politics drew him northward
and Bryan resumed his speaker’s platform.
Though unsuccessful in three bids for the
U.S. presidency, he was a great lawyer, orator,
writer and editor, and was President Wilson’s
secretary of state from 1913-1915.
Mission’s famous writer and educator, Dr.
Cleo Dawson, author of the novel She Came to
the Valley, reminisced about Mission’s early
days and about Bryan in a 1953 article in the
Mission Times:
Mission always celebrated with a great fiesta
and a parade and dance when the “Great
Commoner” came down to his sunny Mission
acres for winter rest and talk about “Free Silver”
and continued Presidential plans. William
Jennings Bryan impressed me, as he impressed
everybody who ever saw him. He impressed me
so much I’m still remembering that first time I
saw him riding down the streets of Mission in a
buckboard, the first parade I ever saw.
I had never seen such a time in Mission.
Everywhere was crowded. Every mesquite
bush in town had horses and wagons and
buckboards tied up to it. People were lined up
all along the street and even sitting up on the
porch-roofs of stores.
Below: The citrus industry was booming by
1923 when John H. Shary built the first
modern citrus packing plant and set up the
Texas Fruit Growers Exchange.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
146

Bryan enjoyed going to Mission after his
mail. The people there looked upon him not
as a great statesman, but rather as a friend
who could be consulted about the weather,
crops and other such commonplace matters.
He once went to a circus that came to
Mission. When the people saw him, there was
such a clamor that he had to make a speech
before the show could start.
As the fledgling town flourished, it looked as
if John Conway’s dreams were coming true. By
1912 Mission had a population of three
thousand. Surrounding the town were eighteen
thousand acres in cultivation, with successful
crops of onions, cabbage, corn, cotton, figs,
tomatoes and cucumbers and the promising
beginnings of citrus cultivation. Because of the
economic downturn of 1912 and other setbacks,
Conway did not personally make the fortune he
expected, but he can be counted among those
rare individuals who lived to see their dreams
come true. He felt that Mission was the “good
place to live” that he had envisioned, and he is
fondly referred to as the “Father of Mission.”
Citrus attracted John H. Shary to Mission.
He was a salesman-promoter on a grand scale
who believed his own sales talk and proved it
by settling down as neighbor and citizen to help
make his predictions come true. In 1912 Shary
bought thirty-six thousand acres in what is now
the Sharyland-Mission area. He bought and
completed the unfinished Mission irrigation
system over a period of several years so he
could grow citrus. By 1914 the first forty acres
had been cleared and the land was ready for
planting. He visited California to study their
harvesting, packing, processing and sales
methods. He built the Valley’s first modern
citrus packing plant in Sharyland and set up the
Texas Citrus Fruit Growers Exchange, a
cooperative marketing agency. The citrus
industry boomed, and orchards around Mission
multiplied. The national press described Shary
as “Citrus King,” “Mr. Citrus,” and the one that
stuck, “Father of the Texas Citrus Industry.”
Shary and his wife, Mary, built one of the
Valley’s best known showplaces overlooking an
artificial lake on North Shary Road. It was the
setting for the 1937 wedding of the couple’s
only child, Marialice, to Allan Shivers when he
was a state senator and just beginning his career
in Texas politics. Later he was to become
lieutenant governor, and then governor for
longer than any of his predecessors in that
office. The Shary mansion became the Shivers’
part-time home, and they entertained many
guests there, including President Dwight
Eisenhower during his three-day visit to
dedicate Falcon Dam in 1953. The over sixthousand-acre
Sharyland Plantation was sold to
the Hunt interests of Dallas in the 1970s, with
the exception of the home and surrounding
land, which the Shivers family gave to the
University of Texas-Pan American, Edinburg.
Lloyd and Elmer Bentsen arrived in
Mission just after their service in World War I
to join their parents, Peter and Tina Bentsen,
who had come from South Dakota in 1917 for
the father’s health. The sons bought ten acres
and went to farming, did well with it, and the
father regained his health. The Bentsen
brothers didn’t have much formal education,
but they were hard workers with imagination
and they learned how to buy land on
favorable terms, sell it, and buy more. The
Bentsen Development Company expanded
into the land clearing business, a palm
nursery, and then into banking and
investments. The family donated land for the
densely wooded 588-acre Bentsen Rio Grande
Valley State Park south of Mission, a popular
birding, camping, and nature site.
The Bentsen brothers and their
descendants have made major contributions
✧
The Shary mansion on North Shary Road
was the setting for the 1937 wedding of John
and Mary Shary’s daughter, Marialice, to
Allan Shivers, who later was governor of
Texas. In 1953, when President Eisenhower
came to the Valley for the dedication of
Falcon Dam, he was a guest of Shivers at
the Shary home.
CHAPTER VII
147

✧
Above: Lloyd Bentsen, Sr.
Below: Some of Mission’s famous people are
shown in this sketch by Manuel Hinojosa,
Kell/Muñoz/Wigodsky Architects. At center
with the cigar is John Shary. Clockwise
around him are longtime U.S.
Representative Kika de la Garza, baseball
hero Leonardo Alaniz, the legendary
Cowboys Coach Tom Landry, and U.S.
Senator Lloyd Bentsen, Jr.
COURTESY OF THE MISSION CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.
to the business and civic life of the Valley.
Lloyd Sr. helped organize the Rio Grande
Valley Planning Board in 1944 and was its
first president. The organization became the
Rio Grande Valley Chamber of Commerce and
now the Rio Grande Valley Partnership, which
has sparked many Valleywide organizations
and improvements.
After service as a bomber pilot in World
War II, Lloyd Bentsen, Jr., began his political
career as Hidalgo County judge until elected
in 1948 as the youngest member of Congress
at twenty-seven. After three terms he left to
enter the insurance business in Houston, then
decided to return to the political arena. He
was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1970, where
he became chairman of the Senate Finance
Committee. In 1988 Senator Bentsen was the
Democratic Party nominee for vice president
and later served as U.S. treasurer in the
Clinton cabinet. Though Houston became his
home, he never forgot his Valley roots.
Another Mission political star is E. “Kika”
de la Garza, who was born in Mercedes but
attended Mission schools, Edinburg Junior
College, now the University of Texas-Pan
American, and law school at St. Mary’s
University in San Antonio. He was elected to
the U.S. House of Representatives in 1964 and
became a member of the House Agriculture
Committee in 1965. He served fourteen years
as its chairman before retiring from politics in
1994. To honor him for his service to
agriculture, especially to the Rio Grande
Valley, the Kika de la Garza Subtropical
Research Center of the USDA/ARS at Weslaco
was dedicated in his honor in 1999.
Mission’s famous people are not limited to
business and politics. One of sports’ most
highly regarded figures was Tom Landry,
honored in his hometown with a colorful
mural depicting his life and career. He began
as a player at Mission High School, won a
football scholarship to the University of
Texas, and served in the Army Air Corps as a
B-17 pilot for thirty bombing missions over
Europe. He landed in Dallas in 1960 to begin
his legendary tenure as coach of the Dallas
Cowboys for twenty-nine years.
Another sports figure who proudly claimed
Mission as his home town was Leonardo “Leo
Najo” Alaniz, a baseball hero in Mexico as well
as Texas. He played several years with San
Antonio in the Texas League, and in major
leagues for a time but a broken leg kept him
from making it big in the majors. He managed
a Mexican league team and became a member
of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Monterrey, as
well as the American Baseball Players
Association. Born in Nuevo León, he lived for
sixty-five years in Mission, which renamed
Seventh Street “Leo Najo Street” in his honor.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
148

Moore Field, a U.S. training field fourteen
miles northwest of Mission, was an important
part of Mission’s life and economy for many
years. It opened in 1941 as a flight school and
trained six thousand pilots during World War
II. Closed in 1945, it was jointly operated by
Mission, McAllen and Edinburg as Tri-Cities
Municipal Airport for a time. Reactivated in
1954 as Moore Air Force Base, thousands of
Air Force pilots received their primary flight
training and academic instruction there before
it was again deactivated. The base was later
the site of the USDA’s successful screwworm
fly eradication program and continues to be
used by the USDA.
Mission marked the sixty-second
anniversary of the colorful Texas Citrus Fiesta
in January 2000. Established in 1932 to
promote the South Texas Citrus industry and
celebrate the bountiful harvest in Mission, the
“Home of the Grapefruit,” it is a major Valley
event that attracts thousands to its Parade of
Oranges and other unique activities.
Rio Theatre, first known as Teatro La Paz
(Peace Theatre), was built about 1912 by Juan
Bautista Barbera, a native of Spain who came
to the United States in 1905. A bricklayer by
profession, Barbera brought films, lecturers,
actors and musicians to his theater. It has been
restored as a center for cultural events and
movie classics with an adjoining restaurant.
Another remnant of old Mission remains
on Conway, Mission’s main street, in the
historic Border Theater. Built by Robert N.
and Dell Smith in 1942, it opened with the
Roy Rogers movie Heart of the Rio Grande. Its
ownership has changed several times in its
fifty-plus years of operation. Bill and Gen
Long bought it in 1995 and have restored it to
its original beauty. Their goal is for families to
enjoy movies in an atmosphere reminiscent of
the early 1940s. Recorded as a Texas
Historical Landmark in 1997, the Hidalgo
County Historical Commission presented the
Texas Historical Medallion to the theater in
January 1999.
Though Mission residents are proud of their
rich history, they did not have a place to display
their growing collection of historical mementos
until the city opened its new police station in
July 2000. Now they are getting a museum as
the city commission approved the Mission
Historical Society’s request to make the old
police station, built in 1940, into a museum.
✧
Above: The historic Border Theater in
downtown Mission is one of the last
remaining theaters with Art Pueblo styling.
Virtually the same as when it opened as the
first air-conditioned theater in the Valley in
1942, it was re-opened in 1995 by Bill and
Gen Long. Remodeled to further recapture
its historical flavor and increase customer
comfort, it shows first-run family movies
and has guided tours and special bookings.
COURTESY OF BILL AND GEN LONG.
Below: The Tom Landry Mural in
downtown Mission by artist Manuel
Hinojosa depicts his life, career, and legend,
spanning the life of the football great from
his early years as a player at Mission High
School to his legendary tenure as the coach
of the Dallas Cowboys and his induction
into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The
biographical mural measures 95 by 8 feet.
COURTESY OF BILL AND GEN LONG.
CHAPTER VII
149

✧
Top, left: The new World Birding Center
headquarters will be located on 175 acres
adjacent to Bentsen Rio Grande Valley State
Park near Mission. It will house
administrative offices and special exhibits,
with a network of bird-watching centers
spanning the Rio Grande Valley.
Top, right: Plain Chacalacas, sometimes
called Mexican Pheasants, are permanent
residents of thickets from Falcon Dam to the
Gulf. They are found in abundance at
Bentsen Park and even in Valley backyards.
COURTESY OF DOUG BRUNDIGE.
Right: Some facilities are in place and others
are under development at the one-hundredacre
Pepsi Sports Park south of Mission. It
will contain facilities for a wide range of
sports and recreation, including a swimming
complex with training-sized pool. It is a
project of Hunt Valley Development on the
six-thousand-acre Sharyland Plantation,
which includes master-planned residential
communities and a business park.
Agriculture remains of great importance to
the Mission area though its citrus acreage is
now reduced. Its expressway business park is
home to several Valleywide agricultural
organizations: Texas Citrus Mutual,
TexaSweet Citrus Marketing, Texas Citrus
Exchange, Texas Vegetable Association, and
Texas Produce Association.
Mission’s schools and health facilities are
constantly expanding to meet the needs of area
citizens and are widely recognized for their
excellence. With over seventy recreational
vehicle parks, Winter Texans almost double
Mission’s population for several months a year,
contributing much to the economy and
community life. The headquarters of Texas
Parks & Wildlife’s new World Birding Center is
under development by Bentsen Rio Grande
Valley State Park, as is the North American
Butterfly Association’s Butterfly Park, making
the area a favorite with ecotourists.
In September 2000, Bentsen Palm Development,
which gave the land for the World
Birding Center, announced plans for Bentsen
Palm Village on its remaining twenty-three
hundred acres, an environmentally friendly,
master-planned community that will blend
with the birds and butterflies.
In the late 1990s, Hunt Valley Development
began a major development program on its six
thousand-plus acres that includes office
buildings, manufacturers, and industrial supply
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
150

firms in the Sharyland Business Park, plus the
one-hundred-acre Pepsi Sports Park. More than
10,000 new homes in master-planned
residential communities are projected for 4,000
acres of the former citrus plantation. In 2000
work was progressing on schedule.
Add to these developments the proposed
$30-million Anzalduas International Bridge,
and the new millennium offers exciting times
for the thriving town named for historic La
Lomita Mission.
LA JOYA MEANS “ THE JEWEL”
La Joya spreads along U.S. Highway 83
between Mission and Rio Grande City. Its
name, meaning “the jewel,” came from a small
natural lake just west of the town, said by
early settlers to shine in the sun like a jewel.
The site was part of what was known as Los
Ejidos de Reynosa Viejo. The ejidos were the
shared grazing lands used for livestock by
Reynosa settlers who had come with Spanish
colonist José de Escandón in 1749. Some of
today’s La Joya residents trace their ancestry
to the Escandón settlers.
During the early 1800s at the site of what is
now La Joya, Francisco de la Garza, a descendant
of the early colonizers, founded a community
called Tabasco adjacent to the northern bank of
the Rio Grande. After the floods in 1908 and
1909, the settlers moved their belongings just
north to higher and less flood-prone ground. In
1926 the residents incorporated their
community as La Joya. Development was limited
and the municipal government lay dormant until
1965, when the city government was revived and
the community began to grow.
Most of La Joya’s activity centers around its
huge 226 square mile school district, which is
made up not only of La Joya, but also the
surrounding communities of Palmview,
Peñitas, Sullivan City, Los Ebanos, Abram, and
Cuevitas. The district has 18 school campuses
with over 17,000 students and more than
2,000 employees. School construction in
recent years has added many new school
buildings and related educational facilities. In
addition to its excellent academic programs,
La Joya is well known for its Tabasco Folkloric
Group and Mariachi Los Coyotes, both part of
its outstanding Fine Arts program.
EDINBURG:
THE HIDALGO COUNTY SEAT
Edinburg had a tumultuous beginning, a
colorful chapter in Valley history that is celebrated
during the city’s annual “Fiesta Edinburg.”
✧
Above: One of many new La Joya school
facilities is its performing arts center, shown
nearing completion in late 2000. It houses
the district’s performing arts academy,
which provides intensive training in dance,
music, visual arts, theater and media
communications, plus a fifteen-hundred-seat
auditorium. The center is part of a $90
million building program that includes six
new elementary schools, two new middle
schools, a new ninth and tenth-grade
campus, and additions to the high school.
COURTESY OF BILL BELL.
Below: It didn’t take long for a courthouse to
be built in the new Hidalgo County seat,
first named Chapin. Shown at the
construction site of the two-story clapboard
building are, (standing from left to right) A.
Y. Baker, Walter M. Dougherty, John
Closner, and D. B. Chapin. James J. Closner
is in the auto. During construction, county
officials conducted business in tents.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
CHAPTER VII
151

✧
Above: The first courthouse was replaced in
1910 with this picturesque stucco structure,
elegant with its marble-tiled walls and
porticos. It remained the hub of county
government until 1954, when the present
courthouse was built. It is remembered with
fondness by those who were associated with
it during its busy years.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
Below: The present Hidalgo County
Courthouse includes the main county offices
and courts at law. When more space was
needed, the county purchased a former bank
building across from the plaza, and other
buildings are utilized to meet the expanding
needs of county government.
When Hidalgo County was organized in
1852, the river town of Edinburgh was
designated as the county seat. It was named
for the capital of Scotland, home of one of its
founders, John Young; the other founder,
John McAllen, came from Londonderry,
Northern Ireland. After several years, the
town’s name was changed to Hidalgo. Located
close to the Rio Grande, the town was subject
to flooding, which posed a threat to county
records. Also, it was not in the center of the
county and was not accessible by rail. By
1907 county leaders began to look for a new
site in a safer, more central location.
Meanwhile, John Closner, William
Sprague, and D. B. Chapin, then the county
judge, had purchased fourteen hundred acres
for a new town sixteen miles northeast of
Hidalgo, to be named Chapin. The townsite
company donated four square blocks in the
center of the townsite for county use. At the
time, Chapin was nothing more than an old
cattle trail in the chaparral, but its supporters
had high hopes for the town. Legal
requirements had to be met, such as a petition
for an election to move the county seat and
then the election itself. Chapin resigned as
county judge to avoid a conflict of interest,
and S. P. Silver of Mercedes succeeded him.
When the election was held on October 10,
1908, the vote was 422 to 90 in favor of
moving the courthouse to Chapin.
Opponents of the move were very angry
and threatened to stop it by an injunction.
Proponents of the change saw they must act
fast before the opposition could stop them. By
October 12 the votes had been canvassed and
certified. Early the next morning, under the
cover of darkness, Closner and other officials
removed the records from Hidalgo by wagon
caravan under armed guard. The loaded wagons
stopped overnight at the San Juan
Plantation. On the morning of October 14,
1908, the wagon caravan arrived in Chapin,
an occasion celebrated with much shouting
and shooting in the air.
Feverish activity began at the recently
cleared site. Lumber was hauled into Chapin
from the new town of McAllen to build a twostory
clapboard building for the records and to
serve as the first courthouse. By November, the
townsite was laid out, business and residential
lot sales had begun, and work was under way
on an irrigation system. A post office was
established on December 3, 1908. W. D. Day
had the first store in the community and served
as the first postmaster.
Meanwhile, work had begun on the rail spur
from San Juan, which reached Chapin in March
of 1909 to connect the new county seat with the
rest of the Valley. Since a roundhouse was
lacking in Chapin, the train, called Flossie, had
to back up on the trip back to San Juan. At first
it had just two boxcars, but it provided that
necessary transportation link. Later, the city
received rail connections with Corpus Christi
and San Antonio through Southern Pacific.
In December 1908 voters approved a
proposition to build a new $75,000
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
152

courthouse, which was completed in June of
1910 to establish a permanent center of local
govern-ment. A new county jail was also
dedicated, built like the courthouse of brick
with white stucco and a red tiled roof. The
courthouse and jail were designed by the
famous architect Attlee B. Ayers. Another jail
was built some years later, and the original jail
was used for city offices and a firehouse before
it was renovated to become the home of the
Hidalgo County Historical Museum in 1970.
The picturesque 1910 courthouse was
replaced with the present structure in 1954 to
provide additional space for offices, records
and courts at law.
In 1911 the name of the new county seat
was changed to Edinburg, which had been the
county’s first capital, then spelled with “h”
like Scotland’s Edinburgh. Somewhere along
the way the “h” on the end of the town’s name
was lost. One account says it was decided to
leave off the final ”h” since the Scottish burr
was difficult for Spanish tongues. There is
another story that says a U.S. Postal Service
decree changed the names of all cities ending
in “gh” to a simple “g” around 1908; however,
the City of Pittsburgh petitioned to keep
the “gh” and won. Edinburg was an
unincorporated town until a vote for
incorporation was approved unanimously on
September 8, 1919.
At first, most of the town’s business
centered around ranching, and Edinburg
continued to be a ranching headquarters.
Beyond the irrigated farmland are some of the
area’s oldest ranches—the Velas of Laguna
Seca, the Guerras and McAllens of Linn, and
the Chapas of San Manuel, to name a few. The
famed La Coma Ranch was owned first by
William Sprague and later the King Ranch in
the early twentieth century, and since 1944 by
members of the Bentsen family. A cattle
auction yard, ranch suppliers, and an amateur
rodeo show the area’s continued interest in
cattle and ranching.
The arrival of irrigation in 1915 initiated
an agricultural economy as Edinburg quickly
became a center for buying and processing
vegetables, cotton, grain, and citrus.
Agriculture, bolstered by the development of
oil and gas reserves, and the city’s position as
the center of government for a large county,
fueled the city’s growth.
The region’s cultural and ethnic mix can be
seen in the way its Spanish heritage blends
with American customs. One of Edinburg’s
citizens, José Jesús “Joe” Ponce, wrote a book
in 1999 about his family, Emigrantes De
Asturias: The Story of the de la Viña Family. His
great-grandfather, Judge Juan Manuel de la
Viña, was an early educator and Hidalgo
County judge who participated in the
founding of Edinburg with his sons, Juan
and Plutarco. The family has contributed
politicians, farmers, businessmen and educators
to the area. “There is plenty of Hispanic
history that has never been told, and it’s
beautiful information,” Ponce said. “Right
now, our family has 42 teachers working in
Edinburg schools, and my Uncle Rudy de la
Viña was mayor of Edinburg for 12 years.”
The rest of the Valley was fast developing into
a winter resort area when Edinburg realized it
was missing out on something big. Being the
palm-lined “Gateway to the Valley” was fine with
the citizens of Edinburg until they realized that
the south gate of the city was also open.
Consequently, most of the tourist business was
driving on through to neighboring cities. They
got busy and provided tourist recreation
facilities. With a belief in themselves and their
community, eleven hundred citizens joined
✧
Early enterprises centered around the
growing of vegetables and citrus. The Juan
de la Viña family is shown in their orchard
about 1915. Educated in Monterrey and
Catholic University in St. Louis, Missouri, he
served as Hidalgo County judge from 1894
to 1900 and was an educator for many
years, as well as a farmer and rancher.
COURTESY OF THE HIDALGO COUNTY
HISTORICAL COMMISSION ARCHIVES.
CHAPTER VII
153

✧
Above: The Echo Motor Hotel was built in
the late 1950s by citizens to help promote
tourism and continues to serve visitors to the
busy county seat. It is shown in the
background in 1969 when Edinburg was
first named an All-America City. Among
those celebrating at poolside were Joyce
Skloss, Celeste Buchanan, and Berta Treviño.
Below: This Gothic Revival style auditorium
was built in 1927 to serve the newly created
Edinburg Junior College, later serving other
educational institutions. The building
features ogee-arched windows and
ornamental stonework. It has been
renovated by the city for use as a municipal
auditorium and cultural center.
forces, bought stock, and built the Echo Motor
Hotel, which was a showplace facility when it
opened in the late 1950s. Many additional
facilities have been added, and its tourism
continues to increase.
Edinburg was named an All-America City
for the third time in June 2000, with the way
businesses and government work together
cited by the National Civic League as the reason
the city won. The league awards the title
to only 10 cities each year, for which the top
30 cities in the country compete. Edinburg
was the first city in the Valley and only the
fourth Texas city to be given the honor when
it received the designation in 1969. The second
time Edinburg was named an All-America
City was in 1995.
Education has been a major factor in
Edinburg’s progress. It has one of the nation’s
largest school districts, covering 945 square miles
and serving the students of several rural
communities in addition to its own residents.
Edinburg Junior College was established as part
of the Edinburg School District in 1927. It
became state-supported as Pan American College,
then Pan American University, and was made part
of The University of Texas System in 1989.
Since the merger with The University of
Texas System, there has been an explosion of
new buildings and renovations, with a fifty-five
percent increase in building square footage, a
tremendous growth rate for any university. Its
new International Trade and Technology
Building draws the world to the Valley and
highlights the University’s ties to economic
development agencies on both sides of the
international border.
Not just buildings, but many new programs
have been added to provide educational
opportunities for its more than thirteen
thousand students. Under construction in 2000
were a new student union and computer center,
with planned facilities to include a $15 million
UT Medical School research center. In most
cases, UTPA buildings follow the “Modern
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
154

Spanish” style set by Kenneth Bentsen, who
designed the original campus buildings.
A joint project of the City of Edinburg and
UTPA is a new $5-million baseball stadium to
be shared by the University’s Broncs and the
Roadrunners, the second Texas-Louisiana
League baseball franchise to locate in the
Valley. The Rio Grande Valley Whitewings play
in Harlingen as part of the league.
Historic sites include its City Auditorium,
built in 1927 and refurbished completely in the
1990s, and the Southern Pacific Depot, now
restored to house the city’s Chamber of
Commerce and Economic Development offices.
The Hidalgo County Historical Museum is a
rich storehouse of the history of the Rio Grande
Valley and northern Mexico. It has developed
into a major Valley attraction and is in the midst
of a nearly $5.7-million expansion, a magnet
for visitors to explore South Texas history.
In addition to its focus on county government,
agriculture and education, Edinburg
has recently emerged as a center of industry,
entertainment and business activity. The combination
holds great promise for the future of
its citizens in this city of beautiful homes,
relaxed living, and cultural diversity.
THE DELTA AREA
The geographical heart of the Valley is a
land of big farms and small towns, of
uncurbed main streets and farm-to-market
roads. It is called the “Delta Area” and includes
the towns of Edcouch, Elsa, La Villa, and
Monte Alto. These towns were formed along
the route of the Southern Pacific Railroad
when it crossed the Valley from Edinburg in
1927. It made its way across the rich land of
✧
Top: New buildings keep sprouting up on the
UTPA campus. Most follow the “Modern
Spanish” style set by Kenneth Bentsen, who
designed the original campus buildings.
Additional land has been acquired for
future expansion.
Above: The Southern Pacific Railway Depot
was completed in 1927 as part of a major
railroad expansion into South Texas.
Passenger service ceased in 1952, but
freight service lasted until 1982. Through
a concerted effort by area citizens, it
was beautifully renovated and is now
home to the Edinburg Chamber of
Commerce and the Edinburg Economic
Development Corporation.
Left: The rich lands of the Delta Area
produced high yields of vegetables, and
farmers took their produce to the packing
sheds that lined the Southern Pacific rail
line. Shown is a beet harvest on the Jim
Wade farm near Edcouch around 1930.
COURTESY OF HCHC ARCHIVES.
CHAPTER VII
155

✧
Above: By the late 1940s, Elsa’s F. H.
Vahlsing Plant had become the largest one
in the world packing vegetables exclusively.
This photo was taken from the Yearbook of
the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas
and Northern Mexico, 1949.
Below: Elsa State Bank and Trust Company,
which has served the Delta Area since 1945,
is an independently owned full service
community bank with branches in Edcouch,
Weslaco, Rio Grande City, and Roma.
the Delta Area about ten miles west of the first
railroad that reached the Valley in 1904.
ELSA: A PLANNED CITY
Elsa was founded in March of 1927 by a
city planning engineer, Major Edward A.
Wood of Dallas. Its business, industrial and
residential districts were laid out to provide
for future expansion. When the auction to sell
lots was held on March 2, 1927, the only
residents were William and Elsie George. He
was farming acreage adjacent to a lone
country store operated by his wife. The
Southern Pacific Railroad agreed to name the
town for Elsie George, using the Spanish
translation of Elsa. The town made it through
the depression and was incorporated in 1940.
By 1957 it had over sixty businesses and a
growing population.
From the 1940s to the 1970s, Elsa was
headquarters for F. H. Vahlsing, Inc., which
grew vegetables on several thousand acres and
shipped them from one of the nation’s largest
produce sheds. Vahlsing also produced
polyethylene bags and films for farm products
and industrial use at the large Texas Plastics
plant. Elsa Canning Company, established by
Carl Roettele, produced its famous Rotel
tomatoes and green chiles and other products
in Elsa for many years. However, by the
1980s, these industries were gone, and Elsa’s
economy faltered.
As Elsa entered the new millennium, new
subdivisions were springing up around the
town. In March 2000 a grant from the U.S.
Economic Development Administration sparked
the development of a sixty-two-acre industrial
park which is creating new businesses and jobs
that are expected to enhance the economy.
The Edcouch-Elsa School District is in the
midst of a major building program and has
received recent praise for its educational
progress, musical performing groups and
historic preservation.
EDCOUCH: NAMED
ITS FOUNDER
FOR
Just a mile to the east of Elsa is its sister
city, Edcouch, also developed in 1927 and
named for its founder, landowner, and banker
Edward Couch, a co-founder of Weslaco in
1919. By 1931 the town was shipping
vegetables and citrus, growing cotton, and
had a weekly newspaper, the Edcouch
Enterprise. In the mid-1960s, Edcouch had a
school, two churches, and 42 businesses.
The changes in agriculture affected the
economy of Edcouch. Freezes took a toll on
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
156

citrus and vegetable growing, and produce
was increasingly being shipped out of the
Valley by truck rather than rail.
The beginning of the new millennium sees
Edcouch in a growing mode again, visible in
the improvement of its existing buildings and
facilities and the construction of new ones. As
in Elsa, school district construction is very
visible and the school spirit of the combined
district is strong and competitive. Much of
community life is focused on school activities,
as seen by the support it gives to its football
team and to other school events.
After Francisco Guajardo graduated with
honors from Edcouch-Elsa High School in
1983, he earned his B.A. in English and M. A.
in History at UT-Austin, then received a fellowship
to study at England’s Oxford
University for a semester. Unlike so many
Valley students who take their education elsewhere,
he returned in 1990 to teach English
and history at Edcouch-Elsa High School,
then began to teach research methods.
With the support of the school administration
and area residents, the students are discovering
and preserving their heritage
through the Llano Grande Center for Research
and Development under young Guajardo’s
guidance. Beginning in 1996, they applied for
and received major grants from foundations.
They have developed oral and written histories
from interviews with their parents, grandparents,
and other residents of Edcouch, Elsa,
La Villa, and Monte Alto. The students wrote
parts of all of the successful grant proposals
for the project. They also have prepared grant
proposals for the Boys and Girls Club and
their public library.
The project is aimed at giving the students
and their communities a better appreciation of
their history and identity in this bicultural,
bilingual region of South Texas. In recent years,
dozens of Edcouch-Elsa graduates have received
scholarships to study at Ivy League universities
and, like Guajardo, most are returning to live
and work in the Rio Grande Valley.
LA VILLA: A PEACEFUL
FARMING COMMUNITY
A few miles east of Edcouch along the old
Southern Pacific line lies La Villa, carved out
of thick brush in 1926 by five farmers who
pooled their land to form a town. In 1967, R.
A. George, one of the founders, recalled in the
Tip-O-Texan, “Lon C. Hill had some friends in
the Southern Pacific and they gave him the
privilege of establishing depots. He came to
us to cut our land into lots and form a townsite.
He got one-third of the lots, I believe, for
his part in the deal. The railroad was built in
1927 and we really advertised in the fall and
early winter that year. But it seemed like every
sale day we had a cold, rainy Norther….”
✧
Above: This building served as the Edcouch-
Elsa High School for many years; it is now
used by the school district for other
purposes. Like other school districts over the
Valley, Edcouch-Elsa is involved in a major
building program, including a recently
completed new high school.
Below: This administration building is one
of the new additions to Edcouch-Elsa
Independent School District facilities.
CHAPTER VII
157

✧
Above: Though La Villa may not have
become the city its founders envisioned, it is
the center of a peaceful and prosperous
farming area that takes special pride in its
excellent schools. This photograph shows La
Villa High School.
Below: Delta Orchard Clubhouse was a
hotel at Delta Lake where land buyers from
northern states were housed and entertained
while courted as prospective buyers of land
newly cleared of mesquite and cactus. After
the land boom it was used for many
purposes before fire destroyed it in 1997.
COURTESY OF GLENN HARDING.
La Villa, still the center of a peaceful farming
community, shows signs of stable growth in
2000. It takes pride in its modern school
system, its high school football team, and the
progress it has made since its incorporation in
the 1960s. To the east between La Villa and
Santa Rosa the big mill of the Rio Grande Valley
Sugar Growers stands guard over fields of
sugarcane, cotton and grain. The area’s cotton
gins turn out thousands of bales of cotton from
June through August each year.
MONTE ALTO & DELTA LAKE
Land excursion parties were entertained in a
grand manner at a regal three-story mansion
near Delta Lake. This was the clubhouse for W.
A. Harding’s “Delta Orchards” land company,
completed in 1930 eight months after the Wall
Street tumble. The great Valley land boom was
over. Though the cities that Harding
envisioned did not materialize, he left other
legacies, such as the Valley’s largest playground
of irrigation waters—Delta Lake. His son Rollo
and grandson Glenn Harding conducted
extensive farming operations in Hidalgo
County, and philanthropic projects through the
Harding Foundation have benefited many
people in Texas and beyond.
“As a child, I held the Delta Clubhouse in
the same kind of awe as the Taj Mahal of
India,” wrote Naomi Vivian Ridge, who grew
up in Elsa, in the Valley Proud History-
Cookbook in 1991. The beautiful clubhouse
north of Monte Alto was used for many
purposes in the years after its glory days, but
was completely destroyed by fire in 1997.
The community of Monte Alto was
established in 1927 but remains unincorporated.
It is part of the Rio Grande Valley Empowerment
Zone, which has been of special significance to
the community for exploring development
possibilities not available previously. Through
community town hall meetings, its citizens
developed a list of needed projects and
prioritized them: flood/drainage improvements,
fire station renovations, and construction of
parks for starters. With county precinct support,
the Empowerment Zone is enabling Monte Alto
residents to revitalize their community.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
158

ENTERING THE
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
AGRICULTURE: FROM BRUSHLAND TO FARMLAND
From the beginning of the Escandón colonization in 1749, Spanish settlers north of the Rio
Grande had productive livestock operations. Sheep were grown for the wool they produced, one of
the region’s major exports through the 1800s, and cattle provided leather and meat products for sale
and home use. Initially, Escandón had envisioned the development of irrigated farms, but efforts at
irrigation met with limited success, so most of the land was covered with thorny brush until the
Anglo development of the early 1900s.
Those Anglo developers envisioned fields made green by water pumped from the Rio Grande. They
were sure that crops would blossom in this southern location with its year-round growing season and
fertile soil. They also believed that the massive job of manually clearing the land and that investments
in irrigation systems would result in great profits from the sale of the improved land in farm-size blocks.
One by one, the entrepreneurs established their kingdoms and began the transformation. Some
made fortunes while others lost them, but by the end of the 1920s much of the cactus and
brushland had become farmland. Irrigated farms now cover around 690,000 acres and dryland
farms about 600,000 acres. Rangeland occupies over a million acres.
✧
The network of highways and overpasses
built and maintained by Texas Department
of Transportation District 21 provides easy
access within and outside the area.
COURTESY OF STEPHEN F. WALKER,
TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION.
SUGAR: ONCE
& AGAIN
Sugarcane was grown in several Valley locations before 1900 and was the big attraction for some
of the early developers. John McAllen produced sugar in Hidalgo County in 1858; George Brulay
had a sugar plantation and mill near Brownsville in 1875, and John Closner was raising sugarcane
at his San Juan Plantation by 1900.
CHAPTER VIII
159

✧
Above: Sugarcane grows thick and tall today
in the Rio Grande Valley. Fields are burned
to remove leaves and chaff before being
harvested mechanically. The mill, large
harvesters, and trucks that haul the cane to
the mill near Santa Rosa are owned by the
Rio Grande Valley Sugar Cooperative.
Below: There was a great celebration when
the new sugar mill opened in 1974. Those
attending the dedication included, from left,
former U.S. Representative Joe Kilgore;
Representative Kika de la Garza; Beryl
Bentsen; Representative Bob Poage, then
chairman of the House Agriculture
Committee; and Senator Lloyd Bentsen, Jr.
De la Garza followed Poage as chairman
of the House Agriculture Committee in
1981, serving until he retired from Congress
in 1996.
Then the developers gave it a try. When A.
F. Hester and T. J. Hooks settled in Run (also
spelled “Runn”) in 1903, sugarcane was their
first crop and a mill was built in Donna. Lon
Hill built a mill in Harlingen but it was
burned by bandits in 1912. Sam Robertson
built one in San Benito but it never produced
any sugar. As the land salted up from overirrigation
and sugar prices declined, the mills
ceased operation until Donna had the only
active mill. It closed in 1921 when the price
of sugar dropped to four cents a pound.
Sugarcane was not grown commercially for
the next fifty years.
A new sugar industry emerged from USDA
and Texas A&M cooperative research in the
1960s. A marketing quota of one hundred
thousand tons of raw sugar was granted to
Texas in 1972 by the U.S. government. An
initial investment of $31 million for field
equipment and a sugar mill at Santa Rosa was
financed by 120 growers of the Rio Grande
Valley Sugar Growers Cooperative. The first
crop was harvested in 1973-74.
The sugarcane grown in the early 1900s was
cut and stripped by hand. Today’s crop is highly
mechanized. The cane is burned in the field
before harvest to remove the excess foliage and
chaff; which, if ground with the stalks, reduce
the yield of sugar. The growers cooperative
owns the huge harvesting equipment and the
mill that turns the cane into raw sugar and
produces molasses as a by-product. Sugarcane
is now grown on some forty thousand acres,
bringing in around $58 million annually. Each
year the mill processes more than a million tons
of cane, producing over 100,000 tons of raw
sugar and 50,000 tons of molasses. The brown
sugar travels by barge to Louisiana where it is
refined into white sugar. The molasses is sold as
cattle feed and shipped by rail or truck.
VEGETABLES
& MELONS
Vegetables formed the Valley’s first great
agricultural bonanza for transplanted
Midwestern farmers able to grow two or three
crops of vegetables a year. The production of
winter vegetables reached commercial
importance in 1907, when 761 carloads of
vegetables, mostly cabbage and onions, left the
Valley. Though more than forty vegetables were
grown through the years, cabbage, carrots,
beets, broccoli, parsley, and onions are the
winter vegetables that have been grown
consistently through the years. Tomatoes,
potatoes, roasting ear corn, beans, peppers,
eggplant, southern peas, cucumbers, squash,
and vine crops are the warm season vegetables
that have maintained their popularity with
Valley growers during both the spring and fall
growing seasons. Cantaloupe, honeydews,
watermelon, and okra have typically been
grown commercially only in the spring and
early summer.
Mule-drawn wagons hauled the loads of
fresh produce to packing sheds adjacent to rail
lines, where the produce was graded, packed,
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
160

iced down, and sent to market. Produce sheds
lined the railroad tracks in each of the young
cities. As with the land developers, fortunes
were made—and some were lost in the produce
business. When World War II came with its
great demand for food for the troops and the
nation, Valley farmers responded with
thousands of cars of vegetables and citrus each
year and prospered.
Meanwhile, tractors replaced mules, and
farm mechanization was on its way. Research
provided new varieties and improved old ones.
Farmers had almost quit growing cantaloupes
until Texas A&M researchers developed
varieties resistant to downy and powdery
mildews in the early 1950s. Later research
resulted in the popular 1015 sweet onion,
Roma tomatoes, a mild jalapeño pepper used
in picante sauces, new grapefruit cultivars, and
the new maroon carrots, to name a few.
Researchers also provided information on soils,
fertilizer, irrigation, and cultivation practices. A
major step forward was the introduction of
chemical herbicides that eliminated hand
hoeing of vegetables, cotton, and other crops
and constant disking of citrus orchards.
Vegetable production changed drastically
during the last half of the twentieth century.
Today, Valley farms are fewer, yet larger, more
specialized and more expensive to operate, yet
they are also much more productive. While
occupying less than 25 percent of the
cultivated land, vegetables bring in more than
25 percent of agricultural revenue. In 2000,
some 50,000 acres were planted to vegetables
and melons in the four Valley counties, for an
estimated income of $140 million.
citrus acreage from 120,000 acres to 20,000
acres. Through the drought years of the early
1950s the industry replanted, only to be struck
by another hard freeze in January 1962. After
rebuilding to 70,000 acres, an extremely severe
freeze on Christmas Day, 1983, killed trees
across the Valley and again reduced citrus
acreage to about 20,000 acres. A burst of
replanting, due in part to the success of the Star
Ruby and new Rio Red grapefruit, brought
acreage back up to thirty-five thousand acres
when it happened again. The second Christmas
Day freeze struck in 1989. The freeze left the
Valley with only eleven thousand acres of citrus.
Fortunately, a citrus tree insurance program
was in place during the 1983 and 1989 freezes
through Texas Citrus Mutual, which enabled
the industry to rebuild once again.
✧
Above: Carrots being harvested on a
farm near Los Fresnos around 1950.
Carrots grown on today’s farms are
machine harvested.
Below: These are just a few of the more than
fifty varieties of vegetables grown on Valley
farms that are shipped all over the U.S. and
sold locally at roadside stands.
COURTESY OF EILEEN MATTEI.
CITRUS KEEPS COMING BACK
Governor Allan Shivers used to refer to
citrus as “the Valley’s glamour crop.” Ever
since his father-in-law, John Shary, “the father
of Texas Citrus” pushed the planting of citrus
in the 1910-1930 era, it has been the Valley’s
trademark. By the late 1940s, citrus covered
120,000 acres and yielded good profits.
Unfortunately, citrus trees are subject to
freezes, and tree-killing freezes have devastated
the Valley’s citrus industry several times. Two
freezes in two years, 1949 and 1951, reduced
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ship choice Valley citrus nationwide from
November to March.
CANNING BECOMES
BIG BUSINESS
Meanwhile, Valley growers found there were
not always markets for the bounty of fruits and
vegetables produced by their land, so they
turned their attention toward canning their
products. Aided by research done by the USDA’s
Fruit and Vegetable Products Laboratory at
Weslaco, the number of canneries increased to
over forty in the 1940s. Most every town had its
own canning plant, with several in the major
cities. In 1946 they processed twenty million
cases of fruits and vegetables that were shipped
over the nation and to world markets through
the Port of Brownsville.
The largest canning plant in Texas and one
of the largest and most modern grapefruitprocessing
plants in the world was the Texsun
plant at Weslaco operated by the Texsun
Citrus Corporation. With more than ten acres
of floor space under roof, it could process two
hundred tons of fruit daily and offered tours
to visitors that became a major tourist
attraction. It operated for more than four
decades until devastating freezes decreased its
fruit supply and it ceased operation. In 2000
there were only two canning plants, Rio Valley
Canning Company in Donna and Texas Citrus
Exchange in Mission. Most vegetables and
citrus are now shipped in refrigerated trucks
or rail cars to be sold on the fresh market or
to freezer plants in Texas and other states.
✧
Top: Citrus, the Valley’s “glamour crop” is
grown on fewer acres now than in its
heyday, but it is still important in Valley
agriculture. Fresh grapefruit and oranges
are harvested from October to April.
Above: When fresh markets were slow,
canning became popular. The huge Texsun
plant at Weslaco had more than ten acres of
floor space under roof. It was the largest
canning plant in Texas and the largest
grapefruit cannery in the world.
COURTESY OF THE WESLACO BICULTURAL MUSEUM.
By 2000, the acreage had grown again
to 33,000 acres, of which over 23,000 acres
is grapefruit.
The reddest of all grapefruit, Star Ruby and
Rio Red, were developed by the Texas A&M-
Kingsville Citrus Center at Weslaco under Dr.
Richard Hensz’ direction. They have brought
worldwide recognition to Texas citrus.
Citrus is marketed commercially through
TexaSweet Citrus Marketing, located in the
Mission Business Park, as is the grower
organization, Texas Citrus Mutual. The Texas
Citrus Exchange, a cooperative, processes the
fruit that is not sold fresh. Gift fruit firms also
COTTON
While cotton was grown in the Valley in the
1890s, it did not reach commercial production
levels until the 1920s. It has had an up and down
history, with between 50,000 and 150,000 bales
produced annually until the early 1940s.
However, 627,549 bales were produced in 1951,
when the freeze made more land available for
cotton and helped control insects. Since then,
production settled in at around 300,000 bales a
year for several decades. Cotton is a major factor
in the Valley economy, even in bad years, because
of its many spin-off businesses—suppliers of
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
162

seed, fertilizer, insecticides, and other production
inputs; cotton gins, compresses, and cottonseed
oil mills; truckers and other transportation; fuel,
maintenance, etc.
The beginning of the new millennium finds
cotton with low prices caused by an oversupply
in the world market and production
costs at all-time highs. Cotton is grown on
250,000 acres in an average year, bringing in
$75 to $90 million to the growers, with a
much larger economic impact through related
businesses. With confidence that the market
will improve, determined cotton growers
continue to tighten their belts and plant again.
GRAIN SORGHUM BECOMES
A HUGE CROP
Grain sorghum arrived late on the
agricultural scene and may not be considered a
glamour crop, but in recent years it has covered
more farmland than any other crop. It is grown
on both irrigated and dry land, and its
production is highly mechanized. Research
continues toward improving resistance to insects
and diseases and increasing production per acre.
For years cotton and grain alternated for
the largest number of acres. Sorghum has had
the most acreage of late, with 400,000 acres in
2000, bringing in about $58 million. Much of
the Valley-grown grain sorghum is exported
by truck to Mexico.
CORN
Corn acreage has gone up and down in
recent years and currently is grown on around
sixty thousand acres. Some of this is seed corn
grown under contract with a major seed
producer. Field corn for animals occupies the
largest portion of the acreage, and sweet corn
is produced on a small acreage for table use.
Some Valley corn is processed into snack
foods like corn chips and Mexican specialties
like tamales that require masa, or corn flour.
Container crops are primarily landscaping
plants, widely used within the Valley and
shipped to other areas. Foliage crops are
grown for indoor decorative plants. While the
smaller nurseries primarily ship within Texas,
there are several commercial nurseries that
ship worldwide. One of the major drawing
cards of the nursery business is that the return
per square foot of space is higher than most
other crops; however, it is labor intensive, and
the production costs are high.
The Texas A&M Research Center has
horticulturists on staff to work with area
nurseries. Of special interest is current
research on growing exotic plants such as
orchids in Texas.
ALOE
VERA
Aloe vera is often nicknamed the “miracle
plant.” Many Valley residents keep one in the
garden to provide instant first aid for minor
cuts and burns. They merely cut off a small
portion of a leaf and rub the interior gel on
the irritated area. Cosmetic manufacturers use
aloe vera in skin creams, sunburn lotions, and
✧
Above: Cotton is a staple crop planted on
around 250,000 acres each year that yields
about that number of bales. Since World
War II, small planes have done the
spraying of insecticides to try to keep insects
under control.
Below: Grain sorghum was grown on the
largest number of acres of any crop in 2000.
Much Valley grain is exported by truck to
Mexico for cattle feed.
NURSERY
& HORTICULTURE
The Valley’s thriving nursery industry has
three types of specialty crops. Field crops
include citrus, shade and palm trees.
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163

✧
Livestock provided the main focus of the
original Spanish settlers and is still
important in the area's agriculture today.
The Santa Gertrudis breed developed by the
King Ranch is one of the breeds well
adapted to area ranches.
COURTESY OF SANTA GERTRUDIS
BREEDERS INTERNATIONAL.
other preparations. However, its greatest
usage is as a health beverage. The Rio Grande
Valley has the right combination of climate,
soil, and water to produce the “miracle” gel in
commercial quantities. The area has several
large aloe vera farms that harvest the leaves
and ship them nationwide and even overseas
to processors, largely cosmetic manufacturers.
KENAF IS THE
VALLEY’ S NEWEST CROP
Kenaf, the area’s newest crop, could provide
an alternate crop for up to twenty-three
thousand acres annually. Work continues on
plans to build a kenaf fiber newsprint mill in
Willacy County. Such a plant would take 18
months to build and create more than 300 jobs
when completed. It would be the first newsprint
company to utilize an annual crop for its raw
materials, preserving timber resources. It could
produce 135,000 metric tons of newsprint
annually, for which there is a ready market. Kenaf
Industries already produces non-woven mats,
items auto manufacturers use in interior car
parts, and other products at its plant near Lasara.
Kenaf was introduced to the Valley in the
1980s with research conducted since that
time by the USDA and Rio Farms. The fastest
growing member of the hibiscus family, kenaf
reaches heights of seven to ten feet and can
grow in the Valley on rainwater received in
wet years. It is currently growing on more
than five thousand acres in Willacy and
Hidalgo Counties. Planting takes place in the
spring and harvesting is done from August
through January.
LIVESTOCK
Livestock provided the main focus of the
original Spanish settlers, and the famed
Chisholm Trail originated here. The cattle on
today’s farms and ranches would hardly
recognize their forebears. While many cattle
breeds have since been introduced, some have
gone by the wayside because of the South
Texas climate. To produce cattle sturdy
enough to live on the non-irrigated rangeland,
ranchers have experimented with crossbreeding,
such as the famous Santa Gertrudis breed
developed by the King Ranch. Some of today’s
cattle producers concentrate on raising prime
breeding stock from registered herds, such as
Santa Gertrudis, Charolais, and Brahman.
The annual Rio Grande Valley Livestock
Show held in March in Mercedes is credited
with much of the improvement in the
industry by educating young exhibitors and
encouraging them to raise livestock on a fulltime
or part-time basis. A vital part of the life
and economy of the area, the livestock
industry provides about fifteen percent of its
agricultural income.
PROGRESS THROUGH RESEARCH
Agricultural scientists have been a major
reason for the success of agriculture in the Rio
Grande Valley. They work diligently to
improve crop varieties; yields; insect, disease
and weather resistance; soil and water use;
production and harvesting methodology; and
marketing of Valley-grown products. More
importantly, they work closely with the
agricultural community by putting their
research to practical use.
TEXAS A & M
UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
In 1923 what is now the sprawling Texas
A&M Research and Extension Center at Weslaco
was initiated following an appropriation of
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
164

$50,000 by the Thirty-eighth Texas Legislature.
It was their response to a rather insistent demand
by the people of the Valley for the establishment
of an agricultural experiment station that would
study area problems. The citizens’ interest didn’t
stop with securing the appropriation. They
contributed funds to purchase the land and have
continued to provide land and other support
through the years.
In 1973, the station celebrated fifty years
of going and growing, described in its
publication, Fifty Years of Agricultural Research
in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. It tells how,
for fifty years, one of the richest farming areas
in Texas has looked to the station to solve
some of the toughest problems with citrus,
vegetables, cotton and other crops in this
state’s only subtropical region. And time and
time again, the station came up with a new
variety, a new disease control, or a revised
farming practice that has enabled some part of
the agriculture in this region to keep going
and growing.
Texas A&M serves Valley agriculture
through the research of its agricultural
scientists and then by getting that information
to farmers through its extension agents. It has
specialists in over a dozen areas, including the
economics of farming and the use of computers
in farm planning and record keeping.
The Texas A&M University-Kingsville Citrus
Center began in 1944 as an extension of Texas
A&I University at Kingsville. Again, Valley
citizens contributed the land. It became part of
the Texas A&M System in 1992 and continues
its research and education in disease and pest
control, soils, irrigation, nutrition, herbicides,
tree physiology, citriculture, cultivar
development, phytochemistry, and biogenetics.
The subtropical climate and geographical
location of the Valley encourages invasion by a
myriad of plant and livestock insects and
diseases. Through its staff entomologists and
plant pathologists, the center is constantly
working on ways to control pests and diseases.
Dr. Jose Amador, who came to the center as an
extension plant pathologist in 1965, has been
the center’s director since 1991.
The Texas A&M Center staff works in
close cooperation with its companion
research institutions.
U . S . DEPARTMENT
AGRICULTURE
OF
In 1931 the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s
Agricultural Research Service
established the headquarters for its
Subtropical Texas Area in Weslaco. Now in its
new headquarters adjacent to Texas A&M, the
two research giants form one agricultural
complex just east of Weslaco by U.S. Business
83. Named the Kika de la Garza Subtropical
Agricultural Research Center in honor of the
Fifteenth District’s longtime Congressman and
House Agriculture Committee Chairman, it
includes a honeybee lab; greenhouses, soil
and water laboratory; remote sensing;
beneficial insects, crop quality and fruit
insects; and integrated farming and natural
resources research units.
Early activities included a Food Crops
Utilization Research Laboratory to assist the
food processing industry, especially citrus. The
USDA operated the successful Pink Bollworm
✧
Above: The Texas A&M/USDA Research
Center just east of Weslaco contains
research and extension facilities, a honeybee
lab, soil and water laboratory, many
greenhouses, fields for experimental
plantings, and much more.
PHOTO BY RENE DAVIS.
Below: The new USDA/ARS headquarters
was dedicated in 1999 and named the Kika
de la Garza Subtropical Agricultural
Research Center in honor of the Fifteenth
District’s longtime Congressman and House
Agriculture Committee Chairman. Shown at
the dedication are Congressman Rubén
Hinojosa; U.S. Senator Kay Bailey
Hutchison, de la Garza, and Dr. I. Miley
Gonzalez, USDA under secretary for
Research, Economics and Education,
Washington, D.C.
PHOTO BY RENE DAVIS.
CHAPTER VIII
165

✧
Dignitaries from over the U.S. and Mexico
came to the Valley for the dedication of
Falcon Dam by Mexican President Adolfo
Ruiz Cortines and U.S. President Dwight
Eisenhower on October 19, 1953. The
dedication of the great dam was the result
of almost two decades of work, planning
and construction.
COURTESY OF W. GENE SMITH.
Research Center at Brownsville in the 1950s
and 1960s, which closed when its mission was
accomplished. The USDA’s Screwworm
Eradication Project’s sterile fly factory was
established in 1962 at the old Moore Air Force
Base north of Mission. It battled this flesheating
pest that was devastating the cattle
industry and succeeded in controlling it in both
the United States and Mexico by releasing
radiated, sterile males. Among both USDA and
A&M’s current projects are research in
biological pest control to reduce the use of
environmentally harmful chemicals.
RIO FARMS EXPLORE
NEW CROPS
Rio Farms, Inc. near Monte Alto began as a
unique on-the-farm training program in 1941.
The State of Texas issued a charter for a nonprofit
corporation, and the Farm Security
Administration lent the corporation $1,266,350
to purchase 25,883 acres in Hidalgo and Willacy
Counties, 17,000 of them under irrigation. This
loan was to be repaid in fifty years, but the entire
loan was liquidated in 1945. All income goes
back into the organization, which is governed by
a board of directors.
Rio Farms operates as a foundation-owned
experiment station, with agricultural education
and research as part of its mission. Initially, its
goals were to meet the social problems of lowincome
families, to assist them in getting
agricultural benefits and in marketing their
products, and to train them to farm
successfully. Each tenant family could stay up
to five years while learning efficient farming
methods on the 80 to 120 acres assigned to
them, save their earnings, and then move on to
a farm of their own.
Some of the Valley’s most productive farmers
of the 1940-1960 era got their start at Rio Farms
as tenant-trainees. By the 1990s, over eight
hundred tenants had received their on-the-farm
education there and had moved on to farms or
businesses of their own.
Adjusting to changing needs and times, Rio
Farms, Inc. is now a private, non-profit
corporation that conducts research to benefit
local agricultural production. It works in
conjunction with the Texas A&M Research
Center and the USDA. Some of its greatest
successes have focused on citrus, sugarcane
and kenaf, a new crop for producing newsprint
and other high-fiber products.
Major corporations have sought out the
research scientists and controlled farming
facilities at Rio Farms to improve current
Valley farm products as well as to investigate
potential crops. Ongoing projects include
testing new niche crops, grain, and sugarcane,
as well as investigating insect control,
cultivation and irrigation practices, to name a
few. Rio Farms, its research scientists, and
participating farmers make a vital contribution
to Valley agricultural research.
There is no way to predict how future Valley
agriculture will fare in the face of an uncertain
irrigation water supply and competing land
uses such as urbanization and wilderness
conversion/conservation. These areas of land
use are expanding with the growth of the cities
and the expansion of the various federal wildlife
refuges that take farmland back to brushland.
Losses in agricultural production may be
partially offset by the growing ecotourism
industry with its heightened appreciation of the
region’s natural resources.
TAMING THE RIO GRANDE
There was great excitement in South Texas
in October 1953 when U.S. President Dwight
Eisenhower and Mexican President Adolfo
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
166

Ruiz Cortines came to the Valley to dedicate
Falcon Dam. The dedication ceremonies on
October 19 followed a three-day Valley stay
by President Eisenhower as a guest of then
Governor Allan Shivers in Sharyland.
The two presidents first met in the
municipal building of the new town of Nuevo
Guerrero for a ceremonial visit, with each
honored by twenty-one-gun salutes. At 3 p.m.
on October 19, 1953, the official dedication
was held at the international line atop Falcon
Dam. After the two presidents spoke to the
thousands of Americans and Mexicans
present, the monument marking the
international boundary was unveiled.
The dedication of the great dam was the
result of almost two decades of work, planning
and construction. In the early years of
the Valley’s agricultural boom, water for irrigation
was usually plentiful from the Rio
Grande. However, the river often flooded.
Then there would be long periods without
rain when there was not enough water.
In the mid-1930s, discussions began about
building a dam to control the floods and store
the water being wasted into the Gulf. The
1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo forbade the
building of dams on the international stream,
so a new treaty was needed. The International
Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) had
worked together on a system of levees and
interior floodways to lessen damage from
floods in both countries. They looked for a
way for the two countries to build dams for
flood control and water conservation.
After long negotiations, the U.S.-Mexico
Water Treaty of 1944 was signed. It called for
the two governments to build three
international dams along the Rio Grande to
control its wild floods, to store and conserve the
water flowing unused into the Gulf of Mexico,
and to use the stored water to generate electric
power as it passed downstream. The two
countries agreed on a site that would provide the
most efficient storage. Then planning began in
earnest in the office of the chief engineer of the
Bureau of Reclamation, Denver, Colorado,
under the supervision of the two sections of the
IBWC. Separate contracts were let by each
country for work to be done on their part of the
huge project.
Construction on Falcon Dam began on
January 2, 1950. One of the longest dams in
the world, it spans the Valley of the Rio
Grande a short distance downstream from the
line between Starr and Zapata Counties. A
rolled earthfill structure, it is 26,294 feet long,
with 16,161 feet in Mexico and 10,133 feet in
the United States. It used massive amounts of
materials, covers 113,000 acres when filled,
and can store 4,085,000 acre-feet of water.
Initial cost of the dam was around $50
million, not including the cost of moving two
county seat towns and other smaller
communities flooded by the lake. On the
Texas side, the old border city of Zapata was
moved five miles to the east, where a new
courthouse, new schools and other facilities
for a modern community were built by the
IBWC. The buildings and homes were moved
to their new location by their owners.
The Mexican government moved the citizens
of Guerrero lock-stock-and-barrel some twenty
miles to Nuevo Guerrero, where a brand new
city was built from the ground up. In addition
to municipal buildings built around a plaza,
seven hundred new homes were built for the
residents of Guerrero. When the waters recede
in dry periods, the ruins of picturesque
Guerrero Viejo emerge, and the site has become
a major tourist attraction.
✧
The rolled earthfill structure is 26,294 feet
long and the initial cost was $50 million,
not including relocating two county seat
towns and other smaller communities
flooded by the lake. The top of the dam
forms a highway from the U.S. to Nuevo
Guerrero, Mexico. A monument to the two
countries marks the boundary line.
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167

✧
Above: The most famous of the flooded
communities was Guerrero Viejo, which was
covered by the waters of Falcon Dam for
several decades, shown in 1975. Its ruins
emerged from the water during the drought
years of the 1990s and the long-flooded city
has become a major tourist attraction as
well as the focus of Mexican citizens whose
heritage lies in the old town.
Below: Falcon Lake, Dam, and Spillway are
shown in the 1980s when the water was at
a high level. Though engineers predicted it
would take ten years to fill, it was filled in
1954, its first year, by rains from Hurricane
Alice that fell in the watershed.
From 1950 to 1953 rainfall was scarce and
the area was in a major drought. Falcon Dam
was not expected to provide much help initially
because engineers predicted it would take about
a decade for the reservoir to fill. They were
wrong. Hurricane Alice slammed into Mexico,
raced up the Rio Grande and dumped millions
of gallons into the watershed, filling up Falcon
in a matter of days.
Since, Falcon Dam has provided a regulated
water supply for domestic, municipal, and
irrigation uses in both countries. In its first year
of operation in 1954, Falcon Reservoir
completely contained the highest flood of
record on the Rio Grande, which otherwise
would have caused devastating damages in the
highly developed Rio Grande Valley. In 1967, it
completely contained the portion of the
Hurricane Beulah flood originating upstream of
the dam, which otherwise would have caused
much more extensive damage than occurred.
In long periods of drought, the storage levels
are carefully monitored and conservation
measures encouraged.
A second dam for flood control and water
storage, Amistad Dam, was built between Del
Rio, Texas, and Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila,
Mexico, just below the mouths of two large
tributaries, the Pecos and Devil’s Rivers. It was
dedicated on September 9, 1969, by U.S.
President Richard Nixon and Mexican President
Díaz Ordaz. Some of the water destined for the
Valley is stored at Amistad and released
downstream as needed.
Anzalduas Diversion Dam west of Mission
diverts floodwaters from the river to the United
States floodways and provides Mexico with an
intake structure to its Anzalduas Irrigation
Canal. Retamal Diversion Dam near Donna is
also a principal part of the international flood
control project. It diverts flood waters from the
river to the Mexican floodways.
BRIDGES OF THE RIO GRANDE
The Rio Grande, so important in the history
of Texas and Mexico, defines the border region.
Now harnessed by great dams to prevent floods
and store its waters, its bridges connect sister
cities of the United States and Mexico. There
are eleven current border crossings, each with
its own storied history.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
168

Before there were bridges, row boats and flatbottom
ferry boats carried people and
merchandise back and forth across the river. The
coming of the railroad spurred Brownsville to
build the first real bridge, the Brownsville and
Matamoros (B&M) Bridge in 1909. Built to
handle heavy railroad traffic, it also carried
wagons at first, then cars and trucks. The original
bridge proved to be a sound structure and is still
in use. A $500,000 maintenance and repair
project was initiated in 2000 to enable the bridge
to handle increased traffic. Railroad traffic on the
bridge, which is jointly owned by Union Pacific
Railroad and Mexico, was up thirty percent in
2000 over the previous year. In 1997 an adjacent
parallel span was added to handle vehicular
traffic. About three hundred southbound trucks
cross the bridge daily, most carrying steel coils
and components for assembly at maquiladoras.
Even with two other Brownsville bridges, traffic
continues to increase.
The population and traffic between
Brownsville and Matamoros had increased
until a bridge for vehicular traffic was needed,
and Brownsville’s Gateway International
Bridge was opened on July 4, 1928. Through
the years new traffic lanes have been added
and many improvements made to the bridge
and its customs and immigration facilities. A
covered walkway has been added to make
pedestrian access easier and safer. With truck
traffic being diverted to the new Veterans
Bridge, Gateway has become a consumer
bridge linking the downtown business
districts of Brownsville and Matamoros.
The Valley’s newest bridge is Brownsville’s
third crossing, the Veterans International Bridge
at Los Tomates, which opened on April 30, 1999
after twenty years of planning. Mexican President
Ernesto Zedillo and Texas Governor George W.
Bush were among the officials who took part in
the dedication ceremonies in the middle of the
new bridge. Located east of downtown and
equipped with the latest technology, the bridge
serves as a direct connection between the U.S.
77/83 Expressway and the Periférico, a six-toeight-lane
loop around Matamoros. Designed
for both commercial and consumer traffic, it
leads to the major arteries that go to Ciudad
Victoria, Reynosa, and all destinations in the
interior of Mexico.
Moving upriver, the next crossing is the Free
Trade Bridge at Los Indios, south of San Benito
and Harlingen. The two cities combined their
efforts for nearly three decades to finally bring
the bridge to completion in November 1992. It
connects the growing industrial areas of
Harlingen and San Benito with industrial parks
in Mexico and leads about twenty-five miles to
Valle Hermosa. There the highway connects
with routes to major Mexican cities. Designed
for both commercial and consumer traffic, it
offers a unique mix of modern design, strategic
location, and the physical capacity to
accommodate large volumes of traffic quickly
and efficiently. Consumer traffic is separated
from the commercial traffic and there are
completely different customs facilities. The
Gateway, Veterans, and Free Trade Bridges are
owned and operated by Cameron County,
providing a three-bridge system that makes
visiting and trading with Mexico easier.
✧
Top: The approach to Brownsville’s present
Gateway Bridge shows some of the
complex support facilities required at
international bridges in modern times,
including customs, immigration, USDA
inspectors, and bridge security.
Above: The Progreso International Bridge,
built in 1952, is widely used by both area
citizens and tourists. Here a group heads for
the pedestrian lane to walk across to Nuevo
Progreso. The original bridge is still in use,
with a new span to be built soon.
CHAPTER VIII
169

✧
Above: Ferry and rowboat service took
travelers back and forth between Reynosa
and Hidalgo until the first bridge was built.
COURTESY OF THE CITY OF HIDALGO.
Below: Once the new bridge was built
between Hidalgo and Reynosa in 1926, it
carried a steady stream of traffic during
peak times. George Cole, engineer for three
suspension bridges at Rio Rico, Hidalgo, and
Roma, later built the bridge over the Royal
Gorge in Colorado, then returned to spend
his retirement years in McAllen.
COURTESY OF CHUCK SNYDER.
The Mid-Valley got its first bridge during the
prohibition years of the 1920s, when Mexico
held a strong attraction for U.S. visitors. The
B&P Bridge Company decided to construct a
bridge halfway between Hidalgo and
Brownsville just east of the Mercedes pumping
station, where the river bank was strong and the
channel narrow. The two-lane suspension
bridge was completed in 1928 and was linked
by paved road to the Texas highway system.
Then the small border town of Rio Rico was
established. The new town prospered, offering
American tourists bars, night clubs with dancing
and mariachi bands, souvenir shops, and
dog racing, found nowhere else along the border.
Its dog track seated twenty-five hundred
and raced Irish greyhounds. Tourists came from
all over Texas and other states as well.
Río Rico was often called “Sin City,” and
this reputation was embellished by reports of
visits by Chicago gangster Al “Scarface”
Capone between 1929 and 1931. Though the
connection with Capone is disputed by some,
local newspapers of the day reported a
Chicago syndicate backed by Capone built the
Rio Rico Kennel Club in 1928 for $40,000.
When prohibition ended in 1933, traffic
dropped and so did the prosperity of Rio Rico.
In October 1941, heavy rains caused great
flooding. As the river continued to surge
toward the Gulf, the Rio Rico bridge began to
weaken, its center dropped into the channel,
and soon its foundation was swept away.
Ferry service was maintained for several
years, and then a surplus army pontoon
bridge was utilized for a time before a new
bridge was built upstream at Progreso.
The B&P Bridge Company still held a
bridge permit, and business leaders believed
that a new bridge would increase tourism.
Weslaco and Mercedes citizens bought
$450,000 in common stock to finance the
project, and Progreso International Bridge was
built in 1952. Though there was no town on
the Mexican side, it didn’t take long for Nuevo
Progreso to grow around the bridge and to
become a favorite destination for both Valley
residents and Winter Texans. Many walk
across the bridge to the restaurants and shops
that line the streets in what has grown to be a
sizeable town.
Plans and engineering work are completed
for a $5.5-million expansion of the privately
owned bridge to six lanes, with construction
to begin as soon as final approval is received
from all of the governing bodies. Though
no presidential permit is needed for a
replacement bridge, it still has a long approval
process, so no starting date had been set.
The Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge
has the longest border crossing in the world at
3.2 miles. Owned by the City of Pharr, it is
one of the new bridges being built to meet the
demands of increased border traffic.
Completed in January 1995, it is used for
both commercial and consumer traffic and
provides a direct link from the Pharr
Industrial Park to Reynosa’s maquiladora
plants. It also links directly with the
Autopista, which is the fastest route to
Monterrey and the interior. The bridge
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
170

elieves the McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa Bridge
of some of the congestion caused by the heavy
truck traffic that it carried prior to the opening
of the Pharr bridge.
Before there was a bridge between Reynosa
and the United States, ferries plied the river
between Reynosa and Hidalgo. In 1910
Crisoforo Vela acquired the ferry and rowboat
service and, with two of his sons, operated the
river crossing until the first bridge was built by
Joe E. Pate and Associates in 1926. The bridge
was damaged by floods in 1933. Although
rebuilt and strengthened, it fell into the river and
was destroyed in 1939 after cable anchors on
the U.S. side failed to hold. A second suspension
bridge was erected the following year and was
purchased by the city of McAllen in 1960. A
four-lane prestressed concrete bridge was
opened on June 1, 1967 and the suspension
bridge was later removed for salvage.
Construction of an additional four-lane bridge
was completed in 1988. The McAllen-Hidalgo-
Reynosa International Bridge is operated jointly
by McAllen, Hidalgo and Mexican interests to
expedite transportation and foster international
cooperation and friendship.
Though other bridges are under
development, the only present crossing
between the McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa Bridge
and Rio Grande City/Camargo is the historic
Los Ebanos Ferry. The last hand-drawn ferry
on a U.S. border, it still operates daily, a
reminder of the early days on the Texas-
Mexico border. According to legend, the
crossing was part of the “Salt Trail” from El Sal
del Rey used by Indians and Spanish settlers.
General Zachary Taylor’s forces crossed the
river here during the Mexican War, and so did
cattle rustlers and Texas Rangers during the
cattle smuggling days. During prohibition
days, the crossing was a convenient means for
transporting illegal liquor.
A hair-pin turn in the Rio Grande marks the
location of the famous crossing. The privately
owned ferry travels the 200-foot width of the
river, safely delivering cars and pickups three at
a time between the U.S. town of Los Ebanos
and the Mexican town of Diaz Ordaz. The ferry
is propelled by the hands of two or more
ferryman on duty seven days a week during
crossing hours. It also carries pedestrians and
tourists who go along for the ride across the
international stream. The trip takes an average
four minutes, but sometimes there are long
lines to cross the river.
An application has been made for a new
international bridge near the ferry crossing
and private funding is available, though nostalgic
citizens say no price can be set on the
historical and sentimental value of the ferry.
The Hidalgo County Historical Commission
recognized the ferry with a historical marker
in June 1974, and the ebony tree to which the
ferry is tied is listed as one of the “famous
trees” of Texas.
Starr-Camargo International Bridge, one
of only two privately owned bridges along
the lower Rio Grande, is owned and operated
by the Starr-Camargo Bridge Company.
✧
Above: The Los Ebanos Ferry is the only
government licensed hand-pulled ferry on
any boundary of the U.S. On the Mexican
side a paved road leads to the town of
Díaz Ordaz. The ferry is a favorite site
for tourists.
Below: Events dating back to the Valley’s
earliest recorded history are connected with
this historic crossing, though the privately
owned ferry has only operated since 1950.
This Texas State Historical Marker dedicated
in 1974 marks the ancient ford and tells its
history. It was unveiled by Felix T. Martinez,
then a Hidalgo County commissioner.
CHAPTER VIII
171

✧
Above: The present Roma-Ciudad Miguel
Alemán Bridge, completed in 1979,
spans the river adjacent to the 1929
steel suspension bridge, which
preservation groups plan to make a
pedestrian only crossing.
Below: The Rio Grande City-Camargo
Bridge has undergone a recent expansion,
with new export, customs, and related
facilities to expedite traffic and trade.
The bridge underwent a major expansion
recently, and a wide range of customs, export,
and support facilities neared completion in the
bridge area in 2000.
Long before it had a bridge, Roma was a busy
crossing by boat and ferry, especially during the
last half of the nineteenth century, when it was
the head of navigation for the steamboats plying
the river. Large mercantile houses were located
along the river, and goods from the steamboats
were unloaded at the docks and transported by
ferry to Mexico. The seven-hundred-foot long
Roma-Ciudad Miguel Alemán steel suspension
bridge was constructed during America’s heyday
of suspension bridges in the late 1920s. It
is the sole suspension bridge remaining of
five built across the Rio Grande. It spans the
river adjacent to its modern counterpart
completed in December 1979. Restoration plans
call for stabilizing the bridge so visitors may take
a stroll across history on this pedestrian only
border crossing.
The final crossing is not really a bridge,
but a five-mile-long highway that tops
International Falcon Dam, completed in 1953.
The toll-free crossing is controlled by U.S. and
Mexican officials on their respective sides.
Crossing into Mexico, the water in huge Falcon
Lake stretches as far as the eye can see to the
right while on the left the controlled river
trickles down the rolling green hills and valleys
in a narrow stream. As the highway reaches
into Mexico, it enters Nuevo Guerrero, the
modern town built in 1953 for the twenty-five
hundred residents of Guerrero Viejo, which
was inundated by Falcon. The Falcon Dam
crossing intersects with Mexico’s Highway 2
that connects its historic border towns and
leads to highways into the Mexican interior.
Requirements to build a new bridge are
stringent and time-consuming. Presidential
permits are required from both governments,
plus environmental studies and approval by
many agencies. Though it may take up to
fifteen years to get approval for a new span,
there are hundreds of bridge proposals by
cities, counties and private businesses all
along the border from El Paso to Brownsville.
While only about one in ten gets final
approval, bridge proponents feel they are
worth the long process.
Work is ongoing by the Port of Brownsville
for a bridge to the eastern industrial section
of Matamoros, by the City of Donna to
Río Bravo, and for the Anzalduas Bridge west
of Mission, a joint project of the cities
of McAllen, Mission, and Hidalgo. The
Anzalduas Bridge has been under development
for about ten years and is projecting a
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
172

2003 completion date. It will connect new
residential, commercial, and industrial
developments on both sides of the Rio Grande.
The future of the Rio Grande Valley, like its
past, is bound to the river, linking families,
friendships, and economies. With peace and
goodwill now firmly established, its bridges
connect its past and present while defining its
vision of the future.
TRANSPORTATION BY
LAND, SEA & AIR
When the railroad connected the Valley
with the rest of the world in 1904, only trails
and dirt roads existed for travel within the
region. The Military Highway established by
General Zachary Taylor evolved into U.S. 281
and was the Valley’s first highway. The
counties were responsible for their roads, but
limited funds were available The passage of
the Federal Road Act in 1916 pushed the
legislature to form a Highway Department,
which could use federal and matching state
money for Texas roads. This relieved the
counties of much of the burden of road
construction. Between 1924 and 1926, U.S.
83 was built close to the railroad tracks to
serve the new communities and businesses,
using state, county and federal funds.
In 1932 the Highway Department created
District 21 from Corpus Christi’s District 16
to serve the state’s ten southernmost counties
from its headquarters at Pharr. Its principal
objective was to plan and construct a public
road network adequate to serve the needs of
the area in conjunction with county and city
officials. Soon work began on a master
highway plan for the four Valley counties,
which became the Valley expressway system.
In the March 15, 1948 issue of the Valley
Morning Star, Dewitt C. Greer, state highway
engineer, is quoted as saying his office “may soon
be ready to ‘talk turkey’ with commissioners
courts in Cameron and Hidalgo Counties.”
He said the road would be used primarily for
through traffic, and “it would have to run near
the old road, a three-lane highway that serves as
the Valley’s ‘Main Street.’ It would have to stay
close to the railroad tracks, the industries of the
Valley, and it would have to run the entire length
of the Valley.” Thus the Expressway 83 system
was launched with construction spread over the
next three decades.
Meanwhile, U.S. 281 was extended south
from Pharr to the bridge at Hidalgo and north to
San Antonio and beyond. U.S. 77 finally made
its way through the King Ranch to Raymondville
in 1940, joining U.S. 83 at Harlingen.
District 21 of the Texas Department of
Transportation now provides the Valley with an
extensive network of U.S. highways and state
farm to market roads. Many highway projects
are currently under construction or planned
for the near future to upgrade the highways
into and out of the Valley. A major effort is
being made to upgrade the three major
highways to interstate standards and to include
the Rio Grande Valley in the proposed I-69
international highway from Mexico to Canada.
✧
Top: Mule-drawn wagons dump caliche in
the early days of road-building near
Edinburg around 1910-20.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
Above: Trucks entered the road-building
picture around 1911, shown here in the
San Benito area.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
CHAPTER VIII
173

✧
Right: The Co-founders of Valley Transit
Company in 1941 were J. Cullen Looney,
Rogers Kelley, and Vance D. Raimond. The
company started in Edinburg, where Looney
was a well-known attorney for over forty
years, a Hidalgo County judge from 1940 to
1946, a banker, and humanitarian. Kelley
established the law firm of Kelley, Looney,
Alexander, and Sawyer in 1926, and was a
Texas state senator representing South Texas
for many years. Raimond had an investment
firm in Edinburg when the three organized
the transit venture. He became the managing
partner with Harlingen as its headquarters.
The co-founders are shown in 1951 on the
tenth anniversary of Valley Transit Company.
COURTESY OF ROBERT FARRIS.
Below: When proposed I-69 routes to the Rio
Grande Valley were included in national
highway system planning in 1997, “Future
Interstate 69” signs were introduced during
activities to honor U.S. Representative Bud
Shuster of Pennsylvania, House
Transportation Chairman, at right, and
longtime U.S. Representative Kika de la
Garza. Shown with them are Ricardo
Gutierrez of Rio Grande City, at left, and Bill
Summers, Valley Partnership president/CEO
since 1987.
This extensive highway network serves
hundreds of thousands of people who drive
their cars and other vehicles within the area,
as well as the huge trucks that carry produce
to nationwide markets and freight in and out
of the Valley and Mexico.
It also provides the routes for buses that
operate within the Valley and to points
outside the area. Valley Transit Company, Inc.,
began operation in 1941 with one bus and a
four-mile route from the Harlingen military
base to downtown. In September 1951, when
it celebrated its tenth birthday, Valley Transit
had expanded service to the entire Valley over
its 209-mile route, carrying over 250,000
passengers per month. Today the company
continues to be a vital transportation link in
conjunction with Greyhound Bus Lines. Its 88
modern buses serve 77 cities in Texas from
the Valley to Houston, Austin, San Antonio,
and Laredo and back to the border, plus
providing regular service to Reynosa, Mexico.
THE VALLEY’ S FOUR PORTS
Water transportation is also of major
importance to the Rio Grande Valley. The area
is served by four ports, all linked to the
Intracoastal Waterway System, which connects
at the Mississippi River with the country’s
vast heartland.
Port Isabel, originally a natural port
through Brazos Santiago Pass, was used during
both the Mexican and Civil Wars. After the
narrow-gauge Rio Grande Railroad was built
from the port to Brownsville in 1873, produce
and manufactured goods were brought in by
ship, then transferred to freight wagons and
moved overland to Brownsville for markets in
the Valley and Mexico. This kept commerce
flowing until the St. Louis, Brownsville, and
Mexico Railroad connected the Valley to the
rest of the nation in 1904, at which time
business slowed to a trickle at Brazos Santiago.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
174

Interest in water transportation was revived
in the 1920s, and in 1928 the Port Isabel-San
Benito Navigation District was organized to
develop the present Port Isabel. A bond issue
was approved, and the federal government
dredged the channel and built jetties. The port
was opened by Governor James V. Allred in
June 1935. With a channel depth of thirty-six
feet, it handles both ocean-going vessels,
cruise ships, and barge traffic and is home to a
growing number of businesses.
The Port Isabel-Brownsville shrimp fleet is
the largest in Texas, and the shrimping
industry has traditionally been a major
contributor to the coastal economy.
Port Brownsville, the famous deepwater
port carved out of the prairie, opened with
great fanfare on May 16, 1936. Ships from over
the world move in and out of the seventeenmile-long
ship channel with goods to and from
South Texas and Northern Mexico. The port
has a depth of forty-two feet and is the
southern terminus of the Gulf Intracoastal
Waterway System. More than 250 businesses
are located along its channel, and with
ownership of 46,000 acres of land, the port can
accommodate substantial growth and
expansion. It also is the home port for a large
portion of the Valley’s shrimp fleet.
Brownsville’s international port offers five
modes of transportation—truck, ship, barge,
rail, and air—and is the closest port to
Mexico’s industrial center of Monterrey. Its
large Foreign Trade Zone, with space at both
the port and the city’s airport, is widely used
by the maquiladora industry.
Harlingen citizens first tried to secure
a port in the 1920s, but their efforts met
with disappointment. In 1942 the federal
government included funds for dredging a
channel to Harlingen in its appropriation for
extending the Intracoastal Waterway from
Corpus Christi to Brownsville. The channel
from the Laguna Madre extends twentytwo
miles through the Arroyo Colorado
to Port Harlingen, five miles east of the
city. The barge port was opened in February
1952. Its principal imports are petroleum
products, steel products and chemicals,
while the principal exports are raw sugar and
crude petroleum.
Port Mansfield is a barge port located
twenty-seven miles east of Raymondville on
the harbor once known as Red Fish Bay
Landing. Named for the late Congressman J. J.
Mansfield of Columbus, it was dedicated in
April 1950. A land cut across Padre Island
provides access to and from the Gulf, and a
12-foot-deep dredged channel through the
jetties leads across Laguna Madre to a turning
basin and small craft basin at Port Mansfield.
Operated by the Willacy County Navigation
District, its principal activities are commercial
and sports fishing, plus oil and gas supply.
In 1967, during dredging of the cut, three
Spanish shipwrecks from 1554 were
discovered. Artifacts from the wrecks can be
viewed at the Treasures of the Gulf Museum in
Port Isabel.
✧
Above: The Port Isabel-Brownsville shrimp
fleet is the largest in Texas and the
shrimping industry is an important factor in
the coastal economy.
Below: The Valley’s four ports are connected
to the Gulf Intracoastal Canal System,
hence to all of the ports on the Gulf Coast,
the Mississippi River, and Florida.
CHAPTER VIII
175

AIR
TRANSPORTATION
✧
Above: Brownsville Mayor A. B. Cole is
shown with pilot Charles Lindbergh, who
landed in Brownsville on March 9, 1929,
with a bag of mail from Mexico City to
participate in the opening ceremonies for the
new Brownsville airport.
COURTESY OF CARL S. CHILTON, JR.
Below: Brownsville-South Padre Island
International Airport was undergoing a
major expansion and renovation in 2000.
Brownsville was the first Valley city to have
a commercial airport with regular airline
service. The Brownsville Municipal Airport
opened on March 9-10, 1929, with famed
aviator Charles Lindbergh and aviatrix Amelia
Earhart among the dignitaries present. The
gala two-day celebration inaugurated the first
Mexico City-New York airmail route and
launched Pan American World Airways
passenger service.
The high moment of the event was the
arrival of Charles Lindbergh from Mexico City
with the first load of airmail after a flight of
five hours and 38 minutes. An estimated
twenty thousand people were at the airport to
greet Lindbergh’s plane. The mail was immediately
transferred to another plane, which
carried it to San Antonio, Dallas, Chicago, and
on to New York. The following day Lindbergh
flew the first southbound load of airmail to
Mexico City, accompanied by various U.S.
and Mexican officials and newspaper people.
For many years, Pan American Airways
had a base at the Brownsville airport for
overhauling their own engines, plus engines
for the Air Force under contract. Engines were
transported to Brownsville from Air Force
installations all over the world to make the
firm the Valley’s largest private employer in
the mid-1950s. Then Pan American’s great
planes began to fly over Brownsville in direct,
nonstop flights between Houston and Mexico
City, no longer stopping at the border. To
continue operation, the well-equipped PAA
base performed unique jobs, such as
converting military C-47s into the civilian
DC-3s, and renovating surplus C-47s for
Liberia to establish a new airline. By 1959 the
many changes in the aircraft industry made
the base obsolete, and the thirty-year
relationship between Brownsville and Pan
American Airways came to an end.
The present Brownsville-South Padre
Island International Airport passenger
terminal was dedicated in March 1972. The
decades that followed saw many changes that
led to a decrease in airline passenger service,
and for a time in the 1980s passenger service
was discontinued altogether. The summer of
1999 saw the beginning of a $4.3-million
project to expand the terminal and upgrade
airport facilities, with construction continuing
through 2000. Currently, in addition to its
Continental Airlines passenger service, the
Brownsville airport is the stopover for many
private planes going to and coming from
Mexico. Its air cargo terminal serves planes
that carry freight and express shipments to
and from the maquiladora plants of
Matamoros. The delivery trucks, cargo
aircraft, and many employee automobiles are
visible evidence of a busy center of commerce.
The Brownsville airport is also home to the
Valley Wing of the Confederate Air Force World
War II Museum, which has many planes of the
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
176

World War II era on display, plus military
uniforms, photographs, and other memorabilia
relating to aviation. The wing conducts an
annual air show, usually in early March.
Harlingen’s first airport sprang from the
Harlingen Air Force Base. After its first closure,
the air base was used as a civilian airport called
the All-Valley Regional Airport from 1947 to
1952. When the base was reactivated in 1952,
airlines continued to fly passengers in and out
of Harlingen from the military airstrip. The city
established Harvey Richards Air Field west of
the city for civilian operations. After the city
purchased the closed air base in 1966, Harvey
Richards Field was phased out and all
operations moved to the base. The present
Harlingen Country Club’s golf course and Palm
View subdivision now occupy the site of the
former municipal airport.
The Valley International Airport at the former
air base was transformed by a major
expansion completed in 1991. The area’s
busiest, it is presently served by four major
airlines—American, Continental, Sun
Country and Southwest, which celebrated its
twenty-fifth year of having air carrier service
to the Valley in February 2000. It also is home
to many travel related businesses and general
aviation operations.
McAllen-Miller International Airport began
in 1930 when Sam Miller donated 109 acres to
the city to build an airport. It was grassland
used by privately owned planes until 1948,
when the first runway was constructed, then
lengthened in 1952 for the coming of the first
commercial airline to McAllen—Trans-Texas
Airways, later named Texas International
Airlines. The airport was designated an
International Airport in 1956 so that planes
coming from outside the United States, mainly
from Mexico, could clear customs at the
McAllen facility.
At first an old barracks was utilized for the
terminal. A second terminal was built in July
1961, another was constructed in 1967, and
the current modern terminal was completed
in 1993. The airport is currently served by
American and Continental Airlines. Many private
planes utilize the services of the airport’s
longtime fixed base operator, McCreery
Aviation Company, Inc., for both domestic
and international travel.
Boardings at the three commercial airports
increased from 123,000 in 1974 to a 863,844
in 2000.
In addition to the three international airports,
other municipal airports offer general aviation
services. Weslaco’s Mid-Valley Municipal Airport
and the Edinburg International Airport have
facilities to serve airfreight planes, business
corporate aircraft and private planes. Several
landing strips throughout the Valley are used for
general aviation and agricultural crop dusting
services. The Texas Air Museum airstrip near Rio
Hondo is used for fly-ins for planes coming to
the Air Museum to see its collection of historic
planes and the U.S.S. Iwo Jima.
✧
Above: Valley International Airport at
Harlingen is the area’s busiest. It evolved
from the military airstrip established at the
former Harlingen Air Force Base.
Below: The Valley Wing of the Confederate
Air Force World War II Museum is located
at the Brownsville airport.
COURTESY OF DOUG BRUNDIGE.
CHAPTER VIII
177

A NETWORK OF UTILITIES
✧
Telecommunications services have changed
greatly since this switchboard, on display at
the Weslaco Bicultural Museum, offered the
latest in telephone service. This exchange
was used until 1929 in the Weslaco
telephone office, where a local and long
distance system had been completed as
early as 1920 and was considered one of the
best. The “operator” is wearing a Gibson
Girl shirtwaist and skirt, popular with
working girls in the 1920s.
COURTESY OF THE WESLACO BICULTURAL MUSEUM.
The Valley’s first communication line to the
outside world was a Western Union telegraphic
connection that linked Brownsville to
Corpus Christi in May 1875. Soon, other local
lines were constructed. The Rio Grande
Railroad built one line from Brownsville to
Port Isabel and another along the river from
Brownsville to Brazos de Santiago. Between
1875 and 1877, the United States Army
Telegraph Division built government-owned
lines between its forts, including one between
Fort Ringgold and Fort Brown.
One of first known telephone lines was
built in 1902 by John Closner from his home
in Hidalgo to his San Juan Plantation, later
extended to the West McAllen depot and then
developed into the Hidalgo Telephone
Company, with Closner as president. The first
telephone exchange was built in Brownsville
in 1904 with seventy-five subscribers and an
office over Cisneros Drugstore at Eleventh
and Washington. In 1910 it was sold to
Southwestern Bell Telephone Company.
Other private exchanges were established
to meet communication needs in each of
the growing communities. By 1937 all of these
exchanges had been purchased by
Southwestern Bell, which serves the larger
portion of the Valley, or General Telephone
Company, now part of Verizon, with
exchanges in Weslaco, La Feria, Raymondville,
Rio Grande City and Roma. Both provide
a full range of modern communications
services. The Valley Telephone Cooperative
was established in 1952 to serve several
communities in Willacy County. Telephone
connections in the four-county area numbered
400,476 in early 2000.
Before the Valley could develop any industries,
an adequate supply of electricity, safe
drinking water and ice had to be developed,
and these were slow in coming.
It’s so easy now to just push a button or
turn a switch that it is hard to imagine a world
without electrical power. Turn back the
calendar to 1900 in the Rio Grande Valley.
The early land development companies built
some of the first plants. In 1908 the American
Rio Grande Land and Irrigation Company
built the Mercedes Electric Light Company to
serve the new town and the company’s pumps
on the river. The San Benito Land and Water
Company’s first canal was completed in 1908,
bringing water to the city, and in 1910 the
company built an electric plant designed to
furnish lights for the town.
Many of the towns established their own
water and electric systems, often financed by
local individuals. In some instances, electricity
was provided by a diesel engine and small
generator. As demand grew, it was difficult and
expensive to maintain the small systems, and
service was often undependable.
Central Power and Light Company was
organized in 1916 and began to purchase
these small plants in the 1920s. Its original
generating system was located at San Benito
on the site of the old sugar mill, which the
company bought in 1923. By 1941 the
number of power plants had been reduced
from ninety to eight. Changes continued over
the years in company structure and generating
facilities, with CPL still the main supplier of
electrical service for South Texas. It is now a
part of American Electric Power of Ohio with
regional headquarters in Corpus Christi and
Southern District offices in McAllen.
Brownsville’s electricity and water services
are municipally owned and are operated by
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
178

the Public Utilities Board of Brownsville.
Magic Valley Electric Cooperative, which
extended electrical service to the rural areas in
1939, serves its rural and suburban customers
from its Mercedes headquarters. Two new
generating plants have been built at Edinburg
to provide additional power for South Texas
and Northern Mexico. Electrical connections
in the Valley region totaled 341,393 as the
new century began.
Artificial ice was first manufactured at Fort
Brown in 1900 for the exclusive use of troops.
Soon a small plant in Port Isabel was erected
for the fishing industry, and Brownsville’s first
commercial ice plant with a capacity of four
tons per day was built in 1903. In 1905 a
twenty-ton plant was completed in
Brownsville. It opened on St. Patrick’s Day, and
free ice was given to all comers, a custom
continued for several years. In a few years,
most towns had ice plants that were of great
importance to citizens and in the shipment of
produce. Cities soon developed their own
water systems, which have improved and
expanded through the years to meet the needs
of the growing population.
By the late 1920s, the Valley was rapidly
emerging from its pioneering stage and its
citizens began to look for more of the
conveniences of living, such as natural gas. At
that time, the nearest supply was in Jim Hogg
County, about eighty miles northwest of Mission.
To provide this service, the Rio Grande Valley
Gas Company was organized in 1926. Franchises
were obtained from towns and industrial sales
contracts made with power plants and others,
and the $5-million construction cost financed
through common stock and the issuance of
bonds. The first town to receive gas was McAllen
on August 1, 1927, and by the end of the year
twelve hundred customers were being served.
The pipeline was continued until all Valley towns
had access to natural gas.
At that time, nobody dreamed that the
Valley was sitting on top of trillions of cubic
feet of natural gas that later would provide a
major economic boon. The former Rio Grande
Valley Gas Company is now part of Southern
Union Gas Company, which provides natural
gas to Valley users through its extensive
network of distribution lines in the region.
Since 1936, local gas from Valley fields has
been utilized. Natural gas connections in 2000
totaled 77,531.
WINDS OF CHANGE
With its infrastructure in place and the
vegetable and citrus industry developing at a
rapid rate, the 1920s were a time of prosperity
for the region. Then came the Wall Street
tumble of 1929, and the Rio Grande Valley
felt the shock along with the rest of the country.
People were struggling to hold on to their
land and make ends meet when another blow
struck. The great 1933 Hurricane blew in via
the Caribbean on September 4, 1933. At that
time hurricanes did not have names, so they
are remembered by their year. The center
passed just north of Brownsville, where the
wind measured 106 mph before the
anemometer blew away. Peak wind gusts were
estimated at 120 to 125 mph, and damages
were estimated at $17 million.
The children of Paul and Beatrice Allen of
Weslaco remember Paul’s tales of the hurricane
when he was a seven-year-old boy. William and
Gertrude Allen and their children were living
close to Llano Grande Lake when the hurricane
blew the roof off part of their house. William
put Gertrude, Paul, and his brother Willis in a
large standpipe for protection while he and his
father stayed in what was left of the house.
There are many such tales about the 1933
Hurricane, which came without warning since
no adequate weather forecasts were available.
✧
Electric transmission lines move electricity
from generating plants to area consumers.
Additional generating capacity has been
added in recent years to meet the electrical
power needs of the fast-growing region.
CHAPTER VIII
179

About ninety percent of the year’s citrus crop
was lost due to heavy winds and water, and
many buildings were blown away or severely
damaged. The future looked bleak, but somehow
the area recovered, as it has so many
times since.
THE OIL & GAS BOOM
✧
Oil and gas activity has continued at a
steady pace since the initial flurry of
activity and is an important part of the
Valley economy.
While the area was recovering from the
hurricane, a positive event made the headlines.
On September 19, 1934, a gusher
roared in at the oil well being drilled west of
Mission at Cuevitas by Otto Woods, who was
working with a borrowed rig and a brokendown
boiler. Witnesses claimed that a column
of oil shot over one hundred feet into the air
before drillers could shut off the valve. At first
the oil formed a lake around the well. Within
a few days the area around the well had to be
fenced in and policed to protect the crowds of
sightseers. Later, production peaked at 4,800
barrels a day. Though oil had been discovered
in Starr County in the 1920s, neither oil nor
gas had yet been found in Hidalgo County.
As news of this discovery spread, oil scouts
flocked to the area, some from major oil companies.
All hotel rooms were soon filled and
business boomed. Telephone and telegraph
companies buzzed as oil men engaged in
feverish leasing and royalty buying and selling
throughout the Valley. However, most drillers
found gas and not the valuable oil so desired.
The vast natural gas reserves were regarded as
worthless. Later, the value of natural gas
increased and it was discovered that as much
as twelve trillion cubic feet of gas lay under
the Valley’s surface, with the McAllen gas
dome alone containing over a trillion cubic
feet. Soon, pipelines extending thousands of
miles were built to send natural gas from the
Valley to cities in the northeast.
Over the years oil and gas have added
much to the economy of the area. Though the
energy sector employs less than one percent
of the workforce, it is a critical part of the
local economy. Hidalgo County is the state’s
third largest producer of natural gas, and
drilling for new wells continued in 2000. The
exploration and production of natural gas
make up a big chunk of the tax base for cities
and school districts, especially in Edinburg
and La Joya.
Though production continues in the Valley,
the field that produced Otto Woods’ gusher is
no longer active, and the only sign that
remains of that exciting day is a historical
marker that reads: “First Oil Well in Hidalgo
County” located west of La Joya on U.S. 83.
WORLD WAR II & BEYOND
The country was pulling out of the Great
Depression as the 1940s began, but the specter
of World War II was on the horizon. For the
Rio Grande Valley, wartime was boom time
because of the great demand for agricultural
products from the “Winter Vegetable Capital of
the World.” Up to that time, a large workforce
had been available to the farmers as there were
few jobs outside of agriculture and willing
hands were available from across the border,
though not always in the U.S. legally. However,
the war took away many young people who
would have worked the land.
To avoid a labor crisis, the Mexican Farm
Labor Supply Program, or “Bracero Program,”
was worked out with Mexico to allow nationals
to cross the border to work seasonally. This
lasted from August 1942 to December 1947,
during which 250,000 Mexican nationals
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
180

worked in agriculture and railroad. The program
was also utilized from 1948 to 1964. Farm
mechanization, including the mechanical cotton
picker, reduced the number of workers needed.
The war brought a great change in the
population of the Valley. In 1940 there were
about 215,800 people in the area. By 1950
the number had grown to 320,500. As the
Valley turned from its emphasis on war to
peace, there were new businesses and more
diverse jobs for people, but there were not
enough jobs to go around.
A cold wind blew into the Rio Grande
Valley in late January 1951 and stayed for five
days. The temperature fell to twenty-two
degrees and icicles covered the 120,000 acres
of orange and grapefruit trees. Describing that
tense time, a former citrus farmer said: “You
could stand in the orchards and hear the bark
splitting. It was like rifle shots.” When the ice
melted, the crop was ruined and seventy-five
percent of the trees wiped out. The harvest
dropped from 28.4 million boxes in 1948-49
to 500,000 boxes in 1951-52.
The devastation in the orchards had a ripple
effect through the Valley, plunging many farm
workers, processing, and shipping personnel
into unemployment. Citrus stalwarts bulldozed
their dead trees, replanted, and waited for the
new trees to bring in citrus gold.
MANUFACTURING HELPS TO
DIVERSIFY ECONOMY
The economy, which had relied almost
solely on agriculture and related industries,
needed to be diversified to lessen the blows
from such natural disasters and provide additional
opportunities for its growing population.
Area leaders began serious efforts to
attract manufacturers to the area, offering
good climate, inexpensive land, good transportation,
and a pool of available and willing
labor. Progress did not come easily, but gradually
it did come.
Petroleum-based industries were explored.
The largest of these started as the $20-million
Carthage Hydrocol plant at the Port of
Brownsville. Originally slated for Carthage,
Texas, the company liked the idea of locating
the plant at a site with ocean shipping. The
announcement of the plant was hailed at the
time as one of the greatest economic achievements
in the history of the Valley.
Construction started in 1947, with as many as
1,000 persons employed. Operations began in
1950, with 325 to 350 operating personnel.
The plant initiated the commercial
production of gasoline, diesel oil, industrial
alcohol, and commercial oxygen from natural
gas, which was supplied through a sixtythree-mile
pipeline from fields up the Valley.
Stanolind Oil and Gas Company, in an
adjacent plant, began processing the organic
chemicals produced. U.S. Industrial
Chemicals, another adjacent plant, packaged
and shipped the processed products.
The process worked well, but mechanical
✧
Top: Plans were announced for the mammoth
Hydrocol plant at the Port of Brownsville in
1947 to produce gasoline, diesel oil, industrial
alcohol, and commercial oxygen from natural
gas. The technology was sound, but
production did not develop as anticipated.
COURTESY OF W. W. MCMANUS.
Above: After the Hydrocol plant closed, it
was converted by Union Carbide
Corporation to manufacture petrochemicals
and operated from 1961 to 1982, when it
closed because of world market conditions.
CHAPTER VIII
181

✧
The threat of flooding from the torrential
rains that followed Hurricane Beulah in
1967 spurred sandbagging activity along the
floodways, shown here south of Mercedes.
The emergency call went out and citizens
rushed to help shore up the levees.
and engineering problems made it impossible
to get the plant into full operation. In 1953
the area was stunned when it learned that
the huge Carthage Hydrocol plant was
suspending operations. Stanolind took over
the Hydrocol and U.S. Industrial Chemicals
operations, reopened the plant in 1956 as
Amoco Chemicals Corporation, and people
relaxed. That operation lasted until late 1957.
Union Carbide Corporation acquired the
facility in 1958, converting it at great expense
to a butane oxidation process to manufacture
acetic acid and co-products. The plant
reopened in 1961 and operated profitably
until 1982, when it closed due to worldwide
market conditions. For many years the great
plant with its complex refining machinery of
tubes and pipes stood vacant and rusting, a
grim reminder of the high hopes for major
petrochemical industries. Finally, it was
dismantled and sold for scrap.
Though the big dream failed, smaller
petroleum-based enterprises thrive in the port
area, as do many other industries that have
come to Port Brownsville, providing
thousands of jobs. The largest business in
2000 is Singapore-owned Amfels, Inc., which
builds and repairs off-shore oil rigs and
reworks seagoing vessels, along with other
marine construction.
TIME OUT FOR BEULAH
Hurricane Beulah blew into the Valley on
September 19,1967. Her winds were strong,
her rains drenching, and she left her mark all
along the coast. Her 136-mph winds damaged
many of South Padre Island’s new hotels and
other buildings along the coast and up the
Valley, and caused severe flooding in all of the
counties, including the highways in and out
of the area. Many residents who had
evacuated to Laredo and San Antonio were
unable to return for a week or more because
the highways were closed by high water.
Much of the rain had fallen into the San Juan
River watershed below Falcon Dam, flooding
both sides of the border.
When the waters receded, utilities were
returned to service; highways, roads, and
bridges were quickly repaired, and the word
went out that the Valley “did not get blown
away or washed away.” Though some
individuals had severe losses, soon the area
was back to normal.
A DIVERSIFIED ECONOMY
During the 1960s and 1970s, many cut-andsew
industries discovered the Valley and its
supply of dependable workers for their clothing
manufacturing operations. Levis were made at
McAllen, Harlingen, San Benito, and
Brownsville; Haggar Manufacturing came to
Edinburg, Weslaco, and Brownsville;
Williamson-Dickie to McAllen and Weslaco;
William Carter and Fruit of the Loom to
Harlingen, among others. Some of the plants
continue as major employers. Though Levi-
Strauss closed some of its large plants in 1999
and Haggar has moved away, these plants
provided employment for thousands of Valley
citizens for a generation.
Many other manufacturers have come and
stayed to produce a great variety of products,
including electronic and automotive
components. The latest report from the Texas
state comptroller showed that 640
manufacturing plants employ 25,500 in the
Valley’s four counties.
Beginning in the late 1960s, attention turned
to Mexico and the development of maquiladoras.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
182

Left: Maquiladoras, assembly and
manufacturing plants in Mexican border
cities, have grown steadily since the 1960s,
providing jobs and economic growth on both
sides of the border. A typical plant,
Cambridge International of Matamoros,
established in 1994, has two hundred
employees who manufacture conveyor
belts for food processing and industrial
assembly lines.
COURTESY OF THE BROWNSVILLE INDUSTRIAL
DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION.
✧
The program was initiated in 1965 during the
Díaz Ordaz presidency as a means of attracting
foreign investment, increasing exports, and
fostering indus-trialization along the U.S.-
Mexico border. Today, maquiladoras are one of
Mexico’s primary sources of domestic
production, exports, and employment, and
they continue to attract foreign investment
from the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Japan.
Such plants temporarily import raw materials,
parts or components into Mexico for
manufacturing, processing and assembly. The
products are then exported out of Mexico to
the country of origin or a third country. No
tariffs are paid while the imported materials
are in Mexico.
Some of these industries have a twin plant
operation, usually a highly automated or
technology-oriented U.S. plant and a laborintensive
sister plant on the Mexican side.
Brownsville-Matamoros and McAllen-Reynosa
each have well over a hundred such plants,
and there are dozens in the smaller border
cities. Around 160,000 jobs have been created
along the Rio Grande Valley border on the
Mexican side and thousands of jobs in service,
retail, supply and other fields have been
generated for U.S. workers. Many other
benefits accrue to the U.S., such as housing
for management personnel, markets for
suppliers, and retail sales.
The 1980s and 1990s saw turbulent
weather again, with Hurricane Allen in August
1980, which moved up the coast and then
inland, skirting the Valley’s heavily populated
areas but causing $55 million in damage.
Hurricane Barry moved in south of Brownsville
in August 1983 over northern Mexico, again
sparing the Valley, and Hurricane Gilbert
struck 125 miles south of Brownsville in
September 1988, bringing high tides, rainfall,
and damages from $3 to $5 million.
In August 1999, Hurricane Bret was headed
for the Valley, but it skirted the region and
made landfall in Kenedy and Kleberg Counties.
South Padre Island had been evacuated when
it appeared the hurricane was going to
strike that area, then Bret turned north.
Below: Though most maquiladora plants
are labor intensive, some are highly
sophisticated and require well-trained
technicians, such as this plant that makes
computer components.
COURTESY OF THE BROWNSVILLE ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION.
CHAPTER VIII
183

default, and the lenders’ generosity broke the
back of many banks.
After the middle of the 1980s, things began
to stabilize and more jobs became available.
The economy was on the upswing again, continuing
through the 1990s. The implementation
of the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 has greatly
increased international trade through the
Valley ports of entry, which is expected to
escalate in the future.
HEALTHCARE KEEPS
PACE WITH GROWTH
✧
Above: The 1980s and 1990s saw an
increased awareness of regional cooperation.
In March 1990, the Rio Grande Valley
Partnership/Chamber of Commerce honored
outstanding Valley citizens Othal Brand,
McAllen Mayor from 1977-1997, and Bill
Card, Harlingen mayor from 1987-1998.
Making the presentation at right is Ygnacio
Garza, Brownsville mayor from 1987-1991.
At left is Sam Vale of Rio Grande City, 1988
Partnership/Chamber chairman and master
of ceremonies for the event.
Below: The present Brownsville Medical
Center evolved from Brownsville’s first
hospital, established by the Sisters of Mercy
of Laredo in 1917 and operated by them as
Mercy Hospital until 1971, when it was sold
and its name changed to Brownsville
Medical Center.
Much of the actual damage was in the Port
Mansfield area.
Drought also hit the area when the water
levels at the Falcon-Amistad Reservoir System
started dropping in 1994, continuing to an
all-time low of nineteen percent of normal
conservation level in 1998. Conservation
measures were instituted as the present
and future water supply came under study
by agricultural interests and city planners.
The water situation is expected to be a
continuing concern.
The economy also had a period of turbulence
in the 1980s, as did all of Texas, with a big boom
in real estate, relaxed lending practices, and then
came the bust. The peso devaluation of the early
1980s hit the Valley hard. Property values fell,
homes were repossessed, loans were in massive
Dr. Cayetano E. Barrera III of McAllen, an
amateur historian, has traced the Valley’s
medical history back more than 450 years.
Using Dr. Barrera’s data, Tom Fatherree wrote
a lively series of articles published in The
Monitor in 1988. He told of the wandering
Spaniard, Cabeza de Vaca, who accidentally
became known as a healer among the Indians,
and about the yellow fever epidemics in
Brownsville and along both sides of the border
in 1858 and again in 1862, when the
entire area was quarantined.
Don Cayetano Barrera, Dr. Barrera’s
grandfather, moved his family from Mier to
Falfurrias in the 1870s to escape the disease,
later returning to northwestern Hidalgo
County to establish La Reforma Ranch, still in
the Barrera family. Later, sons Cayetano E.
went to medical school and Pedro to
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
184

pharmacy school. They settled in Mission,
established a medical practice and Barrera
Drug Store, and began the family’s medical
tradition that continues today.
Yellow fever hit Fort Brown and
Brownsville again in 1882, and the U.S.
Surgeon General sent Dr. William C. Gorgas
to Brownsville to see what he could do. Dr.
Gorgas risked his own life to prove the mosquito
to be the carrier of yellow fever. Once
control measures were established, this
marked the end of these deadly epidemics.
The hospital where Gorgas worked is now the
Gorgas Administration Building for UT-
Brownsville/Texas Southmost College.
As the area was settled, doctors found their
way to the Valley. The Texas Medical
Association established its present structure of
state, district and county chapters in 1869. Rio
Grande Valley doctors formed some loose-knit
groups in the 1890s, and after the turn of the
century they got around to organizing county
chapters of the state association. The Cameron
County Medical Society, an arm of the TMA,
was formed in 1906, and a year later the Starr
County Medical Society was organized. In 1914
Hidalgo County doctors were organized.
These organizations have evolved into two
active organizations, the Hidalgo-Starr
County Medical Society and the Cameron-
Willacy Medical Society, each with active auxiliaries.
Doctors from the medical universities
of many countries, including India, Pakistan,
Mexico, and the Dominican Republic have
joined those from U.S. universities to form a
multi-national medical community in the Rio
Grande Valley. They are assisted by thousands
of healthcare specialists.
It took a little longer for hospitals to make
their appearance. In an article entitled “Our
Hospital Heritage” in the Harlingen Press for
October 4, 1974, Mrs. Marion R. Lawler, Sr.,
of Mercedes traced the development of area
hospitals. Her husband, Dr. Marion R. Lawler,
Sr., practiced medicine in Mercedes for many
years, and her son, Dr. Marion R. Lawler, Jr.,
is a cardiologist in Harlingen. She wrote:
The oldest hospital in the Lower Rio
Grande area is in Brownsville. It was founded
by Miss Nora Kelly, who got permission from
her father to put all the eight or nine elderly
or blind patients her mother had been taking
care of into one room. That was Brownsville’s
first charity home, established in 1901. The
army doctors at Fort Brown tended these sick,
then began to operate on soldiers there with
only meager facilities.
In 1917, a building on Madison Street was
secured to serve as a charity home for
homeless children and indigent elderly
persons. With the assistance of the Sisters of
Mercy of Laredo, this became the Divine
Providence Hospital. In 1923 a new building
was completed and named Mercy Hospital.
The Sisters of Mercy operated it as a
community hospital until 1971, when it was
✧
Above: Harlingen’s first hospital has been
restored and is one of the historic buildings
located in the Rio Grande Valley Museum
complex near the airport. This hospital was
the forerunner of Valley Baptist Medical
Center.
Below: Valley Baptist Health System
facilities have grown to encompass several
adjoining buildings. Construction began
on the adjacent Regional Academic
Health Center (RAHC) in September
2000, which will train junior and senior
medical students.
CHAPTER VIII
185

✧
Top: The first hospital in the Mid-Valley was
the Mercedes Surgical and Obstetrical
Hospital established in 1921 with eight
patient rooms. A new building became
Mercedes General Hospital in 1927, which
operated until Knapp Medical Center
opened in 1962.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
Above: Knapp Medical Center has served
the Mid-Valley area since 1962. Its latest
addition includes greatly expanded
emergency and outpatient care facilities
with separate entrances.
sold to a private corporation and the name
changed to Brownsville Medical Center.
Today, the hospital is a 217-bed facility owned
by Tenet Health System that employs more
than eight hundred healthcare professionals
and offers a complete range of the latest
diagnostic, medical, and surgical services.
The second oldest hospital is Valley Baptist
Medical Center in Harlingen, which began in
a ten-bed converted frame house. Soon more
beds were needed and a new thirty-six-bed
facility was built on “F” Street. On January 22,
1925, Valley Baptist Hospital opened as a
not-for-profit community hospital owned by
the Lower Rio Grande Valley Baptist
Association. The Baptist General Convention
of Texas acquired the hospital in 1945 and the
facility was moved to its present location on
Pease Street in 1956 with a patient capacity of
152 beds.
Many additions later, Valley Baptist is a
major acute care hospital with 588 patient
beds, and a large medical and dental staff
representing all major specialties and most
subspecialties. Now part of Valley Baptist
Health System, it began the new millennium
celebrating completion of seventy-five years of
service. Its extensive facilities are surrounded
by medical clinics and doctors offices plus a
new multi-story medical office building. It will
serve as the primary teaching hospital for the
adjacent University of Texas Regional
Academic Health Center (RAHC).
South Texas Hospital in Harlingen opened
in 1955 as the Harlingen State Tuberculosis
Hospital with a capacity of 518 patients to
serve the twenty southernmost Texas
counties. A follow-up clinic was also operated
for indigent patients. The hospital began
operating under the State Department of
Public Health in 1965. By 1967 the patient
capacity was 234. In 1971 the Texas
Legislature changed its name to the Harlingen
State Chest Hospital to provide treatment for
patients with all kinds of chest and respiratory
diseases. In 1985 the Legislature broadened
its mission, changed its name to South Texas
Hospital, and provided space for the
relocation of the Rio Grande State Center for
Mental Health and Mental Retardation. In
2000, it was undergoing major changes in
services and facilities.
Dolly Vinsant Memorial Hospital in San
Benito was built by community subscription
and opened in 1949. It is named for Wilma
“Dolly” Vinsant, an Army Air Corps flight
nurse from San Benito who was killed during
a mission in World War II. The eighty-onebed
hospital is now privately owned and
offers a broad complement of services in
relaxed surroundings.
The Mid-Valley’s first hospital was in
Mercedes, where a hospital board established
the Mercedes Surgical and Obstetrical
Hospital in 1921 with eight patient rooms
plus surgery and obstetrical rooms. In 1927 a
new building on Texas Avenue was named the
Mercedes General Hospital. Later, Weslaco
also had a small hospital named for two
doctors, the McCalip-Ivy Hospital. Both small
hospitals closed when the new Knapp
Hospital opened in 1962.
In 1957 the Mid-Valley Hospital
Development Corporation was organized to
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
186

aise funds and build a larger hospital to serve
Mid-Valley communities. Initially sponsored
by the Methodist Church, the one-hundredbed
Knapp Memorial Methodist Hospital
opened on January 2, 1962, filling a great need
in the area. Now named Knapp Medical
Center, a not-for-profit hospital, the addition of
a $31 million patient tower in 1995 increased
it to 233 beds, all private rooms, and its tenbed
emergency department is one of the
busiest in the Valley. In June 2000, Knapp
received the Texas Hospital Association’s 2000
Excellence in Community Service Award for its
Diabetes Center, a comprehensive educationbased
program to improve the health of
diabetes patients in its service area.
The movement to establish a hospital in
McAllen began in 1923, and the first McAllen
Municipal Hospital opened in 1925 with
facilities for twenty-five patients. In June 1928 a
larger hospital was built. The new hospital had
85 beds, an automatic elevator, and three
operating rooms. Ward rates ranged from $2 to
$4 per day and private rooms ranged from $4 to
$10 per day, including floor nurses and meals.
Over the years the staff and facilities of the
hospital continued to expand, and by 1952
McAllen had again outgrown its hospital
facilities. A new wing was built, adding 51 rooms
and 92 patient beds. Several more additions and
patient wings were built at the downtown
location before an entirely new hospital was built
by the Expressway.
McAllen Medical Center, no longer city
owned, has 630 licensed beds in several facilities.
In addition to its main center, it includes The
Heart Hospital, a specialty hospital with sixty
beds dedicated to the diagnosis and treatment of
heart and blood vessel disease. Its Medical
Behavioral Health Center and Rehabilitation
Institute provides inpatient rehabilitation in a
freestanding eighty-bed facility, including child
and adolescent services, adult psychiatric,
chemical dependency, and acute rehabilitation
services. Its freestanding Cancer Treatment
Center features individualized chemotherapy
treatment and extensive patient services.
The Edinburg Regional Medical Center is
now part of South Texas Health System, along
with McAllen Medical Center and UHS
Rehabilitation Center, also in Edinburg. It
includes a four-story patient tower, an adjoining
Women’s Pavilion, an outpatient pavilion and
Edinburg Regional Medical Plaza 1. Future
plans include expansion of patient beds from
130 to 250 and construction of an additional
medical office building. This modern Edinburg
hospital succeeds the former city-owned
Edinburg Hospital and the beautiful old
Grandview Hospital built in the 1920s.
The Grandview was described as “one of the
largest and best staffed medical facilities in the
Rio Grande Valley” in an article in the January-
February 1957 issue of Transgas magazine.
Edinburg is also home to the Tropical
Texas Center for Mental Health and Mental
Retardation, once housed in the Grandview
Hospital, and the Cornerstone Center.
Mission Hospital was established in 1953
as a not-for-profit community hospital.
Restructuring and growth led to the present
✧
Above: What started as a twenty-five-bed
hospital in McAllen in 1923 evolved into the
present McAllen Medical Center in the city’s
medical complex, which includes Rio
Grande Regional Hospital, and many other
health facilities.
Below: Edinburg’s beautiful old Grandview
Hospital, built in the 1920s, was first
replaced by the city-owned Edinburg
Hospital and in the late 1990s by
Edinburg Regional Medical Center, part of
South Texas Health System, with McAllen
Medical Center.
COURTESY OF THE HIDALGO COUNTY
HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
CHAPTER VIII
187

✧
Above: Starr County citizens worked for
many years to get their modern Starr
County Memorial Hospital, which opened in
February 1975. It is operated by the Starr
County Hospital District and has a rural
health clinic in Rio Grande City.
Below: Tourists from the Midwest began to
come to the Valley in travel trailers and
modified vans in the late 1930s and 1940s
before trailer parks existed. Shown are some
of these tourists on “moving day” to
temporary space provided by the City of
Weslaco. Soon the Weslaco Trailer Park, the
Valley’s first modern park, was built by
R. S. Parker and sons P. C. and Lyle in
1946. Now the Valley has more than five
hundred mobile home and RV parks.
138-bed facility on South Bryan Road near
the Expressway. Conveniently connected by an
enclosed walkway is the Mission Doctors
Plaza, which houses the high-tech Physical
Therapy Unit, Imaging Center (MRI), Medical
Equipment Supply Store and a drive-through
pharmacy. Mission Hospital is supported by
a dedicated staff of community physicians.
Along with continued population growth,
recent decades have brought additional
hospitals to the area:
• Valley Regional Medical Center in
Brownsville began in 1975 as Valley
Community Hospital at 1 Ted Hunt
Boulevard. The hospital moved to a new
comprehensive medical complex in 1998
located at Expressway 77/83 and Alton Gloor
Boulevard just north of Brownsville. The
177-bed hospital’s many features include
complete diagnostic imaging, outpatient
services, a hyperbaric and wound care center,
and home health services. It also operates two
clinics in Brownsville—Southmost Family
Medical Center on Southmost Drive and Villa
Maria Clinic on Villa Maria Drive. Valley
Regional has begun a major expansion that
will greatly increase the number of beds and
services that will be available in the future.
• Rio Grande Regional Hospital in McAllen on
East Ridge Road near the Expressway, is a
227-bed facility established in 1982. With
over 300 physicians representing 35 medical
specialties, it offers comprehensive health
services including orthopedics, heart surgery
and cardiac rehabilitation, general medical
and surgical services and rehabilitation. It
also has a Diabetes and Wound Management
Center, several Women’s OB/GYN Clinics,
and has begun a major expansion.
• Starr County Memorial Hospital was the result
of long citizen involvement that began with a
Hospital Committee in 1969 and resulted in
the opening of the county’s new forty-four-bed
hospital in February 1975. Located three miles
west of Rio Grande City, it is operated by the
Starr County Hospital District and also has a
rural health clinic in Rio Grande City.
• Valley Air Care of Harlingen began its
emergency helicopter operations in 1995 to
deliver critical patients to Valley hospitals
quickly to improve their chances for survival
and rehabilitation. It also transports children
from the Valley to Driscoll Children’s Hospital
in Corpus Christi, as Driscoll Children’s
Hospital Ambulance Transport Department.
Many other clinics, day-surgery centers,
doctors’ groups, and medical support firms are
located over the Valley. In addition to providing
outstanding healthcare to Valley citizens and
visitors, the healthcare institutions and
professions provide employment to several
thousand area residents.
TOURISM BECOMES
A MAJOR INDUSTRY
The trickle of winter visitors to the Rio
Grande Valley that began in the late 1930s
soon grew to a steady stream. At first,
apartments and motels were built to handle
the growing number of visitors, mostly from
the Midwestern states. Soon they began to
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
188

ing their travel trailers or come in converted
vans to escape the winter cold, but there were
no trailer parks in which they could stay.
It didn’t take long for alert entrepreneurs to
see an opportunity to provide a needed service
and build a good business. In 1946, R. S.
Parker and his sons, P. C. and Lyle, built the
Weslaco Trailer Park, the first modern park in
the Valley, in a cotton field on the edge of
Weslaco. Soon others discovered that RV and
mobile home parks were good investments.
The number of parks mushroomed, especially
in the 1980s, and they got bigger and better. In
2000, over 500 parks provided more than
67,000 spaces.
An estimated 150,000 Winter Texans
spend three to six months in the area each
year, making a major financial impact on the
economy. They also contribute to all aspects
of community life and are great volunteers in
schools, hospitals, libraries and museums.
Area chambers of commerce, convention
and visitor bureaus, tourist clubs, and the
larger RV parks provide social and
recreational activities throughout the winter
season from October to April, attracting
winter residents year after year. Some say
they have been coming twenty years or more
and that they have more friends here than in
their hometowns.
Dr. Vern Vincent, director of the Center for
Tourism Research at the University of Texas-
Pan American, which tracks the industry’s
growth, said Winter Texan tourism to the area
continues to increase, with 3.5 percent growth
from 1997 to 1999.
Travel to Mexico through the Rio Grande
Valley took a new direction after the severe
freeze of 1951 that devastated area citrus
orchards. The freeze also ended Dan
Sanborn’s newsletter to out-of-area owners of
citrus orchards and others, “Dan Sanborn’s
Rio Grande Valley News Letter,” which was
his livelihood. A journalist from Kankakee,
Illinois, Sanborn had come to McAllen in
1946 when his wife Eleanor rebelled at
having to care for four children in a climate
where they were in and out of snowsuits
all winter. After the freeze, he opened a
tourist store in McAllen featuring out-ofstate
newspapers, Mexican curios and books
about Mexico.
People started asking about Mexico
insurance, so he sold insurance and began
the famous “Sanborn Travelogs,” mile-bymile
road logs on separate sheets that could
be combined for each trip. Mexico travel
grew and grew, as did Dan’s business. He is
credited with doing more than any other
individual to stimulate travel in Mexico and
to build good relations between the two
countries. Dan’s son Bill now manages
Sanborn’s headquarters in McAllen, and
Sanborn insurance offices are operated
independently in many border cities.
As tourism increased, more and more
people looked toward storied South Padre
Island as a potential resort, but access to the
Island was limited to ferries and small boats
until the early 1950s. When Cameron County
built the first Queen Isabella Causeway,
dedicated on July 3, 1952, the dream of a
✧
Top, left: Ted R. Hunt was among
proponents of tourism and a new causeway.
He was Cameron County commissioner
from 1943 to 1973, and the causeway was
dedicated to him for his many years of
service when it opened in September 1974.
Above: Dan Sanborn encouraged Mexico
tourism with his Travelogs, which he gave to
those who bought their Mexico insurance
from Sanborn’s International Travel. The
travel service also sparked motorcoach tours
to Mexico, with many such services now
making travel to Mexico’s interior safe, easy,
and enjoyable.
Below: South Padre Island has grown into a
world class tourist resort with its white sand
beaches, wide range of accommodations,
restaurants and entertainment facilities,
and its dedicated residents who make it
all possible.
COURTESY OF THE SOUTH PADRE ISLAND
CONVENTION AND VISITORS BUREAU.
CHAPTER VIII
189

✧
Top: Many shorebirds visit South Padre
Island, adding it to the long list of the
region’s birding sites.
COURTESY OF EILEEN MATTEI.
Above: Birding festivals have become
popular in the area. An estimated one
hundred thousand visitors are expected
to visit the area’s World Birding
Center locations annually when they are
fully developed.
COURTESY OF EILEEN MATTEI.
great new Texas beach resort began to be
realized. Finally, there was easy access to the
beautiful white sand beaches of South Padre
Island. The county built parks and public
facilities that in just two years brought over
1.5 million visitors to the Island. A host of
private developers sold lots, and built hotels,
motels, and homes.
When increased traffic began to create
problems at the county causeway, the Texas
Department of Transportation came to the rescue
to build the present $12-million Queen
Isabella Causeway in 1974. The longest
bridge in Texas, it spans 12,510 feet across the
blue Laguna Madre from Port Isabel to South
Padre Island and chalks up over seven million
vehicle crossings a year. Many new high-rise
hotels and condominiums were built on the
island in the 1980s, and the word spread to
tourists and investors about the nation’s
newest resort.
Initially considered more of a summer
playground, the island has added many yearround
activities, and events in its convention
center attract winter visitors from the northern
states and Canada. New construction, which
had been quiet after the big boom of the
1980s, resumed in the late 1990s to provide
additional motels and entertainment facilities.
The development of South Padre Island made
the Valley a year-round tourist destination,
bringing national and international visitors to
the area.
At the other end of the Valley, Falcon Dam,
completed in 1953 for flood control and
water conservation, also provided a major
recreational area for camping, boating, and
fishing at Falcon Lake and Park.
The opening of the world class Gladys
Porter Zoo in Brownsville in 1971 gave
tourism another big boost and continues to be
a major attraction. The zoo was built and
stocked with rare animals from over the world
as a gift to the area by the Earl C. Sams
Foundation through Sams’ daughter, Gladys
Porter. It is operated by the City of
Brownsville with the support of the Valley
Zoological Society and others.
When the Texas Parks & Wildlife
Department saw how many “birders” visit the
Valley each year and studied the possibilities
for increased tourism, they came up with the
idea for a new World Birding Center. The
primary locations will be Mission, Weslaco,
and Brownsville. Mission will be the center’s
headquarters, housing administrative offices
and special exhibits. There will be several
additional satellite centers, including historic
Quinta Mazatlán in McAllen. Upon
completion, the Birding Center is expected to
bring one hundred thousand visitors its first
year and to be of great interest to both shortterm
and long-term visitors.
Birds are even bringing new businesses to
the area, like Wild Birds Unlimited, which
opened recently in McAllen, and the Wild
Bird Center store in Harlingen. Aimed more at
backyard birders than tourists, they have just
about everything a bird could want.
Ecotourism also gets a boost from
organizations like The Nature Conservancy of
Texas, and the Rio Grande Wildlife Corridor,
which work with other agencies to protect the
rich diversity of plants, animals and ecosystems
native to the area for future generations.
No matter the time of year, the Rio
Grande Valley is a prime destination for
tourists, with palm trees and balmy weather,
the beaches and fishing of Port Mansfield,
Port Isabel and South Padre Island, and
nature preserves full of exotic wildlife. Just
across the border, Mexico affords a different
world with excellent shopping, great food
and friendly people. The border cities of
Matamoros and Reynosa have grown from
their early Spanish beginnings to major cities
with over five hundred thousand people
each. In between, the newer city of Nuevo
Progreso is just a short walk across an
international bridge to a haven for eager
shoppers. All of this translates into a major
industry that joins agriculture, manufacturing,
and trade to form the three main
branches of the region’s economy.
As the Rio Grande Valley enters the new
millennium, its citizens combine a deep
appreciation of their rich heritage with a
positive approach to the future. The economy
is solid, the region continues to grow and
diversify, new construction is everywhere, and
the future of the Rio Grande Valley looks very
bright indeed.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
190

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chatelle, Miriam. For We Love Our Valley Home. San Antonio: The Naylor Co., 1948. (Memories of the early days of Los Fresnos and
how it developed.)
Chatfield, W. H. Twin Cities of the Border. Brownsville: privately printed, 1893. (Includes photographs of Brownsville and Matamoros and
information on Upper Valley.)
Chilton, Carl S., Jr. Seventy Years of Airport History in Brownsville: 1929-1999. Brownsville: City of Brownsville, 2000.
Chilton, Carl S. Jr. Port of Brownsville: Sixty Years of Service. Brownsville: Port of Brownsville, 1997.
Chorlian, Ruth Whitehead. The Long Trail of the Texas Longhorns. Austin: Eakin Press, 1986.
Christensen, Carol and Thomas. The U. S.-Mexican War. San Francisco: Bay Books, 1998. (Companion to the Public Television Series
The U. S.-Mexican War, 1846-1848. Video also available.)
Doyon, Bernard, O.M.I. The Cavalry of Christ on the Rio Grande, 1849-1883. Milwaukee: Bruce Press for Catholic Life Publications, 1956.
Ferguson, Henry. The Port of Brownsville: A History. Brownsville: Springman-King Press, 1976. (A general history of the Rio Grande
Valley with many interesting stories and anecdotes.)
Gerhardt, Karen and Tamez, Blanca E. Images of America - Weslaco. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing Co., 1999.
Horgan, Paul. Great River. (Two volumes). New York: Holt Rinehart Winston, 1954. (A detailed, fascinating work that reaches far back
in time.)
Irby, James A. Backdoor at Bagdad, The Civil War in the Rio Grande Valley. El Paso: Texas Western Press, University of Texas at El Paso,
1977.
Johnson, Marjorie, Ed. Valley Proud History Cookbook - Tales and Recipes of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Edinburg: New Santander Press
for the Rio Grande Valley Chamber of Commerce, Weslaco, Texas, 1991.
Lea, Tom. The King Ranch. (Two volumes). Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1957. (A history of the Rio Grande Valley with emphasis
on steamboating, the Civil War, the King Ranch and development of the cattle industry in Texas.)
Lower Rio Grande Valley Historical Society, Selections from Collected Papers of the LRGV Historical Society, 1949-1979, Volume 1. Harlingen:
Lon C. Hill Library, 1979.
McAllen High School American Studies Class 1974-75. McAllen: A Bicentennial Reflection. Faculty advisers: Betty Bloomfield and Marlyn
Gupton. McAllen: McAllen High School, 1975.
Miller, Hubert J. Jose de Escandon, Colonizer of Nuevo Santander. Edinburg: New Santander Press, 1980.
Miller, Hubert J. Padre Miguel Hidalgo, Father of Mexican Independence. Edinburg: Pan American University Press, 1986.
Miller, Hubert J. Antonio de Mendoza, First Viceroy of Mexico. Edinburg: New Santander Press, 1972.
Pope, Dorothy Lee. Rainbow Era on the Rio Grande. Brownsville: Springman-King Company, 1971. (Splendid account of the land
excursions and a history of Alamo/Ebenezer.)
Pierce, Frank Cushman. Texas’ Last Frontier: A Brief History of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Menasha, Wisconsin: George Banta Pub Co.,
1917; reprinted in 1962 and 1996. (A little book with a viewpoint from turbulent times.)
Raimond, Vance D. Transportation - A Key to the Magic Valley. Edinburg: New Santander Press, 1996. (A History of the Valley Transit Bus
Company 1941-1996 and Progressive Growth and Development of the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas.)
Ramirez, Emilia Schunior. Ranch Life in Hidalgo County after 1850. Edinburg: New Santander Press, 1971.
Rio Writers, The. One Hundred Women of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Austin: Eakin Press, 1983.
Robertson, Brian. Wild Horse Desert: The Heritage of South Texas. Edinburg: New Santander Press for Hidalgo County Historical Museum,
1985. (Excellent history of the area through the 1930s.)
Robinson, Charles M. III. Frontier Forts of Texas. Houston: Lone Star Books, A Division of Gulf Publishing Company, 1986.
Sanchez, Mario L., Ed. A Shared Experience: The History, Architecture and Historic Designations of the Lower Rio Grande Heritage Corridor.
Second Edition. Austin: Los Caminos del Rio Heritage Project and the Texas Historical Commission, 1994. (Excellent history of the
“Roads of the River” from Laredo to the mouth of the Rio Grande. Detailed descriptions, photos and drawings of historical buildings.
Available from Los Caminos del Rio, Hidalgo County Historical Society.)
Schmitt, Karl M. Mexico and the United States, 1821-1973: Conflict and Coexistence. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1974.
Scott, Florence Johnson. Historical Heritage of the Lower Rio Grande. Revised Edition. Waco: Texian Press, 1966. (Educator-Author who
spent most of her adult life in Rio Grande City. Outstanding account of the early Spanish colonization along the border.)
Scott, Florence Johnson. Old Rough and Ready on the Rio Grande. Revised Edition. Waco: Texian Press, 1969. (General Zachary Taylor
during the U.S.-Mexican War.)
CHAPTER VIII
191

Scott, Florence Johnson. Royal Land Grants North of the Rio Grande 1777-1821. Waco: Texian Press, 1969.
(Author’s note: Unfortunately, Florence Johnson Scott’s excellent books are out of print. They may be found in Valley libraries and in
the private collections of area historians.)
Stambaugh, J. Lee and Stambaugh, Lillian J. The Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas: Its Colonization and Industrialization, 1518-1953. Austin:
Jenkins Publishing Company, 1964. Reprinted 1974. (Detailed, well-researched reference work with good index. Out of print, but
can be found in Valley libraries.)
Valley Byliners. Gift of the Rio. Mission: Border Kingdom Press, 1975. (A collection of articles about Valley history by members of
writers’ group.)
Valley Byliners. Rio Grande Roundup. Mission: Border Kingdom Press, 1980. (About individuals who helped make Valley history.)
Valley Byliners: Roots by the River. Mission: Border Kingdom Press, 1978. (About the early pioneers of the area.)
(Author’s note: The three Valley Byliner books are no longer in print, but can be found in most Valley libraries.)
Webb, Walter Prescott. The Texas Rangers. Austin: UT Press, 1977. (A lively account of the heroic, wild and reckless Texas Rangers.)
Wooldridge, Ruby and Vezzetti, Robert. Brownsville: A Pictorial History. Norfolk: Donning Company, 1982. (Excellent photographic
history of Brownsville. Available at Brownsville museums and Brownsville Historical Association.)
Newspapers and Other Publications:
Brownsville Herald, Brownsville, Texas
McAllen Evening Monitor, McAllen, Texas
Mercedes Enterprise, Mercedes, Texas
Mid-Valley Town Crier, Weslaco, Texas
Raymondville Chronicle and Willacy County News, Raymondville, Texas
RGV Business, McAllen, Texas
San Benito News, San Benito, Texas
Upper Valley Progress, Mission, Texas
Valley Morning Star, Harlingen, Texas
Tip-O-Texan Magazine, Weslaco, monthly publication of the Rio Grande Valley Chamber of Commerce, 1965-1975.
Yearbook of the Lower Rio Grande Valley and Northern Mexico, 1945-1980.
Special Publications:
Chamber of Commerce Publications of Rio Grande Valley Cities
Heritage Foundation of Hidalgo County: Pumphouse News, 1993-2000.
Hester, A. F., Family History - draft. Compiled by Guy W. Jones, McAllen, and F. L. (Champ) Jones, Donna. Contains extensive
information and documents of the early days of Run (Runn) and Donna.
Hidalgo County Historical Commission: Newsletters, 1993-2000.
Hidalgo County: The Hidalgo County Centennial Celebration Book, 1952.
International Falcon Dam Souvenir Program, 1953.
Palo Alto Battlefield - The Battle of Palo Alto and the Mexican-American War. U.S. Government Printing Office for National Park Service,
U.S. Department of the Interior, 1994.
Southwestern Historical Quarterly, The State Historical Association, Vol. LXXVII, No. 2, October 1973
Old news clippings and special editions:
Advance News Publications
La Feria News
Mission Times
Pharr Press
Weslaco News
Sand Dollar Watch
Old Newspaper Clippings and Special Editions:
Encyclopedias and Handbooks:
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. William Benton, Publisher. The University of Chicago, 1972.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
192

Historia de México, Book 13. Mexico: Salvat Mexicana de Ediciones, S.A. de C.V., 1978.
The Handbook of Texas Online. A Joint Project of the General Libraries at the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas State Historical
Association. Austin: 1997-2000.
Photographs and Illustrations:
Special appreciation goes to the Hidalgo County Historical Commission for permission to use photographs from its archives and to
HCHC Chairman Bill Foerster for providing the photos on computer disks, and to Glenn Housley of Weslaco for sharing his collection
of early photos.
Thanks go to the Port Isabel Historical Museum and Treasures of the Gulf Museums, Port Isabel, for their outstanding exhibits, of
which photographs provided illustrations for the early historical eras. Thanks also go to the Brownsville Historical Association, Donna
Hooks Fletcher Museum, Donna; Hidalgo County Historical Museum, Edinburg; Rio Grande Valley Museum, Harlingen, and Weslaco
Bicultural Museum for sharing pictures and information from their collections.
Photographs and illustrations not otherwise credited are from the files of the Rio Grande Valley Partnership or the private collection
of the author and her late husband, Burt Johnson. Current photos were taken by the author during the preparation of the book.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Invaluable resources in the preparation of this book were Florence Johnson Scott’s Historical Heritage of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, J.
Lee Stambaugh and Lillian J. Stambaugh’s The Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, Brian Robertson’s Wild Horse Desert, Dr. Hubert Miller’s
Padre Miguel Hidalgo and Antonio de Mendoza, and A Shared Experience edited by Dr. Mario Sanchez for the Los Caminos del Rio Heritage
Project and the Texas Historical Commission. The bibliography lists these and other references, each of which provided useful information.
In addition to those who helped through the legacy of their writing, thanks go to the many persons who gave assistance and advice in
compiling this book. Area historians from Brownsville to Roma reviewed sections that pertained to their cities, and their contributions are
greatly appreciated.
Special thanks go to George R. Gause, Jr., and Virginia Haynie Gause, University of Texas-Pan American Library, for their interest and
assistance; to Ann Washington, Edinburg, for checking the work for historical accuracy; and to Dr. Craig Wiegand of Weslaco for his
careful review and editing of the manuscript.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
193

HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
194

SHARING THE HERITAGE
historic profiles of businesses,
organizations, and families that have
contributed to the development and
SPECIAL
THANKS TO
economic base of the Rio Grande Valley
JP Morgan Chase
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
EDUCATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
Paseo de la Resau
QUALITY OF LIFE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
THE MARKETPLACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
SHARING THE HERITAGE
195

HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
196

BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
the cities, towns, bridges, utilities, and
civic organizations that help to define and
support the Rio Grande Valley
City of Brownsville .....................................................................198
City of Harlingen .......................................................................202
City of Mercedes and
Economic Development Corporation of Mercedes ............................206
City of Mission ...........................................................................210
Town of South Padre Island ..........................................................214
City of McAllen ..........................................................................218
Greater Mission Chamber of Commerce ..........................................221
City of Donna ............................................................................222
City of Edcouch ..........................................................................224
City of Hidalgo and Hidalgo Economic Development Corporation........226
City of La Feria .........................................................................228
City of Pharr and Pharr Economic Development Corporation .............230
City of Raymondville...................................................................232
City of Roma..............................................................................234
City of San Benito ......................................................................236
City of Weslaco ..........................................................................238
The Brownsville & Matamoros Bridge Company ...............................240
Starr-Camargo Bridge Company ....................................................242
Magic Valley Electric Cooperative, Inc. ..........................................244
Pharr/Reynosa International Bridge ...............................................246
Valley International Airport .........................................................248
Rio Grande Valley Partnership ......................................................249
✧
Top: This distinctive city hall was built in
Mercedes in 1928. It has housed the police
and fire departments since a new city hall
was built.
COURTESY OF THE HCHC ARCHIVES.
Bottom: In 1952 the first causeway was
built to connect the mainland to the now
famous South Padre Island, until then
accessible only by boat and ferry. It had a
bridge that swung open so that boats plying
the Laguna Madre and barges using the
Intracoastal Canal could pass.
COURTESY OF GLENN HOUSLEY.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
197

✧
Above: Former Brownsville Mayor John S.
“Rip” Ford is shown in the Confederate
Colonel’s uniform he wore when he
commanded victorious Southern forces in
the last battle of the Civil War east of
Brownsville on May 13, 1865.
COURTESY OF THE BROWNSVILLE
HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
Below: Elizabeth Street, Brownsville’s main
street, is shown in this 1865 image. The
street is named after the wife of Charles
Stillman who was one of the earliest
developers in the city.
COURTESY OF THE BROWNSVILLE
HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
CITY OF
BROWNSVILLE
In 1770 the Spanish Crown granted José de
la Garza and his wife Gertrudis, the daughter of
pioneer Captain Blais Maria Falcon, fifty-nine
leagues of land north of the Rio Grande. For the
next seventy-five years, only small ranches
dotted the grasslands and thickets that were to
become the City of Brownsville.
In April 1846 General Zachary Taylor
established Fort Texas across the river from
Matamoros. Quickly built, the earthen walls of
Fort Texas enclosed an area designed to hold
five regiments. Mexican forces bombarded the
Fort on May 2, causing the death of its
commander Major Jacob Brown. Six days later,
the Battle of Palo Alto, the first engagement of
the Mexican American War took place north of
Fort Texas, pitting 2,300 American soldiers
against 4,000 Mexican troops. The next day, the
armies clashed at Resaca de la Palma, five miles
to the south, with the Mexican troops
retreating. The same day President James Polk
requested Congress to declare war on Mexico
for earlier acts of aggression.
The town of Brownsville rose around the
renamed Fort Brown as the war ended in
1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
that set the Rio Grande as the border between
the United States and Mexico. The property
rights of one-time Mexican citizens were
recognized; they could opt for Mexican or
American citizenship, but they would be
under American laws and English language.
Cameron County was established in 1848 and
Brownsville soon became the county seat.
After the war, Americans such as Charles
Stillman began purchasing land from Mexican
property owners. At Stillman’s request, surveyor
George Lyons drew a town site for the new town
of Brownsville, covering 4,676 acres, complete
with streets and lots on the land encircling Fort
Brown. Within a matter of months, Stillman and
his partners Simon Mussina and Samuel Beldon
had sold enough lots to create a town of two
thousand residents, a cosmopolitan mix of
French, Spanish, German, and American settlers
and their families. City Hall on Market Square,
circa 1851, is the oldest continuously occupied
City Hall west of the Mississippi.
By 1850, the Rio Grande had become the
region’s major highway, linking the Gulf Port of
Brazos Santiago to Brownsville and from there
to Rio Grande City and Roma using steam
boats designed for the shallow river. Richard
King and Mifflin Kenedy were among the
storied, successful riverboat captains. Many of
Brownsville’s famous names trace their roots to
this time. Francisco Yturria founded Yturria
Bank in Brownsville in 1854. William Neale
owned stage lines in the region. Strong
commercial, social and cultural ties to the twin
city of Matamoros were forged. Smuggling
remained a common way of moving goods
from one nation to the next.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
198

The religious needs of residents of
Brownsville and the surrounding areas were
served by Oblate priests visiting far-flung
ranches on horseback and by circuit riding
Protestant ministers. Methodist, Presbyterian
and Episcopal churches were established by
1851. Architect and Oblate Father Pierre
Keralum designed the Immaculate
Conception Church, a spired Gothic building,
completed in 1859. French nuns opened the
Incarnate Word Academy for young women in
1853 while public education and a
Presbyterian school began the next year. The
Oblate Fathers established St. Joseph’s
Academy in 1862.
The Civil War transformed Brownsville into
a major port as its strategic border location
presented the Confederacy with a lifeline. Being
the middleman for commerce brought
Brownsville prosperity and excitement.
Confederate farmers carted their cotton to
Brownsville and other crossing points in South
Texas to sell and ship it from the unblocked
Mexican port of Bagdad. Confederate forces
channeled guns, ammunition, and war materiel
north from Mexico through Brownsville. Soon
after Texas seceded from the Union in 1861, the
Federal troops at Fort Brown had surrendered
and Texas volunteers commanded by Colonel
John “Rip” Ford moved in. When rebel General
H. P. Bee abandoned Fort Brown in 1863 on the
threat of a Union attack, he set fires that
destroyed the Fort and much of Brownsville as
well. In July 1864 Colonel Ford claimed an
empty Fort Brown. On May 13, 1865, more
than a month after the Civil War ended, Ford
and Union Colonel Theodore Barrett clashed at
the Palomito Ranch near Brownsville, in what
was to be the last land battle of the Civil War.
General Phil Sheridan led the Reconstruction
efforts at Fort Brown, using local brick to create
buildings that endure to this day as part of The
University of Texas at Brownsville. Epidemics,
hurricanes, carpetbaggers, bandits and cattle
rustlers staggered Brownsville’s attempts to
reorganize after the war. Ranches in the area
grew steadily larger and became a mainstay of
the economy. In 1875 Texas Rangers arrived in
Brownsville and halted raids which were
relocating hundreds of thousands of American
cattle into Mexico.
In 1876 George Brulay began pump
irrigating one thousand acres of sugarcane near
Brownsville on the former Agostadero del
Espíritu land grant. Other farmers followed his
lead, building canals for irrigation to take
advantage of the delta’s fertile soil and creating
the agricultural expansion, which supported
Brownsville’s growth for decades.
When a railroad was built from Corpus
Christi to Laredo in 1876, Brownsville lost its
importance as a gateway to Mexico’s interior.
By 1903 railroad developer Uriah Lott had
secured funding and rights of way to
underwrite the construction of the St. Louis,
Brownsville and Mexico Rail Company.
Construction began in July 1903 with
✧
Top: Barrilleros, or water haulers, were
once a common sight on Brownsville streets.
For many local residents, these watermen
were the only source of drinking water. This
photograph dates from around 1865.
COURTESY OF THE BROWNSVILLE
HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
Above: Immaculate Conception Cathedral,
still standing, is shown in this 1868 image
taken from the balcony of the Old City
Market. The church was completed in 1854
and is the seat of the Catholic Diocese of
Brownsville.
COURTESY OF THE BROWNSVILLE
HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
199

✧
Above: A $6 million renovation has made
the Brownsville Municipal Golf Center one
of the premier golf courses in South Texas.
COURTESY OF CITY OF BROWNSVILLE.
Below: The City’s tree spade, shown here
outside the new $27 million U.S.
Courthouse complex, is helping to maintain
Brownsville’s image as the most heavilyforested
city in South Texas.
COURTESY OF CITY OF BROWNSVILLE.
projected costs of $12,500 per mile. Civil
engineer Sam Robertson was subcontracted to
lay the track, build bridges and surface the
railway. Beginning outside Robstown,
Robertson’s four-hundred-man crew cleared
the way across territory known as the Wild
Horse Desert and Desert of the Dead, through
chaparral savanna—thickets, cactus and sand,
rattlesnake nests, winter cold, and then
relentless heat. On July 4, 1904, the first
train chugged down the tracks to Brownsville
on an eleven-hour, forty-minute ride from
Corpus Christi. The renovated Southern
Pacific depot lives on today as the Historic
Brownsville Museum.
Transportation lines have been important
for the city’s development. The first
international bridge connecting Brownsville
and Matamoros opened for traffic in 1909.
More bandit raids and general lawlessness
brought U.S. National Guard troops to protect
the area between 1915 and 1917. In 1929
Charles Lindbergh landed in Brownsville on
the first Pan American flight from Mexico City
to the U.S. Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart
attended the dedication of the Brownsville
Municipal Airport on March 10, 1929.
Brownsville’s deep-water port evolved from a
vision of local shipper Louis Cobolini. The
formation of the Brownsville Navigation
District in 1928 on 201,668 acres preceded
the construction of the $5.6 million,
seventeen-mile long ship channel dug from
Brazos Santiago Pass to Brownsville’s new
turning basin which opened in 1936. Today
Brownsville’s international bridges, Veterans
International Bridge at Los Tomates, Gateway
and B&M, sustain the city’s historic
commercial and social ties to Matamoros.
With the Port of Brownsville, home of a large
shrimp fleet, the city can offer four modes of
cargo transportation: sea, as well as rail, land,
and air.
Brownsville, on the border by the sea, has
weathered hurricanes; peso devaluations and
population surges as it matured to a vibrant
city of 150,000 residents spread over sixty
square miles. It is home to the acclaimed
Gladys Porter Zoo, Stillman House Museum,
Historic Brownsville Museum, and the
Confederate Air Force Museum. Among the
city’s prized assets are the Brownsville Public
Library, a park system that maintains eighteen
parks and a newly-remodeled Brownsville
Golf Center golf course, and the Brownsville
Urban System, provider of economical mass
transportation. The University of Texas at
Brownsville/Texas Southmost College is an
integral part of the city’s educational and
cultural resources. Being the county seat,
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Brownsville is the site of county offices
and county and federal courthouses.
Brownsville’s economic base has diversified
although it maintains close ties to Mexican
manufacturing plants and cross-border trade.
Existing businesses are expanding and new
companies are locating in Brownsville, all
creating new jobs in the community.
The Charro Days Festival celebrates the
city’s heritage with parades, food, and fun in
late February. Events as varied as Diez y Seis
de Septiembre, Zoofari, Confederate Air Force
Air Fiesta, concerts, art exhibitions, lecture
series and the Christmas Tree Lighting add to
the excitement of Brownsville life. The city is
the birthplace of writer Américo Paredes and
Kris Kristofferson and has claimed as
residents Lew Wallace, Abner Doubleday,
Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Jefferson
Davis, and Juan Cortina.
The City of Brownsville draws on its
lively past to enhance its tourism industry and
to claim its place in the ranks of historic places
in Texas. The Brownsville Historical
Association/ Stillman House Museum has
deeded to the City the future home of the
Historic Education Center, which will
emphasize the historic importance of
Washington Street and the downtown area.
The Historic Brownsville Museum is enlarging
its facility and, nearby, the Brownsville Police
Department is working to open a Law
Enforcement Museum. The Brownsville Art
League operates an art museum, which
sponsors exhibitions throughout the year.
As time marches on, Brownsville is
emerging into it rightful place as a major
player-perhaps the major player—in South
Texas. It is a challenge and a future the
residents of the city accept gladly.
✧
Above: Soon-to-be-President George W.
Bush, 6th from left, joined Mexican
President Ernesto Zedillo, seventh from left,
to officially open the newest international
bridge in Brownsville, Veterans
International Bridge at Los Tomatoes.
COURTESY OF THE CITY OF BROWNSVILLE.
Below: Crowds swarm Gateway
International Bridge during an international
exchange of friendship that is a part of the
annual Charro Days Festival. The pre-
Lenten celebration has been a part of the
City of Brownsville since 1938.
COURTESY OF CITY OF BROWNSVILLE.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
201

CITY OF
HARLINGEN
For over one hundred years, the area now
known as Harlingen has been a key crossroads
in the Rio Grande Valley. Where once only
pioneers like the Jesus Saldaña family inhabited
the dense thickets of mesquite and huisache
along the Arroyo Colorado, today a city of
seventy-two thousand residents flourishes.
Lawyer and visionary Lon C. Hill, of
Beeville, Texas, began buying Cameron
County land in 1902: 11,007 acres from the
Commissioners Court, school lands, and a
parcel from Henrietta King, paying up to
$2.50 per acre. “These rich lands existed and
only awaited the putting of water on them to
make them fabulously productive,” Hill
wrote. He intended to sell farm tracts and
develop a town on the banks of the Arroyo
Colorado, but soon shifted the town site west
to run along the new railroad tracks, at the
spot railroad construction crews called
Rattlesnake Junction. By 1904, three hundred
people lived in the area, enough to warrant a
post office, which was named Harlingen. The
new town’s namesake was a canal-encircled
Dutch town, the ancestral home of railroad
president Uriah Lott.
Harlingen was little more than a whistlestop
when the first train of the Brownsville,
St. Louis, and Matamoros Railway passed
through on July 4, 1904. “During village days,
train time was the event of the day; everybody
met the train,” an early settler remembered.
Most of the men in the area were Texas
Rangers, United States Mounted Customs
Patrol officers, and construction workers.
They set up target ranges near the railway
station and often were blazing away when the
train pulled in, prompting the conductor’s call
of “All out for Six Shooter Junction.”
In 1905 the Hill family moved into
Harlingen’s first home. Fourteen students
were schooled in a nearby building. Early
settlers included the James Lockhart, J. C.
McBee, A. W. Weller and Santos Lozano
families. Lozano bought the first lot sold on
Jackson Street and built a general store with
living quarters upstairs in 1906. Mrs. Weller
managed the two-story railroad hotel at Van
Buren and what is now First Street. Between
the railroad tracks and the Weller home (site
of the present City Hall), the brush was still so
thick in 1907 that it was impossible to see the
train pass. In that area, handmade bricks from
Hill’s kiln on the Arroyo Colorado were used
to construct the city’s first brick structure.
Nearby Harlingen State Bank occupied the
first floor of a building, which had sleeping
rooms for canal riders upstairs. Not far away
was the Prisoner’s Tree where lawbreakers
were restrained by heavy trace chains until
they could be taken to the county jail.
By 1907, Hill had created an irrigation
company able to supply water to seventy-five
thousand acres, and he began recruiting
settlers to purchase the rich farmland. April
15, 1910, marks the official founding of the
City of Harlingen. The city’s first project was
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
202

to build a water system to replace the muledrawn
water carts. By 1912, the city’s first
school, known as Main School and later as
Central Ward and Sam Houston, was
constructed on East Jackson. Bandit raids
disturbed the region’s social and economic
progress during 1915-1917, burning the Hill
sugar mill and causing many to flee the area.
By 1919, stability prevailed and the city
banned wooden buildings, set a 10 P. M.
curfew for children, and enforced a speed
limit of 15 miles per hour for automobiles.
Land development continued to boom
with trainloads of land parties arriving from
northern states almost daily. Thousands of
small vegetable tracts and citrus groves were
sold in and around Harlingen and at Adams
Gardens, Rangerville and Stuart Place. The
Arroyo Colorado was dredged. Cotton,
sugarcane, and vegetables were the reasons
for Harlingen’s prosperity. Celebrating this
agricultural bounty, the Valley Mid-Winter
Fair began in 1920 and was attracting crowds
of 90,000 by 1950. The Art Deco city
auditorium was built and provided a stage for
luminaries such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Lily
Pons, and Sally Rand.
In the 1920s cotton fields were converted
to residential districts as the city grew. The
Silk Stocking district of fine homes built along
Taylor Street is now part of the Harlingen
Heritage Trail. The swelling population
required more schools, among them the
unique Bowie Elementary School with its
colorful sculpted frieze of snakes, recalling
ancient myths of snakes that embodied
wisdom and knowledge.
Although the 1933 hurricane drowned the
city, and freezes, floods, and Depression bank
failures battered it, Harlingen rebounded. The
city changed forever with the start of World
War II and the creation of an aerial gunner-
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
203

training center at Harlingen Army Air Field,
which later became Harlingen Air Force Base.
The Port of Harlingen opened in 1952 and
began barging Valley sugar and grain north.
By the city’s fiftieth birthday celebration in
1960, the population was over thirty-eight
thousand. But two years later, Harlingen Air
Force Base closed. With fourteen hundred
vacant houses blighting the economy,
community leaders enticed midwestern
retirees to settle in Harlingen’s subtropical
environment. In one year, the program sold
six hundred houses. Since that time,
Harlingen and the Rio Grande Valley has been
a magnet for thousands of Winter Texans from
the Midwest and Canada. The community
spirit and volunteerism that resurrected
Harlingen then have kept the city vibrant and
primed for the twenty-first century. Twenty
citizen advisory boards contribute to the
community’s welfare by participating in
decisions about the airport, library, youth
services, community development, planning,
traffic safety and much more.
The North American Free Trade Agreement
stimulated increased economic ties with
Mexico and border businesses for Harlingen
and all of South Texas. The 1993 opening of
the Free Trade International Bridge just south
of the city at Los Indios reaffirmed Harlingen’s
position as the Rio Grande Valley’s transportation
hub and permitted rapid crossing of
goods and passengers between the two countries.
The city’s Valley International Airport
offers daily flights by major airlines and
records the most passenger boardings in the
region. It is also the home base of major
express freight and parcel cargo carriers. The
expanded intersection of Highways 77 and 83
foreshadows the arrival of Interstate 69 and
further emphasis on the distribution and
logistics aspects of international trade.
Harlingen’s central location consistently
attracts service and industrial corporations to
its Industrial Parks. Park tenants comprise a
balanced group of industrial components
manufacturer, commercial suppliers, food
processing facilities and industrial services
companies. Agricultural products remain a
significant though lessened part of the economy
with sugarcane, citrus, and grain being
shipped from Harlingen to points north and
into Mexico.
The health services industry is a significant
part of the city’s economy with Valley Baptist
Health System now Harlingen’s largest
employer and with healthcare and related
services destined to play even greater roles in
the future. The Regional Academic Health
Center of The University of Texas Health
Science Center-San Antonio, slated to train
third and fourth year medical students, has
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
204

already changed the city’s landscape and outlook.
Additional medical facilities and clinics
are under construction.
Harlingen’s natural resources, particularly
wildlife and habitat, have catapulted the city
into the forefront of eco-tourism. Its Rio
Grande Valley Birding Festival, founded in
1994, draws birders from all over the world to
see the Great Kiskadee, the official city bird,
along with flocks of red-crowned parrots,
plain chachalacas, and other unique species.
The Arroyo Hike & Bike Trail enables residents
and visitors to bike and walk along the
Arroyo Colorado near the city’s forty acre bird
sanctuary, Harlingen Thicket. The city’s 25
parks and recreation facilities include softball
and soccer fields, tennis courts, swimming
pools, picnic shelters, playgrounds, gardens,
and the Tony Butler Golf Course. The White
Wings baseball team of the Texas-Louisiana
League draws enthusiastic family crowds to
Harlingen Field for the summer season.
Cultural and entertainment options for
Harlingen visitors and residents are numerous.
At Marine Military Academy, the inspiring
Iwo Jima Memorial is in fact the mold
from which the famous statue at Arlington
National Cemetery was cast. Harlingen’s
downtown Jackson Street Antique District
offers a combination of unique shops and
cafes for pleasurable browsing and dining.
Over a dozen murals by local and regional
artists are displayed throughout the city. Rio
Grande Valley Museum, Harlingen Art
Forum, the spacious Harlingen Public Library,
and Texas Air Museum in nearby Rio Hondo
all enlighten and educate the public with permanent
and rotating exhibitions. Harlingen
Performing Arts Theatre, Harlingen Municipal
Auditorium and numerous event centers present
a diverse array of expositions, concerts,
performances and workshops year-round. Rio
Fest-the city’s annual arts festival, Jackson
Street Jubilee, and other special events celebrate
the city’s heritage, its resources and its
sub-tropical climate.
Harlingen’s twenty-three elementary and
four middle schools, Keys Academy, and
Harlingen High School and Harlingen High
School South have an enrollment of over
16,900 students and graduate approximately
750 annually. Texas State Technical College-
Harlingen is renown for its technology and
healthcare programs and the customized training
courses it develops for businesses.
Throughout Harlingen’s first ninety years,
its residents have celebrated their city’s past
while enjoying an enviable quality of life in
deep South Texas. As part of their city’s
dynamic future, they anticipate Harlingen
thriving and becoming an even better place to
live, work, visit, and invest.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
205

CITY OF
MERCEDES AND
ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT
CORPORATION OF
MERCEDES
Located in the heart of the beautiful Rio
Grande Valley, Mercedes is a dynamic
community that offers a variety of opportunities
to business, industry and families. Centrally
located in this dynamic area of South Texas,
Mercedes is ideally situated to attract customers
from all parts of the Valley and northern
Mexico. Its business community, residents and
visitors are served by an expanding industrial
park, as well as several new public facilities,
including new schools, new pavilions and
expanded library, with a new police department
also proposed.
Situated just sixty-five miles from South
Padre Island and sixty miles from Rio Grande
City, Mercedes is, itself, the center of a
bustling economy and natural attractions that
continue to bring new residents and
thousands of visitors. Its proximity to other
cities and attractions is of inestimable value
for business and personal convenience.
Highway mileage figures reveal that Mercedes
is just 10 miles from Harlingen; 20 from
McAllen; 150 from Corpus Christi; 250 from
San Antonio; and only 5 miles away is their
border neighbor, Nuevo Progreso, Mexico.
Mercedes has an annual average
temperature of seventy-two degrees
Fahrenheit, a winter average of fifty, with the
semi-tropical climate featuring short, mild
winters. During the summer months, the
effect of the city’s ninety-seven-degree average
temperature is eased by offshore winds from
the Gulf of Mexico. Annual precipitation
averages eighteen to twenty inches.
Tourism is an important industry, and the
many visitors especially enjoy the luxury and
convenience of traveling and shopping in
Mexico, as displays along the streets of
neighboring Nuevo Progreso blend a festive,
holiday atmosphere with outstanding shopping
opportunities featuring leather goods, clothing,
and fine handmade silver jewelry. Travelers who
plan to go farther into Mexico will reach the
cosmopolitan, high-tech market of Monterrey,
just three hours away, along a recently
constructed express highway.
Mercedes offers a wide variety of
recreational opportunities in an area
described as “a golfer’s paradise” featuring two
eighteen-hole courses of challenging terrain.
Those who prefer the lure of sea and shore
will find a beautiful natural playground at
South Padre Island.
Strong leadership, an aggressive business
environment and a diverse culture, all of which
combine with the strategic location to offer
outstanding commercial opportunities as well
as a warm and welcoming environment for
tourists, enhance the city. With a pro-business
philosophy welcoming the opportunity to meet
the demands of manufacturing and processing
industries, the city accommodates a rapidly
expanding economy and a growing population.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
206

As a result, Mercedes has become a key
competitor in the region’s economy, offering
access to a highly trainable workforce, as well
as other benefits to attract businesses of all
types. Among the many exciting industrial
development projects available is a fifty-acre
industrial park located off Expressway 83.
Other incentives available to business
and industry include a citywide Enterprise
Zone, the Rio Grande Valley Empowerment
Zone, and a comprehensive incentives policy
offered by the Economic Development
Corporation of Mercedes.
Favorable tax rates and standard
exemptions and credits are other advantages.
Like other Texas areas, Mercedes levies no
state property tax. Local governments and
special taxing districts levy taxes on real and
tangible personal property, based on a
hundred percent assessment ratio. Sales taxes
of 8.25 percent locally and 6.25 percent
statewide are in effect, along with an annual
report franchise of 4.5 percent.
Readily available air, highway, and rail traffic
ensures easy, economical access of production
supplies and the transport of products to other
areas. Mercedes’ own Rebel Field, which has a
thirty-three-hundred-foot paved runway, as
well as commercial service at Valley
International in Harlingen and McAllen
International, are available for transport and
travel. Airlines serving the area include
Southwest, Continental, and American, as well
as private air and helicopter service. Surface
transportation is via U.S. Highways 83, 281,
and 77; with the nearest Interstate Highways
being IH 37 and IH 35. Union Pacific (MOPAC)
provides rail shipment.
Central Power and Light Company/Magic
Valley Co-op provides electric power, with
detailed information regarding this service
available from the Mercedes Economic
Development Corporation. Southwestern Bell
provides telecommunications and Southern
Union Gas Company is the gas distributor.
Water, sewer, industrial waste and solid waste
disposal services are all readily available.
Educational and cultural resources for the
employee families of Mercedes’ businesses
and industries are of outstanding quality.
Mercedes was the first city in the Valley to
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
207

provide public library service. Residents of all
ages have access to numerous public and
private learning institutions that meet a wide
range of educational needs. Of the sixteen
school districts located within the county, the
largest is Mercedes Independent School
District, which serves an enrollment of more
than six thousand. The district’s nine
campuses include five elementaries, one
junior high, and three high schools. With a
student-teacher ratio of twenty-two to one,
Mercedes ISD graduates approximately 362
students annually. The varied course offerings
run the gamut, ranging from vocational
training to special educational programs that
are available in the South Texas High School
for Health Professions and the South Texas
High School for Math and Science.
Abundant facilities for higher education
are also available, including the South Texas
Community College campus in Mercedes. The
University of Texas Pan American, the largest
institution of higher education south of San
Antonio, is just thirty-eight miles away. The
state’s tenth largest university, UT Pan
American has been in operation for seventy
years. Other schools offering advanced
educational opportunities are Texas State
Technical College at Harlingen, ten miles
away; South Texas Vo-Tech at Weslaco, only
one mile from Mercedes; and another campus
of South Texas Community College, located
twenty miles away in McAllen.
A city with a rich history that reaches back
over two hundred years, as well as an attractive
present and even brighter future, Mercedes was
first settled by ranchers before 1780, as part of
the 1790 Llano Grande Spanish land grant
issued to Juan Jose Hinojosa de Balli. Ranching
remained important to the area’s economy
through the next century.
In 1904 a local land promoter who owned
forty-five thousand acres cleared a portion of
the property, including the present site of
Mercedes. As part of this project a town was
laid out. First named Capisallo, the name was
later changed to Lonsboro, and finally, after
the company’s sale to the American Rio
Grande Land and Irrigation Company, was rechristened
Mercedes in 1907, honoring the
wife of Mexican President Porfirio Diaz.
Prospective buyers were brought to the
town, which was the first stop on the Sam
Fordyce Branch of the St. Louis and
Brownsville Railroad.
Although the company aggressively sought
buyers, care was taken to ensure a sound
economy, with stringent rules for
development, including requirements that
business buildings be constructed of stone,
brick or concrete and cost a minimum of
$3,000, and residences cost at least $2,000.
In 1907 and 1908, local farmers began to
realize the potential of the area as an
agricultural mecca, with grape, citrus fruit
and vegetable culture ushering in a new era.
Mercedes produced the first bale of cotton in
the United States for the 1910-1911 season.
By 1914 Mercedes farmers were growing
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
208

alfalfa, okra, squash, parsley, radishes, corn,
beets, carrots, and kohlrabi. The first annual
corn show was held in 1912, by which time
Mercedes shipped large quantities of corn to
Argentina. The Mercedes Corn Mill was
installed in 1914, to grind corn for meal or
chops, as well as grinding oats and other
grains for feed.
In addition to agriculture, many other
factors have contributed to the local economy
at various times in Mercedes’ history. During
World War I, an estimated fifteen thousand
soldiers were stationed nearby at two Army
camps. This may have influenced the 1918
city council’s decision to prohibit speaking of
the German language in any Mercedes school,
or the use of that language in advertising,
preaching, entertaining or lecturing.
Oil was discovered in the Mercedes field in
1935, adding another facet to the economy.
By the early 1950s, Mercedes had become a
marketing center for cotton, vegetables and
livestock, and had attracted such related
industries as meatpacking, box making, and
farm chemical manufacturing. Construction
of a new international bridge at the Progreso
bend of the Rio Grande boosted tourism and
attracted many “Winter Texans,” who
continue to be of great economic importance.
Among Mercedes’ major employers today
are several companies that have been in
business here for generations. These include
H&H Foods, which has operated here
successfully since 1917, and has positioned
itself on the cutting edge of technology, from
production to distribution of its specialty
meats and prepared foods.
As site of the annual Rio Grande Live Stock
Show and Rodeo, Mercedes has several boot
manufacturers, including Rios of Mercedes
Boot Company, which provides customers
with outstanding handmade boots that meet
the most demanding standards of good looks,
good fit and long life.
Other major employers and their products
include: Chiquita Brands (melons and citrus
products), Queen City Laundry (a uniform
company), Anderson Bean Boot Co., Borden’s
Inc. (dairy products), NSC Corporation
(plastics), C&C Bakery, Inc. (tortillas), HEB
Food Store, Magic Valley Electric Company,
Mercedes ISD, Lily of the Desert (Aloe Vera
products), Mrs. Baird’s Bread (baked goods)
and FINSA Development Group.
Cooperating and collaborating at
unprecedented levels, broad segments of the
Mercedes community have come together to
create a community-driven strategic plan
designed to identify key issues, develop a vision,
set goals and determine strategies for pursuing
sustainable development.
The resulting determination, teamwork and
consensus reflects the dreams and values that
make up the “Today and Tomorrow” Strategic
Plan of Mercedes, combining all facets of the
community improvement process.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
209

CITY OF
MISSION
✧
La Lomita Chapel.
Noted as a winter resort and retirement
area, as well as being the heart of the citrus
industry of the Rio Grande Valley, the City of
Mission is also known as the site of numerous
bicultural tourist attractions, including La
Lomita Mission, the Shary Building, the
Border Theater, Rio Theatre (Institute of Art),
and the William Jennings Bryan home.
La Lomita dates back to about 1865, when
the Oblate of Mary Immaculate Fathers,
assisted by Rene Guyard’s ranch hands, built a
small adobe chapel on Guyard’s ranch. A small
adobe house built soon afterward allowed the
priests to rest from their long rides. The chapel
of La Lomita provided an excellent meeting
place for the Fathers, who arrived there
simultaneously to exchange news and letters.
The Oblates continued to visit the chapel
and administer the sacraments for many
years. The adobe building eventually fell victim
to decay, and was demolished about 1885.
In 1889 Fathers Francis Bugnard and
Pescheur, with the help of Lay Brothers Van
Blaer and Curand, built a 16 by 30-foot
chapel over ruins of the old building. Built of
sandstone from the nearby hill, it featured a
double-door front entrance, six windows, and
a side entrance left of the altar.
The mission closed about 1904, and
Oblates moved their activities to the new town
of Mission in 1911, abandoning the old
chapel. Restoration efforts were undertaken in
1928, as a tribute to past missionary work and
as a shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe. A room
was added, and an old statue of St. Joseph and
a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe were
obtained. Work continued slowly until 1933,
when a hurricane damaged the chapel and
grounds. The Texas Centennial observance in
1936 brought another restoration effort,
allowing public access to the chapel that year.
In 1949 the Oblates of Mary Immaculate
celebrated the first 100 years of missionary work
in Texas, with La Lomita among the old chapels
along the river to be rebuilt, though the rectory
and other buildings were beyond salvaging.
Restoration of the outbuildings was
proposed in 1958 as a joint civic and religious
effort, with plans based on a 1909 photo of the
mission station. The La Lomita Mission and
Park Corporation were created to restore and
preserve the station, and to operate a public
park there. This group has made some
improvements and has provided for general
upkeep of the shrine, though much remains to
be done.
The chapel is presently in good repair, the
fenced property is well kept, picnic tables are
provided nearby, and a new statue of the Blessed
Virgin Mary is located behind the chapel.
A Texas Historical Survey Committee
plaque on the chapel’s facade reads:
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
210

“First chapel, 1865; Present Chapel, 1889.
Headquarters 1865-1904 for missionary
Oblate Fathers in Hidalgo County.”
The fifty-five-year-old Shary Building, once
the center of land sales, irrigation, and canal
work, the citrus industry in South Texas, and
numerous other commercial enterprises, now
houses offices of the City of Mission. John J.
Conway and John H. Shary, the two men most
closely associated with Mission’s development,
successively had their headquarters here. Shary,
the father of commercial citrus development in
the Lower Rio Grande Valley was chairman of
the board that completed the inland waterway
to Brownsville from Corpus Christi. He owned
and sold more than 50,000 acres of Valley land
for an average of $50 per acre, and with an
associate, also developed and sold an even
larger area west of Corpus Christi.
The two-story, Spanish-style Shary Building,
was designed by Harvey P. Smith, a San Antonio
architect, with much of the architectural
engineering on the site done by H. H. Ewing,
the United Irrigation chief engineer. The 64-by
-68-foot building was constructed of white
Bondexed brick with white stone trimming, a
red tile roof, and floors of tile over concrete.
Plans for the building were announced
December 2, 1938, with the expressed hope of
starting construction by December 20, but
ground was not broken until January 20. The
building contract went to Shary’s good friend, J.
E. Walsh of Walsh Lumber Company, and
required 150 days, rather than the ninety days
originally estimated. It succeeded the old
Mission Canal Office, which housed the
Conway-Hoit organization from 1907-15, and
was then headquarters for the Shary businesses.
The older building, which was adjacent to the
new, remained until after the Shary Building’s
completion, to allow various company officers
to make a single move.
After its dedication on June 22, 1939, the
building housed the offices of several Shary
companies. John H. Shary’s private office on
the second floor was next to the general office
of the Shary-Maddox Company. Downstairs
were Texas Citrus Fruit Growers Exchange
and Shary Products Company.
The building was purchased by the City of
Mission from former Texas Governor Allen
Shivers and his wife, Marialice Shary Shivers,
in 1960, fifteen years after Shary’s death. With
the exception of one major addition—the city
hall meeting room constructed in 1979 under
the administration of Mayor Arnaldo
Ramirez—the building’s exterior remains
much as it was in 1938.
The Border Theater in Mission, noted for
its decorative artwork, features murals
depicting the bicultural heritage of the Rio
Grande Valley. This is the fifth and most
beautiful movie house to be built by Mr. and
Mrs. R.N. Smith, pioneer Rio Grande Valley
theater owners.
One of the Border Theater’s mural depicts
typical Mexican figures with homes
untouched by the arrival of settlers from the
✧
Top: Shary Building/City Hall.
Above: The William Jennings Bryan home.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
211

✧
Above: Border Theatre.
Below: Rio Theatre.
north. The other portrays covered wagons
weaving toward a crude little mission near the
border, a copyrighted scene of The Santa Fe,
New Mexico, Weavers of McCropssen
Manufacturing Company, which gave
permission for its use in the mural
Thanks to ingenious craftsmanship, simulated
lampposts spaced along the mural walls,
project “black” light from lanterns, even when
the auditorium is darkened for a movie. This
brings into prominent relief the three-dimensional
principal figures, which have been
brushed with fluorescent paint. E. Risser, a
Dallas artist known for theater decoration
throughout the Southwest, who worked with
the King Scenic Company of Dallas, created
the murals. Similar murals were painted in an
Alice theater, which is no longer in existence.
The Border Theater, designed by architect
William J. Moore of Dallas, accommodated
500 patrons on the auditorium’s ground floor
and 240 in the balcony. A fifteen-ton air
conditioner cooled the entire building,
including not only the auditorium and
second-floor offices for the Smiths’ five
theaters, but also two apartments and Foster’s
Jewelry Store. Separate units cooled another
store and Dr. Ottis Walker’s clinic.
At the formal opening of the theater on
April 3, 1942, John H. Drake, manager of the
Mission Chamber of Commerce, was emcee.
Mission Mayor Logan Duncan and Chamber
President D. W. Cott offered congratulations;
and theater Manager J. S. Thompson, general
contractor George Holiday, and a phalanx of
subcontractors were recognized.
In 1952 the movie screen was enlarged to
show Cinemascope films. Television’s
popularity in the 1950s led Smith to begin
selling off his theaters. Estell Theaters
purchased the Border, which was sold later to
Stanley Warner Theaters, then to Theater
Management Corporation of Dallas. About
1978 Hector Garza of Mission and his aunt,
Concepcion Gavilan of Rio Grande City,
bought the theater and operated it until early
1992. Long-time local managers were Gus
Hoenschied and Baldemar Guttierez.
Mr. and Mrs. Bill Long purchased the
building in 1995. It still stands at 905 North
Conway, Mission, as a monument to its
builders and subsequent owners, remaining
in very nearly the same condition as when it
was opened.
Mission’s Rio Theatre, which began as a brick
building called Teatro La Paz (Peace Theater),
has proud history in unification and enrichment
of the city’s Mexican Americans, reflecting the
community’s bicultural character. Many families
who came to the area from Mexico during the
Mexican Revolution of 1910, as well as those
who remained on their land when this part of
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
212

Tamaulipas became a part of the United States in
1848, utilized facilities of the Teatro La Paz to
continue their artistic expression.
Distinguished visitors from Mexico and
others in exile in Texas, included Jose
Vasconcelos, later Mexico’s minister of education;
Nemecio Garcia Naranjo, historian, journalist
and playwright; Jose Manrique, political figure
and governor of Tamaulipas, Mexico, presented
lectures on a wide variety of subjects.
Juan Bautista Barbera, a bricklayer by
trade, who emigrated in 1905 from Miravet,
near Tarragon, Catalan, Spain, to Brownsville,
built the theater. Barbera first built a frame
theater, the Concordia, and then constructing
La Paz, the theater for which he would best be
remembered. In later years he added the
adjacent buildings, and tried his hand at a
variety of enterprises, including operation of a
drug store, bowling alley, and pool hall.
During the Depression, the building was used
to deliver food to needy families.
In 1981 recollections, 101-year-old Mission
pioneer Tiburcio Femat mentioned the theater’s
outside balcony from which the grito was given
on the eve of Mexico’s Independence Day. The
16th of September Fiesta Queen was crowned
here, young ladies of the community were
presented in concert, and a Mexican poet was
recognized in a velada of his poems.
Felipe Garza, who lived across the street
from the theater, remembered graceful arches
at its entrance, and many performances
presented there in its heyday. Other Mission
residents recalled programs featuring
traveling artists from Spain and Mexico,
classic plays, such as Don Juan Tenorio, La
Llorona, and Malditas Sean Las Muieres. On
special nights dedicated to the artists, the
audience brought gifts showing their affection
and appreciation.
During the silent film era, Barbera obtained
movies from Unique Film Service in Houston,
with the 1916 theater equipment including a
ten-horsepower Douglas gas engine, a dynamo,
a five-kilowatt Edison moving picture machine
and 250 theater chairs.
In 1945 Enrique Flores, Sr., bought the theater,
and changed the name to Rio Theater. He
and his wife operated it for many years, willing
it and the adjacent buildings to Enrique Flores
Jr. for continued operation as a theater and art
center. The Xochil Art Institute, a non-profit
organization, was formed, but dissolved after
the death of the two artists most closely associated
with the building. Today La Paz is a cultural
center, housing a restaurant, art gallery,
and theater performances.
The William Jennings Bryan winter home
at Mission is another of the sites of historical
interest. Bryan, a three-time presidential
candidate (1896, 1900, and 1908) and wellknown
celebrity, came to Mission as part of a
promotional plan by developers John J.
Conway and John Closner to attract northern
and Midwestern farmers to the area.
Conway gave Bryan, who was an old
friend, 160 acres of land located several miles
northeast of Mission, on which Bryan built a
winter home in which he resided during two
winters. The promotion, which was designed
to garner publicity, was apparently successful,
as a number of regional newspapers published
stories and photos of the gift.
After his appointment by President
Woodrow Wilson as Secretary of State in
1913, Bryan, who was not wealthy, sold the
home in order to buy a residence near
Washington, D.C. Following his resignation
from public service, he retired to Florida.
✧
Father Roy Snipes, OMI, and his
dog Magna with La Lomita Chapel in
the background.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
213

TOWN OF
SOUTH PADRE
ISLAND
From the Queen Isabella Causeway arching
over the Laguna Madre, visitors to South
Padre Island see a paradise stretched before
them like a pot of white gold. Cradled
between the Gulf of Mexico and the bay, the
subtropical barrier island has welcomed
shipwrecked Spanish explorers, pioneer
ranchers and pirates. Today palm-fringed
South Padre welcomes families and friends for
fun-filled year-round vacations. The Island’s
resort hotels and family condos, upscale
restaurants and fast food havens, unique
boutiques and miles of pristine beaches add
to the magic of South Texas’ mild, dry winters
and balmy summers.
On South Padre, there’s time to build sand
castles, seek sea shells, dine out, explore sand
dunes and indulge in dozens of other island
past times. Nothing in the world can compare
to the heaven of lounging under a beach
umbrella, soothed by the sound of waves
touching the shore.
To show its commitment to having all
visitors relax and enjoy themselves, the Town
of South Padre Island has made it illegal to
wear a tie on the Island.
The first inhabitants of South Padre Island
were nomadic Karankawa Indians. In 1519
Spanish explorer Alonso de Piñeda named the
one-half mile wide island Isla Blanca. Over the
next three hundred years, Spanish fleets laden
with gold and silver from Mexican mines
occasionally sank during storms off the coast,
leaving castaways on the island and riches
strewn along the beach. Even today after a
storm, flotsam of long-ago shipwrecks washes
ashore or is uncovered by waves. Those
treasure galleons plying the Gulf attracted
pirates from many nations. Legend has it that
ships of the notorious Jean Lafitte made
landfall on the island and the pirates buried
treasure chests which have never been found.
In 1804 Padre José Nicolas Ballí received
the island as a land grant from King Charles
IV of Spain and established the first settlement.
He is the “Padre” the island’s name honors
and his statue greets visitors at the foot of
the causeway. In 1861 early island resident
John Singer, of the sewing machine family,
buried $62,000 in coins and jewelry on the
Rancho Santa Fe before he fled from the
advancing Confederate army. When the
Singers returned in 1865, shifting sand had
erased all traces of their treasure trove.
Somewhere on the island, a sand dune still
protects the long-lost Money Hill.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
214

For the next century the island’s only
visitors arrived by private boat or the ferry
from Port Isabel. In 1973 the township of
South Padre Island was incorporated and the
first causeway was built connecting the
mainland to island playground.
The island slowly added lodgings and now
offers hundreds of hotel rooms and over
4,000 condominium units so there is
something to suit everyone’s lifestyle and
budget. The Island has won the People’s
Choice Award for the Best Vacation Value in
Texas. Restaurants for fine dining or just a
quick bite provide a taste of fresh Gulf shrimp
and the bay’s bounty of flounder. With
Mexico only twenty-five miles away, authentic
south of the border dishes enliven many
menus. Island shops stocked with beach
essentials, trinkets and marvels help draw
ever more Padre-devotees, who now number
over three million annually. But for all its
popularity, South Padre can often feel like a
private getaway whether visitors are staying
in luxurious penthouses, cozy beach cottages
or camping at Andy Bowie County Park.
Stretching north of town, twenty-nine miles
of sand dunes covered by beach plums and
waving oat grass are inhabited only by turtles,
shore birds, lizards and a few coyotes. With
the surf curling on the east and the bay
lapping on the west, South Padre’s dunes are
perfect for private walks, surf casting,
swimming or playing at castaway.
Wildlife has its own South Padre Island
paradise at the Laguna Madre Nature Trail,
next to the Convention Centre. The fifteenhundred-foot
boardwalk crosses four acres of
wetlands giving visitors the opportunity to
view over three hundred species of birds, like
the startling pink roseate spoonbill along with
herons, kingfishers and a resident alligator.
The nearby Warbler Rest Stop attracts
migratory birds and butterflies. Rare
Peregrine falcons can often be spotted high
on condo roofs, looking for prey while brown
and white pelicans patrol the shallow bay.
Dolphins love South Padre, too. They are seen
regularly near the jetties in Isla Blanca Park,
diving and leaping in family groups. Ecocruises
and dolphin watching trips provide
close-ups at the sleek swimmers.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
215

✧
Above: World-class fishing attracts
thousands to South Padre Island each year.
Below: Dune buggies are a popular way to
see the sights of South Padre Island.
Ila Loetscher founded Sea Turtle, Inc., dedicated
to the conservation of endangered sea
turtles on South Padre in 1977. The Turtle
Lady for years presented educational shows
featuring Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles that she
had rescued and the organization continues
those presentations. The University of Texas-
Pan American’s Coastal Studies Lab and its
displays of starfish and crabs and sea life is
open to the public for viewing and touching
inside Isla Blanca Park.
World-class fishing attracts thousands to
the Island. From the jetties, piers, and the
beach and from party boats and private
offshore charters, fishing South Padre
presents an endless array of challenges for
more than sixty years. The five-day Texas
International Fishing Tournament has been a
friendly fishing competition with bay, offshore
and tarpon divisions. More than twelve
hundred anglers cast their eyes on the prizes
for landing redfish, flounder, sea trout,
snapper, grouper, marlin, tarpon, and sailfish.
Drifting through the shallow bay of the
Laguna Madre, anglers sight fish for speckled
trout and redfish in the crystal clear water,
and are able to set down a lure or fly right in
front of the fish. The Laguna reportedly has
more fish per acre than any other Texas bay.
The Ladies Kingfish Tournament in August
brings in competitors eager to try their skill
and luck on the Island’s impressive game fish.
Spectator sports include watching local
shrimp trawlers and fishing vessels pass through
the ship channel next to Isla Blanca Park.
Water adventures include windsurfing,
banana boat rides, hobie cat, and catamaran
charters, sail boating, jet ski and wave runner
rentals, parasailing and fishing. Lessons and
equipment are available for these sports as
well as for scuba and snorkeling. Sunset
cruises on the bay can be the perfect ending to
a perfect day.
On land, the thrills of water parks,
miniature golf, and go-kart runs amuse and
entertain all ages. To move on down Padre
Boulevard, rent a surrey, bicycles, roller blades,
scooter, make tracks with a beach buggy or
hop The Wave, the Island’s free trolley. For a
back to nature sensation, sign up for a
horseback ride down the beach in the early
morning, at mid-day or at sunset. The South
Padre Island Golf Club at Laguna Vista features
challenging terrain on an eighteen-hole par 72
championship course. Brownsville and Rancho
Viejo also have public golf courses.
Sand Castle Days in October celebrate the
artistry and the fun of sand. Festivals are
frequent on South Padre. Catch the Windsurf
Blowout, the Kite Festival, the Bike Fest and
Motorcycle Rally, and beach volleyball
tournaments. The Ruff Rider Regatta sets sail
every summer, racing north from South
Padre. Over the causeway in Port Isabel, the
Championship Shrimp Cook-off along with
the Lighthouse Park and historic museums
are all closely tied to the Island’s present
and past.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
216

The South Padre Island Convention Centre
is a destination in itself with the colorful sea
life mural, Wyland Whaling Wall No. 53. The
Centre hosts body building competitions, arts
and crafts exhibitions, trade shows and
conferences, reunions, conventions and
market days.
For years South Padre Island has been a
Spring Break mecca for students from the U.S.
and Canada.
Fireworks over the bay on summer nights
add to the already festive mood of the Island.
After watching fireworks or equally
spectacular sunsets over the Laguna Madre,
visitors head to colorful nightspots for music
and dancing. The lively bars and restaurants,
both bayside and beach side, include Island
institutions like Scampis, Blackbeards, South
Padre Brew Pub, and Louie’s Backyard with
bungee jumping.
The Island’s only historic building, the Old
Coast Guard Station, boasts a distinctive New
England-style look out tower. The building is
now the home of the South Padre Island
Center offering academic and personal
enrichment classes through the University of
Texas-Brownsville/Texas Southmost College.
Mexico and the Mercado Juarez in
Matamoros are only thirty minutes away from
the Island. Other nearby attractions include
the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge,
only ten miles away, and Gladys Porter Zoo in
Brownsville. The Coastal Current, Island Times,
Port Isabel-South Padre Press, and the South
Padre Parade are guides to entertainment and
events, cafés, and clubs.
The Island is just a short drive from Valley
International Airport (Harlingen) and
Brownsville/South Padre Island International
Airport. That makes it easy to come to South
Padre for a night, a week, a month, or a lifetime.
Yes, it’s easy to get to South Padre, but
it’s very hard to leave.
✧
Top, left: Fireworks over the Laguna Madre.
Top, right: South Padre Island is the host of
the Bike Fest and Motorcycle Rally.
Below: The Wyland Whaling Wall No. 53
mural on the side of the South Padre Island
Convention Center.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
217

CITY OF
MCALLEN
✧
Above: McAllen’s celebrated school district,
its city-sponsored youth programs and safe
environment make the city very popular for
families. Children will soon have even more
opportunities for fun as more libraries and
parks are built.
Below: International commuters cross over
the Rio Grande on the McAllen-Hidalgo-
Reynosa Bridge. McAllen’s ties to Reynosa
run deep and especially strong in the
business area. Residents from both sides
drive each way with regularity.
McAllen, the geographic center of the third
fastest-growing metropolitan area in the country,
is a modern city teeming with business
that moves at a frenzied pace.
However, its trademark tall, majestic palm
trees remind you that McAllen is also a warmweather
center for nature, brimming with
tropical plants and animals that can only be
found in this area of the country.
More than 250,000 people from a twocounty,
two-nation region pack into the city’s
limits every day to go to work, schools, hospitals
and governmental offices. McAllen is THE
commercial and transportation hub of the
region. The city’s airport, expressways, and
new bus station get people from one place to
another. McAllen is also headquarters for many
regional business and governmental entities.
As the retail center of South Texas and
Northern Mexico, McAllen draws from a
consumer base of over ten million people to
its shopping plazas and restaurants. It has led
the Rio Grande Valley in new construction for
years and offers an exceptionally low tax rate
for a city its size, while still providing a high
level of city services.
The city has become a favorite for families
relocating to the Valley. Current estimates
show McAllen to have a population of about
111,000, up almost 30,000 from ten years
ago. Many chose McAllen for its employment,
business and shopping opportunities, but the
region’s weather is definitely a plus.
The Valley’s mild climate—winter temperatures
are generally in the 70s and 80s, with occasional
drops to the 40s—allows outdoor
living throughout the year. Moderate humidity
and a constant breeze make a McAllen tradition,
outdoor grilling, enjoyable. The city has just
embarked on an aggressive parks plan that will
provide a total of 3,000 acres of new parkland,
some of which will have hike and bike trails.
An amazing variety of ecosystems exist in
the Valley; with many plant and wildlife
species found nowhere else in the United
States. These include 115 species of unique
animals, such as the city’s official bird, the
Green Jay. McAllen is located just five miles
north of the Rio Grande.
Because of its location on a system of migration
routes, the McAllen area is a veritable
paradise for bird watchers, while the recorded
history dating back almost three centuries
makes this area a haven for history buffs as well.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
218

Some points of interest include:
• The Quinta Mazatlan, one of the largest
remaining adobe homes in Texas. This
sixty-five-year-old Spanish-style mansion,
which is located on the south side
of the city, includes a 10,000 square-foot
home and surrounding eight acres of
luscious greenery owned by the city. It
will soon become a satellite of the World
Birding Center.
• The McAllen International Museum, featuring
art and science exhibits: The only
major art space in South Texas, it is currently
raising funds for a $5 million expansion
project that will include a children’s
wing and Hispanic art gallery. The MIM
was also chosen to have access to the
Smithsonian Institute’s exhibits, one of
only a handful of museums in the country
chosen for that honor.
• Bill Schupp Park: One of the Valley’s most
popular parks, its twenty-two palm-framed
acres are often filled with children hanging
on playground equipment and healthy residents
walking or running its trails.
• The Casa De Palmas Hotel, one of the
Valley’s truly beautiful buildings: Originally
built in 1918, this Spanish-style building
is laced with arched walkways and has
a stunning tiled courtyard lined with
palms. The Texas Historical Commission
has designated the hotel as an official
historical landmark.
• La Plaza Mall, the largest shopping mall
south of San Antonio: With 150 stores,
including one of the largest Dillard’s stores
in the country, this mall is undertaking a
three-phase expansion and renovation.
Downtown McAllen is one of a few thriving
downtowns in the state. This revitalized
area—with new wide sidewalks and bricked
street intersections—is a favorite shopping
area among local and Mexican bargain
hunters. The McAllen Street Market is held
here during the spring.
A busy calendar of events attracts residents
and visitors. This includes two of the city’s
signature events: the Candlelight Posada, a
traditional Mexican Christmas celebration
held at Archer Park in downtown, and the
Fourth of July Parade. Also drawing thousands
are the Texas Square Dance Jamboree in
February and the Texas Tropics Nature
Festival held in April.
✧
Above: McAllen may be the only place in
the country that’s in perpetual motion.
Construction on commercial buildings and
homes is almost non-stop. McAllen is the
third-fastest growing metro area in the
country.
Below: For decades McAllen has been a hub
for “Winter Texans,” mostly Midwesterners
and Canadians who live in the Valley for
several months each year. One of their most
popular leisure events is square dancing.
McAllen annually hosts the largest square
dance lesson in the world.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
219

✧
Above: The Majestic Quinta Mazatlan sits
on eight acres of tropical paradise in South
McAllen. The City recently bought the
Spanish-styled house, and it will soon
become part of the World Birding Center.
Below: McAllen at the turn of the century. A
few businesses and homes sprout up in what
is now downtown McAllen. The lonely horse
and wagon travel along what is now U.S.
Business 83, one of the busiest roads in
South Texas.
Accurately described as “a color-splashed
subtropical garden nestled in the rich history
and tradition of the Rio Grande Valley,” McAllen
offers scores of attractions for the enjoyment of
winter Texans and vacationers. They are advised
to allow plenty of time to enjoy the enticements
of Mexico, including shops and markets featuring
jewelry, ceramics, hand-woven fabrics,
hand-blown glass, and other unique creations of
skilled Mexican craftspeople.
Reynosa, McAllen’s sister city located just
across the border, is now a modern metropolis
of 750,000, with many fine restaurants and
dozens of international manufacturers. Those
who prefer not to drive their car into Mexico
can park it for a modest fee on the U.S. side
and walk across the bridge to visit shops and
restaurants within a block or two of the crossing,
and the main plaza only a few blocks away.
The natural blending of cultures and countries
that has developed here has been a vital ingredient
in the development of business relationships
between the United States and Mexico on
a daily basis. The city is home to over 100
maquiladoras, mostly foreign-run, manufacturing
plants that employ tens of thousands.
The history of McAllen and its surrounding
area began in the 1740s with the establishment
of the first organized settlements in the
Rio Grande area, mostly on the south side of
the river. Reynosa was founded in 1749, with
a mission dedicated to San Joaquin.
The city of McAllen is named for John
McAllen, who arrived in the Rio Grande
Valley in the early 1850s. When the St. Louis,
Brownsville, and Mexico Railroad reached his
ranch, McAllen and others established a town
site now known as West McAllen. Two years
later other developers started a town on their
own tract, naming it East McAllen. It was
incorporated as the City of McAllen in 1911,
and chartered as a home rule city in 1927.
Rapid growth and a reputation as a favorite
winter tourist resort followed the opening of
the first international bridge to Reynosa in
1926, followed by other international bridges
in subsequent years.
An oil boom, completion of Falcon Dam in
Starr County, the FAA designation of an international
airport at McAllen, and the shipment
of vegetables and citrus were all important to
the city’s continued growth in the mid-twentieth
century. The last half of the century
brought numerous cultural, health care and
governmental building improvements, the passage
of NAFTA, creation of South Texas
Community College (with a present enrollment
of over 10,000), highway construction, and
many additions to the retail business sector.
With the help of the McAllen Economic
Development Corporation, over 2,500 jobs
were recruited to the area in 1999, and that has
been instrumental to making the McAllen MSA
the third-fastest-growing area in the country.
Job growth has also aided in McAllen’s recent
ranking as the country’s eighteenth best place
to live, among cities of all sizes.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
220

GREATER
MISSION
CHAMBER OF
COMMERCE
Spanish Captain José Antonio Cantu
assisted José de Escandon in establishing
Reynosa in 1745 and received the La Lomita
land grant. Beginning in 1848, Missionary
Oblates of Mary Immaculate rode from
Rancho La Lomita to visit their flock on 285
ranches. Padres Bugnard and Pescheur built a
tiny chapel on the Rancho in 1865. The
missionaries inherited the ranch from Rene
Guyard in 1871 but sold most the property to
John J. Conway about thirty years later.
Conway and his partner, James W. Hoit,
constructed an irrigation district and built a
train depot along the railroad tracks, about
four miles north of the mission. In 1908
Mission incorporated and the first post office
opened. By 1910 numerous immigrants
fleeing the Mexican Revolution were settling
in the city. Historical plaques in Mission mark
early businesses and homes including the
1915 drug store of Dr. A. J. J. Austin.
Plunging into citrus production on his arrival
in the Rio Grande Valley, John H. Shary planted
the region’s first commercial citrus orchard in
Mission in 1915. He built a citrus packing plant,
organized the Texas Citrus Growers Exchange, a
production and marketing association, and
became known as the Father of the Texas Citrus
Industry. Land parties continued to arrive,
buying small tracts of farmland.
Along with abundant harvests, early
Mission residents had much to talk about. In
1915 Mexican irregulars raided the Ojo de
Agua Ranch southwest of Mission, leading to
a brief gun battle. Teatro de la Paz presented
famous Spanish and Mexican lecturers and
artists and silent films.
Today Mission’s forty-six thousand residents
celebrate their colorful bi-cultural history. With
the charm and hospitality of an energetic small
town and the amenities of a larger city, Mission
remains a citrus packing and processing center.
For over sixty years in Mission the Texas Citrus
Fiesta has combined fun and elegance in three
days of citrus events and displays. Mission’s
wealth of ecotourism resources include Bentsen-
Rio Grande Valley State Park, World Birding
Center headquarters (2003), assuring unique
bird watching opportunities. Mission’s annual
Texas Butterfly Festival has led to plans for a
one-hundred-acre Butterfly Park.
Honored native sons include Dallas
Cowboy Coach Tom Landry; U.S. Senator
Lloyd Bentsen, Jr.; U.S. Congressman Kika de
la Garza; baseball great Leonardo “Leo Najo”
Alaniz; and Congressional Medal of Honor
recipient Sergeant Jose M. Lopez.
Mission’s progressive vision has created
master-planned communities and friendly
neighborhoods, excellent medical, educational,
and recreational facilities. Winter Texans,
ecotourists, residents, and businesses come to
the city to savor the culture, climate, color, and
charm that is Mission.
For more information, please visit
www.missionchamber.com.
✧
Above: Downtown Mission, c. 1921. This
photograph was taken looking south down
Conway Avenue.
Below: La Lomita Mission, built in 1865, is
the namesake for the city of Mission.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
221

CITY OF
DONNA
✧
Above: The townsite of Donna, 1911.
Below: A strawberry farm near Donna,
mid-1940.
Along the Rio Grande prior to 1900, dense
ebony, huisache and mesquite thickets of the
Mid-Valley were interrupted only by a handful
of self-sustaining ranches: Azadores, Toluca,
Pajarito, and Thomas Hardy’s. Connected by
senderos, or trails, these ranches had evolved
from the 1834 La Blanca land grant to Lino
Cavazos and the 1731 Llano Grande grant to
Juan José Hinojosa. Some ranches had a teacher,
most had a cemetery, but all of them had
adapted to an environment where deer, javelina,
and jaguars crept between the cactus and brushy
thickets. People and local trade goods crossed
the Rio Grande on the Salinas family ferry.
In 1898 A. F. Hester, Sr., T. J. Hooks, Dr. G.
W. Collier, W. W. Cruse, and W. H. Turner,
decided a strip of rich delta land four miles
wide at the river and stretching eighteen miles
north was well suited for agriculture. Due to
complications over land titles, it was 1902
before the group purchased 23,745 acres of the
Llano Grande and La Blanca grants, paying
$1.25 and $2 per acre, much cheaper than
tracts downriver.
The new owners transferred most of the
property to their La Blanca Agricultural
Company. After installing irrigation pumps on
the river in 1902 and digging canals, La Blanca
advertised the land for settlement to mid-western
farmers, who marveled at the area’s growing
climate and resources. The first wave of farmers
joined early Hispanic residents and bought land
near the river along Military Highway in an area
known as the Runn Settlement. The irrigation
company became the first in the Valley to allow
farmers to buy into the irrigation system.
In 1904, persuaded by the conveyance of
1,600 acres from La Blanca, the St. Louis,
Brownsville & Missouri Railroad spur passed
through the future town site of Donna. In
1907, the new train depot was named after
postmistress Donna Hooks Fletcher, daughter
of city developer, T. J. Hooks, while a nearby
settlement was called Beatriz, honoring
another Hooks daughter. The deed for the first
lot of Donna town site was issued in 1908 and
Ed Ruthven opened Donna’s first general store.
By 1908 the renamed La Donna Canal Co.
was irrigating 25,000 acres. Having the railroad
in Donna meant vegetables and berries could be
shipped to eager markets from surrounding
farms. The Donna depot shipped thirty-five
carloads of vegetables that year, more than any
other station on the rail line.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
222

But when the Rio Grande’s biggest known
flood in 1909 submerged homes and even
telegraph poles in the Runn Settlement, most
families moved six miles north to Donna and
East Donna. The new town flourished like the
cucumbers in surrounding fields. The yellow
adobe brick Plaza Hotel complete with hitching
posts opened, as did Ed Jamerson’s tin-ceilinged
Borderland Hardware. As the highest point in
the mid-Valley, the hotel hosted crowds of
refugees during the Rio Grande’s floods. In the
evenings, the Crown Theater and Candelario
Munoz’s theater showed silent films. When the
city incorporated in 1911, it boasted two cotton
gins, a sugar mill, and a telephone exchange.
Through bandit raids, floods, the
Depression and numerous changes, Donna
benefited from the spirited participation of
pioneer families, their descendants, and
newcomers, too, in city projects. Today, public
forums encourage community involvement in
planning the city’s future and in assessing
community needs. Donna Square is being
renovated through a Main Street project,
unifying the building facades to make the area
more appealing to both residents and visitors.
Striking murals designed and painted by
Proyecto Derecho del Corazón housed at the
Boys and Girls Club decorate the city with
colorful portrayals of its history. Donna Hooks
Fletcher Historical Museum, as part of
preserving local heritage, participates in an ongoing
oral history project, which interviews
descendants of the earliest area families.
In 2000 Donna welcomed Real Azteca Inn,
First National Bank, Alamo Bank, and other new
businesses. A privately owned cold storage plant
is being developed along Donna’s new industrial
corridor. The industrial park, starting small, has
ample room to expand commercial development
once Donna’s long-awaited international bridge
becomes a reality. In cooperation with Frontera
Audubon, Donna has converted an abandoned
sewage plant-settling pond into approved
wetlands, providing habitat for waterfowl and
developing trails suitable for eco-tourists
from local and distant communities. With a
declining crime rate and increasing school
enrollment, Donna claims an estimated 16,000
residents. The city’s participation in the urban
county program enables designated low-income
residents to renovate their homes and improve
their quality of life.
“The city with heart in the heart of the
Valley” knows how to work and it also knows
how to celebrate. Crowds flock to the pre-
Easter Eggstravaganza festival in the Park. The
Cinco de Mayo celebration features artisans
from the Valley and Mexico, particularly from
Ramos Arizpe, Coahuila, Donna’s sister city. At
work and at play, from its new water plant to its
two-story library, Donna is changing to meet
the challenges of the new century without
forgetting its roots and traditional values.
✧
Top: ACinco de Mayo Fiesta.
Above: This cultural history mural was
painted by Donna students at Proyecto
Derecho Corazon.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
223

CITY OF
EDCOUCH
In the rich farmland known as the Delta
Area, the City of Edcouch was carved from
a tract covered in mesquite and thorny
brush. Once part of the Llano Grande land
grant, during the 1800s the arid region
supported two ranches: Rancho San Jose´ and
Panchita Ranch. Early settlers belonged to the
Salazar, Crenshaw, Carlson, Gutierrez, and
Johnston families.
In 1926 Weslaco banker Ed C. Couch, eager
to have a Texas and New Orleans Railroad
depot on property he owned, developed the
area that was soon named after him. Within a
year, the city was incorporated and booming.
Cabbage, carrots, and cucumbers grown
outside the city were passing through
Edcouch’s eleven packing sheds on their way to
market via the railroad. Feed stores, ice plants,
and lumberyards lined city streets. Soon
grocery and furniture stores, beauty parlors, an
undertaker, a telephone exchange, a theater
and a weekly newspaper added to the bustle of
the boomtown. The city adopted a slogan that
exhibited its rip-roaring attitude: “Edcouch,
the town where thirty minutes ago is ancient
history.” Even the 1933 hurricane, which
destroyed the post office and fire station,
couldn’t dampen the town’s growth. Sugarcane
fields spread into the distance.
But with time, the packing sheds closed
although produce, cotton, and sugarcane
crops still employed many townspeople. The
city’s economy shifted to service businesses,
and the population shrank. The small town
with the big heart got quiet for a while.
But after an assessment of its resources and
with a determined effort to develop its
potential, the City of Edcouch entered the
twenty-first century reinvigorated. Its location
near the Mexican border positioned the
small town as a front door for binational
business and trade. A young labor force,
median age 23.7 years, indicated the city’s
rich human resources.
Economically, Edcouch is taking advantage
of state and federal development grants available
to it as a subzone of the Rio Grande Valley
Empowerment Zone. The ultimate goal in
developing Edcouch is job creation. To do that,
tax abatements and incentive programs like
Urban County and Community Development
Block Grants are being leveraged to upgrade the
infrastructure, strengthen existing businesses
and draw new ones to the area. With jobs for its
residents, the city can look to a promising future
that mirrors its boisterous past.
“We all realize that without infrastructure,
we can’t grow and we can’t attract new
businesses and residents,” says Mayor Ramiro
Silva. The new water plant symbolizes
infrastructure construction, which is to be
completed in 2001. Its 1.5-million-gallon
capacity is projected to serve community needs
for the next twenty years. Accompanying the
water plant project are extensions of water and
sewer lines. Street and drainage improvements
strengthen the city’s infrastructure.
A new multi-service health center plus the
Bee Healthy Clinic for school children are the
community’s response to under served health
needs of residents. Recently recreational
facilities from trails, baseball fields, municipal
parks and a swimming pool have been added
to the city’s assets. To meet demands for
housing, private investors have constructed
sixty-four new apartment units. Through the
Urban County Housing Rehabilitation
Program, existing homes of low-income
residents qualify for revitalization. In 2000,
seven homes benefited from this program.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
224

A new city hall and police department is
slated for completion in 2001. Already are
four more police cars, new fire department
building and new fire equipment is
safeguarding Edcouch.
But Edcouch is more than public buildings
and good roads. “It’s a community of family
and friends,” Silva explains.
Among the city’s four thousand residents, a
number will be found at places like Nick’s
Café, long a landmark on Santa Rosa Street.
Once a year, family and friends join in the
citywide block party known as the Annual 2-
K Run held in April. Complete with sack
races, a watermelon-eating contest and a pool
party. The day is a celebration and family
reunion rolled in one. Edcouch native, author
David Rice, has lovingly and accurately
portrayed life in a small border town in his
book, Give the Pig a Chance.
Through oral history programs, the Llano
Grande Center for Research and Development
is helping acquaint the youngest generation
with older generations and gain understanding
and respect for their heritage. Under the
guidance of Edcouch-Elsa High School alumni
Frank Guajardo, the Center challenges teens
to find their own histories, to envision life in
other times.
One time in particular Edcouch-Elsa became
the Valley’s leader of a nationwide movement.
In 1968, students at Edcouch-Elsa High School
pioneered Hispanic civil rights in the Valley,
denouncing ethnic discrimination by their
school. Students staged a walkout in protest
against rules that punished any speaking of
Spanish and the unofficial exclusion of
Hispanic student from college track courses and
certain student positions. Federal Courts
reversed the students’ expulsion on First
Amendment grounds. Following this milestone,
policy changes by the school board led to a
more evenhanded educational system.
Through a community effort, the small
town with a big heart is becoming a better
place to live and work.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
225

CITY OF
HIDALGO AND
HIDALGO
ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT
CORPORATION
✧
Above: The 1926 suspension bridge between
Reynosa and Hidalgo was a great
improvement over the original ferry.
Below: Built in 1886, the Hidalgo County
Courthouse still stands, although the top
floor was taken by a hurricane, and the
county seat was moved to Edinburg.
A city rich in history, culture, and
tradition, Hidalgo evolved from the Mission
San Joaquin del Monte founded in 1749 on
the Rio Grande’s north bank by early settlers
of what is now Reynosa, Mexico, to minister
to nomadic Coahuiltecan Indians. The area,
part of a 1767 Spanish land grant to Jose de la
Cerda and Miguel Bocanegra, was once
known as La Habitación, then San Luisito
after a nearby ranch.
Soon after the Mexican American War
established the U.S. border at the Rio
Grande, the settlement was named
Edinburgh, in honor of trading post owner
John Young’s native land. As the first and only
town in the newly established Hidalgo
County, Edinburgh became the county seat in
1852. The first school was built in 1854. In
1861, the town was legally christened
Hidalgo, honoring the leader of Mexican
Independence, Father Miguel Hidalgo. By
that time, the riverboat landing bustled with
steamboat traffic and local ferries connecting
Reynosa and Hidalgo. The community’s post
office was nearby inside a grocery store at
First Street and Flora.
Hidalgo County’s Courthouse and jail of
hand-made brick were built in 1886,
replacing wooden structures that had been
washed away repeatedly by the river’s annual
floods. There was only one lawyer in the
county, which had a population of six
thousand while the city was nearing four
hundred residents. In 1908 political
maneuvering and those floods caused the
county seat to be transferred to a town farther
north. The U.S. Customs Service took over
the Courthouse in 1919. Refurbished by the
Border Bank, the Old Courthouse and Jail
today bear state historical plaques.
The rich soil and its potential for sugarcane
cultivation motivated Henry Pharr and John
Kelly to build an irrigation system in 1909 on
the Rio Grande at Hidalgo. The Louisiana-Rio
Grande Canal Company, incorporated in
1910, began with a single steam-powered
pump, first fueled by wood cleared from
farmland. By 1912 the irrigation system
boasted four steam-powered pumps which
irrigated 72, 000 acres of prime farmland producing
vegetables and sugarcane. Giant diesel
engines and electric pumps were added before
this pumphouse finally closed in 1983. The
last remaining steam pumphouse in the U.S.
is recognized as a National Historic
Landmark. It reopened as the Hidalgo
Pumphouse Heritage & Discovery Park in
1999, recalling the irrigation and agriculture
foundation of the Valley’s growth and the
bygone age of steam power.
In 1926 Hidalgo resident Joe Pate led a
group that obtained permits and constructed
an international bridge. The suspension
bridge between Hidalgo and Reynosa
increased the flow of commercial, social and
cultural traffic between the two cities and
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
226

countries. In 2001 twin international bridges
in Hidalgo stream with NAFTA-generated
traffic. On an average day, over 16,000
vehicles and 3,500 pedestrians cross into
Reynosa, making Hidalgo one of Texas’
busiest crossings.
Today Hidalgo is a city of cultural diversity,
exemplary schools, and friendly neighborhoods.
The town recently completed a dynamic
program of infrastructure and building
development including a new city hall, library,
health clinic, city park with sports fields and
playground, and Youth Center.
Trade with Mexico continues to be a vital
part of the city’s economy. The international
bridges contribute to the continuing growth
of customs brokerages, warehouses and
border businesses in Hidalgo. But the
economy no longer relies solely on trade
because tourism has become a significant
factor. Winter Texans find a home away from
home at Lake Texano Resort and other RV
parks. Other tourists come to visit the
Pumphouse Museum, historic buildings like
the 1904 Crisoforo Vela house and the 1898
Hidalgo School, and to stop by the “World’s
Largest Killer Bee” statue marking the site
where the Africanized honeybee first entered
the U.S. Ecotourism is on the rise, too,
following Hidalgo’s designation as a World
Birding Center satellite. Trails along the
Pumphouse channel and an adjacent six
hundred acre preserve of the U.S. Fish &
Wildlife Service reveal subtropical wildlife—
colorful birds, butterflies and animals—in
native habitat. The city also participates in Los
Caminos del Rio project, promoting border
heritage and history.
BorderFest, held on the first weekend in
March, is a four-day-long celebration of border
culture. The festive parade and ten entertainment
stages bouncing with folkloric dancers,
mariachis, bands, and folk crafts draw tens of
thousands of people. Authentic Mexican food
and good family fun have made BorderFest a
must-be place for residents and visitors.
In December, Hidalgo’s Festival of Lights
attracts thousands of visitors to share the
holiday spirit and to see city parks, public
buildings and private homes ablaze with
festive holiday lights.
Hidalgo’s resources include a branch of the
University of Texas–Pan Am, the Hidalgo
Youth Center, three busy city parks plus the
charm and beauty unique to a City on the
Edge of two nations, two cultures.
✧
Above: Originally begun in 1909 to pump
water from the Rio Grande to the fertile
Valley fields, the Hidalgo Pumphouse is now
a museum on the National Register.
Left: BorderFest Weekend has been
atracting many thousands of people to
Hidalgo since 1976 to enjoy music and
spectacle, food and fun.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
227

CITY OF
LA FERIA
✧
Above: As seen from the La Feria train
depot, the city’s first bank and first hotel
front the road that eventually became
Business Highway 83.
Below: Land excursion parties arriving by
train received a warm welcome at the
La Feria Community Club across from
the depot.
Early Spanish explorers, encountering
Karankawa Indians having a day of feasting
and games, were invited to join them. For
many years that site hosted fiestas and horse
races each September and was called the
Fairgrounds or Los Llanos de La Feria. When
the Llano Grande land grant was divided, the
eastern sector was called the La Feria Grant.
In 1790 Rosa Maria Hinojosa de Ballí took
possession of that twelve leagues of land—
more than 53,000 acres—running north from
the Rio Grande for fifteen miles. Questions
about the La Feria boundary and land
ownership did not cease until 1935.
In 1908 the community of La Feria took
root near the fair site. Within a year its
population reached one hundred, served by
a post office, five stores, and a hotel. The
Minnesota-Texas Land and Development
Company’s president, S. J. Schnorenberg,
established the town site from Canal Street on
the west to Parker Road on the east in 1909.
Although La Feria was laid out along the
railroad line, it lacked a railroad depot, an
essential element in growth and development.
Pleas and inducements did not win the
community more than a mailbag hook. In
1912 a group of La Feria residents took a team
of horses a mile and a half west to the Bixby
Depot, loaded the wooden depot on two flat
cars, and took it home to La Feria where it
served the town for many years.
With a La Feria train stop, the town
acquired legitimacy and prospered as land sales
increased. The La Feria Community Club,
directly across from the depot, welcomed
excursion parties from the mid-west. Once
visitors were feted at the Community Club,
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
228

they toured the surrounding farmlands and
were shown how productive the soil could be.
The City of La Feria was incorporated in
1915 with Bailey H. Dunlap, president of First
National Bank of La Feria, serving as the first
mayor. In 1983 La Feria voters approved a
city manager form of government and in 1989
La Feria became a home rule municipality.
Today La Feria City Hall occupies the site
of the old Community Club. Citrus, cotton,
sugar cane, and grain fields still surround La
Feria for agriculture is alive and well, but the
community has diversified its economy.
Specialty manufacturers, construction and
service companies, banks, retail stores,
medical services, a hotel, and numerous
franchise restaurants are indicators of the
city’s positive business development
philosophy. One of the fastest growing areas
in western Cameron County, La Feria has long
been the preferred location for radio and
television transmission towers, and now,
wireless phone towers.
The city’s resources are committed to
enhancing the quality for life of its nearly
6,300 residents. With water a critical issue
throughout the Rio Grande Valley, La Feria
has secured funding to install a city well near
the current water plant. A new water tower
will more than double the aboveground water
storage for the city, anticipating future
residential and commercial growth.
The Volunteer Fire Department acquired a
new fire hall in 1998, which provides a
training area for firefighters and houses four
fire trucks and several support units. The
average response time within city limits is
three minutes. In 1999 the Bailey H. Dunlap
Public Library completed an expansion,
doubling its size. Technically focused with
twelve Internet-connected computers, the
library gives its patrons access to 360,000
books in the Cameron County Library System.
The academic and athletic prowess of the La
Feria Independent School District is widely
recognized. Approximately 2,600 students are
enrolled in the city’s three elementary schools,
the middle school and the high school.
Accelerated curriculum for gifted and talented
students is provided at all grade levels. The La
Feria Sports Complex, a twenty-five-acre
playground for the young and young-at-heart,
is the home of the city’s Pony Baseball League
for children five to fourteen years old. The city’s
public pool opens in May and a youth program
is available during the summer for students.
Winter Texans, who are a welcome
addition to the city from October to April, fill
twenty-four RV parks in and around La Feria.
The February Fiesta de la Feria, a celebration
originated to entertain Winter Texans, is now
a community-wide party. Carnival rides, live
bands, local talent, arts and crafts, and booths
of appetizing ethnic food fill Main and
Commercial Streets. Like the Fiesta, the city’s
Christmas Parade is a volunteer-run event. In
fact La Feria’s dynamic mix of community
spirit and active civic groups has enabled the
community and its residents to prosper.
Six historical markers in La Feria honor
pioneers of the Texas border. One marker
commemorates the fair site of 200 years ago
and others point out the 1909 Rosalio
Longoria Home, the 1912 Dunlap House; the
First Bank of La Feria dating from 1912; and
the La Feria Cemetery from 1917.
✧
Fiesta de la Feria.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
229

CITY OF
PHARR &
PHARR
ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT
CORPORATION
✧
Pharr’s first hotel, built around 1910.
Riding on horseback across the Rio Grande
Valley in 1909, John C. Kelly decided he had
found the perfect location in which to raise
sugarcane, so he purchased sixteen thousand
acres between Edinburg and the river with a
friend. The success of Kelly’s first sugarcane
harvest attracted the interest of Louisiana
grower Henry N. Pharr. He and Kelly formed
the Louisiana Rio Grande Sugar Cane
Company, jointly purchased twenty thousand
acres, and hired engineers to build an
irrigation system for the thirsty crop.
In 1910 the sugarcane company’s office
was built near the wooden hotel known as the
Gem of the Valley. By the time the post office
for the new town of Pharr opened in March
1911, the community already had several
hundred residents. Platting and mapping the
new town site was underway although the city
was not incorporated until 1916.
Within a few years, sugarcane growing had
been abandoned, but new settlers found the
combination of the Pharr Canal System and the
fertile soil produced profitable crops of
vegetables, citrus, and cotton. While a Mexican
schoolhouse existed in the area, the city built a
two-story Spanish Colonial school at a cost of
$4,000. By 1918 the school had between 70
and 80 students and four teachers.
In 1916, the Rio Grande Clarion, a weekly
newspaper published by W. E. Cage, Pharr’s
second mayor, began informing the town.
Around then, bandit raids became so
widespread along the border following the
Mexican Revolution that the U.S. government
sent National Guard troops to the area to
provide security. New York and Tennessee
regiments encamped just south of the Pharr city
limits. Pharr’s volunteer fire department was
organized in 1925 and the equipment housed in
a shed near A. A. Kelley’s Company store until
the first firehouse was built in 1928 on West
Cherokee. The Library was founded in 1930, by
which time the first civic organizations such as
the Kiwanis had been established.
Despite the Great Depression, related bank
closings, and numerous fires that leveled
downtown blocks of the city, Pharr grew to
become a center for vegetable packers and
fruit shippers and has remained so to this day.
Located in the nation’s third-fastest growing
Metropolitan area, Pharr today is known as a
transportation and distribution center for the
Rio Grande Valley due to its location along the
intersection of Highway 281 and Expressway
83. The opening of the Pharr/Reynosa
International Bridge in 1995 brought a surge in
commercial trucking on its way to and from
Mexico and has triggered the development of
related businesses, such as import/export
brokers, warehouses, and logistics companies,
adjacent to the bridge corridor. Over 2.1
million vehicles used the environmentally
sensitive 3.2 miles long span over the Rio
Grande in 2000. The steadily increasing bridge
traffic, a major revenue producer for the city,
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
230

positions Pharr to benefit from continued
growth in international trade.
In order to assist businesses to locate and
expand in the city, Pharr Economic
Development Corporation has transformed an
empty building into a job training facility. The
facility will provide both opportunities for
citizens to obtain jobs and for new and
expanding businesses to obtain trained job
applicants. South Texas Community College
and Region One Educational Service Center
have the task of developing curriculums to
meet the needs of companies that have
requested special training. The PEDC has also
assisted existing businesses to expand or
renovate their sites.
The highways so essential for commerce
also bring thousands of winter visitors to
Pharr’s popular recreational vehicle parks and
resorts. They and Pharr’s thirty-six thousand
permanent residents decided the city was
their favorite place to live and play. The City’s
Tierra del Sol Golf Club and its numerous
parks from the War Veterans Memorial to the
Central Pharr Project, an oasis of native and
semi-native palms, and flowers, all add
charm, color and feeling to the heart of the
city. Aptly known as the city “On the Rise,”
Pharr plans to enhance the community with a
new police station, a doubling in size of the
Pharr Memorial Library, a revitalization of the
downtown commercial district, and the
creation of the twenty-seven-acre community
park at Las Milpas. Pharr is the headquarters
for the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo school district,
dating to 1919, which pulls students from a
forty-seven-square-mile region.
As Pharr approaches its centennial, the
City, its commissioners, and its citizens are
working together to meet the challenges and
opportunities that arise.
✧
Above: Pharr’s Landmark Building was built
in 1908. The building served as the first city
hall and first bank.
Below: The first City of Pharr Fire
Department building constructed in the
late 1920s.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
231

CITY OF
RAYMONDVILLE
✧
Above: The 1554 shipwreck mural by
Ramon Claudio.
Below: An early watermelon harvest.
Opposite, top: Abraham Rios, boot-maker.
Opposite, middle: Boots made by
Armando Duarte.
Opposite, bottom: An Onion Fiesta Queen
Noino parade float.
On the edge of the Wild Horse Desert,
Raymondville balances a colorful history with a
promising future. Three bright new murals on
Hidalgo Avenue depict local events dating back
more than 400 years. Although Raymondville’s
heritage is very down to earth reflecting its
farming and ranching roots, the city is
remaking itself in the twenty-first century.
Raymondville, the Willacy County seat, is
shooting for the stars…or space at least,
supporting the development of a space launch
center in the region. At the same time, it
takes pride in the job creation that comes
from being a prison-friendly community.
Thousands of visitors are attracted to the
Raymondville region by its abundant wildlife,
native habitat and sub-tropical climate. Yearround
Gulf fishing, the Texas Coastal Birding
Trail, and a Wild in Willacy nature festival
add to the area’s appeal.
The Raymondville region was once part of
the 1790 San Juan de Carricitos Spanish land
grant awarded to Don José Narciso Cavazos.
Convinced the area’s rich alluvial soil was
ideal for growing vegetables, Edward Burleson
Raymond, foreman of the El Sauz division of
the King Ranch, acquired 24,000 acres in
1903. He formed the Raymond Town and
Improvement Company in 1904 and built
a cotton gin. The Kleberg Town and
Improvement Company bought King Ranch
land, and, with Raymond’s company, began to
sell lots. The first St. Louis, Brownsville, and
Mexico Railway train passed through
Raymondville on July 4, 1904. In exchange
for the right of way, the railroad provided low
cost fares for potential settlers attracted by the
possibility of raising crops year around. J. E.
Kimball, Raymond’s brother-in-law, became
railroad agent and postmaster and also
opened the first general store in Raymondville
on the corner of Seventh and Hidalgo Avenue.
In the early days, water from an artesian well
was carted in wheeled barrels to Raymondville
homes and businesses. But the town grew as
other land development companies prepared
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
232

more land for sale to farming families.
Raymondville was soon encircled with new
farming towns named after the developers’ kin:
Hargill, Lasara, San Perlita.
By 1905 Raymondville’s first lodging was
opened by the Kimball sisters, seamstress Dora
and teacher Nellie. The Davidson Hotel, “an
oasis of luxury in a desert of brush” country,
began registering guests shortly after for its
eighteen rooms of brass beds and Oriental
rugs. In a corner of the Raymondville Lumber
Company, the Raymondville State Bank
opened and began taking deposits. City
Founder E. B. Raymond was the bank’s
president and C. H. Pease was the bank’s
owner and cashier.
The City of Raymondville was incorporated
around 1912 in Cameron County with S.
Lamar Gill as mayor. Two years later the town
had a population of 350, a newspaper and four
general stores. In 1921 Raymondville was
named the seat of the newly created Willacy
County. The County Courthouse, built in
1922, is still in use.
Bootmakers, electricity, doctors, paved
streets and more stores arrived in
Raymondville, but agriculture remained the
heart of the city. The families that sowed and
harvested the surrounding fields of potatoes,
onions, cotton, peas, corn, and sorghum
swelled the area’s population. Dryland farming
was the norm, but in years of below average
rainfall harvests were meager. The need
for an irrigation system became apparent. W.
A. Harding and S. Lamar Gill helped create
the Willacy County Water Control and
Improvement District No.1 in 1929, which
contributed greatly to the town’s prosperity.
In 1929 Raymondville began calling itself
the “Onion Capitol of the World,” celebrating
its fragrant Bermuda onions with Onion
Fiestas held until 1960. Jackrabbit races,
cooking contests, and a Queen Noino (onion
spelled backwards) pageant brightened the
spring air of the county, which dubbed itself
“The Breath of the Nation.”
During the Depression, Raymondville was
the only Valley city that had no bank failures.
Bumper vegetable crops and the beginning of
oil and gas production contributed to the
banks’ solvency.
Today, as the gateway to the border region,
Raymondville attracts legions of winter visitors
who appreciate its warm climate and outdoor
attractions. West of Raymondville, the
salt lakes La Sal Vieja and El Sal del Rey—
landmarks before the conquistadors—have
become a unique nature tourism destination.
Nearby Port Mansfield is a favorite sports fishing
spot. Housed in a 1924 schoolhouse, the
Raymondville Historical Museum features
exhibits of ranch life including the cypress
gate that once barred the Corpus Christi to
Brownsville stagecoach road. Artifacts from a
1554 shipwreck off the Gulf coast and sepiatoned
photographs of early settlers delight
both tourists and residents.
As the town approaches 9,000 in population,
it is being revitalized by new industries,
supported by the Industrial Development
Foundation, and by quality of life ingredients
like pocket parks and school improvements.
The Valley’s telecommunications leader in
fiber optics is headquartered in Raymondville,
enabling the growth of virtual high-tech businesses.
Nevertheless, Raymondville remains
an agricultural center for traditional crops and
for new ones such as kenaf. With all its
resources, working together, looking ahead,
Raymondville is creating a brighter tomorrow.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
233

CITY OF ROMA
✧
Above: The seven-hundred-foot-long
Roma-Miguel Aleman Suspension Bridge
constructed in 1928, proudly spans the
Rio Grande. Adjacent to its modern
counterpart remains the sole remaining
suspension bridge out of the five built
across the Rio Grande.
Below: Guadalupe Plaza located along U.S.
Highway 83 and Garcia Street and Mendez
Avenue. Concerts and festivals are held at
the plaza throughout the year.
In 1753, José de Escandon established a
settlement south of the Rio Grande at Mier, one
of five original colonial towns of Nuevo
Santander province. The Spanish crown
awarded land grants down river on the north
bank to colonists Miguel Saenz and Juan Salinas
in 1765, although it wasn’t until 1767 that
families moved onto Rancho de Buena Vista
and Rancho de los Saenz. The self-sufficient
ranches were on tracts, which began at the bluff
overlooking river and stretched north.
By the early 1840s the ranches supported a
village known as Garcias. The origin of the
name of Roma is traced to two different
legends. The city either honors a military
officer named Roman or recalls its
resemblance to Rome and the arid rolling
Italian hills, as described by visiting priests.
In 1846 Roma, which had relied on small
boats to maintain connections with Mier, was
transformed into a river port as Mifflin
Kenedy’s steamboat company began operating
between Brownsville and Roma. As the
western end of the navigable waterway, Roma
became the site of a busy steamboat landing.
Until river traffic halted in the early 1880s,
Roma’s economy benefited from being a major
entry port for goods bound to Mexico’s
interior. Roma’s residents claimed French,
Hispanic, German, and Texan heritages,
which are evident today in the city’s
architecture, food, and family names.
The Mexican American War, settled by the
treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, separated
the City of Roma from Mier, Mexico, legally, if
not culturally, economically or socially. Roma
became part of Starr County, formed in 1850
and named after Dr. James Starr, treasurer of the
short-lived Republic of Texas.
The city’s plaza features stone and brick
sidewalks in front of walled compounds that
hide spacious courtyards in the Spanish style.
A church and a building which served as a
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
234

Civil War hospital face the plaza along with
homes and business establishments built of
sandstone, caliche, and molded brick
Many builders contributed to the city’s
architectural style. They used building
traditions common in northern Mexico, such
as plastering designs and techniques, brick
and limecrete as roofing material, and
sandstone patterning methods. The Noah Cox
House built in 1853 is an example of
mercantile establishments of the steamboat
era. The church tower at Our Lady of Refuge
Catholic Church is all that remains of the
original church erected in 1854 by the noted
Gothic style architect, Father Peter Keralum.
In the 1880s, builder Heinrich Portcheller
employed using elaborate designs molded
brick from his own kiln to created some of the
city’s finest, most enduring structures. Among
them are the Manuel Guerra Store built for a
Starr County political and civic leader, the
Old Convent, the Pablo and Josefa Ramirez
House now the Knights of Columbus Hall,
and the Nestor Saenz Store with its
underground basement where Mexican
Revolution refugees were sheltered.
In 1928 a steel suspension bridge connecting
Roma and Ciudad Miguel Aleman allowed a
freer flow of trade and people between the two
sides of the river, which had never been a barrier
to legal or illegal commerce. Plans are underway
for restoring this last surviving suspension
bridge over the Rio Grande as a pedestrian and
bicycle crossing.
In 1951 Roma had a moment of glory when
the movie Viva Zapata starring Marlon Brando,
Anthony Quinn and Jean Peters was filmed
here. The city celebrates the event with an
annual “Viva Zapata” festival in November. An
October festival honors the architectural and
pastoral work of Father Keralum.
Today Roma is gradually being
transformed from a small rural town
dependent on agricultural and ranching
efforts into a more urban-based economy.
Thriving trade between the U.S. and Mexico
and a rise in oil production, mining and
limited manufacturing have enabled Roma to
grow to approximately twelve thousand.
School enrollment is just over six thousand.
To serve current and future growth, the city’s
infrastructure is being upgraded by a $30
million investment in water treatment and
wastewater processing facilities. A young and
aggressive workforce remains one of Roma’s
major assets.
The Roma National Historic Landmark
District attracts visitors to admire the thirtyeight
restored and soon-to-be restored
buildings that date from 1848 to 1928. The
district is adding a visitor complex that
includes an information center and a
museum. The complex will also provide
information on natural habitat and resources,
as a satellite of the World Birding Center. A
major stop on the Caminos del Rio project,
Roma is an outstanding representative of the
region’s multi-faceted heritage.
✧
Above: Our Lady of Refuge Parish Hall,
located at 301 Saint Eugene de Mazenod in
the Roma Historical National Landmark
District. The hall was built in 1880 by
Heinrich (Enrique) Portscheller as living
quarters for a group of nuns.
Below: A group of students touring the
Historical National Landmark District
and the World Birding Center located in
the district.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
235

CITY OF
SAN BENITO
In 1793 the Spanish crown awarded the
seventy-five thousand acres of the Concepción
de Carricitos grant to Eugenio and Bartolo
Fernandez who agreed to colonize the land on
the north bank of the lower Rio Grande. A few
scattered ranches comprised the settlement. After
the Mexican American War in 1848, descendants
of the Fernandez brothers hired attorney
Stephen Powers to protect their title to the land
when it became part of the United States. In
exchange for his services Powers took about onehalf
of the entire grant, beginning several miles
back from the river where the land was valued at
less than ten cents per acre. He later bought out
several heirs with portions on the river. Powers’
daughter Frances Landrum inherited some of
that land and with her husband James Landrum
completed a home in 1902 at El Rancho Cipres,
named for the cypress shipped from New
Orleans to the nearby riverboat landing.
Landrum pioneered an irrigation system for his
cotton and vegetable crops.
In 1903 Sam Robertson won the contract to
lay track and build trestle bridges for the St.
Louis, Brownsville, and Matamoros Railroad
between Robstown and Brownsville, at the
same time scouting for farmland to develop.
Near the Resaca de los Fresnos, he selected a
depot site, which he named Bessie. Robertson
reached agreements with landowners James L.
Landrum and Oliver Hicks for thirteen
thousand acres of land. “I discussed my plans
for the irrigation of their lands and the building
of a town at San Benito, then a narrow place in
the jungle…I made a verbal contract with
twenty-five Mexicans for canal rights of way to
be deeded when the canals were built,”
Robertson wrote many years later. James
Landrum, Sam Robertson and Oliver Hicks led
in developing the area.
In 1907 Robertson platted the town of Diaz,
which was soon renamed San Benito. Robertson
had already secured investors and $500,000 to
form the San Benito Land and Water Company
designed to irrigate sixty-eight thousand acres. A
combination of man-made channels, locks and
the Resaca formed the district’s thirty-seven-mile
long main canal. In 1908, with the irrigation
district ready to supply farm tracts, excursion
trains began arriving with Midwesterners eager
to purchase small plots of productive land.
By 1909, the community boasted several
stores, a cotton gin, one schoolhouse, churches
and homes and awaited the arrival of electricity,
a city water system, sidewalks, an ice plant, and
a large sugar mill. San Benito’s first school had
only one room when it opened in 1908 with
forty-eight students speaking the languages of
Germany, Bohemia, Spain and Mexico as well as
English. To help get produce to market, thereby
increasing land sales, Robertson built the San
Benito and Rio Grande Valley Railroad, known
as the Spiderweb or Backdoor Railroad which
connected Rio Hondo and San Benito to Los
Indios and on to Mission. San Benito was
incorporated in 1911 and became known as a
railroad hub. The city gained a reputation for
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
236

shipping the highest volume of fruits and
vegetables of any Valley city.
Bandit raids followed by World War I and
the arrival of National Guard troops to protect
the border disrupted the city’s steady growth.
In 1915 troops of Iowa National Guardsmen
set up a tent camp on Landrum School
grounds. Through the 1920s and ’30s, despite
the Depression and the Hurricane of 1933,
the city held its own. The Stonewall Jackson
Hotel, built in 1928 by public subscription,
became a center of social life while movie theaters
like the Rivoli, the Ruenes, and Palace
offered entertainment, as did dances at La
Villita and the ship-shaped Aztec Building.
Narciso Martinez played the music of the
region’s ranchos and farms on his accordion,
giving birth to the folk music known as conjunto,
while he earned the nickname el
Huracan del Valle. The cultural arts center
named for him in San Benito presents programs
of Hispanic music, art, and literature.
Today, San Benito’s 23,444 residents recall
their roots with the Summertime Heritage
Festival, the Diez y Seis de Septiembre
Festival of Conjunto Music at the Narcisco
Martinez Cultural Arts Center, and the South
Texas Youth Stock Show every spring. The
city’s resources include its Downtown Main
Street program, the Challenger Space Center,
and the Dolly Vinsant Memorial Hospital. The
city is home to Texas’ largest RV park, Fun ‘n’
Sun, which adds three thousand residents
each season, and thriving industrial parks
hosting diverse manufacturers, some of which
supply maquiladoras across the Free Trade
Bridge. Many years ago, San Benito businessmen
had the foresight to set aside land for the
bridge, which has established the city firmly
in the global economy.
Resacas still wind through San Benito’s
tree-shaded neighborhoods just as the railroad
runs through the city center. While the
city is evolving and becoming a better place to
live and work, it strives to retain the people,
the buildings, and the sense of community
that have made it what it is today.
✧
Opposite, top: The General Land Office of
the San Benito Land & Water Company A
few of the levee riders’ horses hitched in
front. The riders managed two hundred
miles of irrigation canals, making sure
farmers received water when and where
they needed it for their crops. Today the
building at South Sam Houston and
Robertson Streets is home to Cameron
County Irrigation District #2.
Opposite, bottom: At one time, the City
Hall of San Benito, also known as the
Aztec Building, was renowned for its shiplike
structure.
Above: An early photo of Main Street in
San Benito.
Below: A view of Resaca from the
Aztec Building.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
237

CITY OF
WESLACO
✧
Above: Weslaco was home to Texsun, the
world’s largest grapefruit juice canning
plant for many years, and Texsun
advertised its products throughout the
United States and beyond. The site is now
home to Weslaco’s International Venture
Center and the Mid-Valley Branch of South
Texas Community College.
COURTESY OF WESLACO BICULTURAL MUSEUM.
Below: Weslaco provides year-round family
events and a great quality of life. Its citizens
take special pride in its 1928 City Hall,
designed by architect R. Newell Waters and
commissioned an Official Texas Historic
Landmark in 1979.
COURTESY OF WESLACO BICULTURAL MUSEUM.
In the midst of the Rio Grande Valley,
Weslaco claims a healthy economy, tree-shaded
neighborhoods, adventurous restaurants, and
high quality education. With its historic
buildings and downtown shopping district,
year-round outdoor recreation, and new
businesses, the city has attracted over thirty
thousand residents who appreciate its past and
anticipate its future.
In 1919, land excursion parties began
arriving at the Llano Grande Lake clubhouse,
ready to take on the task of converting brushcovered
terrain into highly productive
vegetable farms. Land developer W. E. Stewart
sold a tract of the Llano Grande grant to Ed C.
Couch and R. L. Reeves for a town site along
the Missouri & Pacific Railroad line. On
December 1919 an auction of residential and
business lots officially established the town
with land set aside for schools, parks,
churches, and a city hall. The town’s name
was formed from the first letters of the W. E.
Stewart Land Company: Weslaco.
Within two years, the city bustled with
activity at new enterprises such as the S. M.
Mattar family’s The People’s Store and the
Guaranty Bank, presided over by Ed Couch.
Donkey-drawn water barrel delivery carts had
been replaced by a city water system. The
fertile Rio Grande Delta insured a thriving
agricultural economy. McManus Produce and
Baxter Seed Company got their start then, as
did numerous cotton gins and vegetable and
citrus packing sheds. The prosperous city in
time diversified its economic base into
manufacturing, tourism, and healthcare.
Civic resources, natural assets, and
economic strengths have enabled Weslaco to
grow. Weslaco’s multi-story Knapp Medical
Clinic is the hub of a major medical complex
of physicians’ offices, clinics, and health
services. And retirees across the nation come
to John Knox Village Retirement Community
to enjoy their retirement years in its secure life
care program.
Today Weslaco is a city of historic
landmarks, progressive businesses, and friendly
residents. Built in 1928 as Weslaco’s water
storage, the Tower Theatre is now a Texas
historic landmark and the site of six amateur
stage productions annually. The private
donations and support that transformed the
abandoned water tank into a theatre-in-theround
are only one example of Weslaco’s
dynamic community. Next to the city’s library,
Weslaco’s Bicultural Museum displays glimpses
of early settlers’ lives. Sepia tinted photos show
the faces and places that built the city.
Agriculture, the basis for much of
Weslaco’s birth and growth, remains a major
economic force because the city is home to
the Texas A & M University’s Agricultural
Research and Extension Center, the Texas A &
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
238

M-Kingsville Citrus Center and U. S. D. A.’s
Subtropical Agricultural Research Center.
Researchers in Weslaco pioneered the Ruby
Red and Rio Star grapefruit along with the
1015 onion and many advances in cotton,
sugar cane, and vegetable production.
Weslaco is the future site of the Agriculture
Discovery Center, which will have hands-on
exhibits of agricultural technology and
provide a research library and archive South
Texas agricultural history.
The International Venture Center, once the
Texsun Citrus processing plant, is today home
to a business incubator and economic
development effort and also to South Texas
Community College. Weslaco’s mid-Valley
location is drawing more and more industries,
which recognize the easy access to Mexican
businesses offered by the nearby Progreso
International Bridge.
Downtown merchants have supported the
revitalization of Weslaco through the Main
Street Program. The renovated Villa de Cortez is
the center of a very active and attractive
downtown. Built in 1928, as the Hotel Cortez,
the Villa de Cortez enhances the downtown
area with restaurants, ballrooms, boutiques and
offices, just as its namesake did in its day.
Weslaco’s characteristic 1920s and 1930s stucco
architecture is visible both at City Hall, built in
1928 and now a state historic landmark, and
the Skaggs House, which is being restored as a
museum to celebrate that era.
Weslaco’s warm welcome and recreational
opportunities for all ages draw Winter Texans
and other visitors. From the Village Executive
par 3 golf course to the renowned Tierra Santa
Golf Club’s 18-hole course, exercise and sports
activities abound. In April the Onion Festival
celebrates the harvest of the sweet 1015 onion.
Music, contests, and onions—served blossomed
and fried or raw—bring out both hometown
crowds and visitors.
In addition to the city’s seven park, the Valley
Nature Center’s urban oasis offers five acres of
native plants, butterflies, and exotic local birds
including the red-crowned parrot. The
Frontera Audubon Society’s meadows and
woodlands attract wildlife from tree lizards to
ground squirrels. Given Weslaco’s wildlife
resources, it is easy to understand why the city
will be an integral part of the World Birding
Center. Nearby Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge is an
ideal bird and butterfly-watching destination.
Besides being home to the Rio Grande Valley
Partnership/Valley Chamber of Commerce, the
Super National Guard Armory, and the Mid-
Valley Airport, Weslaco has all the amenities
that make living and working here a “slice of
the good life.” Just ask anyone who lives in
Weslaco…or wishes they did.
✧
Above: School children parade on Weslaco’s
Texas Boulevard in honor of San Jacinto
Day on April 21, 1924.
COURTESY OF THE WESLACO BICULTURAL MUSEUM.
Below: Weslaco, one of the best birding spots
in Texas, is a major site for the World
Birding Center.
COURTESY OF MARTHA NOELL.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
239

✧
Above: The swing bridge was swung open in
July 1910 for inspection and was
photographed by famous photographer
Robert Runyon.
Below: An early 1900s view of the bridge
and the U.S. Customs installation.
THE BROWNSVILLE & MATAMOROS
BRIDGE COMPANY
In 1908 U.S. Congressman John Nance
Garner introduced a bill authorizing
construction of a bridge across the Rio Grande
at Brownsville to connect the St. Louis,
Brownsville and Mexico Railway with the
Mexican National Railway line. At that time,
only small ferryboats and a pontoon bridge
connected the sister cities.
Benjamin F. Yoakum, magnate of the St.
Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway, signed
an agreement in 1909 with representatives of
the Mexican National Railway, which made the
railroads equal partners in the Brownsville &
Matamoros Bridge Company. The new
company assumed responsibility for operating
the bridge. Construction got underway in April
1909 with the Foundation Company of New
York building the bridge’s concrete
foundations. The Wisconsin Bridge Company
erected the steel spans that were riveted into
place. The first permanent bridge built across
the Rio Grande was 227 feet long and cost
approximately $225,000. The B & M Bridge
was designed as a swing bridge to
accommodate steamboat traffic on the Rio
Grande, but by the time it was completed in
July 1910, river traffic had ceased. The bridge
was swung open once for inspection in 1910
and has never been opened since, although
much of the gearing mechanism is still in place.
When the bridge opened to the public in
December 1910, pedestrians, horses, wagons
and carriages were invited to pay a toll and use
the narrow eighteen-foot wide bridge to cross
the Rio Grande. The toll for a foot passenger,
with or without baggage, was five cents,
although children under seven accompanied
by adults crossed free. A horse and rider paid
a ten cents toll, the same paid by empty carts
and wagons with one draft animal and a
driver. Wagons with yokes of oxen paid
twenty-five cents each; mules and cattle cost
five cents; and sheep and goats were charged
two and one-half cents each. The toll on
merchandise such as vegetables, cotton bales,
and pots and pans was six cents per hundred
pounds. Automobiles paid twenty-five cents
each plus five cents per passenger.
In 1953 the B&M Bridge was widened
three feet to accommodate trucks. As
Brownsville and Matamoros grew, the volume
of traffic increased as well, requiring further
renovation in 1992. In 1997 a four lane
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
240

concrete bridge was constructed next to the
original steel bridge. Ninety years after the
bridge first opened, the concrete addition is
used exclusively for cars while the original
structure crosses only trains.
Today the B&M Bridge Company is an
American corporation owned jointly by the
Union Pacific Railroad and the Federal
Government of Mexico. Four officials of the
Union Pacific Railroad serve on the board of
directors, as do four representatives of the
Mexican Federal government. The bridge is
unique in that all bridge administration,
security, and maintenance services for both
sides of the bridge are managed by a single
operation located on the U.S. side. The most
unusual feature is the fact that all tolls, both
north and south bound, are collected on the
U.S. side. At the B&M border station, U.S.
Customs, Immigration & Naturalization
Service, USDA, T. A. B. C., as well as the Border
Patrol and local law enforcement work side by
side to fulfill their different missions.
Rail traffic has been increasing steadily,
most recently at a rate of twenty-one percent
annually. Steel from the Port of Brownsville
going to Monterrey, auto carriers and grain are
some of the rail shipments. Of the three
international bridges in the Brownsville-
Matamoros area, the B & M currently leads in
the total number of autos passing north and
south. Its toll rates are traditionally lower than
competing bridges.
For many years the B&M Bridge was
referred to as the Old Bridge or Puente Viejo,
acknowledging its history. Now the bridge has
a new marketing concept and nickname: the
Express Bridge. In 1999, the B&M Bridge
introduced Express Cards, convenient prepaid
toll cards. Available for purchase at every
B&M tollbooth, the cards come in $15 and
$30 versions and can be used by both
northbound and southbound traffic. The toll
taker simply punches out a fare each time the
card is presented. One free trip is awarded for
every ten crossings. Within eighteen months
of its initiation, more than eight percent of
bridge traffic was using the Express Card to
cross daily between Brownsville and
Matamoros. Recently the B&M Bridge
completed a bypass that gives cars access to
the bridge when a train is blocking Calle Sexta
in Matamoros. The railroad bridge is also
being upgraded with a $2.5 million
investment in structure and image.
In 1999 the Texas Historical Commission
and the Cameron County Historical
Commission dedicated a state historical
marker recognizing the Bridge’s historical
significance. Always attentive to customers
and fiscally conservative for its owners, the
Company envisions becoming the standard of
excellence in the international toll industry.
✧
Above: An early 1900s view of the bridge
from the U.S. side.
Below: A 2000 aerial photograph of the
Brownsville & Matamoros Bridge Border
Station showing auto and rail bridges.
COURTESY OF THE HNTB ENGINEERING.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
241

STARR-
CAMARGO
INTERNATIONAL
BRIDGE
✧
Right: Arnold J. Vale and his wife, Miriam,
in 1980. He realized his great-grandfather’s
dream of an international port of entry with
the Starr-Camargo International Bridge.
Below: The original Starr-Camargo
International Bridge first opened for traffic
in 1966.
First opened to traffic in August 1966, the
two-lane, privately owned Starr-Camargo
International Bridge was the realization of a
vision for international trade between two
countries conceived by John Vale (circa 1850).
These visions of trade, the Rio Grande as a navigable
river, as well as the region’s proximity to
Monterrey, continued to resonate in his mind.
His son, Joseph Hillary Vale, a U.S.
Customs inspector in Roma, shared the same
vision. Later, his son, Samuel P. Vale,
continued what had almost become a
generational obsession to link trade routes in
this region with the construction of an
international port of entry. Four generations
later, the Vale family mettle resurfaced when
Arnold J. Vale, great-grandson of John Vale,
finally turned his vision into a reality.
Recently, Miriam Vale reminisced about seeing
her late husband Arnold and his friend,
Mike Valadez, clearing the land for a bridge
site. “Today we celebrate the razing of the
physical remnants of a bygone era to make way
for the rebirth of the Starr-Camargo
International Bridge.”
Miriam Vale smiled as she recounted an
experience reflecting trans-border cooperation
years before the North American Free Trade
Agreement. A plaque affixed to the middle of
the bridge commemorates how the Starr-
Camargo Bridge was opened as most of the
town of Camargo was evacuated into Rio
Grande City during Hurricane Beulah in 1967.
“We opened the bridge and allowed their
residents to escape the flooding, and then they
returned to their homes when the water
subsided,” she recalled.
Prior to the existence of the bridge, a ferry
once served as the only connection between the
sister cities of Rio Grande City and Camargo,
Tamaulipas. One can still see the wooden posts
with steel braces resting quietly in the noonday
shade of the bridge superstructure in testimony
of a bygone era. On September 21, 1959, the
Congress of the United States approved Public
Law 86-343 that authorized the construction
and operation of the port of entry, and the rest
is history.
“This crossing has become the architectural
icon driving regional economic development,”
says Samuel F. Vale, a fifth generation Vale and
president of the Starr-Camargo Bridge Company.
“We have only seen a preview of the
economic development building blocks that will
provide the foundation for our future growth in
Starr County and in the Rio Grande Valley.”
At a recent U.S./Mexico Binational
Committee meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona,
one of the members described this port of
entry as “efficient and unique” due to the level
of binational cooperation shown between the
public and private sectors. The attitude
displayed was “finding solutions to problems
before they became problems.” Traffic was not
allowed to stack up for too long because the
public and private sector immediately began
searching for international business solutions.
Today, Samuel F. Vale continues the Vale
family tradition of building and contributing to
the development of the economies of the
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
242

United States and Mexico. He presides over
eleven corporations, serves on numerous local,
national and international boards, and
constantly promotes international trade. Still,
he finds time to exchange greetings during
impromptu visits from old friends,
acquaintances and occasionally from dignitaries
from the three countries that now dominate
world trade.
Days away from the formal dedication of a
new state-of-the-art port of entry, one would
believe that this satiates the drive to build.
However, nothing could be further from the
truth. A new two-lane, southbound bridge is
now the order of the day. The Mexican
government shares the vision as well, and is
also planning to expand their port facilities.
Trade has continued to dominate the
regional business landscape, and one can
once again hear Samuel F. Vale say that we
must continue “Linking Friendships and
Economies of the U.S.A. and Mexico.” This
has become so ingrained in the Vale tradition
that it is the company motto, seen on business
cards and company stationery.
Today, Camargo, founded on March 5,
1749 by 30 pioneer families, retains the
distinction of being the first Mexican Customs
Port of Entry on the Rio Grande. Located
along La Ruta Corta, the short route that
connects Starr County to Monterrey, the City
of Camargo shares a vision for the future and
is jointly supporting regional development.
The Starr-Camargo International Bridge is
120 miles northeast of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon,
and the largest industrial center in Northern
Mexico. The activity in the region continues to
be driven by its retail, commercial, agricultural
and tourist industries. New oil and gas
exploration in the Burgos Cuenca region of
Northern Tamaulipas has prompted the revival
of the petrochemical industry by PEMEX
through BJ Oilfield Services.
Visitors flock to historical sites such as Fort
Ringgold, the General Robert E. Lee House, La
Borde House, Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto, and
a host of natural and historical treasures found
along Los Caminos del Rio Historical Corridor.
Growth is inevitable, and this family’s
vision has left an indelible signature in time.
✧
Above: Samuel F. Vale and his wife, Linda,
are the present owners of the bridge that
links the sister cities of Rio Grande City and
Camargo, Tamaulipas, Mexico.
Below: Architectural perspective of the new
Starr-Camargo International Bridge and its
port of entry facilities at Rio Grande City.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
243

MAGIC VALLEY
ELECTRIC
COOPERATIVE,
INC.
✧
The first pole to be set in Magic Valley
Electric Cooperative’s rural electric system.
The ceremony took place on June 7, 1938.
Present for the historic occasion were (front,
left to right): J. E. Wilder, V. W. Bernard,
Judge B. H. Oxford, George McCain, R. M.
King, George Darnell, Helen Cronkite
Dickman, and L. H. Henry. Back row: Mr.
Griffin (left) and W. J. McKnight.
Saturday, May 11, 1935, was just another
spring day to millions of Americans. The
send-a-dime chain letter craze was at its
height, Rear Admiral Byrd had returned from
another trip to Antarctica, and the Cleveland
Indians and the New York Yankees led the
major baseball leagues. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt finished his week’s work, including
signing of Executive Order 7037, creating an
agency to begin a rural electrification program
that would transform rural society.
In 1937 most of the Rio Grande Valley towns
in South Texas were well on their way to
becoming electrified. It was not profitable for
private power companies to provide service to
sparsely populated rural areas; farmers and
ranchers were left to their icehouses, hand
pumps, and oil lamps. So a small group of local
farmers and ranchers signed a $200,000 note
and began constructing the first electrical
distribution lines in rural South Texas. Within
eleven months, 75 miles of electric lines
provided power to 125 homes.
From the date of its state charter, September
13, 1937, Magic Valley Electric Cooperative,
Inc. (MVEC) has been among the best in the
nation. The original loan to build electrical
infrastructure was repaid fourteen years ahead
of schedule. It was the first rural electric
cooperative in the nation to make an across the
board capital credits refund (margin/profits) to
its members, and the second in the nation and
the first in Texas to take advantage of two-way
radios in service trucks, dramatically increasing
efficiency to its member/owners.
During its first forty years, the primary
goal of MVEC was to bring electricity to the
rural areas of the Rio Grande Valley of South
Texas. In 1975 the newly created Texas Public
Utility Commission (TPUC) granted MVEC
certification to serve in all general areas into
which lines had been extended, and MVEC’s
mission became one of improving reliability
and containing expenses, to ensure the
members continued to receive reliable energy
at the lowest possible cost. As the rural area
grew to become an urban community, farms
and ranches gave way to urban subdivisions,
schools, commercial businesses, hospitals,
and state prisons.
Today, many electric co-op consumers
don’t remember the first day electricity came
to their homes. Electricity was probably
already on when they moved in–an automatic
thing, like the telephone line and running
water. The cooperative philosophy is still
vitally important today. The co-op is locally
owned and operated, led by a board of
members/directors elected by the
membership. The co-op is not driven by
profit motives or return on equity for
stockholders. It provides service to members
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
244

at cost. Any monies above cost are ultimately
returned to members as “capital credit”
refunds. As a member of state and national
electric cooperatives organizations, MVEC
benefits from economy of scale in purchases
and specialized equipment repairs, employee
and director trainings, safety and benefits,
and strong grass roots lobbying at state and
national levels.
When the airline, railroad and telephone
industries were deregulated, consumers did not
have the organized protection that co-ops can
offer this time around. Now, through such
alliances as Tuchstone Energy ® , the cooperatives’
national brand, cooperatives can pool resources
and brainpower to ensure that members get the
superior service that they deserve.
Deregulation under Senate Bill 7 will change
Texas’ electric utility industry forever.
Beginning in January 2002, consumers will be
able to choose their electrical service provider.
MVEC’s preparations began years ago, and
include a contract with a low-cost generator to
give the co-op flexibility in the deregulated
market. Beginning in July 2001, MVEC will
discontinue receiving electrical service from
the investor-owned utility in South Texas,
allowing MVEC to offer member/owners a
substantial decrease in the cost of electricity.
Regardless of possible legislative changes in the
interim, the co-op will adhere to its two core
commitments: 1.) all consumers must benefit,
and 2.) any restructuring scheme must ensure
service reliability for member/consumers.
MVEC serves portions of five counties—
Cameron, Hidalgo, Willacy, Kenedy, and Starr.
With 3,615 miles of energized line, MVEC
serves 58,825 member/owners, and has a net
worth approaching $145 million. It is the
third largest electric distribution co-op in
Texas, adding some 400 new customers per
month. With headquarters in Mercedes, it
also has division consumer service offices in
Edinburg, Brownsville, and Pharr, and
twenty-three convenient pay centers
throughout the Rio Grande Valley.
The future of Magic Valley Electric
Cooperative will continue to lie where it
always has—in the hands of its members, who
have always sought self-sufficiency. When the
owners are also the customers, they have a
common stake in the organization–a share of
the rewards and a right to expect the best,
most reliable and economical services
available. This is the goal of the co-op—to
enhance the quality of life, in a safe manner for
its member/owners, and its Valley residents.
✧
Top: When the community needs new
service, Linemen Leo Garza and Carlos
Guajardo are ready to help.
Middle: Customer Service Representative
Esmeralda Elizondo assists co-op member
Sandra Herrera.
Bottom: In the control room, Blanca
Werbiski and Ben Garcia keep power
flowing to co-op members.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
245

PHARR/REYNOSA
INTERNATIONAL
BRIDGE
✧
The Pharr International Bridge
Administration Building.
The Pharr/Reynosa International Bridge is
the longest border crossing in the world.
Strategically located and environmentally sensitive,
the international gateway links the
south Texas City of Pharr with Reynosa,
Mexico. Although it is the longest bridge
spanning the Rio Grande, the Pharr/Reynosa
Bridge offers one of the fastest crossing times
for commercial vehicles.
The question often arises about why the
Pharr/Reynosa International Bridge is 3.2 miles
long yet crosses over a river approximately 330
feet wide. Ecology determined the bridge’s
design that was many years in development.
The City of Pharr began its quest to secure an
international bridge more than thirty years ago.
In 1963 Pharr city attorney Ramiro Martinez
requested U.S. Senator Ralph Yarborough to
assist the Pharr Municipal Bridge Corporation in
the construction of an international bridge. By
that point, the annexation of land adjoining U.S.
281 down to the Rio Grande was already under
discussion, but little progress was made in the
next ten years. Then the passage of a federal law
prohibiting private ownership of international
bridges spurred Pharr Mayor A.C. Jaime to
organize the city’s resources to build the
Pharr/Reynosa International Bridge, and
succeeding city administrators continued the
campaign.
Five different bridge concepts were
reviewed before the design of what is sometimes
called the Cadillac of bridges was chosen.
Building an international bridge required the
coordination of U.S. and Mexican federal and
state agencies, each with diverse goals. The
permitting process involved the International
Boundary and Water Commission, Texas
Natural Resources Conservation Commission,
Department of Transportation, Parks and
Wildlife, to name a few.
The International Boundary and Water
Commission wanted a bridge designed so that
the river at flood stage encounters the least
amount of resistance to water flow possible.
An equally important local consideration was
the environmental factor: the benefit of
providing a wildlife corridor along the banks
of the Rio Grande, eventually to run from the
Gulf up river to Falcon Dam. With its
provision for unimpeded habitat for native
birds, animals and plants, the Pharr/Reynosa
International Bridge is considered the most
ecologically sound and the most
environmentally friendly of any international
bridge along the United States border.
The City of Pharr finally completed the
Pharr/Reynosa International Bridge in 1995.
Bridge facilities include four southbound
lanes with an additional four lanes ready for
expansion. The bridge crosses above fields
planted in cantaloupe and other produce and
terminates in Mexico near a statuary park
filled with Mexican cultural, historical and
religious figures.
Pharr is increasingly a focal point of
transportation and distribution businesses in
Hidalgo County, and the bridge’s strategic
location is a major contributor to this
development. The city is part of the McAllen
Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is among
the fastest growing MSAs in the nation. U.S.
Highway 281, which runs directly to the
Pharr/Reynosa Bridge, is one of the three
major roadways linking the Rio Grande Valley
to regional markets and to the north and west.
This highway intersects the Valley’s major eastwest
expressway making it easily accessible.
Less than two miles south of the Bridge is
Reynosa Industrial Park, home to more than
seventeen maquiladora plants with another
industrial park being developed nearby. The
economic benefits of the Pharr/Reynosa Bridge
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
246

✧
Above: Traffic headed southbound
into Mexico.
Below: Commercial traffic going to Mexico.
extend beyond the companies involved in
assembly operations at the maquilas. Trucking
firms, packing sheds, light and heavy
manufacturing concerns, warehouses, and
customs brokerages are some of the businesses
drawn to Pharr because the bridge makes
Mexico so accessible. Once across the Rio
Grande, traffic can turn down Mexico Highway
2 and to go into Matamoros or into Reynosa
and then on to Monterrey and other tourist or
commercial regions of Tamaulipas and Mexico.
Reynosa International airport is also within five
miles of the Pharr/Reynosa Bridge.
The federal facilities at the Pharr International
Bridge include four inspection stations for cars
and four super booths for trucks. Two docking
areas are capable of handling fifty trucks at once.
The U.S. Customs Service has installed both
drive-through and portable X-ray machines for
cargo inspection which speeds the process of
moving cargo between countries. A cold storage
area is accessible for perishables when they must
be off-loaded, although produce companies have
found their perishable goods are crossed more
rapidly at Pharr/Reynosa than at older bridges.
The border station accommodates the USDA,
Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, the
immigration, and customs, along with city and
county law enforcement, the Border Patrol and
the bridge administration.
In 2000 a total of 2,118,877 vehicles crossed
the bridge southbound, bringing in revenues of
$4.86 million. Private cars and trucks accounted
for eighty-eight percent of the traffic.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
247

VALLEY
INTERNATIONAL
AIRPORT
More than half of all Rio Grande Valley air
travelers pass through Harlingen’s Valley
International Airport, gateway for business and
recreational trips to South Texas. Valley
International Airport, home of the Valley’s
longest runways, is within forty miles of more
than ninety percent of the Rio Grande Valley’s
population and its attractions. Long the leader in
passenger travel with non-stop flights to seven
airports, VIA’s easily accessible location has fueled
substantial growth in air cargo traffic, particularly
express parcel capacity. Now the hub for FedEx,
UPS, Airborne Express, and integrated cargo
service on the border, VIA has become a staging
area for international parcel shipments.
In 1947 the All-Valley Regional Airport
opened at the former Harlingen Army Air Field,
a World War II aerial gunnery-training base.
When the U.S. Air Force reactivated the base
during the Korean War, the city’s municipal
airport shifted west to Harvey Richards Field.
The closure of Harlingen Air Force Base in
1962 created temporary economic stress for the
city, but led to the 1966 opening of Harlingen
Municipal Airport using the military runways
and facilities. Growing with the city, a new
Harlingen Air Terminal was built in 1978, and
1983 saw the completion of Rio Grande Valley
International Airport’s terminal building. Valley
International Airport underwent a major
expansion in 1991 and in 2001 completed a
comprehensive facilities upgrade, including
revamped ticket counters and expanded parking.
Southwest Airlines, Continental Express,
American Eagle, and the scheduled charter Sun
Country Airlines provide travelers with their
choice of more than forty inbound and
outbound flights daily. Southwest Airlines
began flying into Harlingen more than twentyfive
years ago, selecting Harlingen, city code
HRL, as its first expansion airport.
Always innovative and oriented to
passengers’ needs, VIA was the first in the Rio
Grande Valley to offer jet bridge service, gate
area internet access, and work cubicles. A
KidsPort play area lets active children enjoy
themselves while waiting for a flight. Flight
information display screens are readily
available for travelers while the airport’s
website, www.Iflyharlingen.com, provides a
convenient means of checking on real-time
arrival and departure information. The
International Arrivals Building is designed to
process 360 passengers per hour.
Valley International Airport is also home to
thriving fixed base operators, which offer a full
menu of services for private, charter, cargo,
and medical evacuation planes.
At the end of the twentieth century, Valley
International Airport was recognized as Texas’
only growing small hub airport and, some
might say, the gateway to the future of the Rio
Grande Valley.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
248

World War II was nearing its end when what
has become the Rio Grande Valley Partnership
was organized in 1944. Civic leaders from the
still young Valley cities and towns met to study
the need for regional planning once the war was
over. The area’s agricultural economy flourished
during the war as fruits, vegetables and cotton
helped supply the huge war machine. Military
bases in Harlingen and Mission helped train
manpower and also provided a boost for the
economy. Leaders realized that changes would
come once peace finally came.
They formed the Lower Rio Grande Valley
Planning Board to provide a clearinghouse and
planning organization to promote economic
diversification, better highways, improved
marketing of farm products, increased tourism,
and more non-farm jobs for the growing
population. They chose Weslaco as their
headquarters due to its central location and
helpful business community, which provided
initial office space. Soon it became the Lower
Rio Grande Valley Chamber of Commerce,
then the Rio Grande Valley Chamber of
Commerce, or simply Valley Chamber.
In 1974 the regional chamber moved into its
present headquarters at FM 1015 and Expressway
83 between Weslaco and Mercedes. A major
expansion was completed in 1993 to make it the
beautiful and efficient structure it is today.
By the time it celebrated its fiftieth anniversary
in 1994, many organizations had been formed
under its umbrella, some quickly becoming
independent entities. The Valley Sportsmen’s
Club started here, as did Texas Citrus Mutual, the
Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers, the Valley
Proud Environmental Council, and the Rio
Grande Valley Empowerment Zone.
Other organizations stayed under its
umbrella and are administered by what became
the Rio Grande Valley Partnership in 1995.
These include the Regional Mobility Task Force,
now working to bring interstate highways to the
Valley as part of the I-69 Corridor; Citizens
Against Lawsuit Abuse; the Lower Rio Grande
Water Committee and the Valley Agricultural
Research & Development Corporation.
The Partnership also continues its regional
chamber functions to promote the economic
and strategic importance of the Rio Grande
Valley as a region and to provide quality research
and technical support to business, industry and
government. It maintains a wide range of Valley
wide statistics and publishes many business and
tourism publications. Legislative liaison and
advocacy for Valley interests make up an
important part of the Partnership’s agenda.
Since all of the Rio Grande Valley borders the
Mexican State of Tamaulipas, the Partnership
created an office for the Valley in Ciudad
Victoria, the state’s capital, in 1993. This office
assists area businesses in conducting business
across the border, maintains close ties with
Tamaulipas state officials, seeks to improve flow
at the international bridges, works with
Customs, and was instrumental in the retention
of the U. S. Consulate in Matamoros.
Since it began in 1944, the Rio Grande Valley
Partnership has represented the Valley business
community with its mission to improve the
business climate and regional quality of life. Its
basic support comes from its business members.
Many of these members are represented in
the “Sharing the Heritage” section of this book,
which brings information on organizations,
businesses and individuals that have helped to
build the Rio Grande Valley of today. The
Partnership feels privileged to sponsor the
publication of Historic Rio Grande Valley, which
brings the history of the region to life in words
and pictures from its early Spanish occupation
to its entry into the New Millennium. Its hope is
that you will treasure the book and keep it as a
memento for your children and their children to
show them what the Rio Grande Valley was like
up to the year 2000.
RIO GRANDE
VALLEY
PARTNERSHIP
✧
The Rio Grande Valley Partnership
headquarters on FM 1015 and Expressway
83 in Weslaco, Texas.
BUILDING A GREATER RIO GRANDE VALLEY
249

HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
250

EDUCATION
the schools, school districts, and universities
equipping future generations of Valley
residents with the tools they need to succeed
La Joya Independent School District...............................................252
University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College.........254
South Texas Vo-Tech....................................................................256
Sharyland Independent School District ...........................................258
Weslaco Independent School District ..............................................260
The University of Texas Pan-American ...........................................262
COSTEP and STHEA ...................................................................264
San Benito Independent School District ..........................................266
South Texas Community College ....................................................268
McAllen Independent School District ..............................................270
Raymondville Independent School District.......................................272
Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District ..........................274
Roma Independent School District .................................................276
South Texas Independent School District.........................................278
Rio Grande City Consolidated Independent School District ................280
Mercedes Independent School District ............................................282
Texas A&M and USDA Research Centers.........................................284
Marine Military Academy.............................................................286
Texas State Technical College Harlingen .........................................287
Region One Education Service Center.............................................288
Deborah Case Dance Academy ......................................................289
✧
Top: This Santa Rosa High School was
dedicated in 1928, and the school had a
Valleywide championship football team that
same year. A new high school was built in
recent years and this school now houses
younger students.
COURTESY OF THE WIEGAND FAMILY.
Bottom: One of the buildings on the site
formerly occupied by Fort Brown is the
UTB/TSC Library, which has an extensive
collection of early books, magazines,
newspapers, photographs, and other
memorabilia of South Texas and Northern
Mexico.
EDUCATION
251

LA JOYA
INDEPENDENT
SCHOOL
DISTRICT
✧
Top: Amancio J. Chapa Jr., La Joya School
Board president, presents an award to Alma
Ortega, principal of E.B. Reyna Elementary
School, for being a Recognized Campus for
the 1998-99 year.
Below: Two elementary students are
learning at high levels using a hands-on
technology program.
Professional educators in the
La Joya Independent School
District are dedicated to continuing
the district’s tradition of
excellence through development
of the unique gifts and talents
of all its students. Staff,
board members, and the community
cooperate to ensure that
all LJISD students have access
to quality instructional programs
to help them reach their
full potential. Committed to the
concept that educational excellence
is every student’s right,
the district seeks to foster a climate
continually affirming the
worth and diversity of all students
and strengthening the
links among self-concept, learning,
and behavior.
Located in the western part of Hidalgo
County, La Joya ISD encompasses an area of
over 226 square miles, and is one of the fastestgrowing
school districts in Texas, with an estimated
increase of 700 students annually.
Its strong educational history dates back to
the first half of the nineteenth century, when
citizens from a few towns and villages established
a place of learning. One of these early
schools, built in western Hidalgo County’s
Havana in 1849, was a rock and adobe structure
offering students an education as strong as
the building. This would later become known
as the La Joya School. One of La Joya’s pioneer
educators was Nellie Leo Schunior, who taught
from 1913 to 1918, and was joined by
Guadalupe (Ninfa) Ornelas, an Old Reynosa
resident, who crossed the Rio Grande by boat
daily to teach. Schunior, who dreamed of building
a high school to serve communities west of
Mission to the Hidalgo County line, donated fifteen
acres of her own land for that purpose.
Although she did not live to see this dream
become a reality, the Nellie Schunior Memorial
High School, which was built in 1920 and had
eighteen teachers, became part of the newly
formed Tabasco Independent School District.
Today’s La Joya ISD includes twenty campuses—thirteen
elementary schools, four
middle schools, an alternative education center,
a ninth grade campus, and La Joya High
School. The district employs a professional
and support staff of 2,420 and had a peak
enrollment of 17,163 during 1999-2000, with
Hispanic students accounting for 99.5 percent
of the enrollment.
To meet their educational goals, LJISD’s
educators and administrators have developed
some of the most successful programs in
Texas. These include implementation of:
• A bilingual program placing equal emphasis
and value on the acquisition of both
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
252

Spanish and English, the languages of
both the school and the community
• A gifted program promoting successful
critical and creative thinking in all the
district’s students
• Internet, distance learning, and multicultural
programs, to offer students experiences
to prepare students for life-long
success
• Fine arts programs including choir,
orchestra, band, Mariachi “Los Coyotes,”
Grupo Folklorico “Tabasco,” drama, and
UIL activities
These programs will be augmented beginning
in the 2000-2001 school year by two new
LJISD programs—the Health Science Academy
and the Academy of Communications, Visual
and Performing Arts. Both have been made possible
through generous community support.
The four-year Health Science Academy is
designed to prepare students for the competitive
field of medicine, whether it involves postsecondary
education or entering the medical
profession job market. Since 1985, LJISD has
offered health science and technology classes.
This new program offers countless opportunities
to learn about these fields in a unique,
hands-on environment. Plans include careerrelated
curriculum, customized degree plans,
job shadowing, concurrent enrollment opportunities,
and participation in competitive
events, community service, and field visits to
medical facilities outside the Rio Grande Valley.
Plans are to offer opportunities for students to
become certified as an Electrocardiograph
Technician, Pharmacy Technician, Nurses’
Aide, or Licensed Vocational Nurse.
The Fine Arts Academy, the first of its kind
in the Rio Grande Valley, will offer a specialized
four-year Fine Arts curriculum for high school
students. Its mission is to provide extensive
education in the arts, building on students’
talents and academic abilities to achieve
excellence through performance. Concurrent
enrollment will be available, and students will
attend professional performances and perform
in lab recitals several times annually.
Through the core schools and the new academies,
Schunior’s dream continues today in the
hearts of students and staff at La Joya ISD. Her
ideals and values of offering an education to
everyone have been incorporated in the La Joya
ISD mission statement–that all students will
have access to quality educational opportunities
that enable them to perform at high levels.
✧
Top: Three workers stand on the northeast
side of the 1500-seat La Joya Performing
Arts Center.
Below: La Joya Mariachi “Los Coyotes”
pose with Ann Richards after dedication
ceremonies for the Ann Richards
Middle School.
EDUCATION
253

UNIVERSITY OF
TEXAS AT
BROWNSVILLE
AND
TEXAS
SOUTHMOST
COLLEGE
Few universities and colleges match the
colorful past of The University of Texas at
Brownsville and Texas Southmost College
campus. Centered on Fort Brown, a former
U.S. Army post built during the Mexican
American War of 1846-48, the campus’
illustrious history is rivaled only by its dynamic
present. UTB/TSC has attained excellence in
teaching and research while becoming an
integral part of the bicultural, bilingual City of
Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley.
Just as unique as the campus, the partnership
of The University of Texas at Brownsville and
Texas Southmost College (UTB/TSC) is the only
arrangement of its type in Texas. The two
institutions have forged a seamless transition
between a regional university with upper level
courses and a community college with a flexible
open-admissions policy. By eliminating barriers
for students while lowering administrative costs,
UTB/TSC is fulfilling the educational needs of its
nearly 10,000 students with a one-stop
education location. The institution is nationally
ranked as a top producer of Hispanic graduates,
particularly in math and foreign languages.
“Our goal is to reach 20,000 students by
2010,” says Dr. Juliet V. Garcia, president,
predicting an increase of one thousand students
annually. By 2010 UTB/TSC expects to offer a
full spectrum of associate and undergraduate
degrees along with master’s programs relevant
to professionals working in the Rio Grande
Valley. UTB/TSC ranks as the fastest growing
campus in The University of Texas System as
students respond to the opportunity to pursue
occupational and technical certificates,
traditional academic degrees, and continuing
education credits in the Rio Grande Valley.
The projected doubling of enrollment is a
signification evolution from 1926 when
Brownsville civic clubs, the chamber of
commerce, school district, and a pastors’
alliance led a campaign to create a junior
college. That year the Junior College of the
Lower Rio Grande Valley enrolled eighty-four
students. A name change to Brownsville Junior
College in 1931 was followed by the college’s
move to the Fort Brown campus in 1944.
World War II veterans skyrocketed enrollment
to 1,238 in 1948, and in 1950 the school was
renamed Texas Southmost College.
In 1991 Texas Southmost College and The
University of Texas System formed a partnership,
which led to the establishment in 1998
of The University of Texas at Brownsville, a
full four-year institution. The school welcomed
its first freshman class that year.
Garcia, who was the first Hispanic female to
be named a university president, voices
UTB/TSC’s celebrated commitment to academic
achievement: “Here students at all levels
develop skills of critical thinking, quantitative
analysis, and effective communication that will
sustain them in lifelong learning.” Baccalaureate
degrees are awarded in twenty-three fields as
diverse as criminal justice, fine arts, respiratory
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
254

therapy, and computer sciences with Master’s
degrees available in eleven programs.
UTB/TSC’s mainstay is its School of
Education which last year had 2,928 students
enrolled. The School of Education, together
with the School of Health Sciences, the School
of Business, the College of Liberal Arts and
the College of Science, Mathematics and
Technology, awarded 484 baccalaureate and
188 masters degrees in 1999. The same year,
students earned 410 associate degrees and 208
certificates in fields such as drafting, electronics,
and nursing.
Spreading over 337 acres, UTB/TSC is
undergoing a growth spurt in the new century
that includes a $22.5 million Life and Health
Science building, a Technical Training Center, a
new Student Union and the Public Health
component for the South Texas Regional
Academic Health Center. The Technical
Training Center will find new ways to produce
a skilled workforce, which supports the technical
and occupational training needs of regional
businesses, while providing professional
development opportunities in its 40,000-
square-foot complex.
As UTB/TSC meets the challenges of growth,
it continues to honor its heritage. Gorgas Hall,
the one-time Fort Brown hospital with its
breeze-blessed arcades, now houses the
President’s Office. The name commemorates the
Fort Brown medical officer whose pioneering
research led to the conquest of yellow fever.
Around the campus, Spanish-style arches on
new buildings complement graceful older
buildings of weathered brick, all linked by a
winding paseo. The Arnulfo L. Oliviera Library
is a tree-lined walk away from the recently
completed Science and Engineering and
Technology Building and the new bookstore that
is open to the community. The Sid Richardson
Art Gallery, the Distinguished Lecture Series,
and Patron of the Arts are part of the cultural
excitement at UTB/TSC, balanced by a full
calendar of sports events and entertainment.
UTB/TSC’s administration and its faculty of
458 are confronting the challenges facing higher
education in the nation’s fastest growing region
with vision, passion and competency. To prepare
the next generation of students, UTB/TSC’s
GEAR UP program works with the region’s middle
and high school students, giving them access
to information, financial aid, and the skills to
succeed in college. The future may include a virtual
university without borders, a bi-literate
diploma, and students achieving academic
excellence in yet unexplored fields.
The partnership of The University of Texas
at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College
continues to extend a bridge to quality higher
education and progress for students and the
entire community.
EDUCATION
255

SOUTH TEXAS
VOCATIONAL-
TECHNICAL
INSTITUTE
“For twenty-seven years, we’ve been
educating the Valley’s workforce from
Brownsville to Roma,” says South Texas Vo-
Tech President /CEO Elma G. Rodriguez. The
oldest existing privately owned vocational
and technical school in the Rio Grande Valley,
South Texas Vo-Tech provides short-term
intensive training programs for skills in high
demand. Their students gain a competitive
edge in the job market.
“Not everyone has the time, money, or
ability to attend a two or four year college,”
says Rodriguez who co-founded the Texas
Language Academy in 1973 with her husband
Carlos Rodriguez. Initially offering classes in
Spanish and English as a Second language,
the school soon recognized the region’s
need for vocational training in the fields of
allied health, business, childcare, computers
and legal related occupations. It began
offering courses in these fields and in 1983
changed its name to South Texas Vocational-
Technical Institute, also known as South
Texas Vo-Tech.
With more than 450 students enrolled in
eleven programs of study at campuses in
McAllen and Weslaco, South Texas Vo-Tech is
an important element in job skill education on
the border. STVT’s fields of study include
Nurse Assistant LTC/Home Health Aide,
Pharmacy Technician, Clinical Laboratory
Technician, Patient Care Technician, Medical
Office Specialist, Child Care and Development,
Legal Office Specialist, Paralegal/Legal
Assistant, Computer Accounting Specialist,
Computer Office Specialist, and Sales and
Marketing Associate.
“We set ourselves up as a stepping stone.
We prepare our students to get out and get
started in a career field,” says Rodriguez.
Many South Texas Vo-Tech students represent
the first generation of their families to enroll
in post-secondary education. STVT’s courses
of intensive study typically last between six
and twelve months. Its state approved
instructors have practical experience in their
fields and teach programs designed with the
employers’ needs in mind. This means the
skills and knowledge acquired at STVT are
immediately applicable on the job.
The Small Business Administration
recognized the impact Elma Rodriguez has
had on the business community when it
named her SBA’s Hidalgo County
Businesswoman of the Year in 1989.
Rodriguez received the award in recognition of
her achievements as a minority business
owner who founded and developed South
Texas Vo-Tech into a vital component in Valley
education and business.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
256

Rodriguez’s five daughters who have joined
her in the administration of STVT are carrying
on South Texas Vo-Tech’s tradition of
excellence in education. Rosanna Rodriguez is
public relations, marketing, and financial aid
administrator; Sylvia Ann Cardenas is the
Weslaco Campus director; Sandra Lynn May
is curriculum coordinator; Carla Yvonne
Kucia is the McAllen Campus director; and
Laura Liza Arguelles is faculty coordinator. All
five sisters are active in national, state, and
local educational and civic associations.
STVT continues to add new programs to its
curriculum in response to changes in the local
business community. The recently developed
Pharmacy Tech program anticipated new state
regulations for pharmacy employees and was
the first certified South Texas testing site for
that license. Likewise, the new Sales and
Marketing associate program answers a voiced
need for employees with customer service and
merchandising skills.
Beyond actual course work, South Texas Vo-
Tech supports the professional and personal
development of its students through training in
interview skills, resume’ writing, computer use
and appropriate dress. The open-door policy
practiced by school directors, instructors, and
financial aid counselors enables students to have
easy access to advice on academic and financial
situations. STVT maintains contacts with likely
employers and refers graduates to job
interviews. The school prides itself on providing
lifetime job placement for its graduates through
the graduate services coordinator.
South Texas Vo-Tech has taken on the
challenge of fulfilling the training needs of area
businesses, government agencies and
organizations on a contractual basis. For example,
when a company’s employees need safety training
to meet new regulatory standards or one
department needs instruction on a new computer
program, STVT can provide the instructor and
train on site or at the school’s campuses.
Additionally numerous seminars sponsored by
the McAllen Chamber of Commerce and other
local organizations are held at the STVT McAllen
and Weslaco campuses.
STVT is accredited by the Council on
Occupational Education and is approved and
regulated by the Texas Workforce Commission,
Proprietary Schools Section. Financial aid
includes federal grants and loan programs,
scholarships, work-study and veterans
assistance programs.
South Texas Vo-Tech promotes its
curriculum at Career Fairs, advising candidates
on what jobs are in high demand as well as
what training is required for those positions.
“We encourage everyone to continue their
education in one form or another, with us or
elsewhere,” says Rodriguez.
EDUCATION
257

SHARYLAND
INDEPENDENT
SCHOOL
DISTRICT
✧
Above: Sharyland Independent School
District in 1924.
Below: Sharyland Independent School
District in 2000-2001. This aerial picture
depicts the Administration Building;
Sharyland High School with four academic
buildings and 2 gyms; McLeaish Resource
Learning Center; the Vo-Ag facilities; the
band hall; a nine-acre practice field; B. L.
Gray Junior High with 2 gyms; the football
stadium with track; baseball and softball
fields; the central cafeteria; ana the looped
bus ramp in the middle of the facilities. The
SISD complex is bordered by Shary Road
and Taylor Road just north of Business 83.
Opposite, top: One of the oldest Sharyland
Band pictures (right) and the first football
team members (left).
Opposite, bottom: One of the first school
buses used to transport students. In
inclement weather the tarps were released
to drape across the openings.
Student achievement is the Sharyland
Independent School District’s reward for
the combination of a dedicated staff, involved
parents, strong programs, a disciplined
environment, and the proud heritage of the
district’s unique and historical roots.
This twenty-six-square-mile school district
in Hidalgo County, created in 1921, works daily
towards its mission of providing the highest
quality education possible for all students. The
district is dedicated to the concept of providing
students, to the full extent of their individual
abilities, the opportunity to develop the ability
to think logically, independently, creatively, and
to communicate effectively. It endeavors to
promote the worth and dignity of all students
and encourages them to become productive
and responsible members of society.
Named for John H. Shary, who was president
of the district’s first board members, the
Sharyland district evolved from a single room of
boxboards built by local residents about 1914-
1915. With a wood-burning stove, outdoor
privy, and cracks in the walls through which
winter winds whistled, the building housed
eighteen children in first through seventh
grades, taught by one teacher. High school
students attended Mission or McAllen schools.
By the end of 1917 the McAllen District, of
which the Sharyland School was a part,
provided buses from the Shary tract, charging
each student fifty cents per month. Sharyland
area residents petitioned the McAllen board to
build a new school in their area, and in 1918 a
three-room building was constructed.
Three years later the Texas Legislature
approved a separate school district. Voters elected
original board members A. C. Trapp, C. H. Ray, J.
C. Nelson, W. H. Wilson, Peter Bentsen, W. J.
Bond, and John H. Shary, who would remain as
board president until 1940. When school opened
in September 1921, five teachers at three different
locations taught ninety-eight students. The
district’s rapid growth led to approval of a school
bond issue in 1922. The ten-room building, on
property donated by Shary, was the “latest style
of school, similar to those being successfully used
in California.” This open-air, one-story building,
the first of its kind in Texas, was equipped with
an auditorium, a public address system and a
home economics department with a complete
efficiency apartment.
When district funds ran low in 1925, Shary
personally financed the school until the end of
the term. Without his generosity, the school
would have closed at mid-semester. High
school students were still educated in nearby
districts until 1924. The first commencement
exercises for Sharyland High School were held
in 1927, with four graduates who had started
high school in McAllen or Mission.
Continued growth of the district to its
present enrollment of fifty-two hundred
students housed in one junior and one senior
high school and four zoned elementary schools
has led to numerous building improvements in
recent years, including:
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258

• A bilingual program placing equal emphasis
and value on the acquisition of both
Spanish and English, the languages of both
the school and the community;
• Three elementary schools built since
1996, using identical plans to cut costs;
• High school building renovations and
additions of science classrooms, gymnasium
and dressing rooms, additional parking
and site improvements, technologically
equipped library with teaching theater,
track, tennis courts, softball facility, and a
nine-acre practice field area;
• A junior high wing with thirteen classrooms,
main building renovation,
gymnasium, and tennis courts;
• Two exit roads have been added for traffic
pattern improvement.
A fiscally conservative board maintains a
$32 million budget, with 56 percent of revenues
derived from the state, 34 percent from local
property taxes, and 10 percent from federal programs.
Operating costs per student are below
state and regional averages.
With a staff of about 650, including 312
teachers, the district’s salary and benefits
schedules are above the state minimum. Over
fifteen percent of teachers have twenty or more
years of experience.
Each school derives benefits from an active
parent-teacher organization, community volunteers,
and the loyal support of residents.
The district offers instruction on parenting
skills and literacy, so parents can become
more influential in their children’s education.
The staff utilizes progressive programs and
initiatives, along with basics, to maintain a wellbalanced,
grade-appropriate curriculum, including
computer labs and Internet access, to help students
succeed. The high school offers a broad spectrum
of basic, elective, concurrent enrollment, dual
credit, and advanced placement courses, as well as
career and technology courses in agricultural
science, business and office management, home
economics, and trade and industrial arts.
Numerous opportunities beyond basics are also
available on the elementary and junior high levels
for students with varied needs and interests.
Student accomplishments as described in
the 1999-2000 state report attest to the
district’s success in its mission, including:
• Two elementary schools rated “exemplary”
by the Texas Education Agency for
the TAAS tests;
• The district, high school, other elementary
schools, and migrant high school students’
TAAS performance rated “recognized” by
the Texas Education Agency;
• SAT college entrance scores above regional
and state averages, even though a higher
percentage of SHS students took this exam;
• Annual victories of first place in UIL district
contests for over forty years;
• Texas Scholar designation for eighty
percent of the SHS graduates in 1999 and
2000 compared to the state average of
sixteen percent.
For more information about Sharyland
Independent School District please visit
www.sharyland.k12.tx.us.
✧
Board of Trustees, 2000-2001
Lowell Hudsonpillar, president
Linda Cardenas, vice president
Joe D. Williamson, secretary
Paul R. Rodriguez, assistant secretary
Joe Phillips
Ramón Rosales
Tony LaMantia
Administration
Sandra H. Reed, Ph.D., superintendent
EDUCATION
259

WESLACO
INDEPENDENT
SCHOOL
DISTRICT
✧
Above: WISD Superintendent Richard
Rivera has served from 1996 to the present.
Below: Weslaco High School students use the
latest technological tools.
The 2000-2001 school year marked the
fifth consecutive year the Weslaco Independent
School District has been named as a
Texas Education Agency “Recognized School
District.” This designation is based on
eighty percent mastery of the Texas
Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) tests in
math, reading, writing, science and social
studies by Weslaco students.
Located in south central Hidalgo County,
about eight miles north of the Texas-Mexico
border, the fifty-four square mile Weslaco ISD
is bordered by the cities of Progreso, Donna,
Mercedes, and Edcouch/Elsa.
Weslaco city officials organized the district
soon after the city’s establishment in 1919. With
an enrollment of 350 in its first year, 1921-22,
the district had a faculty of ten and a ninemember
graduating class. The first official
school building, completed in February 1922,
was welcomed by students and staff. The new
insulated building brought comfort after a harsh
winter, and the students would no longer have
to borrow benches from city hall.
Weslaco ISD now serves about fourteen
thousand students, of which 96.93 percent are
Hispanic. More than forty-five hundred students
who are classified as “migrant students” leave
the district with their parents during the school
year for agriculture-related work.
With a current operating budget of $92.5
million and about 2,000 employees, WISD is one
of the largest employers in the City of Weslaco.
Through careful financial planning, it has grown
with the student population while retaining one
of the lowest tax rates in the Valley. Over five
hundred students graduate annually from
Weslaco High and pursue higher education.
WISD is made up of a pre-kindergarten
campus, seven elementary schools, four
intermediate, three middle, and three high
schools. The SFA Early Childhood Center, one of
the largest pre-kinder campus in the Rio Grande
Valley, is designed to ease the transition of fouryear
olds with limited English proficiency to the
district’s curriculum plan. Elementary schools
(grades K-4), and intermediate schools (grades
5-6) lay the foundation to the district’s extensive
curriculum. The middle school curriculum offers
more advanced courses as well as fine arts and
technology courses.
Weslaco’s second high school, Weslaco East,
opened in 2000-01. To avoid overcrowding at
Weslaco High, the new school was built to
accommodate ninth and tenth grades, and in
time will be converted to a four-year high school.
Both high schools provide an array of upper-level
courses, such as advanced placement. Through
concurrent enrollment, students can obtain
college credit or take college courses while still in
high school. Career and technology education
courses allow high school students to prepare for
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
260

the workforce. South Palm Gardens is a
free-choice high school for grades 10-12. The
small class size and individualized instruction
offered meets the needs of students seeking a
different environment from the traditional high
school setting. The Weslaco ISD Guidance
Center provides an alternative to suspension and
gives students a second chance to improve
their behavior.
All Weslaco ISD students have access to the
latest educational programs and research
tools, such as the Internet and a variety of
software. With computers in every classroom,
students are kept abreast of technological
advances. Teachers utilize computers to
enhance the district’s tough curriculum and to
track student progress through district-wide
testing and grading.
Reading, writing and math skills are the
building blocks that all students need to be
successful. The district’s eclectic approach to
teaching reading includes phonics, the use of
authentic literature, and integration of reading
and writing. Recognizing the increasing
importance of math in the age of technological
advancement, WISD is committed to providing
quality math education geared to each
student’s individual needs and abilities.
Performance objectives guide teachers in
planning instructional strategies to ensure
continuity across grade levels.
Science and social studies concepts and skills
are emphasized at all levels. At the elementary
level an interdisciplinary approach emphasizes
themes that span many disciplines. At the upper
levels, science and social studies become more
specialized and require more in-depth learning.
Advanced Academic Services, the WISD
gifted and talented program provides a quality
education for all students, recognizing that each
has unique needs, interests, and abilities. Gifted
education fosters intellectual and artistic ability,
task commitment, creativity, and critical
thinking. QUEST—an acronym for Questioning,
Understanding, Exploring, Searching, and
Thinking—is the gifted program for
kindergarten through sixth grade students,
which is designed to enhance education through
enrichment opportunities. Key components of
the secondary gifted program include the Distinguished
Achievement Plan, in which students
perform at college or professional level, and
allows students to pursue college-level studies
while in high school. Concurrent enrollment is
available with the University of Texas-Pan
American, allowing students to earn credit
concurrently for both high school and college.
The wide variety of advanced programs has
earned Weslaco High School recognition as a
“Mentor High School.” Its advanced placement
program was selected in the spring of 2000 by
Newsweek as one of the best in the country.
The district’s administration, faculty, and
staff strive to provide a quality education with
an innovative and challenging curriculum.
Working as a team with parents and the
community, Weslaco ISD will continue to
ensure that all students are prepared to meet the
demands of an ever-changing world.
✧
Above: WISD elementary students.
Below: WISD students in the Science Lab.
EDUCATION
261

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS-PAN AMERICAN
✧
Above: The original campus.
COURTESY OF THE HIDALGO COUNTY HISTORICAL
MUSEUM ARCHIVES.
Below: Dr. Miguel A Nevárez is the longestseated
Hispanic president of a four-year
college or university in the United States.
The oldest and largest institution for
higher education in the Rio Grande Valley,
The University of Texas-Pan American leads
Texas universities in the number of certified
teachers graduating each year. It also ranks
first in the United States in preparing
bilingual teachers. With 12,500 students, a
faculty of nearly 400, and a staff of
approximately 790, The University of Texas-
Pan American is the fifth largest university in
the University of Texas System as well as the
tenth largest university in Texas.
That’s a world away from 1927 and the
founding of Edinburg College. The
community college created by the Edinburg
School District was conceived as the gateway
to higher education for thousands of Valley
residents. The first graduating class numbered
only five. Enrollment soon averaged 250 and
the 20 to 30 faculty members generally taught
at area high schools as well as at the college.
H. P. Ward served as president for twenty-six
years, beginning in 1931.
The institution was known as Edinburg
Junior College from 1933 until 1948, when it
became Edinburg Regional College. In 1952
the name changed once again to Pan
American College and for the first time had a
senior division for upper-level work and
degrees. Graduates doubled to more than 100
annually and Pan American joined the Texas
System of Colleges and Universities. Over the
next twenty years, enrollment grew to five
thousand while the college acquired
additional property, developed a master
building plan, and offered extension courses
in four counties. Pan American University,
chartered in 1971, began offering graduate
courses in the arts, education and science and
also launched the Marine Biology Lab on
South Padre Island.
As the Texas Legislature committed more
funds to higher education in South Texas, The
University of Texas-Pan American opened
officially on September 1, 1989. Continuing a
pattern of growth and expansion, new
baccalaureate and master’s level programs
were added. The Engineering Department was
created and doctoral level programs in
educational leadership and international
business were developed. Besides being the
only four-year public university offering the
Physician’s Assistant Studies degree program
in Texas, UTPA has the state’s only accredited
manufacturing engineering program.
During the 1999-2000 academic year, the
University awarded 1,062 baccalaureate degrees,
281 master’s degrees, and 6 doctoral degrees. The
colleges of Business Administration, Education,
Health Sciences and Human Services, Arts and
Humanities, Science and Engineering, and Social
and Behavioral Sciences currently offer 49
bachelor’s degree programs and 41 master’s
degree programs. Doctoral degrees are now
presented in two fields: Business Administration
and Educational Administration, and a doctorate
of pharmacy in cooperation with UT Austin.
Dr. Miguel Nevárez, who has been
president since 1981, has stated one of the
University’s priorities is to ensure that all
graduates receive a strong liberal arts
education regardless of their major. UTPA’s
courses emphasize competency, multicultural
understanding, and high ethical standards,
drawing on the multicultural, multilingual
character of the UTPA community.
UTPA undergraduates in fields as diverse as
engineering and biology have the opportunity
to do field studies and research traditionally
reserved for graduate students at other
universities. Internships give students hands-
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
262

on experience in their fields of study. Students
have access to the latest information for any
research project through their professors, the
resource-filled library, and the Academic
Services Building’s five hundred Internetconnected
computers for student use.
Immersed in the full spectrum of student life,
UTPA students develop their talents and
interests both in class and out. Three on-campus
art galleries, musical ensembles from jazz to the
award-winning UTPA Mariachi, the University
Theatre, lecture series, and publications provide
cultural stimulation. Extracurricular activities
include intramural sports, supporting the efforts
of the Broncs and Lady Broncs and participating
in special interest clubs, student government,
campus events, and celebrations.
The University of Texas-Pan American
continues to grow, keeping pace with rising
enrollment. New state-of-the-art buildings
include the Mathematics and General
Classroom Building, the Computer Center
Building, and the forty-four-thousand-squarefoot
Student Union, which houses a variety of
student activities. The International Trade and
Technology Building, home to many of UTPA’s
public service operations, also functions as a
conference and meeting facility. The Center for
Entrepre-neurship and Economic Development
has contributed to the establishment and
expansion of numerous businesses along with
the creation and preservation of thousands of
South Texas jobs.
Today, The University of Texas-Pan
American continues the mission envisioned
years ago by Edinburg College, encouraging
the higher education aspirations of Valley
youth and adults. Many UTPA students
represent the first generation of their families
to attend college, and the majority receive
some form of financial aid. Accessible financial
aid combined with UTPA’s low fees and
inexpensive public university tuition enable
new and continuing students to reach their
educational goals. Experience Excellence by
visiting The University of Texas-Pan American
in Edinburg and at www.panam.edu.
✧
Above: The award-winning UTPA Mariachi.
Bottom, left: The Science Building.
Bottom, right: Pre-medical students at
UTPA have a sixty-five percent acceptance
rate to medical schools. The state/national
average is thirty-five percent.
EDUCATION
263

✧
COSTEP
AND
STHEA
Liz Estrada, COSTEP Marketing
Department, helps students use the
Internet to apply for financial aid.
COSTEP was founded by a man with a
vision—a man from a long line of visionary
pioneers who have worked to improve South
Texas for over eighty years.
It all began in the late nineteenth century,
when Tina and Peter Bentsen emigrated from
Denmark to South Dakota to farm. They left
South Dakota in 1917 with a dream to prosper
in a warm climate, and that they did. Peter
Bentsen told his sons, Lloyd and Elmer, “Buy all
the land you can and hold on to it.” His sons
followed his advice and the Bentsen Development
Company became one of the largest land
businesses in the Valley. The grandchildren
expanded and diversified the family’s holdings
into insurance, banking, and politics.
Perhaps the most famous grandchild is
Lloyd Bentsen, Jr., who has a long history of
service to South Texas, the state, and the
nation. He served as a judge for Hidalgo
County—the youngest judge in Texas—then
became the youngest member of the U. S.
House of Representatives, serving three terms.
In the early 1970s, he won a U. S. Senate seat
and served until 1988, when he resigned to
run for vice president of the United States with
Michael Dukakis. President Bill Clinton chose
Bentsen as his secretary of treasury in 1993.
In the early 1970s Lloyd Bentsen, Jr., like
his grandfather before him, had a vision. He
saw a South Texas fifty years in the future that
had a diverse economy, lower unemployment
rate, higher personal income, a thriving and
productive public school system, and
prestigious institutions of higher education
with greater enrollment and graduation rates,
and increased participation in the political
system. But how to get there?
In his first speech after taking office in the
U. S. Senate in 1971, Senator Bentsen threw
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
264

down the gauntlet. He challenged the
business leaders of South Texas to join him in
attacking some of the economic problems of
South Texas, “a great area, but an area that has
far more than its share of poverty in a nation
of affluence.”
Senator Bentsen established the Council
for South Texas Economic Progress (COSTEP)
in McAllen, Texas, to deliver his dream of
South Texas. COSTEP was chartered in 1972
as a nonprofit corporation. It provided a
striking demonstration of how the talent and
energy of the private sector can form a
productive working partnership with the
resources of government to solve problems
that were of concern to many Texans.
COSTEP’s mission was to improve the
educational level of the region as one of
the primary factors for improving the
economic condition. To do this, another
vehicle was needed—secondary loan markets
to work with lenders, schools, and borrowers
to efficiently and effectively manage the
student loan funds. To this end,
COSTEP in 1973 established the
South Texas Higher Education
Authority, Inc. (STHEA) under the
sponsorship of the City of Edinburg,
but headquartered in McAllen.
STHEA is the oldest, continuously
operational secondary student loan
market in the United States.
Since 1972, the COSTEP/ STHEA
partnership has helped nearly a
quarter of a million students attend
postsecondary education. Among the
many benefits of an increasingly
educated citizenry that have accrued
to the Valley over the years include
higher earnings fostering higher
consumption, tax and savings rates
that fuel the economy. Social and
cultural benefits include a reduced
crime rate, more charitable giving,
greater participation in civic life,
improved health, and increased
appreciation for diversity. COSTEP
and STHEA are proud to be
contributors to such improvements in
the life of South Texas.
The infrastructure for higher
education has expanded dramatically since the
1970s. In 1972, the year COSTEP was founded,
there were 3 universities and 8 community
colleges in South Texas serving 47,841 students.
By 1998 there were 6 universities and 11
community colleges serving 128,839 students, a
269 percent increase.
Keeping in mind the low economic status
of the area, COSTEP offers student loans at
the lowest possible cost, and works with
students to put together a package of grants,
scholarships and loans that leaves the student
with the smallest debt burden possible.
COSTEP’s and STHEA’s actions are guided by
their belief that equal access to education is the
key to economic progress for all. They believe
in working with the community to provide the
resources for all students to fulfill their
educational aspirations. The improvements in
South Texas over the past twenty-five years are
in part due to the vision of Senator Bentsen, and
two organizations he put in place—COSTEP
and STHEA.
✧
Rosie Serna of McAllen, Texas, shown here
with her children at her graduation, used
her student loan to attend The University of
Texas–Pan American.
EDUCATION
265

SAN BENITO
CONSOLIDATED
INDEPENDENT
SCHOOL
DISTRICT
✧
Above: Students in the district take pride
in their heritage by celebrating various
cultural events.
Below: The district utilizes innovative
methods in an effort to help students become
lifelong learners.
Before San Benito opened a city school,
privately hired teachers in one-room schools at
Highland, Rangerville, La Encantada, El
Naranjo, La Paloma, and Los Indios taught
children on farms and ranches. In 1907 when
San Benito first opened Ward School on North
Travis Avenue, it enrolled forty-eight students
representing five nationalities: Americans,
Mexican, German, Spanish, and Bohemian.
Classes for Spanish speaking students were
held at Fred Booth School. By 1910 different
grades were scattered around town in various
locations with some classes meeting on the
second floor of the E. De La Rosa Dry Goods
Store. In January 1911, all grades of English
speaking students moved into a brick building
on Reagan Street. Landrum School was added
in 1912.
Teachers and students in San Benito’s
early days were able to witness history on
their doorsteps. During the era of Bandit
raids in 1916, students at Landrum School
saw their playground converted into a
camp for the Third Iowa Regiment and
Texas Rangers who were protecting the
region. Fred Booth Elementary served as a
hospital during the 1918 Spanish influenza
epidemic when schools were closed for a
two-week quarantine.
From its one-room school beginnings, San
Benito Consolidated Independent School
District today has achieved “State Recognized”
honors from the Texas Education Agency for
six consecutive years. The school district
encompasses fifteen campuses with a total
enrollment over eighty-seven hundred
students. It employs 595 teachers and 798
support staff. The district’s ten elementary
schools are Fred Booth, Dr. Cash, Ed Downs,
Landrum, Rangerville, Frank Roberts,
Sullivan, La Encantada, La Paloma, and Dr.
Garza. The district also maintains two middle
schools Berta Cabaza and Vernon Jordan; San
Benito High School; the Ninth Grade Learning
Center; and the Joe Callandret Positive
Redirection Center.
The success of San Benito schools is evident.
Led by Superintendent Joe D. González, the
district—which has been a state recognized
district for six consecutive years—boasts several
exemplary and recognized schools. The school
district’s accomplishments have been achieved
by hard work, by dedication, and by strong
community support. Voters approved school
bond issues for $23 million in 1997 and for
$26.3 million in 1999. School bond approval
has allowed the district to upgrade facilities at
Frank Roberts, Rangerville, Ed Downs, La
Paloma, Landrum, Sullivan, Dr. Garza and Dr.
Cash Elementary Schools. The new Fred Booth
elementary campus, on the site of the old
school, welcomed its first students during the
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
266

2000-2001 school year. District-wide
expansions are underway. Construction includes
classroom wings, new libraries, new cafeterias,
and special education rooms.
Because of its very impressive levels of
academic success despite having a large
proportion of economically disadvantaged
students, the San Benito School District is
considered a model for other Texas schools to
follow. The Charles A. Dana Center of the
University of Texas conducted research to
learn why San Benito students are excelling
academically and achieving high scores. The
researchers hope to determine what policies
and procedures are influencing and sustaining
academic excellence.
Recognizing the importance of parents in a
student’s education, the District’s Parental
Involvement Program offers literacy and
instructional programs for parents, enabling
them to become partners in the education of
their children. It also offers GED and skills
training valuable in job placement. Through
parent centers, parents work as volunteers in
classrooms, libraries, class projects, and
school offices while learning job skills.
Overall, the program averages 440 participants
monthly.
The Gear UP program raises postsecondary
expectations of students and helps
them make a college degree a reality. With the
skills needed to succeed in college and
financial aid information, students may
become the first in their families to go college.
Additional programs from Even Start to
Public Education from the Home to the
Doctorate continue the message that every
child in San Benito can go to college given the
proper tutoring, mentoring and university
exposure needed to make this choice.
The new Naval Junior ROTC at San Benito
High School and the restructuring of the
ninth grade are initiatives designed to help
students experience success. The Community
Oriented Policing Services, along with the
District’s Security personnel, work to ensure
a safe environment for students, teachers,
and staff.
Along with other school districts, San Benito
has partnered with the Challenger Learning
Center in San Benito. The space flight simulator
exposes students to the hands-on value of their
science, math, and English studies. The District
has contributed two teachers, funding and the
temporary use of the building for the Space
Flight simulation mission.
Educating every student to succeed, the
San Benito School District takes pride in
the accomplishments of those students
and strives to produce graduates who are
lifelong learners.
✧
Above: Impact, a publication produced by
the University of North Texas, profiled the
district for its technology practices. The
district has obtained various technology
grants the past several years.
Below: Graduates from the Class of 2001
smile with pride prior to commencement
ceremonies.
EDUCATION
267

SOUTH TEXAS
COMMUNITY
COLLEGE
Super Onda, “The magazine for young adults
with purpose,” has chosen South Texas
Community College as its number one choice of
“Best Schools 2000.” The magazine, which rates
Hispanic-serving institutions, notes that STCC
“is committed to the preparation of intellectually
flexible, creative, and productive citizens”
with academic goals “achieved through exposure
to a range of disciplines and technologies.”
STCC, which has a fifty-five percent retention
rate for Hispanic students, provides a variety
of free events to complement students’
intellectual development, the magazine says,
adding, “Hispanic students received ninety-five
percent of all scholarships, fellowships, and
grants for the 1998-99 academic year.” This is
an area in which the College is especially outstanding,
having awarded over 400 National
Hispanic Scholarship Fund scholarships.
STCC’s achievements are worthy of particular
notice in view of the fact that the college
district was organized just seven years ago.
Now the fastest-growing community college
in Texas, it serves Hidalgo and Starr Counties,
previously the only area of Texas with a population
of almost half a million people not
served by a community college. The district’s
population is primarily Hispanic—ninetyseven
percent in Starr County and eighty-five
percent in Hidalgo County, and the College’s
enrollment is ninety-five percent Hispanic.
From 1,058 students in the fall of 1993,
STCC has grown steadily to a total of well over
11,000 in the fall of 2000. Studies conducted by
the College and the Texas Higher Education
Coordinating Board, in conjunction with Texas
A&M University, predict continued growth in
enrollment to a total of 20,528 by the fall semester
of 2005. This phenomenal growth projection
is based in part on forecasts showing the total
population of the two counties will increase
from the present 601,183 to 809,357 by 2010.
Since its inception with just one campus,
STCC has also grown to include five campuses/centers—the
Downtown Center, Pecan
Campus, and the Center for Advanced and
Applied Technology, all in McAllen; Starr
County Campus in Rio Grande City; and Mid-
Valley Campus in Weslaco. An additional new
campus is a possibility by 2005 if enrollment
projections prove accurate. A campus master
planning architectural firm has received a contract
from STCC to prepare a Campus
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
268

Development Master Plan for the next ten years.
The total faculty and staff have reached 848.
A recent evaluation found STCC has provided
“a solid base for future planning,” to serve “a
dynamic community college in a rapidly growing
and changing district” with its focus on
serving the diverse educational and training
needs of the people of Hidalgo and Starr
Counties. The STCC mission of providing educational
training for good jobs and future
employment opportunities emphasizes that
this is a critical requirement for the area’s economic
development. This concept directs all
planning and development activities, with
access and equity considered the principal
challenges as the institution continues to grow.
The presence of STCC is vital to this area, in
which the 1990 census showed that forty-one
percent of all Hidalgo County adults and fiftyseven
percent of those in Starr County had less
than a ninth grade education. The census
showed forty-one percent of Starr County adults
and twenty-nine in Hidalgo County either spoke
no English or were limited in English.
The College seeks to offer and maintain
academic programming of the highest quality,
and to make access to this programming widely
available to its constituents. STCC sites near
its students’ homes are of particular importance,
since many have extremely limited
access to transportation. Technical and vocational
certification, Associate Degrees in both
technical and academic areas, transferable
courses, and workforce/work site training programs
targeting employment opportunities
within the district are available. Students say
“caring and committed faculty” is the number
one reason they are pleased with STCC.
Most graduates are either employed or
pursuing future education. A survey of
employers shows that 92 percent are satisfied
with the STCC graduates they hire.
The many grants awarded to STCC are
confirmation of the quality of its programs
and the effectiveness of its methods. Among
these are:
• American Association of Community
Colleges Microsoft “Working Connections”
Grant and $1.3 million in software from
Microsoft and IBM.
• $350,000 in funding from the University of
Texas Health Science Center South Texas
Border Initiative
• $1 million commitment over the next four
years from McAllen Medical Center
• $5.2 million in institutional grants for
FY 2000
• $2.9 million in Workforce Training Grants
for FY 2000
• $1.2 million from the City of McAllen
• $1 million HUD Community Development
Block grant
Promoting the values of quality, integrity and
community, STCC strives to meet educational
goals of excellence, student success, regional
prosperity, community service, and districtwide
access, with an overall vision of a better
quality of life for the communities it serves.
✧
COURTESY OF SOUTH TEXAS COMMUNITY COLLEGE,
OFFICE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS & MARKETING.
EDUCATION
269

MCALLEN
INDEPENDENT
SCHOOL
DISTRICT
✧
Above: Valedictorians Michael McCarthy of
Rowe (left), Crystal Calvin of McHi
(center), and Daniel Jay Hernandez of
Memorial proudly take the lead in
McAllen ISD’s first graduations of the new
millennium.
Below: Education Foundation awards
innovative grants—“Yes! We got the grant,
we got the grant!” The McAllen Education
Foundation awarded teachers across the
district twenty-two grants on March 6,
2000. The announcements took teachers
and students by surprise as members of the
Foundation Board of Directors burst into
classrooms, toting balloon bouquets, flyers,
and special “Ask me about my Foundation
Grant” pins. Teachers at Garza Elementary
were thrilled to hear the news.
An outstanding school board, professional
and support staff, combined with generous
community support and parental involvement,
have helped propel students in the
McAllen Independent School District to a
remarkable level of scholastic and extra-curricular
achievement.
The district’s mission is an ambitious one:
“To educate all students to become lifelong
learners and productive citizens in a global
society through a program of educational
excellence utilizing technology and actively
involving parents and the community.” Efforts
toward its fulfillment are obviously paying
dividends, as the district, its teachers and its
students continue to win accolades on both
state and national levels.
McAllen has been recognized as a progressive
school district that sets the pace for educational
change and innovation, promoting an
environment that allows its staff to tailor
practices, programs and systems to the specific
needs of its students and achieve a positive effect
on learning. With an enrollment of 21,625
students, McAllen ISD operates three 5A high
schools, 6 middle schools, 18 elementary
schools, and 4 alternative education facilities. Its
1,414 teachers average 11.3 years of teaching
experience, and over seventeen percent hold
advanced degrees.
The district’s achievements start at the very
top, with the McAllen School Board having
been named in 1998 as the School Board of the
Year for Texas’ Region One, and as an Honor
School Board of Texas—one of just five in the
entire state. High praise has also been directed
to the district’s outstanding professional staff,
which has included eight Regional Teachers of
the Year in the past nine years. The district’s
teachers have also won State Teacher of the
Year honors, Tandy Corporation “Champion of
the Classroom” and Reader’s Digest “American
Hero in Education” recognition, the Molly
Gerold Human Rights Award, and finalist
status in the Disney American Teacher Award
competition, as well as many other honors.
McAllen ISD has been rated a “Recognized”
school district by the Texas Education Agency for
two consecutive years, based on students’
achievement rates of 80 percent or more passing
each section of the Texas Assessment of
Academic Skills (TAAS) Test. Preliminary figures
indicate MISD may again win “Recognized”
status for the third year in a row. Gains over the
period from 1994-99 show an 8 percent
improvement in reading, 28 percent in math, 9
percent in writing, and 24 percent for all tests at
every grade level. Although the district’s
Hispanic, LEP and economically disadvantaged
populations surpass the state average, the district
consistently exceeds state TAAS averages.
Five McAllen ISD schools were rated
“Exemplary” by the state for TAAS achievement
rates of ninety percent and above; and thirteen
were “Recognized” for scores of eighty percent
and above. Preliminary figures indicate the
number of “Exemplary” campuses may actually
increase for next year. Three schools—Travis
Middle School and Seguin and Milam
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
270

Elementary Schools—are former National Blue
Ribbon schools. Three of the district’s schools
have been selected as Mentor Schools, based
on student achievement. This means they serve
as resource/visit sites for other districts. The
Texas Scholars Program, which requires a more
extensive mathematics or science curriculum
than other schools across the area, attracted
404 McAllen students in 1998-99 and 518 in
1999-2000.
Recognition has been granted on all levels of
the McAllen district’s schools, and for a variety
of programs. This is the only district in Texas—
and one of just nine in the U.S.—to win
“Exemplary” status for its Academic 2000
systemic reform in early childhood and
elementary education. This achievement has
prompted the awarding of national grants based
on the effective reading instruction here. The
district’s Counseling Program was Texas winner
of the Planning for Life Award, and ranked
among the top three urban districts in the U.S.
Much of MISD’s success can be attributed to
a focus on advanced academics and innovative
programs such as the proposed International
Baccalaureate Program, a vigorous two-year
course of studies for highly motivated secondary
schools. The drive for excellence is also evident
in the Independent Studies Mentorship
Program, the Summer Health Institute, Math
Camps and integrated physics and chemistry
(middle school students taking high school-level
courses), Duke University Talent Identification
Program, elementary enrichment programs,
vertical teaming, and an emphasis on
technology. In 1998-99, the College Board for
outstanding student achievement on the
Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) and
Advanced Placement (AP) tests singled out
MISD. McAllen students scored among the top
2 to 13 percent on nationally administered
exams, receiving college credit. The district’s
students have also won awards in a wide variety
of other categories, from Constitution Team to
visual and performing arts.
Created by the Thirty-fourth Texas Legislature
on March 22, 1915, and originally financed by a
$100,000 bond election, McAllen ISD is a
community resource for a rapidly growing city,
whose population had risen by over twenty
thousand in a ten-year period—to an estimated
105,868 at the end of 1999. Widespread
community support is a matter of record—
approval of a $42 million bond issue in 1997, for
example. Specific areas of assistance include such
programs as the McAllen Education Foundation
grants that fund innovative teaching, such as
Shakespeare in elementary school, DNA research
in high school, and radio telescopes for study of
galaxies. All are aimed at helping the district
fulfill its commitment to the community’s
citizens of the future.
✧
Left: McAllen ISD’s Campus Teachers of the
year (from left to right): Yvette Trejo,
Alvarez; Enedelia Gonzalez, Bonham;
Lorraine J. Mosher, Bowie; Tina De La
Garza, Crockett; Tiffany D. Perez,
Escandon; Norma J. Saenz, Fields; Raquel
C. Adams, Garza; Sherri D. St. Clair,
Gonzalez; Jimmie S. Shadow, Houston;
Elizabeth Iverson, Jackson; Nancy A.
Birkenmayer, McAuliffe; Marcella C.
Garcia, Milam; Carol J. Brown, Navarro;
Dalinda Garcia, Rayburn; Yadira A.
Torres, Roosevelt; Silvia Pompa, Seguin;
Ana M. Rojas, Thigpen; Veronica M.
Champion, Wilson; Imelda Guajardo,
Zavala; Kenneth B. Brock, Brown Middle;
Juan J. Garza, De Leon; Martha A.
Somohano, Lamar; Yolanda G. Morales,
Lincoln; Paul S. Hallock, Morris; Karen
Wilkin, Travis; Sylvia Alvarado, McAllen
High; Cynthia Mills, Memorial High;
Gerardo H. De La Garza, Rowe High;
Kevin Kelly, Options High; and Maricela
Hernandez, I & G Center.
Below: McAllen ISD students rank among
the nation’s and the state’s highest achievers.
McAllen Memorial High School’s
Constitution Team captured the state title
for the eighth time and met with then-
President Bill Clinton during his visit to
McAllen in January 2000.
EDUCATION
271

RAYMONDVILLE
INDEPENDENT
SCHOOL
DISTRICT
The Raymondville Independent School
District is currently engaged in a $22 million
building program designed to help realize
the district’s mission of providing a superior
academic and technological education for all
its students.
The building program includes replacements
and renovations at Raymondville High
School, replacement of the Pittman and L.C.
Smith Elementary Campus buildings, and
renovations and additions to Myra Green
Middle School and the Raymondville
Instructional Center. The district’s facilities
will include a high-tech fiber optic backbone
that will provide all Raymondville ISD classrooms
access to the Internet, Distance
Learning opportunities, and other technological
resources. New library/media centers are
central to each project, and significant
improvements are also being made to the athletic
facilities at each campus. The new sports
complex includes lighted tennis courts, baseball
and softball facilities, and practice fields.
Raymondville ISD participates in the Texas
Rural Systemic Initiative for Mathematics and
Science, and has received grants from the
Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund
Board, the Texas Education Agency, and other
sources. These sources help local taxpayers in
providing support for the district’s mission of
ensuring that 100 percent of Raymondville
ISD students “graduate and become productive
citizens with a strong sense of social and
civic responsibility in a multi-cultural society,
while integrating the agricultural, historical,
recreational and cultural aspects of South
Texas and Northern Mexico that are unique to
the Gateway of the Rio Grande Valley.”
Raymondville schools are all fully accredited
by the Texas Education Agency, and scores
on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills
have steadily improved over the last five
years. During the 1999-2000 school year, the
Duke University’s Talent Identification
Program identified 75 students from
Raymondville ISD as students with a promising
academic future.
In addition to increased academic rigor
and performance, Raymondville has a proud
tradition in athletics and the Arts.
Raymondville Bearkat athletic teams consistently
win district championships in several
sports. The RISD Band program is a consistent
1st Division winner at UIL Competitions;
many of the band members participate successfully
in individual events, advancing to
State competition. Raymondville students
have enjoyed success in Debate and One-Act
Play, as well as other UIL events.
The first Raymondville School, a small
frame building, was constructed in 1906.
Classes were conducted under the able leadership
of Miss Kimball. By 1913, the district
needed larger facilities to serve the increasing
student enrollment, leading to construction of
a two-story brick building. Its completion was
celebrated with a dance. Heavy rain fell just
before the event, leaving the freshly graded
school grounds ankle deep in mud.
Chivalrous men met the guests’ horse-drawn
buggies and wagons in the street and carried
the ladies across the muddy area, depositing
them safely inside to enjoy the festivities.
Raymondville High School began athletic
competition in 1914, when boys interested in
baseball met and partially cleared an area for
use as the outfield, after which practices
began. During that same year, the district’s
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
272

first commencement exercises were held, with
a graduation class of four–all girls.
The school library was opened to the entire
community in 1915 to give all residents an
opportunity to use its facilities. By 1920
Raymondville had almost 1,000 residents and
was growing. When a train bearing President
Warren Harding and his party stopped briefly
in the town of Raymondville, classes at the
school were dismissed so that students would
have the opportunity to shake the hand of the
distinguished guests.
The district’s first superintendent, V. H.
Tumlinson, was employed in 1923, and further
improvements followed. During the 1930s,
Raymondville High School offered students a
choice of the commercial, vocational, or college
entrance curriculum. A local chapter of the
Future Farmers of America was organized, and
the district’s first band won a number of honors
in various competitions. The 1940s
brought organization of a local chapter of
National Honor Society and a Student Council.
In the 1950s, the school board purchased a 50-
acre tract and built a new high school. The district
also dedicated the Thomas Burnett
Stadium, named for a member of
Raymondville’s 1939 district championship
football team, and completed construction of
the Myra Green Junior High School.
In the 1960s, the Raymondville Historical
and Community Center acquired the 1913
school building, which was renovated to
accommodate the Raymondville Chamber of
Commerce, to provide space for historical
exhibits and for use by the Willacy County
Art League.
By the beginning of the new millennium,
Raymondville’s enrollment reached 2,834 students,
and the district employed 207 classroom
teachers, a staff of 36 administration and
support personnel, and an auxiliary and paraprofessional
staff of 217. The district operates
on an annual budget in excess of $22 million.
A seven-member board of trustees, Joe E.
Martinez, Mark A. Brown, Sr., Zacarias
Gonzales, Ramiro Ricones, Harry J. Cavazos,
John R. Kellogg, and Victor Rublacaba governs
the Raymondville Independent School
District. Santos L. Lujan, Jr. serves as
Superintendent of Schools.
EDUCATION
273

EDINBURG
CONSOLIDATED
INDEPENDENT
SCHOOL
DISTRICT
✧
Above: The Sophomore class of 1926-27
was composed of eighty students. The class
resolved to study hard and to leave social
functions alone until they became
upperclassmen. They chartered their goals
with good will to master English, Latin,
algebra, Spanish, and science. Class officers
included Mildred Combs, president; Arthur
Sigleton, vice president; Gordon Pruitt,
secretary; Lorieta Hall, treasurer; and Don
Zimmerman, sergeant-at-arms.
Below: Stephen F. Austin Elementary School
is the oldest of Edinburg CISD schools that
remains operational today. The school,
which was built in 1927, has undergone
some renovations. Many of Edinburg’s city
and school leaders throughout the years
were once students at Austin Elementary.
Today, the school boasts a student
enrollment of approximately 340 with
Dahlia Sanchez as principal.
The Educational Center of the Rio Grande
Valley of South Texas, the Edinburg
Consolidated Independent School District
(ECISD) is committed to providing the resources
and opportunities for all students to achieve
educational excellence. The district’s highly
competitive salaries and generous employee
benefits program, continuous remodeling and
expansion program, strong discipline support
and alternative program, and thousands of
dedicated staff members combine to create an
outstanding educational atmosphere.
Location of the University of Texas/Pan
American within the city offers great
opportunities for the district’s staff to pursue
advanced degrees while keeping informed
about the latest in educational trends and
teaching techniques. Edinburg, an “All America
City,” is a closely-knit community that strongly
emphasizes the value of a good education.
The district encompasses 945 square miles,
making it among the nation’s largest. It offers
three 5-A high schools, four junior high
schools, one alternative campus, and 24
elementary schools. With a peak enrollment of
21,014 students in 1998-99, the district
continues to grow at the rate of 750-800
students annually, making it one of the fastestgrowing
districts in Texas. This growth has
necessitated a continuing building program.
Four new elementary schools and one new
middle school opened in 1999. The district’s
third high school, encompassing 285,000
square feet opened August 11, 2000.
The district’s patrons continue to recognize
the needs of the rapidly growing district and to
provide strong support for education. In
December 1999, voters approved a $60 million
school bond issue to construct three additional
elementary schools, a career and technology high
school, and to renovate ten existing schools.
Under the Instruction Facilities Allotment fund
seventy-three percent of these bonds will be paid
by the state, leaving district taxpayers to assume
the remaining twenty-seven percent.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
274

One of the district’s new elementary schools
was officially dedicated on August 28, 2000, and
was named for Melissa Dotson Betts, a long-time,
Edinburg teacher. This is the first school in Texas’
Rio Grande Valley to be named for an African
American. Betts, a much-loved teacher of African-
American children in the then-segregated George
Washington Carver School of Edinburg, taught all
of the first eight grades there until 1961. During
the first two years after this school was closed, she
was given administrative duties, then taught for
two years at Edinburg High School, and spent the
last five years of her teaching career at Austin
Elementary School in Edinburg.
School officials, who spoke during the
ceremony of Betts’ dedication to her students,
particularly mentioned her amazing ability to
teach eight grades by herself, while always
maintaining a positive attitude. Former students,
who were instrumental in the effort to honor
Betts through the new school’s name, recall her
simple manner of teaching about cultural
differences, in an era when this was not a popular
thing to do. They praised the district’s decision to
recognize the contributions of Betts and other
African-Americans who have contributed to the
rich history of ethnic community in the Valley.
ECISD’s 3,500 employees include over
1,500 teachers and more than 700
paraprofessionals. Its well-balanced elementary
curriculum features small classes that
concentrate on strong oral and written
language programs. Edinburg’s proximity to
Mexico makes the district’s bilingual program a
crucial factor in helping many of the students
cope with the acquisition of both language and
concept. The district provides for half-day Pre-
K classrooms as well as a gifted and talented
elementary program. More than 500 teacher
aides are assigned to the ECISD staff, primarily
in Pre-K through first grade.
The secondary schools offer a strong
academic program with diversified courses in
elective and vocational subjects, a sound
health/physical fitness program, and an
expanding computer and technology program.
Other features include a primary prevention
program on drug and alcohol abuse, a special
education program to serve the needs of
qualified students with disabilities, and programs
in both fine arts and extra curricular activities.
In its more than eighty-year history since
election of the first school board on April 5,
1919, with M. McIlhenny as board president,
thirteen superintendents have led the Edinburg
District. These have included W. E. Foster, H. C.
Baker, R. P. Ward, H. A. Hodges, Dr. Ohland
Morton, Thomas S. Pickens, Richard S. Evins,
Dr. Ruben Gallegos, Jose Peralez Jr., Dr. Jim
Chapman, Dr. Miguel de los Santos, Dr. Douglas
Moore, and Mario Sotelo. Eugenio Gutierrez, a
veteran educator with thirty-three years of
experience, was named the district’s fourteenth
superintendent in October 2000.
District goals and objectives include
professional development, technology, academic
excellence, communications, parental involvement,
and optimum learning environment.
Individually these are seen as stepping stones to
fulfilling the overall mission of the Edinburg
Consolidated Independent School District’s
TEAM—its board of trustees, administrators,
teachers, staff and parents, in partnership with
community and public educational agencies—
providing the resources and opportunities for all
students to achieve educational excellence.
✧
Above: Children are important part of the
Edinburg District, which continues to grow
at the rate of 800 students a year. In the
2000-2001 school year, the District had a
peak enrollment of 22,370 students of which
12,332 were enrolled in the District’s
twenty-four elementary schools. The
District’s aim is to help every child
succeed academically.
Below: One of the Edinburg CISD’s oldest
elementary schools William B. Travis
Elementary. Built in 1950, the school today
holds approximately 370 students grades
Pre-K through fifth under Edna Olivarez as
principal. The school has undergone some
renovation from its original presentation.
EDUCATION
275

ROMA
INDEPENDENT
SCHOOL
DISTRICT
One of Texas’ most historic areas, the land
that is now included in the Roma
Independent School District was one of the
first inhabited regions in Texas. The district is
located on U.S. Highway 83, halfway between
the cities of Laredo and Brownsville, and is
adjacent to the Rio Grande River, which
serves as a natural border between Deep
South Texas and Northern Mexico.
A rich blend of “Old Mexico” and modern
Texas, the district is enriched by this diversity
of cultures, and the growing community
includes among its residents some who can
trace their ancestors back to the Spanish
colonists who settled the region in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The City of Roma serves as the principal
commercial area of this school district, which
covers over 490 square miles of land. Several
townships and small communities are also
located within the district, which proudly serves
a highly concentrated Hispanic population.
Falcon Lake, which is in the northwest
corner of the school district, is the primary
source of water for the area, and also provides
a portion of the area with its electrical power.
Noted for its friendly people, the Rio
Grande Valley border area offers a variety of
cultural events and happenings available to
residents on both sides of the river, providing
both social and a commercial activities to suit
varying interests.
Roma Independent School District benefits
from an economy based primarily on mineral
extraction and ranching. The district’s current
Maintenance and Operations tax rate is $1.50
per $100 valuation (up from a 1994 tax rate
of 90 cents). No Interest and Sinking Fund
tax is included. Calculated on a collections
rate of 85 percent for the 1999-2000 school
year, the district’s budget has been estimated
at $32.2 million, consisting primarily of state
and federal funding sources.
Nine campuses make up the physical plant
of the school district. These schools include:
Roma High School, which has 1,524 students
in grades 9-12; Roma Middle School, with
917 students in grades 7 and 8; Roma
Intermediate School, with 1,071 students in
grades 4, 5, and 6; Y. B. Escobar Elementary,
with 634 students in Pre-Kindergarten
through grade 5; F. J. Scott Elementary, with
469 students in Kindergarten through third
grade; Emma Vera Elementary, which has 516
students in Kindergarten through third grade;
R. T. Barrera Elementary, with 475 students in
Kindergarten through third grade; Ana S.
Canavan Elementary with 362 students in
Pre-Kindergarten and Headstart; and
Alas/I&G Alternative Center, a dropout
recovery school and discipline management
campus that serves thirty-four students with
special needs.
The Roma school students’ performance in
academics and co-curricular activities is a
source of pride for the district. The Roma High
School music program has achieved numerous
honors. The High School Mariachi Music
Program, Marching Band, and Choral Music
students have been invited to perform at
various functions at the nation’s capital. In
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
276

addition, teams in sports, dance and drill
team, as well as Ballet Folkloric teams are
maintained at all campuses and for students of
all ages, as part of the district’s University
Interscholastic League programs.
Roma ISD students maintain a high attendance
ratio, along with low dropout rates that
have made the district the focus of numerous
success studies.
The district is fortunate in the high quality
of its leadership, as well as its professional
and support staff. The Roma ISD board of
trustees includes Celia R. Saenz, president;
Fausto Garza, vice president; Elisa Vera-
Lujano, secretary; Juan J. Garcia, Romeo
Gonzalez, Raymond P. Mussett, M.D., and
Roque Rosales, members. Jesus O. Guerra Jr.
serves as superintendent of schools.
EDUCATION
277

SOUTH TEXAS
INDEPENDENT
SCHOOL
DISTRICT
✧
Above: The Science Academy research and
development class prepares students for the
rigors of scientific research.
Below: Through hands-on activities, Med
High students practice necessary skills in the
medical field of their choice.
The widely varied curriculum available
through the four campuses of this innovative
district provides a unique opportunity for the
South Texas Independent School District to
serve the individual educational and vocational
needs of students from throughout its
service area.
Students living in twenty-eight school
districts in a three-county area are offered the
opportunity to focus on vocational development
through a variety of programs offered
by South Texas ISD. Each campus—the
Science Academy in Mercedes; South Texas
High School in San Benito; South Texas High
School for Health Professions (Med High) in
Mercedes; and the Teacher Academy in
Edinburg—provides a specialized, focused
education with an advanced academic curriculum
that gives students an insider’s look at
the career fields of medicine, math, science,
architecture, engineering, and teaching.
Students are exposed to extraordinary realworld
experiences. Examples of past experiences
include meeting a Nobel Prize-winning
chemist, observing open-heart surgery, and
leading school children on museum tours.
The district and each of its rated campuses
have received Exemplary Accountability
Ratings from the Texas Education Agency, and
Med High received the 1995 U.S. Department
of Education Secretary’s Award for
Outstanding Vocational-Technical Programs.
The Texas Legislature initially developed
South Texas ISD in 1963 as a rehabilitation
district. After becoming an independent
school district in 1967, lawmakers extended
the district’s purpose in 1983 to permit the
operation of vocational magnet schools. Med
High opened in 1984, followed by the Science
Academy in 1989, and the Teacher Academy
in 1993. All are state-accredited, tuition-free,
public magnet high schools.
South Texas ISD receives its funding
from state and federal sources, and from
property taxpayers in Cameron, Hidalgo, and
Willacy Counties. A nineteen-member board of
directors includes both elected and appointed
representatives; they serve a three-county area.
The rigorous curriculum and strong teaching
staff at the Science Academy prepares students
for the fields of math, science, engineering, architecture
and computer science. The school has
enjoyed membership in the College Entrance
Examination Board and received the Governor’s
High Performance Award in both 1992-93 and
1993-94. Beginning in the fall of 2000, students
have the opportunity to enroll in the Science
Academy three-year graduation program.
Through this program, students earn the
required high school credits in only three years.
Partners that continue to help make for an
educational success include Rice University,
Baylor College of Medicine, the University of
Texas-Pan American, and the South Texas
Hospital Laboratory.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
278

Med High also enjoys partnerships with
Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University,
and the University of Texas-Pan American, as
well as with many local businesses. The
school combines strong academic preparation
with hands-on experience and exploration of
the various health fields. Senior students wear
scrubs for their clinical rotations at hospitals,
such as Knapp Memorial, McAllen Medical,
and Valley Baptist, and other medical facilities
with whom the school partners. Advanced
placement and pre-advanced placement
courses are available as are concurrent enrollment
courses for college credit.
Serving students with special needs, South
Texas High School-San Benito prepares student
aptitudes to ensure each student his highest
potential. Life skills programs and programs
for those with severe and profound disabilities
are available. Related services for students
include occupational and physical therapy,
registered nursing, speech therapy, social
services, counseling, transitional services and
parent support services. In addition to
academic courses ranging from English to
desktop publishing, the school offers career
and technology training including animal and
plant production, business support services,
home economics, building trades, auto
specialization, and welding. Students may
participate in on-campus, on-site, and on-thejob
training. Some disabled students attend
local high schools for academic courses while
receiving career and technology training at
South Texas High School.
The Teacher Academy emphasizes strong
academic preparation and hands-on experiences
allowing students to explore the education field.
Upperclassmen gain real teaching experience in
cooperation with several area school districts
and museums. Advance placement and concurrent
enrollment courses are offered. Teacher
Academy partners include Southwest Texas
State University, Stephen F. Austin University,
and the University of Texas-Pan American.
Opened in 1998, Biblioteca Las Américas is a
twenty-first century library facility designed to
serve up to 2,500 students and house up to
50,000 volumes. Equipped with the latest
technological tools, the library is a resource for
students from the Science Academy and Med
High, as well as patrons of the district. The
library features a 135-seat conference room,
desktop publishing center, video production
studio, video editing rooms, conference rooms,
and a classroom.
Throughout the years of change and
development, South Texas ISD has upheld
its commitment to education and the students
that it serves. Hard work and dedication have
helped the district succeed in its mission
to prepare students with specialized needs,
interests, and aptitudes to be effective,
productive citizens living successfully in a
democratic society.
Visit South Texas ISD on-line at
www.stisd.net or call 1-800-21-STUDY.
✧
Above: Through valuable classroom
training, students at South Texas High
School in San Benito gain workplace skills.
Below: Teacher Academy upperclassmen
gain real teaching experience through
partnership programs with surrounding
school districts.
EDUCATION
279

✧
Above: Rio Grande City High School.
Below: Alto Bonito Elementary.
RIO GRANDE CITY CONSOLIDATED
INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT
Taking pride in both its unique history and
its many present-day accomplishments, the Rio
Grande City Consolidated Independent School
District works to achieve its vision statement,
exemplifying “achievement, credibility, and
commitment in preparing all students to meet
the academic, creative, and social challenges
and responsibilities of our society.”
The district’s history is entwined with that of
Fort Ringgold, which was established October
26, 1848, as one of five army posts built along
the lower Rio Grande River to defend border
settlements against Indians and Mexican
raiding parties. By the time Fort Ringgold was
declared surplus in 1944, the school district
had been in operation for over thirty years,
having begun classes in the Mifflin Kenedy
Warehouse at Water and Texas Streets in 1885.
The Fort Ringgold site, on the north bank of
the Rio Grande River, about a hundred miles
southwest of Brownsville, leased by the federal
government from Rio Grande City founders
Hilaria de la Garza and her husband, Henry Clay
Davis, was chosen as an observation post. Only
five miles from a strong garrison at Carmargo,
Mexico, it was at the head of steam navigation for
supplying posts further up the Rio Grande River.
One of the most elaborate posts along the border,
Fort Ringgold housed U.S. soldiers under
Zachary Taylor and later those who guarded
against raids led by Juan N. Cortina of Mexico, as
well as Confederate forces during the Civil War.
It had a combination of permanent and
temporary structures. Some of the old buildings,
including the former post hospital, barracks,
bakery, guardhouse, headquarters, officers’
quarters, warehouses and storehouses, are still
used by the school district. The 1869 and 1920
barracks buildings, each designed as quarters for
eighty enlisted men, have been remodeled to serve
as functional classrooms. Rio Grande City school
facilities located at this site include an elementary,
fifth grade, middle school, alternative center,
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
280

central kitchen, football field, transportation
department, health services department, district
warehouse, maintenance department, auditorium,
Community Multipurpose Center, and numerous
offices. The high school, located here until 1997,
is now in new facilities on FM 3167. An additional
two new elementary schools are to be located in
neighborhood areas away from the fort, leaving
the historic site to house special project schools,
administrative offices, a middle school, and an
elementary school.
The district’s almost 9,000 students live in a
400-square-mile area including Rio Grande City
and 37 surrounding communities, including La
Casita, Garciasville, La Grulla, and Alto Bonito.
Student demographics reflect a 99.7 percent
Hispanic population whose predominant home
language is Spanish. Because of the district’s
proximity to Mexico—less than three miles
away—there is a first-year immigrant student
enrollment of 200-250 annually.
The district employs 548 teachers, 186
instructional paraprofessionals, 99 professional
support staff, 26 campus administrators, and 4
central office administrators. Their cooperative
efforts are reflected by significant gains in
students’ TAAS results, with efforts continuing
toward further improvements.
Recognizing the critical need to provide
good education at all levels; Rio Grande City
CISD makes every effort to focus on
instituting instructional programs in which all
students can succeed. Each campus is charged
with the responsibility of providing an
education where all students can attain
educational equity and excellence. TAAS
ratings for Spring 2000 showed eight
campuses receiving an “acceptable” rating and
three receiving “recognized” status. The
district credits these improvements in student
performance primarily to a dedicated staff and
the proper implementation of the reading,
writing, and mathematics curriculum, which
has been carefully aligned to the Texas
Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and
TAAS objectives.
The district has received acclaim for students’
performance in several extra-curricular activities
related to academic pursuits. In one of these,
“Odyssey of the Mind,” several elementary
campuses have achieved regional and state
awards and have advanced to world finals. Most
recently, three teams placed first at state level
and traveled to Knoxville, Tennessee, where all
did well, and one, the Ringgold Fifth Grade
Team, won first place among forty-one teams
from China, Germany, Peru, France, and several
other countries in the World Competition. The
Grulla Middle School team has consistently
received national recognition in the HOSTS
(Helping One Student to Succeed) program for
Language Arts, with participants demonstrating
significant gains in reading levels. In other areas,
the Rio Grande City High School Band has a
long tradition of excellence in music, including
marching and concert band competition and the
selective process of All-Region, All-Area, and
All-State students. Special Education students
who participate in the annual Special Olympics
have earned numerous gold, silver and bronze
medals, to add to the district’s pride as it strives
to reach its ultimate goal of providing the best
possible education for all its students.
✧
Above: Ringgold Elementary. Old barracks
from Fort Ringgold were converted into
classrooms.
Below: The Ringgold Elementary Fifth
Grade Team won first place at the
international “Odyssey of the Mind”
competition.
EDUCATION
281

MERCEDES
INDEPENDENT
SCHOOL
DISTRICT
Soon after the town of Mercedes was
settled in 1907, residents began working
toward establishment of schools for their
children. County Superintendent H. A. Marsh
and a seven-member board acquired rooms at
the corner of Ohio and Third Streets and
furnished the schoolrooms with benches,
desks, a clock, posters and a blackboard.
Four teachers employed to serve the district
were E. L. Horton, who also served as
principal; Fred Johnson, Adela Shields, and
Agapita Tijerina.
Parents purchased the books, paper, and
other supplies needed by the students, but the
school did have a library consisting of French,
Latin, medicine, and science books donated
by Dr. T. W. Carter from his private library.
In 1909 the district bought more land
and began planning for building additions,
even though the source of funding for the
projects was of serious concern. A $15,000
bond election was called for June 1909. The
pro-school sentiment was unanimous, and the
bond issue was approved by a whopping 47-0
margin. These bonds provided the funds for
additional rooms at both schools.
The cash crunch was far from over, however.
Teachers had to be paid from “incidental funds”
in order to continue the school for the entire
nine-month term, but in May 1910, voters
approved a property tax levy. However, the
election was fraught with so many irregularities
it was finally decided by the court.
The school tax, along with a tuition charge
of $1 per month for students under age seven
and over eighteen, financed the purchase of
equipment. As is often the case, the timing of
tax payments lagged behind the district’s
needs, necessitating stop-gap measures such as
obtaining loans and renting schoolrooms for
lodge meetings and music lessons. Despite
these and other problems, however, the
district’s first graduate, Marian Riess (Haslam)
received her diploma in 1914.
Army personnel, stationed in Mercedes to
protect residents from raids by bandits along
the border, used the school auditorium for
socials and other events. The facilities were also
used by several religious denominations, which
held services in the schools. In exchange for
this use, they paid the electric bill, brought
wood for fires, or paid rent of $50 per month.
✧
The newly renovated Mercedes High
School (above) and Taylor Elementary
School (right).
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
282

The economic depression that gripped the
country beginning in 1929 seriously affected
Mercedes schools for several years. By 1932 tax
and budget cuts were instituted, salaries
reduced, and some positions were eliminated.
In lieu of paychecks, school personnel received
notes that had to be held for a certain period
before cashing, but paid interest of 8 percent.
Exacerbating the financial woes, a severe
hurricane struck the area on September 4,
1933, damaging some buildings and rendering
at least one, the old South School, unusable.
That site was sold and material from the
building used to repair other school facilities.
By 1958 three elementary schools were added
and the current high school was built in 1967.
Sixteen Superintendents have led Mercedes
schools. Monte Churchill retired in 1997 after
serving seventeen years as superintendent, the
longest term held to date. Current
Superintendent Jesus Gandara began his
duties at Mercedes ISD in July 1997.
Mercedes schools today have little
resemblance to the schools of the early 1900’s.
With eight schools and enrollment just under
5,000 students, Mercedes ISD now has 750
employees. Bond elections totaling over $30
million allowed for much needed renovation
and new construction. Recently Mercedes High
School and Taylor Elementary were renovated
and projected completion for a new pre-Kinder
and Kindergarten school is August 2001.
Construction of a new elementary school to be
named after U.S. Congressman Ruben E.
Hinojosa, a graduate of Mercedes High School,
should be completed by May 2002.
Today, as it has been throughout its history,
Mercedes ISD is dedicated to providing the
best possible education for all its students.
The goal of the District is that each student
who graduates from Mercedes High School
will be fully prepared to attend any university
he/she may choose.
✧
Above: Monica Moreno, Michelle Castillo,
Eric Gonzalez and David Cordosa proudly
display the Texas Education Agency
Recognized flag.
EDUCATION
283

TEXAS A&M
AND
USDA
RESEARCH
CENTERS
✧
The Texas A&M University System
Agricultural Research and Extension Center
at Weslaco was established in 1923.
Beginning in 1750 Mexican and Spanish
pioneers settled south Texas and northern
Mexico. Without means to draw plentiful
water supplies from the Rio Grande, the
settlers carved cattle ranches out of the harsh
brush country.
By the turn of the twentieth century, wars
and treaties had established the Rio Grande as
the sometimes-meandering boundary between
the United States and Mexico. And by 1910 all
the elements were in place for what would
become a thriving agricultural breadbasket in
extreme south Texas–rich delta soil, a favorable
growing climate, a vast irrigation system built
by land companies, railroads to move people
into the area and produce out, and an ample
labor market made up mostly of refugees from
Mexico’s bloody revolution of 1910.
By 1920 area farmers, mostly from the
Midwest, called upon the state Legislature to
fund local, scientific agricultural research that
would help make them better producers. In
1923 state and local funds paid for a 120-acre
tract of land to house agricultural experiment
facilities managed by the state’s land grant
college, Texas A&M University.
The facilities and its original staff,
headquartered near Weslaco in the central
part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, soon
began experimenting with a host of field
crops, fruits and vegetables. So successful was
this early research in developing new varieties
of horticultural products, the local
agricultural industry boomed. Growers
prospered as trainloads of cotton, citrus and
vegetables, including tomatoes, cabbage,
melons, peppers and onions were shipped
daily throughout the country year-round.
The original Research Center has today grown
into a sprawling campus of several state and
federal research agencies employing some sixty
Ph.D. scientists and several hundred support
staff. Their basic mission is to keep the local and
national agricultural industry competitive in the
growing global agricultural economy.
The agencies include the Texas Agricultural
Experiment Station, Texas Cooperative
Extension, Texas A&M-Kingsville Citrus
Center, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi,
and the USDA ARS Kika de la Garza Subtropical
Agricultural Research Center.
The Experiment Station’s research includes
work on sugarcane breeding and disease and
insect management, vegetable Integrated Pest
Management (IPM), vegetable diseases, virus
diseases, melon and pepper breeding,
ornamental plant research, irrigation, soil and
fertility studies, and local and distance
education. It also supports other scientists in the
Texas A&M University System researching corn,
sorghum, cotton and other crops.
Texas Cooperative Extension joined the
Weslaco Center complex shortly after World
War II and disseminates to the local
agricultural community the information
generated by the Experiment Station.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
284

Education programs of Extension’s Family
and Consumer Science faculty promote family
well-being, community collaboration, youth
develop-ment, environmental stewardship,
and a better understanding of agriculture.
The Texas A&M-Kingsville Citrus Center at
Weslaco began operations in the mid-1940s
when local growers approached the then-Texas
College of Arts and Industries, Kingsville
(Texas A&I) to establish a research facility
specializing in citriculture. With the help of
state and local industry funds, citrus research
facilities expanded in 1992 when Texas A&I
merged with Texas A&M, and the Citrus
Center strengthened ties with the nearby Texas
A&M Research and Extension Center.
Scientists currently conduct extensive citrus
research in the areas of biotechnology,
economics, pathology, entomology, breeding/horticulture
and post-harvest physiology,
plus teaching and technology transfer. Rio
Red, a deep-colored grapefruit, is an example
of the fruits of this research.
The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is the
chief scientific research agency of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture. ARS’ Kika de la Garza
Subtropical Agricultural Research Center is part
of a unique concentration of research, education,
and extension institutions at Weslaco.
The Kika de la Garza SARC had its origins in
1931. In 1938 it was known as the Fruit and
Vegetable Products Laboratory, later changed to
the Food Crops Utilization Research Laboratory.
Today, the USDA Center has three research
units employing 123 people, including 33
scientists conducting research of regional,
national and international significance.
The Crop Quality and Fruit Insects Research
Unit conducts research on post-harvest
problems of fresh commodities, including pest
management and maintenance of quality.
The Integrated Farming & Natural Resources
Research Unit develops scientific information
and technologies to develop more profitable and
sustainable crop production systems and areawide
pest management strategies.
The Beneficial Insects Research Unit develops
scientific knowledge and biologicallybased
technology to enhance the role of natural
enemies for control of key insect pests and
weeds. A new research area for the unit is the
glassy-winged sharpshooter. This research is
being done in cooperation with APHIS and
the California Drug and Food Administration.
The Honey Bee Research Unit, part of the
Beneficial Insects Research Unit, develops
technology for managing honey bees in the
presence of Africanized honey bees, parasitic
mites and other pests, including diseases and
stress of honey bees used in honey production
and pollination.
Despite the advent and prosperity of other
subsequent south Texas industries, including
manufacturing, tourism and retail sales, agriculture
can lay claim to being the original
industry that propelled the area to the booming
growth it enjoys today.
✧
Above: The Texas A&M University-
Kingsville Citrus Center dates to the
mid-1940s.
Below: The entrance to the Kika de la
Garza Subtropical Agricultural Research
Center on Business 83.
EDUCATION
285

MARINE
MILITARY
ACADEMY
✧
Above: A Marine Military Academy cadet
“hits the books.”
Below: Cadets are shown in formation at the
MMA parade grounds.
In the early sixties, an Arizona rancher and
former Marine, Bill Gary, wanted to send his
son to a private military school that embraced
the same ideology as the U.S. Marine Corps.
He found none. Politics were tumultuous, causing
a decline in all military schools. Captain
Gary wanted a school that focused on college
preparation while concurrently teaching the
responsibilities of leadership, teamwork, individual
accountability and moral values. He
founded the Marine Military Academy in
September 1965, offering an educational program
based on the Marine Corps concepts of
focus, fraternity and esprit de corps.
Providing a solid, college-preparatory education
is the primary purpose of the Marine
Military Academy. Small classes, a focused curriculum,
and balanced course offerings in math,
literature, science, history and written communications
prepare students for the competition
they will experience at the university level.
At the Marine Military Academy, leadership
is a doctrine and a heritage, based on the concept
that true leadership is learned from
observation, experience, and emulation. The
Academy provides the laboratory for this
development. The faculty and drill instructors
lead and teach by example, providing the
combination of education, opportunities, and
tradition that form a solid foundation
throughout a man’s life.
Cadets who set their sights on a position of
responsibility within the Corps of Cadets must
prove they have what it takes. Many demands
are made on them. No one is born a leader, yet
many cadets graduate with the leadership
qualities necessary in the business world.
Cadets participate in physical activity after
a full day of academic studies. This athletic
training and competition teaches teamwork,
discipline and sportsmanship, while maintaining
a healthy body.
A Naval Honor School, the Marine
Military Academy is a recognized preparatory
school for the U.S. Naval Academy, U.S. Air
Force Academy and the U.S. Military
Academy (West Point).
The Academy also offers special programs
such as a five-week intensive English as a
Second Language (ESL) experience. Students
attend classes six days a week, learning to
speak, read, and write contemporary American
English. After school, they participate in sports
and physical fitness in a military environment.
A four-week Summer Military Camp
offers an extraordinary adventure for boys
13-17. In a structured, disciplined, militarystyle
environment, campers can acquire selfconfidence,
teamwork and problem-solving
skills through activities such as the Marine
Corps-style obstacle course, drill, hikes,
paint ball, pugil stick training, speed march
reaction course, rappelling, and scaling the
climbing wall.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
286

Recognizing that higher education is an
indispensable tool to meet the challenges of
the twenty-first century, Texas State Technical
College Harlingen provides a quality education
with hands-on training for its students.
The school’s highly specialized technical programs
reflect the business and technological
manpower needs of Texas.
“TSTC graduates possess the knowledge
and skills that help employers remain competitive
in the global marketplace,” says Dr. J.
Gilbert Leal, president. “Technical education
is not merely a last chance or a consolation for
those not pursuing a university education. It’s
a wise choice for even the brightest students.
Our students have a passion to learn and the
ability to put that knowledge to work.”
Partnerships with business, industry, and
community leaders enable TSTC to offer
instruction in the most current technology
trends. The supportive faculty, who are experts
in their fields, can immerse students in real
world laboratory settings. Once students have
completed their course work at TSTC, they
transition smoothly into their chosen careers.
TSTC Harlingen takes pride in the placement
rate of its graduates—ninety-five percent. The
college excels nationally in the number of
Hispanic graduates in engineering-related
technologies, computer information science
technologies, and health science technologies.
Since its founding in 1969 on the site of an
abandoned Air Force base, TSTC Harlingen has
grown into a 125-acre campus with over
10,000 full-, part-time, and contract training
students. It is a coeducational, state funded,
accredited institution of technical education
and training with more than thirty courses of
study. Associate of Applied Science Degrees or
Certificates of Completion are awarded to
graduates of programs in health, business,
computers, electronics, agricultural, industrial,
and manufacturing.
With a student body as diverse as the programs
of study offered, TSTC’s student activities
and organizations are integral to personal
development. Affordable programs, intensive
counseling, childcare facilities, and student
housing are among the services that enable
students to concentrate on their educational
goals, graduating in two years or less.
TSTC continues to develop technical education
and training programs for business and
industry. It is responsive to the needs of both
emerging and advanced industrial and technological
companies. TSTC has customized
courses for retraining employees, introducing
newly evolved technical procedures, and
updating skills.
“Education is a process of ongoing discovery,”
says Dr. Leal. “The first important discovery
for students is that Texas State
Technical College Harlingen is the springboard
for their future.”
TEXAS STATE
TECHNICAL
COLLEGE
HARLINGEN
EDUCATION
287

REGION ONE
EDUCATION
SERVICE CENTER
✧
Below: Region One Education Service Center.
Bottom: Developing new and exciting
approaches to teaching is one of the goals of
the Region One Education Service Center
Even before the Fifty-ninth Texas
Legislature established regional education
service centers in 1965, schools in the South
Texas area pooled their resources to form coops
for media services, professional development,
and curriculum development. When
this South Texas association successfully lobbied
the legislature to create twenty regional
centers in the state, the South Texas region
was given the distinction of Region One
Education Service Center. It is located in
Edinburg near the campus of the University of
Texas-Pan American.
Encompassing over ninety-six hundred
square miles in South Texas, Region One
provides services to Cameron, Hidalgo,
Willacy, Starr, Webb, Jim Hogg, and Zapata
Counties. It serves 39 school districts with
512 campuses and over 300,000 students.
Region One serves a unique student
population. Leading the state in the number
of Hispanic students and the number of
Spanish-speaking, low income, and migrant
students, educators have taken on the task of
ensuring that these students receive a quality
education and the same opportunities as their
counterparts around the state.
To achieve this goal, Region One is
committed to providing professional
development opportunities to enhance
learning in the classroom. Activities held
throughout the year include conferences, staff
development workshops, advisory councils,
and cooperatives geared toward preparing
educators to serve the student in the classroom.
Initially the purpose of the education
service centers was to provide regional media
services. Over the past thirty-four years their
purpose has greatly expanded. Today, in
addition to the areas of media and technology,
school districts can rely on their service center
to provide technical assistance in the areas of
curriculum and instruction, student services,
administrative training, and business
procedures and application.
Their main objectives are to assist school
districts in improving student performance, to
operate more efficiently and economically,
and to implement initiatives assigned by
the legislature or by the state commissioner
of education.
“Students First” is the motto of Region
One, and all activities are geared to improve
the education offered to the students in its
service area. Its student population continues
to grow annually, making it one of the fastest
growing service center areas in the state.
Region One focuses on the future by
providing leadership, promoting communities
of learners, creating networks, influencing
and supporting the use of appropriate
technologies, and building capacity for
change in its educators and the students
they teach.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
288

Deborah Case Dance Academy is the official
school of the Rio Grande Valley Ballet, founded
in 1972 by Doria Avila and Alfred Gallagher.
The Academy offers instruction in ballet, jazz,
tap, folkloric, flamenco, and tumbling to over
400 students in McAllen. Classes are offered
year round for training never stops and neither
does striving towards dance excellence.
A Texas Christian University education
graduate, Deborah Case joined Rio Grande
Valley Ballet in 1979 as a dancer, soon becoming
principal dancer and an instructor. When
Gallagher and Avila retired in 1993, they named
Case the company’s artistic director and turned
the Ballet over to her. The Academy and its
performing wing, the Rio Grande Valley Ballet,
are located in the landmark building once
known as the McAllen Festival Center, designed
in the 1940s by Zeb Rike. Light from the
Academy’s original high windows illuminates
students perfecting dance movements in front of
the mirrored walls. Nearby, young ballerinas
practice pliés at the barres. Academy students
attend dance conventions and workshops to
expand their knowledge of dance. They also
participate in ballet and jazz competitions where
they consistently are highly ranked. Deborah
Case Dance Academy students perform in an
annual recital every May.
DEBORAH CASE DANCE ACADEMY
One hundred of the Academy’s students who
are deeply committed to dance are members of
the performing company known as the Rio
Grande Valley Ballet. Besides training during the
week, the students attend ballet rehearsals on
weekends. The Rio Grande Valley Ballet’s
Nutcracker, presented six times each December
at the McAllen Civic Center, is the longest
running show in the city, having begun in 1972.
In the spring the company presents Festival of
Dance. Rio Grande Valley Ballet is on the roster
of the Texas Commission on The Arts Touring
Program, giving performances in Galveston, San
Antonio, Fort Worth, and other cities. Recently
the RGV Ballet became part of the Heartland Arts
Fund program and is touring nationwide.
Community outreach includes performing across
the Valley for schools and civic events.
The Academy’s summer program includes
several national and international guest artists
who come for one month to teach the advanced
students, honing their skills and enriching their
dance lore. “Summer is when the best training
happens,” says Case. Some of her students are
now university dance majors and one has a full
scholarship at School of American Ballet.
Among the Academy’s eight instructors are
dance graduates who have returned to the
school to reach a new generation of students
from three years old to adult.
✧
Above: Belinda Santos, principal dancer.
Below: Dana Creech, principal dancer.
EDUCATION
289

HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
290

QUALITY OF LIFE
healthcare providers, churches,
and families that contribute to the
quality of life in the Rio Grande Valley
Catholic Diocese of Brownsville.....................................................292
Valley Baptist Medical Center.......................................................296
Golden Palms Retirement & Health Center......................................300
Marion R. Lawler, Jr., M.D...........................................................301
Brownsville Regional Medical Center..............................................302
St. Paul Lutheran Church.............................................................305
John Knox Village .......................................................................306
The Krishnan Family...................................................................309
The Lloyd Bentsen Family ............................................................310
Valley Grande Manor ..................................................................312
Cardiovascular Associates ............................................................314
The Dyer Family ........................................................................316
Planned Parenthood Association of Hidalgo County ..........................318
Planned Parenthood Association of Cameron & Willacy Counties ........319
Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley, Inc.........................................320
Valley Regional Medical Center.....................................................321
Heart Clinic, P.A. .......................................................................322
The Harding Foundation ..............................................................323
The Hester-Jones Family ..............................................................324
Texas Citrus Fiesta .....................................................................325
✧
Top: When Raymondville’s original high
school, completed in 1924, was replaced, the
community succeeded in turning it into the
Raymondville Historical Museum and
Community Center, which preserves the
area’s heritage.
Bottom: The Bailey H. Dunlap Memorial
Library was named in honor of the La
Feria’s first banker and mayor.
QUALITY OF LIFE
291

CATHOLIC
DIOCESE OF
BROWNSVILLE
✧
Below: The Oblates of Mary Immaculate
were one of the first religious orders to serve
the people of the Rio Grande Valley. They
first arrived in 1849, and traveling by
horseback to remote ranches earned them
the name of the “Cavalry of Christ.”
Bottom: The former St. Peter’s Novitiate
near Mission will now be used as a
junior college seminary, St. Joseph and
St. Peter Seminary.
The Catholic Church has been an integral
part of the history of the Lower Rio Grande
Valley for almost six centuries, beginning with
the landing of Spanish explorer Alvarez de
Piñeda at the mouth of the Rio Grande in 1519.
Missionary efforts followed settlement along
the south banks of the Rio Grande, with early
towns there including La Villa de Santa Ana de
Camargo, Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de
Reynosa, the Villa de San Ignacio de Loyola de
Revilla, and Lugar de Mier. Many of the oldest
towns in the present Brownsville Diocese trace
their origins to the people living along the Rio
Grande’s south banks. The Villa de San
Augustin de Laredo, the oldest city in what
came to be the Vicariate Apostolic of
Brownsville, was established in 1755. Laredo is
the second oldest municipality in present day
Texas, and was the site of the first parish church
in South Texas, a stone building constructed in
1789 and called San Augustin de Laredo.
The vast area constituting present-day Texas
was originally under the ecclesiastical
jurisdiction of the bishop of Guadalajara, with
the Franciscans from Queretaro and Zacatecas
responsible for the pastoral care of the Catholic
community. In 1777 Spanish Texas came under
the bishop of Linares, later known as the bishop
of Monterrey. The Prefecture Apostolic of Texas
was created in 1839, at which time the Catholic
Church in the United States became responsible
for Catholics living in Texas.
After Texas’ annexation by the United States
in 1845, a large influx of Protestant settlers
diluted the Catholic atmosphere once
established by early Franciscan missionaries.
Twelve Vincentian missionaries labored among
the Catholics in Texas from 1838-1848. During
this period Catholic immigrants of Irish,
German, Czech, and Polish descent increased
their number. This led to founding of the
Diocese of Galveston in 1847. Jean Marie
Odin, C.M., the bishop of Galveston, and
about nine priests were responsible for serving
some twenty thousand Catholics scattered
across the immense territory covering the
entire State of Texas.
On September 18, 1874, Pope Pius IX
established the Vicariate Apostolic of
Brownsville, with the Immaculate Conception
Church chosen as the Cathedral. This new
ecclesiastical area had its own bishop, who was
called a vicar apostolic. The Vicariate,
essentially a missionary territory, encompassed
what is now the Diocese of Brownsville, the
Diocese of Corpus Christi, and the Diocese of
Laredo. This area included by far the largest
population adhering to the Roman Catholic
Faith, but was small in resources when
compared to Galveston and San Antonio.
By the third quarter of the nineteenth century,
Roman Catholics in the Vicariate of Brownsville
numbered about forty-two thousand, many of
whom lived in the counties of Cameron, Willacy,
Hidalgo and Starr, which today constitute the
Diocese of Brownsville.
Livestock raising was the major industry,
and isolated settlements of ranchers and their
families, friends and servants were served by
the Oblates of Mary Immaculate who arrived in
December 1849 at the invitation of the bishop
of Galveston. They were temporarily
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
292

withdrawn in 1851, but returned in 1852. One
of the first Oblates who arrived in the Valley,
Father Alexander Sourlerin, spearheaded the
“pony” ranch ministry. Each week he faithfully
mounted his pony and set out to remote
ranches with his Mass kit daring the dangers
and privations of a thirty-six-hundred-squaremile
frontier territory. The Oblates’ traveling by
horseback earned them the name of the
“Calvary of Christ.”
Father Dominic Manucy, a priest from the
Diocese of Mobile, was the first bishop selected
to serve the Brownsville Vicariate. Installed in
the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in
Brownsville on February 14, 1874, he labored
tirelessly over the next nine years, until his
transfer to the Diocese of Mobile in 1884. He
later asked to be allowed to return to the
Brownsville Vicariate; however, he died before
he was able to return.
Father Claude C. Jaillet, vicar general of the
Vicariate, served as administrator, until Father
Pedro Verdaguer was appointed in 1890 as
bishop of the Vicariate Apostolic of Brownsville.
From ox carts and burro trains,
transportation advanced around the middle of
the nineteenth century to steamboats plying
the Rio Grande and overland freight transport
via mule-drawn wagons. The real advance
came a bit later, however, with completion of
a rail line linking the Lower Rio Grande Valley
to the rest of North America. By the 1920s
almost every major community in the present
Diocese of Brownsville had a railroad station.
A combination of the improved transportation
situation and development of irrigation that
fostered agricultural development along the
Valley brought an influx of settlers to the area.
Many improvements were made in the
Vicariate during this period, including the
construction of St. Peter’s Church in Laredo in
1896, to serve English-speaking Catholics of
that area, and construction of Our Lady of
Guadalupe Church in 1899, to meet the needs
of the growing Mexican-American population.
Between 1908 and 1910 Catholic Churches
were built in Harlingen and Raymondville,
and as new towns were established, additional
mission centers and chapels were added.
Early efforts to enlist women’s religious
communities in France to work in the area
were unsuccessful until four sisters of the
Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament agreed
to come to Texas in 1852. Remaining in
Galveston for several months to learn English
and Spanish, they then sailed to Brownsville,
where they lived in a small, one-story
warehouse until a new convent and boarding
school for girls was constructed. Named the
Incarnate Word Academy, it was to become
the oldest school for girls in Texas. The Sisters
faced a succession of crisis ranging from
epidemics, tropical storms and Civil War
clashes to the death of one Sister in an Indian
attack. Through it all, they not only
✧
Above: Immaculate Conception Church in
Brownsville was first designated a Cathedral
in 1874 when Pope Pius IX established the
Vicariate Apostolic of Brownsville.
Below: The Basilica of Our Lady of San
Juan Del Valle–National Shrine attracts
millions of pilgrims each year from
throughout the country and the world who
come to give thanks to our Lady and to her
Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. It is one of only
four basilicas in Texas.
QUALITY OF LIFE
293

✧
Officially dedicated in 1954, this San Juan
Shrine was destroyed in a plane crash fire
in 1970. A beautiful new Shrine was
dedicated in 1980.
persevered but actually extended their service
throughout the Dioceses of Galveston and San
Antonio. In 1900 they opened a school which
operated for more than twenty years in Rio
Grande City.
Other women’s religious communities,
including the Order of the Sisters of Mercy,
the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the
Sisters of the Holy Ghost and Mary
Immaculate, the Sisters of Divine Providence,
the Sisters of St. Joseph, the Sisters of St.
Joseph of Bourg, and the Sisters of St. Joseph
of Carondolet, also have long histories of
service to people in the Lower Rio Grande
Valley. They have operated Catholic schools
and taught in several public schools over a
long period, as well as teaching catechism. A
number of other orders have also served in
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine programs
and the home visiting apostolate in the
present Diocese of Brownsville.
By 1911 the Brownsville Vicariate had 16
diocesan and 16 religious order priests, 15
churches with resident pastors, and 60
chapels and mission centers attended by the
overworked missionaries. The following year
it was converted into the Diocese of Corpus
Christi, with St. Patrick’s Church in Corpus
Christi to be the Bishop’s Cathedral. This
diocese had a population of 158,000, among
them were 83,000 Catholics. Catholic
organizations, retreats, missions and
devotions were established, and in his first
Confirmation tour, the bishop confirmed
almost 1,000 people in Brownsville and over
500 more in San Benito. Emphasis on
education led to the opening of quality
parochial schools in Harlingen, Mercedes,
San Benito, and elsewhere, as well as the
establishment of a number of additional
churches. By 1919 the Catholic Church’s
presence in the Diocese had grown to 46
priests, 31 churches with resident priests,
and 83 missions and chapels. These served
99,580 Catholics.
With an influx of Catholic immigrants of
widely varied heritage German, Polish, and
Irish, and Mexican—during the next three
decades, parishes, church improvements and
schools were added during the next four
decades. On July 10, 1965, Pope Paul VI
established the Diocese of Brownsville, with
Bishop Adolph Marx installed on September
2, 1965, at the Cathedral of Brownsville. The
diocese included the four counties of
Cameron, Willacy, Hidalgo and Starr. This
4,226-square-mile area contained 40
parishes, 46 missions, and 22 stations, served
by 14 diocesan priests and 67 Religious
Order priests.
Bishop Marx died not long after his
installation; he was succeeded by Bishop
Humberto S. Medeiros.
During the turbulent Sixties, a period of
unrest throughout the country, the
Brownsville Diocese faced hard issues,
including violence between farm workers and
farm owners in Starr County. Brownsville
Bishop Humberto S. Medeiros—later named
archbishop of Boston—offered his services as
mediator in the dispute, and urged his own
parishioners and the bishops of northern
areas to provide for both the secular and
religious needs of the migrant workers.
Bishop John J. Fitzpatrick, a native of
Canada, was appointed the third bishop of
Brownsville on April 27, 1971. He served the
Diocese for twenty years until his retirement
on November 30, 1991.
During his tenure, Bishop Fitzpatrick
upheld the dignity and rights of the poor and
oppressed, whether they were farm workers,
migrant laborers, Central American refugees
or farmers caught in financial difficulties.
Because of the unbelievably lopsided ratio of
parishioners per priest he promoted the lay
ministry programs. He also purchased and
maintained a public broadcasting station in
the Valley for the service of the community.
Upon Bishop Fitzpatrick’s retirement,
Bishop Enrique San Pedro, S.J. was installed
as the fourth bishop of Brownsville. He placed
the need to improve the quality of education
as his first priority in the Diocese. Sadly his
time was cut short with his unexpected death
on July 17, 1994.
Continued growth of the Lower Rio
Grande Valley during the last half of the
twentieth century—along with the increased
number of Catholics in the Brownsville
Diocese—has encouraged cooperative efforts
and the use of modern technology in
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
294

handling diocesan business matters, to allow
priests to concentrate their efforts on the
most important of their duties to the faithful.
The increasing burden of work on the
religious community has also resulted in
increased reliance on the laity in promoting
works of the Church, as well as an intensive
program promoting vocations to the
priesthood. All of these measures are
designed to serve the Diocese’s more than
850,000 Catholics, whose growing numbers
have led to the establishment of five new
parishes. Four of these were established
under the leadership of Bishop Raymundo J.
Peña, who was installed on August 6, 1995 as
the fifth bishop of Brownsville.
The deeply religious nature of Catholics in
the Brownsville Diocese is expressed in many
ways, including the construction of the
National Shrine of Our Lady of San Juan. This
Shrine now delivers its message of faith to
more than eighty thousand Catholics every
month. Beginning as a small wooden chapel
in San Juan, this site drew so many pilgrims
that it was decided to build a Shrine, which
was officially dedicated in 1954. This was
destroyed in a plane crash fire in 1970, but
the site continued to function, and a beautiful
new shrine was dedicated in 1980. In 1998
Pope John Paul II designated the Shrine as a
minor basilica.
The Diocese has registered a number of
highlights in recent years. This includes the
opening of the first retirement home for
priests in the Diocese, the establishment of an
Altar Servers’ Association, and the
establishment of an Office for Immigration.
On June 10, 2000, Bishop Peña convoked the
first Diocesan Synod in the history of the
Diocese to look at the pastoral programs
currently in place and determine how these
programs might better serve the people in the
next millennium.
Bishop Peña maintains a firm commitment
to continue placing the public broadcasting
station (KMBH-TV 60) at the service of the
community, particularly for education
purposes both in the academic and religious
spheres in order to enrich the quality of
life in the Valley as well as the quality of
faith. During his tenure, the station has
recognized a steady increase in religious and
Spanish programming.
The rigorous promotion of vocations has
resulted in an increase in the number of
seminarians to 32 compared to 8 when Bishop
Peña first arrived. Also, ten new priests have
been ordained in the Diocese. With a continued
focus on vocations, the Diocese and the
Pontifical College Josephinum from Columbus,
Ohio entered into a collaborative effort in 2001
to open the Saint Joseph and Saint Peter
Seminary. The junior college seminary in La
Lomita south of Mission is located on the
grounds of St. Peter’s Novitiate, the former
novitiate of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
✧
Above: The Diocese opened its first
seminary in the Valley in 2001 to
accommodate young men entering the
priesthood. Here three young men are being
ordained into the priesthood during a Mass
at the Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan Del
Valle–National Shrine.
Below: Bishop Raymundo J. Peña meets with
Pope John Paul II during his adlimina visit
to the Vatican.
QUALITY OF LIFE
295

VALLEY
BAPTIST
MEDICAL
CENTER
Valley Baptist is the Valley’s leader in hightech
advancement, excellence in healthcare,
and community service with a modern medical
system, which traces its beginnings to 1925.
Following seventy-six years of service to the
Valley, Valley Baptist Medical Center and
Health System in Harlingen ushered in the
twenty-first century with a variety of new
advancements and services for the community.
Valley Baptist, now one of the largest
medical systems in South Texas with
approximately six hundred beds, had humble
beginnings. The original ten-bed hospital in
Harlingen was actually located on F Street
between Harrison and Tyler in a frame house
owned by Mrs. Ida Gilbert. In 1923 a group
of citizens including Dr. N. A. Davidson,
Dr. G. W. Letzerick, S. G. Stringer, and Judge
Fred Bennett saw the need for a modern
medical facility.
A new thirty-six-bed hospital was built on
F Street, a few blocks away from the original
ten-bed facility. Valley Baptist Hospital,
owned by the Lower Rio Grande Valley
Baptist Association, opened as a not-for-profit
community hospital on January 22, 1925.
The hospital grew, with the bed count
more than doubling to eighty-two by 1943.
The Baptist General Convention of Texas
acquired the hospital in 1945. In 1956 Valley
Baptist moved to its present location on Pease
Street off Ed Carey Drive in Harlingen.
Ben M. McKibbens, FACHE, became the
president and CEO of Valley Baptist Medical
Center in 1977. Along with VBMC’s Board of
Directors, Advisory Board, Medical and Dental
Staff, Administration, employees and volunteers,
McKibbens has guided VBMC for nearly
a quarter of a century. During this time of
remarkable growth, decisions have been based
upon the guiding principles of the Valley
Baptist Mission Statement, which serves as a
framework for all of Valley Baptist’s endeavors.
Today, Valley Baptist is one of the few
remaining not-for-profit hospitals in the
Valley. Valley Baptist and its physicians have
brought many types of heart procedures to
the Valley. The first critical care unit dedicated
to heart disease was opened in 1967. It was
the site for the Valley’s first open heart surgery
and cardiac catheterization in 1977. Through
the years Valley Baptist Medical Center
continued to bring advancements in diagnosis
and treatment to the region.
To enhance heart care in the new
millennium, the Health System created the
Valley Baptist Heart and Vascular Institute to
usher in a new approach to heart care in the
region. In one seamless package of services,
the Heart and Vascular Institute brings
✧
The original thirty-six-bed Valley Baptist
Hospital was built in 1925 on F Street, a
few blocks away from Harlingen’s first tenbed
hospital.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
296

together a concerted effort to prevent heart
and vascular disease through community
outreach and education; a program for early
detection and intervention of heart disease;
and expanded, state-of-the-art diagnostic and
treatment options.
Valley Baptist has also been the home of
many Valley milestones in other types of
medical treatments, including orthopedic
surgery and trauma care, with VBMC being
the first Level III Trauma Center designated in
South Texas. Trauma patients are treated in a
large state-of-the-art Emergency Department.
A rooftop heliport above the department
speeds up the transport of trauma patients
into the Emergency Room.
In 1998 VBMC became the first hospital in
the Valley to be designated a Joint
Replacement Center. Even before the designation,
VBMC had a significant joint replacement
program already in place, providing hip,
knee, and other joint replacements for
patients with joint problems. VBMC is considered
one of the best orthopedic hospitals in
the state and is one of the leading hospitals in
the number of joint replacement surgeries
performed annually.
With the opening of the new East Tower in
1998, VBMC expanded its women and
children services while putting an emphasis
on convenience, efficiency and accessibility.
The East Tower includes a 14-room labor,
delivery and recovery area; a 32-bed “Mother-
Baby” obstetrical unit which features familycentered
maternity care; a 32-bed gynecology
unit; and a 38-bed Newborn Intensive Care
Unit. The entire fourth floor is being
developed into a 62-bed Children’s Center
with 48 spacious private rooms and a 14-bed
intensive care unit. A thirty-bed Day Surgery
Center and convenient outpatient services are
also located in the East Tower.
Throughout the years, Valley Baptist’s
growth has occurred only after extensive
studies by the Board of Trustees, Medical and
Dental staff, Administration and employees in
✧
Valley Baptist Medical Center, the largest
hospital in the area with approximately six
hundred beds, has provided seventy-six
years of service in the Rio Grande Valley.
QUALITY OF LIFE
297

HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
298

consultation with leading experts. Strategic
planning helps assure that there is good
stewardship of the resources available to meet
community needs.
Valley Baptist’s expansion of services culminated
with the creation of the Valley Baptist
Health System and the medical center being
named the primary teaching hospital for a
new Regional Academic Health Center
(RAHC) in Harlingen. The RAHC is a medical
education program operated by the University
of Texas Health Science Center at San
Antonio. It offers training for third and fourth
year medical students as well as residents in a
variety of medical specialties. The Valley
Baptist Family Practice Residency Program
opened in 1996 to address the chronic shortage
of primary care physicians in the Valley.
Under the program, medical school graduates
serve a three-year residency at VBMC.
Valley Baptist Health System continues to
show its commitment to all segments of the
community by holding a large number of free
health screenings and making health
information available at no charge to area
residents. Each year, thousands of Valley
residents receive free screenings in a program to
identify potential health problems and prevent
serious illness. The wellness program is taken
out into the community in a variety of settings
including the annual RioFest arts celebration in
Harlingen, the Rio Grande Valley Livestock
Show in Mercedes and more. This activity is an
important part of the Valley Baptist mission to
promote a healthier community.
Looking to the future, Valley Baptist’s Board of
Trustees, administration, physicians, employees,
and community supporters are committed to
continuing a “Tradition of Excellence” while
keeping the Valley on the cutting edge of
healthcare technology and services.
✧
Opposite: The East Tower at Valley Baptist
Medical Center was completed in 1998,
providing faster, more convenient access to
emergency care, outpatient services, and
women and children health services.
Above: A rooftop heliport speeds up the
transfer of critically injured patients into the
Rio Grande Valley’s first Level III trauma
center.
Below: Dr. Ruben Lopez, Cardiovascular
Surgeon, discusses laser energy used during
Transmyocardial Revascularization (TMR)
with patient Celia Crews of Brownsville.
Mrs. Crews became the first Valley patient
to receive the new heart treatment on
November 11, 1999, at Valley Baptist Heart
and Vascular Institute.
QUALITY OF LIFE
299

GOLDEN PALMS
RETIREMENT &
HEALTH CENTER
✧
Right: Golden Palms Retirement Center, an
active retirement community in Harlingen
since 1986.
Below: Golden Palms’ residents enjoy an
exciting program of activities, which
emphasize fun, fitness and health.
Bottom: An atmosphere of friendship and
comfort help make Golden Palms a top
choice for retirement living.
Golden Palms Retirement &Health Center
offers apartments for active retirement, assisted
living, and licensed nursing care, adjacent to
Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen, and
is a continuing care retirement community
serving retirees since 1986. Beautiful
apartments, warm neighbors and professional
staff enhance the Golden Palms community of
friendship and comfort.
Golden Palms offers a full spectrum of
services, from gracious two-bedroom
apartments, to an assisted living area, and a
skilled nursing unit. The Palm Suites Assisted
Living apartments are available for residents
who need personal assistance. The Golden
Palms Health Center is a sixty-bed skilled
nursing unit located inside the facility, meaning
residents will never have to leave the
comforting presence of familiar faces should the
need for nursing services arise.
Golden Palms offers an exciting program of
activities, which emphasize fun, fitness and
health. Residents participate in as many or as few
activities as their schedule will allow. Activities
include low-impact exercise in Golden Palms’
health club, tai chi, and aquatic aerobics. There
are also group trips in a motor coach, painting
classes, educational seminars, galas, birthday
luncheons, and a host of other activities.
Golden Palms offers its residents nine
different floor designs, featuring one- and twobedroom
apartments. Amenities include fully
equipped kitchens and private balconies where
residents can enjoy the year-round sunshine and
warmth of sub-tropical South Texas. Golden
Palms also provides beautifully landscaped
grounds, scheduled housekeeping and laundry
service, and a maintenance staff that alleviates
worries about appliance repairs. Scheduled
transportation is provided for residents, as well
as valet service for residents who drive. In
Golden Palms’ luxurious dining room, the wait
staff quickly learn each resident’s name and their
individual preferences. When combined with
the sunny weather of South Texas, Golden
Palms offers a top choice in retirement living.
For more information, contact Golden Palms
at (956) 389-4653 or visit its website at
www.goldenpalmsrgv.com.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
300

During World War II, a young boy watched
his father Dr. Marion R. Lawler, Sr., operate on a
patient at his Mercedes, Texas clinic. In the
midst of the operation, sutures ran low, and the
boy was given a nickel and sent to Handshaw’s
dime store. He returned with a spool of J. P.
Coats white thread, which was then sterilized
and used to sew up the incision. Marion Lawler,
Jr., followed in his father’s footsteps and became
a Rio Grande Valley surgeon.
Following graduation from Southwestern
University, young Lawler attended Baylor
College of Medicine in Houston. Baylor was
a hub of cardiovascular surgery innovations,
and Lawler observed outstanding surgeons
performing groundbreaking operations. After
Lawler completed surgical training at Vanderbilt
University, he served in the U.S. Navy for
two years, including one year as a thoracic
surgeon aboard the hospital ship USS Sanctuary
in Vietnam.
When Lawler returned to the Valley in
1971 he established a surgical practice in
Harlingen, specializing in vascular and
thoracic surgery and introducing many new
procedures to the area. In 1977 Lawler
performed the first open-heart operation in
the Rio Grande Valley. That same year, he
helped found Valley Regional Heart Center at
Valley Baptist Medical Center, where over six
thousand open-heart surgical procedures have
been performed.
While serving as medical consultant to the Rio
Grande Valley Development Council, Dr. Lawler
became committed to establishing a Harlingen
Community Emergency Medical Service. To get
support for the EMS, the first of its kind in the
Valley, he spoke to every civic organization in
town. In 1979 he was appointed to the founding
board of Harlingen EMS and served until 1984.
In 1978 Dr Lawler and Dr. Tom Clark formed
Cardiovascular Associates of Harlingen.
“Cardiovascular surgery is very gratifying
field,” said Dr. Lawler. “The physician has direct
responsibility for improving a patient’s quality of
life and actually sees those changes take place
before his eyes.”
Active in diverse civic organizations,
particularly the American Heart Association, Dr.
Lawler’s professional affiliations include American
College of Surgeons (fellow), American College of
Cardiology (fellow), the Denton A. Cooley
Cardiovascular Surgical Society, and the Debakey
International Cardiovascular Society, as well as the
Texas Medical Association. He is past president of
numerous medical organizations and served as a
governor of the American College of Surgeons for
six years. Lawler is a clinical professor of
cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Texas
Health Science Center San Antonio.
Dr. Lawler and Frances “Nan” Kennedy of
Nacogdoches were married in 1960. Their
children, Marion Russell III and Karen, live in
the Valley.
✧
MARION R.
LAWLER, JR.,
M. D.
Above: Dr. Marion Lawler, Sr.
Below: Dr. Marion Lawler, Jr.
QUALITY OF LIFE
301

✧
BROWNSVILLE
Above: The Divine Providence Hospital,
built in 1917 on the corner of Sixth and
Madison Streets in Brownsville. The Sisters
of Mercy ran the hospital until the new
hospital, now BMC, opened in 1923.
COURTESY OF THE MOTHER OF PERPETUAL HELP
NURSING HOME.
Below: The original operating room log from
Mercy Hospital. This log was kept from
February 1923 until May 1930. Many
individuals from this area’s founding
families are found in this book.
MEDICAL
CENTER
COURTESY OF THE BROWNSVILLE HISTORICAL MUSEUM.
“Patients are our priority now, just as they
were in 1923 when the hospital first opened,”
said Ruben Edelstein, Chairman of the
Governing Board of Brownsville Medical Center.
Now caring for more than sixty thousand
patients each year, Brownsville Medical Center is
dedicated to improving the health of the patients
entrusted to its care while safeguarding the
community’s health through wellness programs.
The hospital’s roots go back one hundred
years to Miss Nora Kelly who founded St.
Joseph’s Home for the Aged. Then in 1913, she
opened a Charity Home on Madison Street,
which cared for homeless children and indigent
elderly, with only a limited amount of medicine
practiced. Two years later, when more than two
hundred Mexicans who were wounded in the
on-going Revolution filled improvised hospitals
in Brownsville, Miss Kelly received a donation of
$14,000 that allowed her to purchase two
blocks out of the Stillman Estate for a hospital.
On June 1, 1917, Divine Providence Hospital
opened under the management of the Sisters of
Mercy, led by Mother Superior Mary Stanislaus.
Brownsville soon outgrew that hospital, but
through a donation of the landsite by the estate
of James Stillman, son of Brownsville’s founder,
and other donations by city residents and the
Sisters of Mercy, the new Mercy Hospital was
dedicated in July 1923 with the nuns continuing
to serve as nurses and administrators.
Mercy Hospital kept growing, adding more
beds, a maternity wing, and a convent for the
nuns. World War II demonstrated the need
for a yet larger facility. In 1952 a new wing
and major renovations brought the hospital
an emergency room, pediatric and psychiatric
units, a new laboratory and an operating
room along with air conditioning. In 1963 the
hospital added fifty-two more beds, a labor and
delivery area, surgical suites, a radiology
department, and other key services.
The annual patient census reflects the
hospital’s growth: 390 patients in 1923; 1,083
patients in 1943; 4,361 in 1953; and 20,000-
plus in 1983.
In 1983 part of the 1923 building was
demolished and replaced with the current threestory
patient tower. In 1995 Brownsville Medical
Center was purchased by Tenet Healthcare
Corporation, a nationwide company dedicated
to providing patients with quality innovative
care at 114 acute care hospitals. At Brownsville
Medical Center, a local governing board works
in partnership with physicians, hospital
management and the communities it serves to
secure the best hospital care possible.
Brownsville Medical Center continues to make
significant investments in technology so Rio
Grande Valley residents do not have to leave the
area for medical treatment. Recent innovations
at the 243-bed hospital include the Women’s
Center, which features ten labor and delivery
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
302

suites and thirty-four post-partum rooms. In the
36-bed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, as well as
in the nursery, supportive staff and a new
generation of technology focus on the
importance of early contact between parents and
baby. New parents can use the hospital’s digital
camera and computer to post Internet photos of
their newborn for families and friends.
Brownsville Medical Center’s commitment to
providing the best equipment and training is
evident throughout the hospital. The
Emergency Department is a designated Level
Three Trauma Center, the first in Brownsville
and only the fifth in Texas. The Trauma Center
plays a leadership role in community disaster
preparedness with trauma physicians always on
call. In Spring 2001 the hospital opened the
Express Care Unit next to the Emergency
Department. The unit is designed to quickly
treat a wide range of minor emergencies for
adults and children.
At BMC’s Cardiac Center of Excellence, the
hospital’s team of cardiologists, cardiovascular
surgeons, nurses and staff provide the high level
of care and service that patients have come to
expect. A cardiac catheterization lab and
electrophysiology lab provide physicians with
increased diagnostic capabilities. The Imaging
Department offers advanced CT (computerized
tomography) scan capabilities, magnetic
resonance imaging, and more.
In its constant review of services, searching
for ways to improve, Brownsville Medical Center
remains responsive to community needs.
Recognizing the high incidence of diabetes in
the Valley, BMC’s Wound Healing Center for the
treatment of hard-to-heal diabetic ulcers works
closely with its Center for Diabetes
Management, which offers classes on diet and
exercise along with diabetes support groups.
Through an extensive outreach program,
Brownsville Medical Center provides free
educational lectures and health fairs,
acknowledging the community’s cultural
diversity by presenting programs both in
English and Spanish. Contributing to the
overall health of the city, the hospital sponsors
free citywide diabetes screenings each year,
offers free prostate cancer screenings, and
seasonally, administers over three thousand
flu shots each year. Partnering with
Hadassah’s “Check it Out” program, BMC has
trained over ten thousand high school girls in
breast self-examination in the past eight years.
Brownsville Medical Center’s program for
seniors, the Premiere Plus Wellness Center, has
evolved since 1991 into a valuable package that
helps to enhance the quality of life for older
residents. Exercise and muscle strengthening
classes are combined with social activities and
✧
Top, left: BMC’s 1952 expansion,
which added 73 patient beds and
much needed services.
COURTESY OF STILLMAN HOUSE.
Above: Mercy Hospital, built by the Sisters
of Mercy. Part of the original building is still
standing and is used for offices.
COURTESY OF THE HISTORIC BROWNSVILLE MUSEUM.
Below: Brownsville Medical Centers during
the 1980s, including the 1984 expansion
which added a three-story tower with 100
medical/surgical beds, 12 ICU beds, a new
physical therapy unit, and more.
QUALITY OF LIFE
303

✧
Above: The Edelstein Professional Building,
opened in 1999, is named after Ruben
Edelstein, chairperson of the BMC Board of
Governors, and a recognized civic leader.
Below: BMC today. This photo shows the
Professional Tower at Brownsville Medical
Center, added in 1995.
health information presentations, benefiting the
minds and bodies of participants.
More than eight hundred Brownsville
Medical Center employees are dedicated to
making every patients’ stay at the hospital the
best that it can possibly be. From the dietitians
and dialysis nurses to rehabilitation therapists
and radiological technicians, BMC’s highly
skilled staff form a team working for each
patient’s health. Hospital privileges are accorded
to more than two hundred physicians,
encompassing a wide range of medical
specialties from neonatology to geriatrics. The
Hospital Auxiliary, active since 1959, runs two
gift shops and provides welcome support and
assistance to patients and staff.
A full service JCAHO accredited facility,
Brownsville Medical Center has initiated a
major customer service program called Target
100, emphasizing that there is nothing
more important than making sure that every
patient receives the services each deserves.
For the convenience of both patients and
physicians, the Edelstein Professional
Building with ten physicians’ offices and a
pharmacy has been located near the
Emergency Room and Women’s Center.
Brownsville Medical Center remains closely
involved with community organizations such as
the Infant Nutrition Program, the Make-a-Wish
Foundation, Tip of Texas Family Outreach,
Monica’s House and programs to prevent child
abuse, and “Shots Across Texas” immunizations
for children. Of course, local chapters of the
American Heart Association, American Cancer
Society, American Diabetic Association, and
many other agencies know they can rely on
Brownsville Medical Center for support. Serving
the community online at BMC’s website,
www.brownsvillemedical.com, provides a
comprehensive medical reference library, a
listing of physicians, and in-depth information
on hospital services.
Brownsville Medical Center, still known as La
Merced by many citizens, continues to anticipate
the community’s needs, understanding and
caring for the health of the community as well as
the individuals who live there.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
304

ST. PAUL
LUTHERAN
CHURCH
The ministry of St. Paul Lutheran Church,
McAllen, is dedicated to bringing all people to
faithful discipleship of Christ through the
witness of the Gospel. Charter members
August Kolb, E. H. Kleinschmidt, Ed Koch, E.
F. Krumdiek, and John Bruns held the first
organizational meeting of the church in Pharr
on December 10, 1916, and resolved to begin
worship in a borrowed church. Reverend M. J.
Scaer became the first resident pastor in 1918.
The next year St. Paul Lutheran Church
acquired its first building, a Christian Church
known for being constructed by volunteer
labor in one day. The earliest services were in
German, the native tongue of many members,
but within ten years services were being
conducted in English. Until World War II,
men and boys sat on one side and women and
girls on the other.
As the church grew, a Sunday School was
added and the Ladies Aid was formed in
1920. Today the ladies’ group has six circles
of charitable or ministerial activity. In 1926 a
Walther League was established for Lutheran
youth. The congregation sponsored mission
churches in McCook and Alamo and later
aided El Buen Pastor.
In 1943 St. Paul Lutheran Church opened
a Lutheran day school and three years later
moved the school into the second floor of the
new two-story church and school building.
In 1956 a new school wing was built on a
twenty-acre site on Pecan Boulevard.
Teaching the Christian faith has been the
basis of the school’s success and continued
growth. Current enrollment is 350 in
childcare, pre-school, and kindergarten
through eighth grade.
The current sanctuary, also built in 1956, is
altar-centered, creating an emotional impact as
light reflected from the stained glass windows
touches the altar. The V-shaped tower soars in
the altar’s background, enhancing worship and
meditation, as does the nineteen-rank Hoffman
pipe organ installed in 1971. A fellowship hall
and school additions have reflected the
increase in church outreach and growth.
Excellent leadership and an unswerving
membership have enabled St. Paul Lutheran
Church to thrive and become a benefactor to
the community and to global charities. The
church today maintains its Christian traditions,
yet added a contemporary worship service in
1995. It remembers the pastors called to serve
at St. Paul: the Reverends Scaer, Medler,
Ploneit, Elser, Remmert, Diers, Buvinghausen,
Albers, Davenport, Nelson, Brauer, and
Krueger. Reverend Duane Kirchner has been
pastor since 1993.
✧
Above: “Church built in a day” home of St.
Paul Lutheran Church from 1919 to 1943.
Below: The present sanctuary of St. Paul
Lutheran Church.
QUALITY OF LIFE
305

JOHN KNOX
VILLAGE
✧
Above: John Knox Village is renowned as a
life-affirming community where adults can
retire to enjoy the best of their lives.
Below: The region’s Spanish heritage is
reflected in this colorful corner.
Seniors have the time of their life as they
age in the satisfying, invigorating yet secure
environment of John Knox Village in Weslaco.
The continuing care retirement facility
enables adults to remain independent as long
as possible with the assurance of supportive
services, including assisted living and skilled
nursing care, if needed.
The Village atmosphere creates a zest for
maintaining wellness and independent living
among John Knox’s approximately 275
residents. The sound of community is apparent
in the friendly chatter over cards and the warm
welcome given to newcomers. It is heard in
laughter in the meeting rooms, impromptu
sing-a-longs and the resonant chimes of the
grandfather clock in the elegant yet friendly
foyer. The community is visible in groups of
seniors stretching in daily exercise programs, in
the comfortable chairs in the well-lit library,
and in the lush subtropical landscaping and
gardens. Community caring shows in safety
railings along the corridors, multiple elevators,
and the rose gardens that residents tend.
Established in 1965 as Wesley Manor
Retirement Facility by the Methodist Church, the
property was acquired by the nationwide John
Knox Communities, Inc. in 1977 and then
developed as a continuing care retirement center.
Since 1981 John Knox Village has been
locally owned and independently operated as
a not-for-profit corporation by a local Board
of Directors. Set on forty landscaped acres,
John Knox Village is renowned as a lifeaffirming
community where adults retire to
enjoy the best of their lives.
Independent living is a cherished advantage
for John Knox Village residents who have
their choice of hacienda-style one and two
bedroom cottages, larger upscale patio homes,
and 187 apartments in the Main Building
where several floor plans are available.
Cottage complexes with red-tiled roofs
encircle tropical courtyards. Pets are welcome
and so are visitors. The three wings of the Main
Building reinforce John Knox Village’s concept of
aging in place with comfortable apartments—
studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments
furnished by each resident. With John Knox’s
continuum of care, the elderly do not have to be
uprooted from their friends and kin if they
require personal care. The Assisted Living area
and the skilled nursing unit are integral parts of
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
306

John Knox, enabling residents to continue their
friendships. In fact, the many volunteers at the
Med Center and Assisted Living units live in John
Knox’s homes and apartments.
Payment of a one-time endowment fee,
along with a monthly service fee, entitles
residents to lifetime occupancy at John Knox
Village in either the independent living units,
assisted care facility, or in the Med Center.
Residents gain peace of mind knowing that
the endowment fee entitles each of them to
skilled long-term nursing care, if ever needed,
at no extra cost. The Village’s assured financial
stability combined with this safeguard of
continuing medical care gives all residents a
special freedom to enjoy their future.
Services provided by the monthly fee
cover: all utilities including basic cable, but
not telephone; scheduled transportation to
shopping and events; 24-hour security patrols
and a gated entrance; 24-hour desk services;
emergency nurse response; free blood
pressure checks and nurse consultations; and
bi-weekly maid service.
Main Building residents receive one meal
daily and weekly linen service as part of the
service fee. Free laundry facilities are also located
on each floor. Residents who need a modest
amount of assistance in daily activities can
arrange for services such as meal tray delivery in
their own house or apartment, and for extra
housekeeping and handyman services. A twoway
emergency intercom connects all residences
to the front desk. Any resident can arrange for a
single meal, special diet, or for a meal plan in the
Main Building’s spacious dining room.
At the Village, residents have time to enjoy
new adventures and good times with friends
while the staff handles “the chores.” With the
aid of staff, John Knox residents design and
carry out the activity programs and events
they have chosen.
Some might call John Knox Village a fitness
center since the wellness concept pervades
every aspect of life. Carefree days are filled with
a combination of stimulating social and
physical activities and heart-healthy meals in
the dining room. Something is always going on,
either in the exercise room, the arts and crafts
room and the woodworking and hobby room,
or else in the ice cream parlor, billiards room, or
the quilting and sewing rooms. Check out the
beauty and barbershop, the party rooms and
the gardening areas. For quiet moments, large
armchairs in the library encourage residents to
browse through the wide selection of
magazines, books and videos. The Chapel
meets spiritual needs with denominational
services. Outdoors in South Texas’ tropical
warmth, residents splash in the heated
swimming pool and Jacuzzi or match up at the
shuffleboard and horseshoe courts and at the
putting green. And for inveterate shoppers, the
Country Store carries convenience items.
Monthly parties give all residents a chance to
visit with each other and enjoy entertainment.
✧
Top: Residents may choose hacienda
cottages or patio homes on the beautifully
landscaped grounds.
Above: The spacious lobby invites residents
and visitors to enjoy good fellowship.
QUALITY OF LIFE
307

✧
Above: Resident volunteers staff the wellstocked
library, which offers daily
newspapers, music, tapes and CDs, videos,
and a wide choice of books.
Below: An old-fashioned ice cream parlor
provides light refreshment and a place to
visit with other residents.
Outside the grounds, Weslaco and the Rio
Grande Valley offer recreational opportunities
from nature trails and wildlife refuges to the
white sand beaches at South Padre Island.
Weslaco’s subtropical climate invites yearround
golfing at the championship eighteenhole
golf course at Tierra Santa and at the
nine-hole Village Executive Golf Course, two
of many courses in the area. Valley Nature
Center, Frontera Audubon Center, and other
Weslaco birding hotspots are easily accessible
for viewing the Valley’s colorful, exotic
wildlife. Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge
with its hanging Spanish moss is nearby.
Living at John Knox Village makes it easy to
indulge in a favorite Border pastime: shopping
and dining in Mexico, just across the bridge
south of Weslaco. Cultural activities abound,
too. Besides the City’s Tower Theatre and its Bi-
Cultural Museum, art shows along with
symphony concerts, museums, exhibitions and
theater performances can be found throughout
the Valley. For pure fun, there’s Weslaco’s annual
Onion Festival. John Knox residents participate
in the larger community by volunteering at the
hospital, museums, and schools and by taking
part in clubs, organizations, and churches.
The Health Building, named for long-time
Executive Director Audrey L. Earl, boasts two
garden areas with gazebos, one for Assisted
Living and one for skilled nursing care. Inside
and outside aviaries stocked with finches and
parrots provide a great deal of enjoyment for
residents and visitors alike. Med Center residents
receive twenty-four-hour nursing service in a
licensed unit on a short-term or long-term basis.
“If I had to do it again, I would have come
here sooner,” said Amelia Root, who lives in a
garden cottage. “For me, the best part of John
Knox is the sense of community. It feels like
home; it is home.”
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
308

When S. G. Krishnan and Elizabeth Gopal
Krishnan and their two children came to live in
the Rio Grande Valley in July of 1973, they were
the first natives of India to move to the area.
This husband and wife team of physicians—
he is an orthopedic surgeon and she specializes
in obstetrics/gynecology—are both Board
Certified and both have also been elected to the
prestigious American College of Surgeons. They
practice medicine in Weslaco as S. G. Krishnan,
M.D. and Associates.
The Krishnans met and became friends
while attending medical school in India, and
came to New York City to pursue post-graduate
training in their medical fields. They married in
St. John the Divine Episcopal Church in New
York City in 1966, two years after coming to
this country. Their two children, a daughter and
a son, were born in New York and christened in
the church where their parents were married.
After remaining in the city for nine years, they
moved to upstate New York to fulfill their
dream of practicing in a smaller community. A
year in that cold climate was more than enough,
however, and they began looking for a small
town in the Sun Belt. They found the answer to
their “wish list” when Dr. S. G. Krishnan attended
a medical meeting in San Antonio.
Soon after his arrival in the Alamo City, he
called home to tell his wife that he had found the
region where they should move. With excitement
evident in his voice, he explained that the
area was “just like India,” with hot weather, palm
trees, and bougainvillaea. His words sounded
warm and wonderful to his wife and children,
who were shivering on that September day in
upstate New York, where the temperature had
reached just twenty-eight degrees.
The Krishnans immediately began researching
opportunities available for physicians with
their training in smaller communities in South
Texas, and in October the family visited the Rio
Grande Valley, basking in temperatures in the
low 80s.
Finding the area, the people, and the opportunities
all welcoming, they returned to New
York to begin the planning and work necessary
to moving here. Even the relatively short delay
seemed onerous to the children, who wanted
to stay in the Valley, without bothering to go
back to allow their parents to work out the
details needed for the relocation.
During the ensuing years the Krishnans’
children have grown up, completed their
studies, and embarked on careers. Both
received undergraduate degrees from Rice
University in Houston, then did postgraduate
work. Their daughter is now a lawyer, and
their son is an orthopedic surgeon.
During the family’s first years in the Valley,
they were the only natives of India living in the
area. But two years later,
members of their family
moved here, as have a
number of other families
from their part of the
world in the years since.
This diversification has
offered numerous advantages
to the city and community,
bringing a bit of
India’s rich cultural history
in arts, music, and language,
as well as the
background of a country
that is the seat of origin
of the Hindu and Buddhist religions.
Of her family’s arrival in Weslaco, Elizabeth
Krishnan says they came “like pilgrims.” For the
first year they lived here, she spent full time as a
mother, not beginning to work professionally
until 1974, when her children started school.
Although this is now their home, the
Krishnans continue to return to India every
year to visit relatives and friends, and to volunteer
their professional services in their
native country.
They are also members of Health Volunteers
Overseas, and are looking forward to going to
Vietnam in September, to share their talents and
training with young physicians in that country,
and wherever else they are needed afterward.
THE KRISHNAN
FAMILY
✧
Top, left: Drs. S.G. Krishnan and Elizabeth
Gopal Krishnan.
Above: The Krishnan Family moved to the
Rio Grande Valley in 1973.
QUALITY OF LIFE
309

THE LLOYD
BENTSEN FAMILY
✧
Above: Lloyd Millard Bentsen in World
War I.
Right: Lloyd and Edna Bentsen.
Even at ninety-five, Lloyd Millard Bentsen
did not believe in retirement. His farms
and ranches covered approximately fifty
thousand acres and, along with his citrus,
banking, oil, and far-flung real estate interests,
occupied the time not spent with his family or
hunting and fishing. Throughout his lifetime,
his pioneer spirit, astute insights, and
generosity created a legacy that continues to
enhance his community, his family, and the Rio
Grande Valley.
Born to Danish immigrants Peter and Tena
Bentsen on a homestead in White, South
Dakota, on November 24, 1893, Lloyd
Bentsen helped maintain the family’s stock
farm. He received only a few years of formal
education; however, he was a voracious
reader. As a youth, he tamed wild mustangs in
the Dakotas, followed the grain harvest across
the Mid-West, and nearly lost his life in a
motorcycle accident in 1915. During World
War I, Lloyd enlisted in the U.S. Army Signal
Corps, Aviation Section. He received his
wings and an officer’s commission in the
198th Aero Squadron, the Flying Wildcats.
After the War and a stint of barnstorming
with a flying circus, Lloyd joined his parents
in Mission, Texas. The beautiful Red Cross
volunteer, Edna Ruth Colbath, had caught the
young man’s eye and the couple married in
1920. Family always ranked foremost in their
lives: their four children—Lloyd, Jr., Donald,
Kenneth, and Betty—as well as their fourteen
grandchildren—Lloyd III, Lan, Tina, Becky,
Don Jr., Kathy, Karen, Molly, Betty, Ken Jr.,
Will, Ellen, Dan Jr., and Susan.
Adhering to a personal creed of “Back your
judgment” and believing in the future of the Rio
Grande Valley, Lloyd Bentsen slowly expanded
his business of clearing land for citrus orchards
into buying that land. He went into debt
convinced that land purchases would pay off in
the long run. He soon became involved and, in
time, a leader in the development of Valley
cities and businesses. His enterprises ranged
from banking, ranching and farming to real
estate and oil. For fifty years, Mr. Lloyd, as he
was affectionately called, was an owner and
Chairman of the Board of several South Texas
banks. He was co-founder of Lincoln Liberty
Life Insurance Company and the Mission-
McAllen Beef Syndicate. In 1946, envisioning a
unified and carefully developed Rio Grande
Valley, Lloyd Bentsen co-founded the Valley
Chamber of Commerce and served as its first
president of what is now Valley Partnership.
Lloyd Bentsen’s business interests were
balanced by years of public service and
philanthropy. Just before World War II, Bentsen
organized and led a Texas Defense Guard
battalion in the Valley, which inspired the
formation of Defense Guard units across Texas.
After serving thirteen years as the Texas State
Guard Reserve Corps commander, he was
inducted into the Guard’s Hall of Honor. The
National Guard Association of Texas recognized
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
310

him as “one of Texas’ most distinguished citizen
soldiers” and bestowed the Minuteman Award.
He also received the U.S. Marine Corps League
Citation of Merit for loyalty to community and
country, along with The Texas A&M University’s
Award of “Outstanding Texan” and the Silver
Beaver Award from the Boy Scouts of America.
Honors came also from the Texas Business Hall
of Fame for his vision, dedication and courage
that helped build modern Texas. The first
Heritage Hall of Fame of the State Fair of Texas
recognized him as a legend of the early Rio
Grande Valley citrus industry and a Texas hero.
The Lloyd Bentsen family was co-donor of the
land for Bentsen State Park. Long a supporter of
First Baptist Church of McAllen, he was a major
supporter of Rio Grande Children’s Home,
whose activity center is named for his wife.
When questioned about his success, Lloyd
Bentsen always gave the credit to his beloved
wife, Dolly. Born September 6, 1898, in
Somerset, Texas, she was reared by her
grandparents. A cherishing wife, mother, and
grandmother, Dolly is remembered as a beautiful
woman, gracious and kind with a delicious sense
of humor. Her homemade ice cream, rich with
cream and a dozen eggs, was known far and
wide. Quick to praise, soft-spoken Dolly was a
treasure to her family and legion of friends.
“One wonderful thing about Dad and Mother:
they always said they were from the Valley, not a
separate city. They had such pride in the whole
area,” said daughter Betty Bentsen Winn. The
Bentsen children have flourished: Lloyd Bentsen,
Jr., as U.S. senator from Texas and U.S. secretary
of the treasury; Donald Bentsen as an owner and
CEO of several successful companies; Kenneth
Bentsen as a prize-winning Houston architect;
and Betty Bentsen Winn, who has remained
involved with the Lloyd Bentsen enterprises and
Foundation with her brothers.
Edna Ruth Bentsen died in June 1977, after
fifty-seven years of marriage. Lloyd Bentsen died
in January 1989, leaving his family, friends, and
the Rio Grande Valley a better place to live
because of his example, foresight, and
commitment. As Lieutenant Governor Bill
Hobby recalled, “He was one of the last, great
patricians of Texas.”
✧
Above: The children of Lloyd and Edna
Bentsen (from left to right): Donald,
Lloyd Jr., Kenneth Bentsen and Betty
Bentsen Winn.
Left: The Lloyd Bentsen Family, 1987.
QUALITY OF LIFE
311

VALLEY
GRANDE
MANOR
✧
Valley Grande Manor provides quality
nursing care and rehabilitation services
from this Weslaco facility.
Valley Grande Manor at Weslaco continues
to bring a tradition of quality healthcare to
residents of the Valley. But more than that, this
thirty-two-year-old facility brings a civic
awareness and social and religious commitment
to the community it serves.
Founded in 1968 with just sixty-two beds,
Valley Grande Manor is affiliated with the
Seventh-day Adventist Church and
committed to following the example given by
our Lord in His dealings with mankind. The
goal has always been to provide loving,
quality, cost-effective healthcare to each
individual regardless of race, sex, religion, or
physical condition within the capabilities of
the Manor. It has been the administration’s
objective to nurture the whole person:
physical, mental, social, and spiritual. This
devotion to Christian concern is extended to
the employees, volunteers, families, and the
community at large.
It also provides a commitment to Christian
education by providing work opportunities for
students at the adjacent Valley Grande
Academy, allowing them to finance their
education. Students have been employed in a
variety of departments, including nursing,
housekeeping, laundry, activities, dietary,
medical records, administration, maintenance,
and landscaping.
“One of our roles has always been to
provide employment opportunities for these
students,” said Sylvia Williams, administrator
of Valley Grande Manor. “We help them
finance their education, but more important,
we are teaching them job skills that will be of
benefit regardless of their career choice.”
Williams points out that students learn
about work ethics, responsibilities, and other
issues related to succeeding in the workplace.
“Students who go through our work/study
program leave with valuable lessons,” she
added. “By putting them in a vocational
setting, they experience first hand the
demands related to holding a position and the
criteria needed to excel.”
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
312

During its thirty-two-year history in the
Mid-Valley, the center has also evolved with
the changing healthcare industry. Physicians
and hospitals recognize the excellence and
compassion that have become synonymous
with Valley Grande Manor.
In addition to offering quality long-term
nursing care, Valley Grande Manor also has one
of the Valley’s most comprehensive rehabilitation
facilities. This center provides residents with
comprehensive physical, occupational and
speech therapy programs; respiratory services;
and post-acute care following a hospital stay.
Valley Grande Manor also subscribes to the
Eden Alternative philosophy, which
incorporates plants, animals, and children into
the nursing home environment. Plants grace
common areas and residents’ rooms. In
addition, cats, dogs, fish, and birds make their
home in the Manor. Young people work here as
well, and residents benefit from interacting with
them and the animals. Every effort is made to
encourage residents to participate in the care of
pets, which helps to alleviate problems
associated with loneliness and boredom.
With a professional staff of more than 175
employees, this 147-bed full-service facility has
demonstrated a commitment to quality and
compassionate care for residents of the Valley.
Valley Grande Manor is a teaching facility as
well as a care facility. It is used by a number of
licensed vocational nursing and certified
nursing assistant schools as a clinical site where
students can get hands-on experience.
Valley Grande Manor’s philosophy of care
extends well beyond the physical facilities.
“We understand that the decision to place
a loved one in a nursing home is a difficult
one,” added Williams. “However, it usually is
in the best interest of the care giver and the
resident to consider this level of care at the
appropriate time. Our staff works closely with
families and friends of residents so that they
understand the issues of nursing home care
and the approach we take in caring for their
loved ones.”
Valley Grande Manor develops and
implements programs that are custom
designed for each resident by a team of nurses,
certified aides, social worker, dietician, and
activity personnel.
“Our focus is to integrate each resident into
a social setting so as to keep them as active as
possible for as long as possible,” said Williams.
“We draw on the experiences of many
outstanding professionals to offer our residents
the finest care and therapy in the area.”
Valley Grande Manor is located at 1212
South Bridge Avenue in Weslaco. For more
information, call (956) 968-2121.
✧
Above: Staff members as well as residents
enjoy the animals that make their home in
the Manor.
Below: Technicians check out equipment at
Valley Grande Manor, which has one of
the Valley’s most comprehensive
rehabilitation facilities.
QUALITY OF LIFE
313

CARDIOVASCULAR ASSOCIATES
In 1978 Dr. Marion R. Lawler, Jr., and Dr.
Thomas A. Clark formed Cardiovascular
Associates in Harlingen, Texas. Dr. Ruben
Montelongo Lopez joined Cardiovascular
Associates in 1999. All are Board-certified
cardiovascular surgeons.
Cardiovascular Associates specializes in heart
surgery, providing comprehensive medical care
to the cardiac patient. The surgeons’ procedures
include open-heart bypass surgery, insertion of
permanent transvenous pacemakers, as well as
surgical treatment of valvular heart disease,
aortic aneurysms, and carotoid artery problems.
They also perform major vascular and thoracic
surgical procedures.
Even before Cardiovascular Associates was
formed, its physicians were introducing
cardiovascular innovations to the Rio Grande
Valley. Dr. Lawler performed the first open
heart surgical procedure in the Valley in 1977.
The same year, he was instrumental in
establishing Valley Regional Heart Center at
Valley Baptist Medical Center.
The use of progressive procedures has
characterized CVA since that time. In 1985
Cardiovascular Associates funded research and
development for computerized intensive care
records with functional home access link, the
first of its kind in Texas. Recently, Dr. Ruben M.
Lopez performed the first trans-myocardial laser
revascularization of the heart in south Texas.
Among CVA’s other innovative cardiovascular
services, the surgeons insert permanent heart
defibrillators and rings for mitral valve repair.
CVA’s surgeons are also undertaking some
coronary bypass operations “off-pump,” without
the heart and lung machine.
“Eighty percent of what we do are
innovations new in the last ten years. Every year
we incorporate new procedures,” said Dr. Clark.
Coronary bypasses remain one of the most
common heart operations and over 400,000
are performed annually in the U.S. alone.
Revolutionary procedures have enabled
surgeons to cut recovery time in half and
greatly reduce the length of hospitalization.
“We have learned how to get you over open
heart surgery in better shape,” Dr. Lawler
pointed out. “Even as the population ages,
and patients are older and sicker when they
come to us, we’re able to do more for them
than ever before.”
Training in cardiovascular surgery requires
the completion of a general surgery residency
program followed by two to three additional
years of specialized training in all the aspects
of heart, blood vessel, and chest surgery. But
cardiovascular surgeons are more than heart
surgeons. They operate on the veins and
arteries circulating blood throughout the
whole body—in the legs, lungs, neck, and
abdomen. CVA’s surgeons surgically treat lower
extremity occlusion and perform major
peripheral vascular surgery and reconstruction
as well as micro vascular surgery for diabetic
leg ulcers.
Doctors Lawler, Clark, and Lopez are very
aggressive in expanding their technical
medical knowledge. Each earns double or
more of the required Continuing Medical
Educations credits annually. They are
committed to improving the procedures they
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
314

can offer cardiac patients. Educating their
patients is equally important. Cardiovascular
Associates strives to explain procedures,
recovery and rehabilitation along with
providing information on controlling the risk
factors that lead to heart disease.
Dr. Marion R. Lawler, Jr., son of a Mercedes,
Texas, surgeon, graduated from Southwestern
University and Baylor College of Medicine. He
completed surgical training at Vanderbilt
University in thoracic and cardiovascular
surgery. After serving as a thoracic surgeon
aboard the U.S. Navy hospital ship Sanctuary off
of Vietnam, Dr. Lawler established his surgical
practice in Harlingen in 1971. He performed the
first open heart operation in the Valley in July
1977 and helped found the Valley Regional
Heart Center at Valley Baptist Medical Center.
Dr. Lawler is a fellow of the American College
of Surgeons, the American College of
Cardiology, and the Southwestern Surgical
Congress. He is a member of the Denton A.
Cooley Cardiovascular Surgical Society, the
DeBakey International Cardiovascular Society,
the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the
International Society of Cardiovascular Surgery,
the Texas Surgical Society, the American Medical
Association, the Texas Medical Association, and
the Cameron-Willacy County Medical Society.
Dr. Thomas A. Clark, an Ohio native,
graduated from the University of Florida and the
University of Miami Medical School. His thoracic
and cardiovascular surgery residency was
completed at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda,
Maryland. Dr. Clark is a fellow of the American
College of Surgeons and a member of the
American College of Cardiology, the American
Medical Association, the Texas Surgical Society,
the Pan-Pacific Surgery Association, and the U.S.
Naval Reserve.
Dr. Ruben Montelongo Lopez graduated
from the University of Texas at Austin and the
University of Michigan Medical School, and
then completed his cardiothoracic residency
at the Texas Heart Institute under the
direction of Dr. Denton Cooley. He is trauma
director for Valley Baptist Medical Center and
an associate fellow of the American College of
Surgeons, a member of the Denton A. Cooley
Cardiovascular Surgical Society and the
Cameron-Willacy County Medical Society.
Cardiovascular Associates is participating in
the University of Texas Health Science Center’s
Regional Academic Health Center. Medical
residents will work with Cardiovascular
Associates’ surgeons as part of their rotation.
Dr. Lawler is currently a Clinical Professor of
Cardio thoracic surgery at UTHSC, San
Antonio. Cardiovascular Associates’ web site,
www.valleyheart.com, explains how to avoid
heart problems and lists the operations
performed by the practice.
QUALITY OF LIFE
315

✧
Above: Newt and Maggie Dyer look back
at their family from atop the mountain at
Chipique, Mexico. They had honeymooned
there and returned forty-five years later
with their family for Valentine’s Day, 1997.
Below: When Newt and Maggie retired from
farming they began a new career in land
development. This is the first building,
nearly finished, of Capote International
Business Park, Inc. This photo was taken
south of the Military Highway and looking
north, up Highway 281. The family’s time
capsule is visible on the right side of the
front of the building.
THE DYER FAMILY
The Dyer family of Pharr and Mission
traces it heritage back to two early Rio Grande
Valley settlers. James Newel Dyer, Sr., moved
to the Rio Grande Valley for his health in the
late 1920s, but he wasn’t too ill to participate
in the region’s development as president of
banks in McAllen and San Juan. When banks
began closing during the Depression, he hit
on a clever way to forestall panic among bank
customers. He borrowed wooden bushel
baskets from a packing shed, put false
bottoms in them, stacked the top of each with
dollar bills, and set them behind the tellers’
cages. The tellers told everyone “Look, we
have plenty of money. Your money is safe
here.” And his banks indeed stayed solvent.
In 1937, James Dyer, Jr., opened the
Gateway Café, one of the Valley’s premier
restaurants in Pharr. He also owned citrus
groves in Mission and San Juan.
His son Malcolm, nicknamed Newt after
his father and grandfather, graduated from
Texas A&M College in 1952 with a degree in
horticulture and a commission in the U.S.
Army Artillery. The same year, after marrying
Mary Agnes (Maggie) Busch, daughter of
William Mathias and Agnes Mary Doffing
Busch, he went to Korea to serve during the
Korean Conflict. After several years in west
Texas, Newt and Maggie Dyer returned to the
Rio Grande Valley in 1957 and began farming
on Military Highway south of Pharr with
Maggie’s father William Busch. Maggie Dyer’s
grandfather John Busch had farmed near La
Lomita. Her other grandfather Nick Doffing
had come to Mission in 1904 from Duncan,
Oklahoma, and farmed land south of Pharr. In
1923 Nick’s son Peter and his oldest daughter
Josephine purchased the San Juan Plantation
that John Closner created when the sugarcane
industry was being formed.
Under the name Capote Farms, Newt Dyer
began raising cotton, grains and a wide variety
of vegetables for the packing sheds. The name
Capote Farms is a nod to the past and a onetime
village that stood where the Pharr Bridge
is now. The settlement once had a brick factory,
a building dated 1883, and numerous houses
made of mesquite and willow branches. It was
destroyed by a combination of floods and
droughts almost one hundred years ago,
leaving behind only a small cemetery.
The Dyer family no longer raises vegetables
but grows sugarcane on more than one thousand
acres and owns a citrus grove on the river. Their
farm bordering the river has considerable natural
habitat for wildlife, which makes living there
exciting and enjoyable, say family members. The
couple’s children have prospered. James William
is a lawyer-engineer in McAllen and married to
Cecily Silvernale of Denton. Don Phillip, married
to Mary Theresa Rutkowski of St. Louis,
Missouri, is the founder of Farm to Market
Grocery and Silo Restaurant in San Antonio.
Robert Anthony owns and operates Growers
Select Produce, Inc. in Mission and is married to
Christina Marie Plugge of Dallas. Theresa Dyer
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
316

Arizmendi has a Masters’ degree in child
psychology, is a professional clown and a trauma
counselor for youths. She is married to Richard
Anthony Arizmendi, a master sergeant in
the United States Army. They are stationed in
Corpus Christi.
Aggies have learned how to say “Wait until
next year,” which is why they make good
farmers, Newt Dyer will tell you. He has been
a lifelong supporter of Valley agriculture,
having served on the Boards of the San Juan
Farmers Coop Gin, Cotton Inc., All Valley
Winter Vegetable Show, Magic Valley Electric
Cooperative, Rio Grande Valley Sugar
Growers Association, San Juan Water District
No. 2, Hidalgo County Farm Bureau, and
other organizations. The Rio Grande Valley
Council of the Boy Scouts of America has had
Newt and Maggie’s unwavering support.
Destined for Texas A&M, just like their
parents, Newt and Maggie’s grandchildren and
their A&M classes are Sarah (’02), Noah
Francis (’04), Briannah (’06), and Joseph Micah
(’08), the offspring of J. W. (’75) and Cecily
(’75). Bob (‘83) and Christina’s (’83) children
are Emily Anne, Christopher Malcolm, Lucas
Roman, and Nathaniel Robert. Phil (’77) and
Mary’s children are Nicholas James, Gregory
Gerard, and Matthew Alexander. Jeremiah
James is the son of Theresa and Richard.
✧
Above: Newt wields the scissors and Maggie
displays the Proclamation at the ribboncutting
ceremony for Capote International
Business Park, Inc., January 24, 2001.
Various members of the Dyer family, the
Pharr business community, and Miss Pharr
look on.
Below: The entire family gets together at
every opportunity to share good times. The
family welcomed the new century with a
skiing trip to Copper Mountain, Colorado in
January 2000.
QUALITY OF LIFE
317

PLANNED
PARENTHOOD
ASSOCIATION OF
HIDALGO
COUNTY
✧
Below: The Methodist Church in Mission
provided space for the first clinic. A house
on Twelfth Street and Conway was donated
in the late 1960s for a more permanent site.
In 1990 the building was sold, and a new
clinic was built on the same site.
Bottom, right: Nurse practitioners at
Planned Parenthood promote healthy
lifestyles, and many patients visit the clinics
for regular preventive screenings.
In 1964, the first Planned Parenthood
agency in the Rio Grande Valley was founded
in Mission by a group from the First United
Methodist Church, led by Reverend Bruce
Galloway. To help people plan the spacing of
their children and improve the family’s quality
of life, the group addressed the issue of
poverty and rapid population growth with
education, counseling, and medical services.
Staffed by volunteers and supported by local
contributions, a clinic opened in the church’s
basement and provided free or low cost family
planning services to women with limited
healthcare access.
In 1965 McAllen’s Anti-Poverty
Committee agreed to open a family planning
clinic and soon other clinics and information
centers were established in Hidalgo County.
In 1967 the agency became a full-fledged
Planned Parenthood affiliate. Today over
20,000 people get healthcare at the six fulltime
and several part-time health centers
throughout Hidalgo and Starr Counties.
Clinic services include birth control,
screening for cancer and other health
concerns, testing and treatment for sexually
transmitted infections, and testing for HIV.
For many patients, Planned Parenthood is
their only source of preventive healthcare.
Educating the community about
preventive health and responsible choices has
always been a primary focus. The “Knock on
Every Door” project, begun in 1979, informed
women about birth control and available
services. During the 1980s, Planned
Parenthood was the first Hidalgo County
agency to provide education and outreach to
prevent HIV/AIDS. The Active Community
Teen Theatre (ACTT) was developed to
promote communication between adolescents
and their parents.
Nationally recognized as a model health
project, “Entre Nosotros or “Between Us” has
offered reproductive health education to
families in the rural areas of the county since
1989. With a neighbor teaching neighbor
approach, it uses peer educators to reach over
20,000 people annually with information on
family planning, cancer screening, disease
prevention, and healthy lifestyles.
Many volunteers have been instrumental in
helping Planned Parenthood serve the
community. Some of those most involved
through the decades include Lila Baxter, Oralia
Saldaña Cavazos, Dr. Daniel Chester, Reverend
Mary English, Dell Hardwicke, Reverend Bruce
Galloway, Joe Hopkins, Neal King, Noemi
Lopez, Dr. Elinor March, Dr. Kenneth
Landrum, Reverend Ernest Miller, Sue
Peterson, Gracie Silva, Dr. Alvin Smith, O. A.
Terry, Dr. Barbara Tucker, Jack Whetsel and Dr.
Charles Wilson.
While the agency has grown, adding many
medical, educational and community
services, Planned Parenthood’s vision
continues to be “every child a wanted child.”
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
318

Community leaders who
recognized the need for low
cost, confidential family
planning services for indigent
families founded Planned
Parenthood of Cameron and
Willacy Counties in
Brownsville in 1966. Doctors
Lee Salinger and Harry Miller
first organized the volunteer
effort and with such
community volunteers as
Marvin Brown, Melanae
Connor, and John Black
established a part-time clinic.
The mission was clear:
everyone in the community
has a right to information and
services needed to make
decisions privately about
whether and when to add
another child to the family.
When all children can be
welcomed into a family that is
prepared to nurture and
support the child, the
mother, the family and the
community benefit.
Planned Parenthood’s mission focuses on
making excellent, affordable reproductive
healthcare available to the community. Because
of the need for its services, the agency has grown
to include five clinics, an education department,
and two case management programs. Funding is
provided through private donations, grants,
contracts, and patient fees on a sliding scale.
Family planning services include all FDAapproved
methods of birth control. Female
patients receive a pap smear, a breast exam, and
a diabetes-screening test. The clinics provide
pregnancy testing and counseling as well as
testing and treatment for sexually transmitted
infections for men and women. In addition,
colposcopy services are available for women
with abnormal pap smears. Promesa Salud, a
case management project partially funded by
Texas Department of Health and Texas Cancer
Council, provides support to the patient with
an abnormal Pap smear or mammogram to
assure timely diagnosis and treatment. Eligible
women over fifty receive free mammograms.
Teen pregnancy prevention remains an
important goal. The Education Department
works with local schools and youth organizations
presenting programs and materials that
provide healthy, honest information to
encourage teens to make responsible choices.
The high rate of sexually transmitted infections
and pregnancy among teens are clear
evidence that many Valley teens are sexually
active. Scientifically based information on
reproductive health and pregnancy are provided
with an important focus on abstinence
as the safest, healthiest alternative for teens.
The Positive Directions project assigns a
licensed social worker to pregnant or parenting
teens, to help them become self-sufficient,
capable parents. The goal is for them to avoid
future pregnancies and to stay in school.
From being strictly a provider of birth control
services, Planned Parenthood of Cameron
and Willacy Counties has developed into a
comprehensive women’s healthcare program
while upholding its original mission.
✧
PLANNED
PARENTHOOD OF
CAMERON &
WILLACY
COUNTIES
George Olivo, board member; Rosemarie
Herrmann, executive director; and Sherry
McCullough, board president, all of the
Planned Parenthood Association of
Cameron & Willacy Counties, greet Gloria
Feldt (second from the left), president of the
Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
QUALITY OF LIFE
319

FOOD BANK OF
THE RIO GRANDE
VALLEY, INC.
✧
Above: Personnel from a member agency
load their truck with can goods and fresh
produce to distribute to needy families.
Below: The Garden Fresh Express program
provides fresh produce delivery to member
agencies in the Rio Grande Valley.
The Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley,
Inc., located in McAllen, supplies food to over
160 non-profit food pantries and feeding
programs in six south Texas counties:
Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr, Willacy, Zapata, and
Jim Hogg. Since its founding as a food pantry
in 1983 and as a food bank in 1986, the Food
Bank RGV has grown to be the second largest
food bank in distribution in Texas and the
24th largest in the U.S. FBRGV distributes
over fourteen million pounds of food annually
on a budget near $1 million, maintains a
volunteer force one hundred strong, and is
managed by a professional staff and a twentyfour-member
board of directors. Demands for
assistance have doubled in the past two years,
due in part to the large number of low-income
families in the Valley. Hungry children are a
very important issue and getting them
nutritious meals is a priority of the Food Bank
RGV. Through FBRGV member agencies,
171,000 men, women and children received
food assistance in 1999.
A computerized inventory system tracks
produce, packaged foodstuffs, frozen products,
and refrigerated meats and cheeses
that come into the FBRGV’s fifty-thousandsquare-foot
warehouse. The Food Bank RGV
distributes food five days a week to member
agencies who give the food to needy families.
It is also a distributor of USDA TexCap
commodities and uses FEMA funds to
purchase foods that are in short supply.
Community donations supply most of the
bounty for the needy. HEB is the single largest
donor; followed by farmers, produce companies,
and local retailers. FBRGV is a member
of America’s Second Harvest, which distributes
products from manufacturers such as Ocean
Spray. Annual canned food drives by the Boy
Scouts, Girl Scouts, the National Association of
Letter Carriers, and the KBFM-104 High School
Student Hunger Food Drive all benefit FBRGV.
Civic groups, businesses, organizations, and
churches are important donors and supporters
of its mission. The annual Outdoors Spotlight is
the main fundraising event for FBRGV.
Qualified 501(c) 3 non-profit feeding
programs receiving and distributing FBRGV
allotments include Salvation Army, Ozanam
Center, Loaves and Fishes, and numerous
church operated food pantries. The Second
Chance program provides the FBRGV
warehouse with a much-needed workforce of
Lopez State Jail inmates who learn job skills
while they volunteer.
In 2000 the Food Bank of the Rio Grande
Valley, Inc. was one of only fifteen non-profit
agencies nationwide to receive the Victory
against Hunger Award, presented by the
Congressional Hunger Center for its Garden
Fresh Express Program.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
320

Valley Regional Medical Center combines
state-of-the-art medical facilities, equipment
and professional expertise with a friendly,
genuinely caring atmosphere that is reflected
in every facet of its operation, to provide optimum
care for patients.
The Center, which began life in 1975 as
Valley Community Hospital, then had fewer
than 100 physicians and 100 employees. Of
the fourteen staff members remaining today,
some recall a bucolic setting, with cattle grazing
near the facility.
Now housed in a three-story, 300,000-
square-foot, $60-million facility built in 1998
on the north side of Brownsville, the Center
reflects the many changes in modern healthcare
delivery. A three-story professional building
containing 60,000 square feet has offices
for nearly twenty-five physicians.
A vital part of the area’s economy, the
Center employs over 700, has about 200 doctors
on the medical staff, and has an annual
payroll estimated at $21 million.
Designed for convenience, the most frequently
used facilities such as admitting
offices, pre-admission testing area, laboratory
and radiology departments are all easily accessible
from the main mall.
The emergency services area offers both
immediate assessment of the emergency, with
a fast-track system to ensure most rapid care
for the most urgent cases, and an observation
unit for those who do not require hospital
admission but are not ready to return home.
VALLEY REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER
The Women’s Care Pavilion has its own covered
entrance, providing labor and delivery
facilities, adjacent newborn nurseries with
infant security systems, neonatology facilities,
and complete gynecological services. The finest
surgeons available direct eight surgical suites.
A twelve-bed Outpatient Surgery Unit provides
efficiency and privacy for patients
undergoing less-invasive procedures.
Second-floor patient accommodations
include thirty-one medical beds, twenty-eight
surgical beds, twelve pediatric beds, and a
specially designed twelve-bed progressive
care area.
A Skilled Nursing Facility and Rehabilitation
Unit offers support and rehabilitation to help
patients become self-sufficient.
The state-of-the-art Meditech computerized
information system allows faster access of information
by the hospital staff and physicians.
A new CAT scan provides threedimensional
information to more accurately
determine a patient’s injuries, blood vessels,
bone structures, and brain tissue, while also
reducing radiation exposure.
A Pneumatic Tube Transport System
distributes medications, blood, and other
items faster and with more reliability, while
maintaining security.
Located at Expressway 77/83 and Alton
Gloor Boulevard, the Center and its adjacent
office buildings provide easy access to
quality healthcare and twenty-first century
medical technology.
QUALITY OF LIFE
321

✧
Above: Heart Clinic, Harlingen. Texas.
Bottom: Heart Clinic, McAllen, Texas.
HEART CLINIC, P.A.
With an uncompromising commitment to
patient care, the Heart Clinic offers advanced
and comprehensive cardiac treatment for
adults in a supportive environment. The
Heart Clinic is the Valley’s largest cardiology
group with Board-certified and Board-eligible
cardiovascular sub-specialists. In five offices
spanning the Rio Grande Valley, Heart Clinic
cardiologists put their hearts into taking care
of their patients’ hearts.
The Heart Clinic has led the way in progressive
techniques of cardiovascular care since
1983 when Dr. Hugo Blake founded the Heart
Clinic as the first dedicated outpatient cardiology
clinic in the Rio Grande Valley.
Dr. Blake, the Valley’s first Board-certified
invasive cardiologist, now serves as a director
of the Heart Clinic and chairman of the board
of directors. He was instrumental in establishing
the McAllen Heart Hospital, the nation’s
first freestanding cardiovascular hospital. Dr.
Blake established the cardiology and cardiac
catheterization programs at Brownsville Medical
Center as well as the cardiology program at
Rio Grande Regional Hospital. He is also a
former director of Valley Baptist Medical Center’s
cardiac catheterization department.
The Heart Clinic provides a full spectrum
of in-clinic diagnostic services for the
convenience of its patients and to speed the
diagnosis and treatment of cardiac conditions.
In-clinic procedures minimize travel and
decrease stress for patients who require
echocardiograms, electrocardiograms, nuclear
cardiology imaging, and electrophysiology
procedures. Stress tests, laboratory studies,
Holter monitoring, vascular tests, and
pacemaker and defibrillator follow-up care
are other standard on-site procedures.
Heart Clinic cardiologists conduct interventional
and invasive hospital procedures such
as coronary and vascular stents, angioplasty,
cardiac catheterization, directional atherectomy
and other advanced procedures as part of their
full service, quality cardiovascular care.
The Heart Clinic’s locations in Brownsville,
Harlingen, Weslaco, McAllen and Rio Grande
City give patients more flexibility in appointment
scheduling. Every major hospital in the Valley
has a Heart Clinic cardiologist on the medical
staff that insures informed treatment wherever a
patient is hospitalized.
From its founding, the Heart Clinic has
led the way in cardiovascular care. Dr. Blake
and Dr. Shereef Hilmy performed the first
angioplasty in the Valley in 1984. In 2000
Dr. Hilmy became the Valley’s first
cardiologist to perform endoluminal graft. At
the Heart Clinic, education and technology
are directed to improving every patient’s
quality of life and outcome. The Heart Clinic’s
physicians and dedicated staff concentrate not
only on caring for patients, but caring about
them as well.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
322

THE HARDING
FOUNDATION
The Harding Foundation of Raymondville,
which celebrated fifty years of philanthropy in
1999, continues the legacy of one of the Valley’s
most enthusiastic and courageous pioneers.
Before he left his native Minnesota for a
warmer climate, William A. Harding had
already worked his way through the
University of Minnesota, married Laura
Lindahl, farmed and raised cattle, perfected a
side shift attachment for buggy shafts, and
served a term in the Minnesota Legislature.
After a flax-raising venture froze in 1911, he
decided he would prefer to live in a part of the
country that had 364 growing days a year
instead of Minnesota’s 120. He purchased land
around Raymondville, shipped his tractor and
road-grading equipment to South Texas, and
went to work grading roads, farming, and building
commercial buildings in his new hometown.
With partner Lamar Gill, he acquired
50,000 aces of brushland, had it cleared, and
brought prospective land buyers to the impressive
Delta Lake Club House. Things were going
great until the 1928-30 depression hit. He lost
everything he had and owed $750,000.
Never one to give up, he began slowly to
recoup his losses and pay his debts. He was successful
in oil and gas production and built a
dehydrating plant on his Evergreen Farms to
dry alfalfa, barley, oats and rye, in great demand
for use in feed rations. Now he had a farming
operation that ran 24 hours a day, 364 days a
year. Needing a market for his Meyer lemons,
he formed Puretex Lemon Juice, Inc., which
flourished for twenty-five years.
With the profits from dehydration, oil, gas,
business buildings, and lemons, Will and Laura
Harding funded their dream of Christian
education through a family foundation “to
support benevolent, charitable, educational or
missionary undertakings and to further Christian
education through the distribution of the Bible.”
The Bible in Pictures was sold below cost, and
a million copies distributed by 1981, when the
project was discontinued. Small contributions
were sent to hundreds of worthy causes. In
1986 a grant to the Raymondville First United
Methodist Church funded the Harding
Fellowship Hall, a well-known communitymeeting
place.
The Foundation’s theological scholarship
program is now its main priority. Since 1976
the Harding Foundation has given more than
$500,000 in scholarship money to over a
hundred theological students in the U.S. and
other countries. The Foundation also has given
grants to build churches in Mexico and Africa.
Their son, Rollo Harding, and his wife, Nola,
continued the work of the foundation until their
deaths. Nola Harding was an avid historian, and
the records, newspapers and maps she amassed
during her years of research are in the Reber
Memorial Library in Raymondville for the public’s
use. They also established a pioneer days
room in the Historical Center in Raymondville.
Grandson Glenn, head of the foundation
since 1982, carries on the family tradition of
community service, joined by granddaughter
Dorothy Jean Parr of Denton and greatgrandson
Martin Dale Harding.
✧
Left: William Aspey Harding.
Right: Laura Lindahl Harding.
QUALITY OF LIFE
323

THE HESTER-
JONES FAMILY
✧
Above: A.F. Hester, Sr., and wife, Mary
Richardson Hester, at the Hester Plantation,
south of Donna in 1911.
Below: Forrest Edward Hester and daughter,
Virginia Hester Jones, in front of the Hester
home, Donna, Texas, c. 1915.
Rich delta land along the Rio Grande River
drew Albert Franklin Hester, Sr., a native of
Meridian, Mississippi, to South Texas in 1898.
Traveling by wagon and horseback, he
reached the thick, thorny brush of the Llano
Grande and La Blanca tracts, stretching 18
miles inland from the river.
After clearing property titles in March
1902, Hester and fellow investors purchased
23,745 acres of the historic land grants. The
partners soon conveyed the land titles to La
Blanca Agricultural Company.
In 1902, the fifty-four-year-old Hester moved
his wife, Mary Jane, and their five children from
Village Mills in East Texas to Brownsville. He
lived in a jacale on 152 acres of his land, clearing
brush for planting and for the homestead,
which was completed in 1904, near the Run settlement.
That frame house served as the community’s
first school when daughter Mary Hester
taught classes there.
La Blanca Agricultural Company, with A. F.
Hester as president, began constructing an irrigation
system in 1902 to bring Rio Grande water to
developing farmland. La Blanca evolved into the
Donna Irrigation District, Hidalgo County No. 1.
In 1904, Hester and partners founded the City of
Donna adjacent to the new railroad line.
A farmer, land developer, and visionary
businessman, Hester grew vegetables and
worked to bring the sugar industry to Donna.
The disastrous Rio Grande flood in 1909, with
water rising to the top of the telegraph poles
on Military Highway, convinced the Hesters
and many neighbors to relocate six miles north
to their new town of Donna.
Hester and his family’s positions in the community
reflect their civic involvement. He was
charter trustee of Common School District 3
(Run), charter president of the Donna I.S.D.,
Hidalgo County Commissioner, formed the
Donna Light and Power Company and was
president of various financial institutions. T. I.
Hester was a County Commissioner for sixteen
years until 1954; Forrest E. Hester was Tax
Assessor of Hidalgo County; A. F. Hester, Jr.,
was postmaster in Donna and the Donna City
Secretary; Guy W. Jones, Jr., was a trustee of the
Donna I.S.D., a Weslaco City Commissioner
and a trustee of Run Common School District as
was his brother, Forrest L. Jones.
A. F. Hester died in 1944 at age ninetyseven,
but his descendants remain in the
area and include granddaughters—Virginia
Hester Jones and Mary Collier York; three
great-grandsons—Guy W. Jones, Jr., Larry D.
Jones, Forrest L. Jones; and seven greatgreat–grandchildren—Michael
Hester Jones,
Matthew Lee Jones, Mitchell Jay Jones,
Rebecca Gay Jones, Larry Dean Jones, Jr., Veta
York Allen, and Beverly York Strubhart. Four
attorneys are numbered among A. F. Hester,
Sr.’s descendants.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
324

TEXAS
CITRUS
FIESTA
The citrus industry in the Rio Grande
Valley was still young when Paul Ord and the
Young Men’s Business League introduced the
first Texas Citrus Fiesta at Mission in
December 1932. They saw the celebration as
a way to spread the word about the bountiful
winter harvest of grapefruit and oranges from
the lush, subtropical Rio Grande Valley.
The theme of that first Fiesta, held
outdoors against the background of citrus
bearing trees, was “Coronation and Pageant of
Citrus.” John H. Shary, considered the Father
of the Texas Citrus Industry, reigned over the
one-day celebration. It started with a halfhour
concert and ended with the coronation
of King Citrus and Queen Citrianna. This
became a tradition of “royalty,” with a citrus
industry leader chosen as King and a Queen
from Rio Grande Valley “Duchesses,” each
representing a Valley community and its
product or industry.
The second Fiesta did not take place until
1934 because of the damage caused by a
hurricane in 1933. Other than during World
War II, it has been held annually. In the
1930s, Fox Movietone News enjoyed showing
the Valley’s lovely ladies in bathing suits in a
swimming pool of floating grapefruit while
the rest of the nation was in a deep freeze.
The Fiesta still takes delight in showing off
the lovely ladies and handsome lads at the
Coronation of King Citrus and Queen
Citrianna. Coronation is now held indoors
amidst the flourish of herald trumpets, during
the last week of January.
Since 1932 the Fiesta has presented its
Product Costume Style Show. The exquisite
costumes are made of citrus and other local
Valley products. Through the years of modern
technology, the costumes have become
intricate works of folk art, using Valley citrus,
fruits, vegetables and foliage that have been
pulverized, dehydrated, blended and cooked
in the microwave. These costumes have been
featured in National Geographic, Southern
Living, and Texas Monthly magazines, and at
shows from Kansas City to Washington, D.C.
Our unique Parade of Oranges features
floats covered with citrus and Valley products.
Today, the parade route is lined with over one
hundred thousand spectators from the United
States, Canada and Mexico, who come to
watch the colorful floats built by civic clubs,
churches and businesses.
Fiesta activities have grown through the
years and now include an Arts and Crafts
Show; the Fiesta Fun Fair, with folk dancers,
music, food and entertainment for every age
group; and a Vaquero (cowboy) Cook-off, in
which contestants cook over their campfires
in front of their antique covered wagons.
The Texas Citrus Fiesta is a historical and a
continued tradition in the State of Texas!
Come join us in Mission, Texas.
✧
Above: A new King Citrus, Queen
Citrianna, and Royal Court are selected
yearly to preside and reign over the Citrus
Fiesta festivities.
Below: The Texas Citrus Fiesta Float is the
highlight of the Parade of Oranges. The
Royal float travels throughout the State of
Texas as the ambassador representing the
Citrus Industry and the City of Mission.
QUALITY OF LIFE
325

HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
326

THE MARKETPLACE
The Valley’s manufacturers, financial institutions,
and retail and commercial establishments provide
the economic foundation of the Valley
H-E-B .......................................................................................328
KRGV-TV5 .................................................................................330
Texas State Bank ........................................................................332
Whataburger..............................................................................334
Aloe Farms by Mark Berry ...........................................................336
Boggus Ford ...............................................................................338
Campeche Seafood Products, Inc....................................................340
Wells Fargo ...............................................................................342
Payne Dealer Group....................................................................344
Valley Co-op Oil Mill ..................................................................346
Rios of Mercedes.........................................................................348
Sea Garden Sales Company ..........................................................350
Wallace Boudreaux, The Shrimp King of Texas.................................352
Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company .......................................354
Cardenas Auto Group ..................................................................356
Rancho Viejo Resort & Country Club .............................................358
Atlas & Hall, L.L.P. ....................................................................360
Villalba Group, Inc. ....................................................................362
Texan Guest Ranch......................................................................364
Reynolds International, L.P. .........................................................366
SBC Communications Inc..............................................................368
Cingular Wireless .......................................................................369
Olivarez Ranches by Kathy Olivarez ..............................................370
Security 1st Federal Credit Union formerly
Hidalgo Federal Credit Union.....................................................371
The Walsh Family & Mission Shippers, Inc. ....................................372
Texair Company, Inc. ..................................................................373
Jones, Galligan, Key & Lozano, L.L.P. ............................................374
Alamo Bank of Texas ...................................................................375
Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers, Inc............................................376
Best Western Palm Aire Hotel & Suites ..........................................377
Villa de Cortez...........................................................................378
K-10 Enterprises, Inc. .................................................................379
Barbee-Neuhaus Implement Company .............................................380
Burton Auto Supply.....................................................................381
Weaks Martin Implement Company, Inc. .........................................382
Valley Fruit & Vegetable Company, Inc. .........................................383
Sebastian Cotton & Grain Corporation...........................................384
Echo Hotel & Conference Center ...................................................385
Valley Armature & Electric ..........................................................386
✧
Top: In this photo, cabbage is being loaded
on railroad cars for shipment in San Benito
about 1915.
COURTESY OF MARION MOYER.
Bottom: La Feria’s first bank is now the
home of the Gooch Insurance Agency.
THE MARKETPLACE
327

H-E-B
The history of H-E-B encompasses almost a
hundred years, from its beginnings as a tiny
family shop in Kerrville, Texas, to its position
today as a major supermarket presence in
Texas and Mexico with hundreds of grocery
stores and thousands of Partners (H-E.B’s
name for its employees) throughout the state.
H-E-B’s commitment to excellence has made
it one of the nation’s largest independently
owned food retailers. Yet that position as a
leader in the food retailing industry has not
changed H-E-B’s ongoing commitment to being
the customer’s champion when it comes to
service, quality, variety and low prices.
In 1905 Florence Butt decided to open a
grocery store in Kerrville, Texas, to support her
family, and invested $60 to start the business.
The C. C. Butt Grocery Store opened on the
bottom floor of the family’s two-story home.
By 1926 Howard E. Butt, son of Florence
Butt, was at the helm of the company and
decided to expand the business into the Rio
Grande Valley by purchasing some Piggly-
Wiggly grocery stores. In 1928 the company
headquarters was moved to Harlingen, Texas,
under the new corporate name H. E. Butt
Grocery Company. Stores were now open in
Brownsville, Mercedes, Weslaco, San Benito,
and Harlingen. By 1931, nine of the
company’s twenty-four stores were operating
in the Rio Grande Valley, including stores in
Donna, Raymondville, Mission and Pharr.
In 1933 a major coastal hurricane veered
into the Valley causing extensive damage to
the Rio Grande Valley community, yet the
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
328

Harlingen store opened for business
immediately after the hurricane, being the
only store able to serve its patrons.
Today, H-E-B continues to serve its
customers and its communities after nearly a
hundred years of business. At the beginning of
a new millennium, H-E-B is an $8 billion
company with nearly three hundred stores,
including nearly twenty stores in Mexico. The
Rio Grande Valley is now home to nearly thirty
stores, and stores are open in the Mexican
Cities of Matamoros, Reynosa, and Nuevo
Laredo, directly across the international
border from the Rio Grande Valley.
The company is still Texas-based and family-owned,
led by Charles Butt in San
Antonio, Texas, and employing more than
50,000 Partners in over 140 communities.
H-E-B’s commitment to its customers
extends beyond the four walls of its stores and
the quality of product offerings like its private
label H-E-B Own Brand products. That
commitment is evident in its policy to
annually contribute at least five percent of its
pre-tax income to the communities it serves.
In 2001 H-E-B contributed products with
a value of more than $32 million to over
fifteen food banks in Texas and Mexico; it
fed over 170,000 less fortunate people in
Texas and Mexico with a free hot meal at
seventeen H-E-B Feast of Sharing holiday
dinners; and nearly fifteen hundred Texas
schools were adopted state-wide by H-E-B
in the largest public/private education
partnership in the state.
H-E-B continues to stress solid teamwork
among Partners and superior service, quality,
variety and low prices to its customers.
In the Rio Grande Valley and in every other
market in which it operates, H-E-B remains the
best place to work and the best place to shop.
THE MARKETPLACE
329

KRGV-TV5
✧
Douglas Manship directed Mobile
Video Tapes, Inc. to purchase KRGV-TV
in the 1960s.
“When it matters to you, it matters to KRGV-
TV5” is more than just an appealing slogan,
according to Station Manager Ray Alexander.
“It shows our commitment to serving the
public interest and the community’s needs by
providing accurate news coverage and the best
entertainment through the latest technology.”
The Rio Grande Valley television station
features quality news and entertainment,
demonstrating its dedication to the community
through locally produced educational programs
and public service projects.
It all began in April 1954 when NBC affiliate
KRGV-TV5 began broadcasting from
downtown Weslaco, Texas. KRGV-TV5 drew
early audiences with now classic television
shows: Dragnet starring Jack Webb, You Bet
Your Life with Groucho Marx, and the Milton
Berle Show. Businessman O. L. Taylor was
the station’s founding stockholder, but during
its first ten years the station had a series of
owners, including Lyndon B. Johnson. In
1964 Mobile Video Tapes, Inc., directed by
the Douglas Manship family, purchased
KRGV-TV. The company has overseen the station’s
development ever since.
The Manship family’s commitment to quality
television programming has nurtured and
sustained the station through nearly forty
years of growth, mirroring the growth of the
Rio Grande Valley. KRGV-TV5 moved to its
current 900 East Expressway location in
Weslaco in 1969, the same year the station
began transmitting broadcasts from its 1,049
foot tower in La Feria. When KRGV-TV
became an ABC affiliate in 1976, Valley residents
tuned in to Channel Five to view Happy
Days, Charlie’s Angels, and Laverne and Shirley.
To keep KRGV-TV running takes skilled
crews working all day, every day. The staff uses
innovations like the magical green weather wall,
teleprompters, closed captioning for the hearing-impaired,
and digitized editing to bring distinction
to each of the station’s departments.
The Five Eyewitness News department
requires the station’s largest staff. It takes the
combined efforts of technicians, cameramen,
news producers, news anchors, and reporters
on the scene with the live remote broadcasts
units or at a news bureau to bring viewers up
to the minute news on important Valley
issues, highlighting local people and events.
First Warn Five Weather uses the industry’s
leading on-air meteorological technology,
which includes Storm Trackers, Lightning
Tracker and the Valley’s strongest Doppler
network, to provide the best advance information
on weather problems. Pinpoint Future
Track, a sophisticated computer installed in
1999, anticipates weather shifts and provides
detailed storm and temperature information
pinpointed to time and specific neighborhoods.
Overall, forecasts of the First Warn
Five storm team allow viewers to see severe
weather as its approaches, giving them time to
make informed decisions about the weather.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
330

“This is just the beginning of what KRGV-TV
5 will unveil in the coming year to provide the
best weather coverage to keep you and your
family safe,” Ray Alexander predicts.
KRGV-TV’s programming department
oversees the purchase and scheduling of
shows such as Oprah, Seinfeld, and Home
Improvement. ABC network programs like Who
Wants to be a Millionaire?, 20/20, and important
sports events keep loyal viewers tuned to
Channel Five.
Educational programming matters to
Channel Five because it matters to the viewers.
The award-winning Masterminds program, a
high school-level academic quiz show, has
showcased every high school in the Valley.
For meeting the challenges of tough questions,
each team has $100 awarded to its library
by KRGV-TV.
Tying all this together, the control room
engineers and operators make sure what is
produced and programmed gets to the viewers.
They keep feeds from the network, commercials,
and remotes from news reporters
transmitting in an uninterrupted stream. The
promotional staff develops ads promoting the
station and public service spots for community
events and organizations. The creative
staff produces commercials for businesses
and ad agencies.
Always a dynamic partner in the community,
KRGV-TV has developed programs that
enhance the quality of life in the Valley.
KRGV’s “Teach the Children” project raises
funds to provide school supplies and school
clothes to first graders from low-income
families. “Wednesday’s Child” spotlights an
adoptable older child in need of a permanent
home. Channel Five has been awarded two
Presidential Citations: one for its program
Project Abuse with its examination of family
violence and the other for the Job Bank
telethon which aimed to connect employers
with potential workers.
In May 2000, all KRGV-TV’s cameras and
editing equipment were digitized, part of the
continuous process of employing state-of-theart
equipment to bring the news, sports and
weather quickly, clearly, to its audience. The
station also opened a Hidalgo County news
bureau and sales office in McAllen, joining
KRGV offices in Brownsville and Harlingen.
KRGV-TV5 continues to be responsive to the
Valley’s history, involved in its present, and dedicated
to its future, serving the public interest.
THE MARKETPLACE
331

TEXAS
STATE
BANK
✧
Top: Texas State Bank Headquarters opened
on July 13, 1998.
Bottom: Texas State Bank—1982 until July
1998.
“No One Knows The Valley Like We Do.”
Texas State Bank’s motto offers a clue as to
the mission of this Valley financial institution.
Opening its doors in 1981, TSB welcomed
customers, both individual and corporate,
with the promise of personal service attuned
to the financial needs of the Rio Grande
Valley. The temporary quarters, nine employees
and $1 million in deposits may have
appeared insignificant, but a year later TSB
moved into its permanent home, aiming to be
a financial mainstay of the Valley.
Today, Texas State Bank’s eleven-story
building is the newest and most dramatic
against the McAllen skyline. Atop this building
stands a pyramid, shining bright as a
beacon of trust, where countless Valley citizens
look for financial expertise. It also stands
as the guiding light for twenty-five other TSB
locations spanning the Rio Grande Valley.
With over $2 billion in deposits and $192.5
million in shareholders’ equity at quarter-end,
March 31, 2000, it is one of the largest financial
institutions in the Valley.
All nine hundred employees and many
customers would point to Glen E. Roney as
the banker who knows the Rio Grande Valley.
He is the chairman of the board and CEO of
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
332

oth Texas State Bank and Texas Regional
Bancshares, Inc., the bank holding company.
Biannually, Roney travels to the country’s
major financial centers to explain to investment
bankers and potential shareholders the
virtues of investing in Texas State Bank and
the Rio Grande Valley.
However, Roney would point the spotlight
back to a team of select individuals—the board
of directors, officers, and employees. Each
team member has joined him in pursuit of two
goals—knowing the Valley inside and out and
serving its citizens. Texas Regional Bancshares
relies heavily on the leadership of the board of
directors—Morris Atlas, Frank Boggus, Robert
G. Farris, Kenneth Landrum, M.D., Julie
Uhlhorn, Jack Whetsel, and Mario Max
Yzaguirre, along with advisory directors Danny
Buttery, Frank Kavanagh, and Paul Moxley.
Paul Moxley, Ann Sefcik, Nancy Schultz, and R.
T. Pigott, Jr., join Roney as holding company
officers. The bank itself has forty-three directors
and advisory directors representing every
facet of the Valley. In memoriam, Texas State
Bank pays tribute to the faithful service of
directors Jack Boggus, Vannie Cook, Jr., R. E.
Friedrichs, Joe Kilgore, and John Willis.
Because northern Mexico is part of the
heart and soul of the Rio Grande Valley, TSB
realized the importance of a strong international
department. Today, their multilingual
and multicultural banking experience is recognized
globally. National awareness of the
Valley also increased when Texas Regional
Bancshares stock began trading publicly
under the symbol TRBS on the NASDAQ
Stock Market in 1994. The stock became a
means of investing in the future of the Rio
Grande Valley. While investors own bank
stock worldwide, over 1,000 shareholders live
in the Valley. Texas State Bank also offers brokerage
and trust services unequaled in the
Valley. The computer age introduced a way
that Texas State Bank could serve other banks.
They now offer data processing services to
other banking institutions in the Valley. At the
start of the new millennium, Internet banking
is the newest service offered by TSB to the Rio
Grande Valley.
Giving back to the community, both corporately
and individually, is what Texas State
Bank does best. Not only through loans and
other banking services, but also in donations
to charitable, educational, and non-profit
organizations. Besides monetary donations,
employees donate time on behalf of Texas
State Bank. They chair gala events, work at
auctions, serve on boards of directors, and
answer phones in the telethons.
Because the Valley contains two of the
fastest growing regions in the U.S.A., Texas
State Bank anticipates continuing its own
strong growth trend. Two new bank buildings
in Harlingen and Brownsville are under construction,
and bank facilities are constantly
being updated throughout the Valley. Total
assets were over $2.1 billion at year-end
1999, up 194 percent since Texas State Bank’s
first annual report in 1981. As of year-end
1999, deposits have grown 218 percent since
the bank’s first operational year. Loan volume
has seen a 276 percent increase since 1981.
No matter how rapidly the region is growing,
the Texas State Bank team strives to meet
the needs of the Rio Grande Valley. At one TSB
location, a potential college student talks to a
loan officer about a student loan. A vice-president
of a Fortune 500 company visits with
TSB officers about relocation opportunities in
the Valley. Another bank employee tours a
group of elementary students by the safety
deposit vault. A newlywed couple sits with a
new accounts representative picking out personalized
checks, and the tellers busily cash
payroll checks for employees from a wellknown
manufacturing facility.
No One Knows The Valley Like We Do.
✧
Glen E. Roney, chairman of the board,
Texas Regional Bancshares, Inc. and Texas
State Bank.
COURTESY OF GITTINGS & LORFING PHOTO, ©1999.
THE MARKETPLACE
333

WHATABURGER
✧
Above: Whataburger founder Harmon
Dobson in the early years.
Right: Harmon Dobson at his first
Whataburger, c. 1950.
On August 8, 1950, Harmon Dobson
opened a small hamburger stand with a big
name: Whataburger.
A former bush pilot and a businessman,
Dobson had been involved in everything from oil
to diamonds to cars before trying his hand at the
hamburger business. But after selling hundreds
of twenty-five-cent burgers on opening day, he
wrote in his journal, “Whataburger will probably
turn out to be my life’s work.”
Today millions of Whataburger fans know
he was right. The six-hundred-store hamburger
chain, boasting its famous quarter-pound, all-
American beef hamburger on a five-inch bun
with lettuce, three slices of tomatoes, four dill
pickle slices, chopped onions, and mustard, has
achieved icon status across the South.
How Dobson did it, though, had remained
in the background until 1999, when family
members and company personnel began
searching archives—including Dobson’s journals—preparing
for the company’s fiftieth
anniversary. The event honored the company’s
founder and his commitment to making great
tasting, made-to-order burgers that have
propelled Whataburger’s growth to the eighth
largest hamburger chain in the nation.
Dobson’s journals reveal that in 1950 he
decided that his hamburger buns must be
larger than the standard four-inch size, believing
that in Texas, where people think big, the
Whataburger really needed to be large to
make people exclaim, “What a burger!” He
struck a deal with Rainbo Bread Company to
manufacture pans for the first five-inch buns.
“Our heritage is an important part of our
company culture,” says Dobson’s son, Tom,
now Whataburger’s chairman and CEO. “We
have made great progress—our food has even
traveled with the space shuttle, but so much
of what we do today is the same as it was fifty
years ago. We are thrilled to finally share the
words and sentiment of the man who started
it all.”
Harmon Dobson used his training as a bush
pilot to promote his new business, towing
bright red “Whataburger” banners behind his
single-engine Piper Super Cub, blowing a big
air horn that sounded like a duck honking. He
dropped coupons and leaflets from the plane,
inviting folks to the restaurant. Through his
hard work and ingenuity he managed to turn
Whataburger into the hamburger of choice for
Texans, who have rewarded the company with
unmatched loyalty. There are now six hundred
Whataburger restaurants throughout eight
states and in Mexico. The distinctive restaurants
feature an orange-and-white-striped roof and
offer a variety of products, but the mainstay of
the menu continues to be the signature grilled
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
334

quarter-pound, all-American beef Whataburger
on a five-inch bun.
The Whataburger difference is the quality of
its food and the people who prepare it. In its
advertising campaigns Whataburger openly
acknowledges that its customers don’t want the
fastest or lowest-priced food—they want the
best. The Whataburger is famed for its taste
and freshness, and every burger is made to
order. Billboards reflect quiet confidence: “You
could get a cheaper burger. But then you’d
have to eat it.” The corporate slogan is: “Just
like you like it.”
Company highlights are plentiful:
• 1959: First restaurant outside Texas, the
twenty-first, opened in Pensacola, Florida
• 1961: First three-story A-frame building
with orange-and-white striped roof, a
design that has served as a visual billboard,
and was recognized in 1991 by The Whole
Pop Catalog, as a pop icon of the 1960s
• 1979: Began serving breakfast in all
locations
• 1982: Began twenty-four-hour operations
in all locations
• 1992: Expanded into Mexico, making
Whataburger a truly international phenomenon
Growth has been tremendous. The 100th
restaurant opened in 1972; the 200th by
1978; 300th in 1980; and 500th in 1995.
When Dobson died in a plane crash in
1967, his wife, Grace, took over the business.
In 1994 his eldest son, Tom, became company
president and CEO and immediately went to
work restoring Whataburger’s original vision:
to provide outstanding service and top
quality, made-to-order food to satisfied
customers. He assembled a new, streamlined
management team and implemented an
aggressive “back to basics” approach. Overall
sales jumped five percent that year and ten
percent in 1995, earning Whataburger the top
ranking in same store sales growth by Nation’s
Restaurant News.
Under Tom Dobson’s leadership Whataburger
continues to thrive in the most competitive
sector of the restaurant industry, thanks to loyal
customers and dedicated service by team
members. There are hundreds of stories about
customers who have had Whataburgers sent
to them out-of-state via Federal Express, and
transplanted Texans whose first meal upon
returning home is at a Whataburger.
In 1999 the company opened its flagship
restaurant, the two-story, sixty-one-hundredsquare-foot
“Whataburger by the Bay” in downtown
Corpus Christi, where Harmon Dobson is
immortalized in bronze at the bayside entrance.
Even while celebrating Whataburger’s first
fifty years, the family-owned and -operated
business is positioned for the future,
rededicating itself to being the best
hamburger company in the industry.
✧
Above: Chairman and CEO Tom Dobson.
Below: Nighttime A-frame Whataburger.
THE MARKETPLACE
335

ALOE FARMS
BY MARK BERRY
✧
Above: Aloe Farms’ frugal beginnings.
Below: Mark Berry caught in a snowstorm
in Alpine Texas, on the way to California to
sell aloe.
The Rio Grande Valley happens to
have the right combination of climate,
soil and water to grow Aloe Vera, the
“miracle plant,” and ninety-five percent
of the world’s commercial production
comes from the Rio Grande Valley of
Texas and northern Mexico.
The plant’s thick green leaves are
filled with a jelly-like substance that is
made into Aloe Vera juice, gel, and
capsules. Although, official claims
cannot be made for the aloe products,
many people say they help such
problems as ulcers, arthritis, internal
stomach ailments, external skin
disorders, and especially burns.
Cosmetic manufacturers also use Aloe
Vera in skin creams, sunburn lotions and
other preparations.
Mark Berry first heard of Aloe Vera’s
healing qualities during a vacation in Miami
Beach, Florida in 1967 when the caretaker of
the Jackie Gleason golf course introduced him
to Aloe Vera. He told about two airline
stewardesses who were sunbathing and got so
burned they couldn’t go to work. He gave
them Aloe Vera, told them how to apply it to
the burns, and in a very short time they were
able to return to work. Berry did some
research on the plant and found that a
company in Fort Lauderdale, Florida was
already very involved with the product, so he
decided not to go any further.
In 1976 Berry left the printing trade to find
a business that he could start and selected
South Texas to search for a new beginning.
While driving around the Harlingen area, he
saw fields of Aloe Vera. He introduced himself
to Bill Mangum, the grower, and asked about
the growing of Aloe Vera and what type of
market he had.
“He said the market was expanding and
that he would be glad to help me get started,”
said Berry. “I bought plants from him and
started planting them on my first five acres in
Bayview, Texas.
“Soon the plants were growing so well that
I couldn’t drive the tractor in the field to
cultivate. I cut the plants back drastically and
used the tractor tires to crush the leaves into
the ground. It was very difficult since the gel
from the leaves just made the tires slip so
much that I was afraid that the tractor would
get stuck.
“One day I saw Bill standing by my field
looking very puzzled. He asked what in the
world I was doing, and I told him that I was
rebuilding my soil with the leaves because I
didn’t want to look stupid. He told me the
upper Valley had experienced a freeze and
that he needed good quality leaves. He offered
to buy all I had, which now had been reduced
to fifty percent by the severe cutting.
“The sale of those leaves opened the door
for me and probably saved the venture. Later
I sold leaves to Jim Morrison, a manufacturer
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
336

in Santa Rosa, Texas. I had a chemistry
background from my college days, so he let
me work in his lab experimenting with
formulas. As we tracked the market, Aloe
seemed to be developing in the cosmetics
industry as well as the health food market.”
“Just as things were looking good, a severe
freeze in December 1983 sent the Aloe
industry a wake-up notice. Everybody lost
their crop and many people went out of
business. To make matters worse, the savings
and loan company that had my savings went
into bankruptcy and my savings were
unrecoverable for business needs. Just six
months earlier I had bought a house and
married Elvia Koite of San Benito. Fortunately,
she was employed as a respiratory therapist,
which gave us money to live on until the
business could recover.”
That is when Berry decided to get into the
processing business and take his products
directly to the marketplace. He bought an old
van and drove to every health food store he
could find. Soon he was able to buy a bigger
truck. When he outgrew that, he started to
use the telephone and acquired brokers and
distributors.
After the deadly freeze in 1983, Berry
developed innovative cultivation practices that
have helped him survive various freezes while
others lost their crops. He also has diversified
and now has the largest domesticated planting
of Chaya trees in the world. Chaya is a product
used by diabetics to control blood sugar
without the use of insulin. A liquid
formulation is made from the leaves of the
Chaya tree and is packaged alone or combined
with Aloe Vera juice or gel.
Aloe Farms is the creator of the whole leaf
Aloe Vera capsule, along with various other
formulas of Aloe Vera. Their product list has
diversified from their own brand to many
private label brands and bulk material sent to
other manufacturers throughout the United
States and abroad.
Berry supplies his Aloe and Chaya products
to wholesalers and to retail outlets like Aloe
Vera Products “Harbison’s Original” at
Weslaco, where Gary Harbison has
developed a substantial business with
area residents and Winter Texans.
“I remember when Mark Berry came
from Wisconsin to begin his Aloe Farms
venture in 1976,” said Harbison. “His early
years were rough, but he has developed a
solid business and is an outstanding
manufacturer and supplier.”
As the business has grown, so has the
Berry family. It now includes four
children, Brenda, Michael, Catherine,
Patricia, and a grandson, Dante. Aloe
Farms has its offices in Harlingen, with
its growing and processing operations
in Bayview.
✧
Above: Mark Berry loading fertilizer in New
Mexico destined for Aloe Farms.
Below: Kusuo Koite (left) and Mark Berry
loading boxes of leaves in Bayview Texas,
June 1981.
THE MARKETPLACE
337

BOGGUS FORD
Boggus Ford, now operated by the third
generation of the Boggus family, is a vital part
of Texas’ Rio Grande Valley business
community today, as it has been since its
founding by Lewis Boggus, Sr., in 1921.
Subsequent operators of the business were
Lewis, Sr.’s son, Frank, and grandsons, Jack,
who prior to his death ran the Harlingen
location, and Bob, who is now president of
both Boggus Ford dealerships, located in
Harlingen and McAllen.
The family’s history has also been a part of
civic and charitable organizations throughout
the Valley for eighty years, another family tradition
that began with Lewis and is proudly
continued by his descendants.
The son of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Boggus,
Lewis Boggus, Sr., was born March 25, 1901,
on a small ranch operated by his parents in
Odem, know then as Angelita Community. He
began his “business” career before the age of
six, herding sheep for his uncle for $3 per
month and using the money to purchase
school clothes. Throughout his public education
and while attending business college in
San Antonio, he held odd jobs.
In 1917 the business college arranged for
him to keep books for L. R. Daniel, McAllen’s
Ford dealer. Arriving by train in what was
then little more than a village of mesquite
brush lands, Lewis discovered that his “bookkeeping”
job also included washing cars and
managing the parts department. He became a
salesman in 1918, when Henry Ford directed
that each dealership survey its area to find out
how many people owned Ford vehicles—and
why the rest didn’t.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
338

The major “perk” of Lewis’ new job, in
addition to a commission, was the opportunity
to drive the Model T demonstrator, then
one of the few cars in the Valley. He made his
first sale unexpectedly, as he drove up behind
a farmer and his three daughters, who were
driving a team of fine horses. Horses weren’t
accustomed to automobiles in that era, so
Lewis kept a safe distance behind for the nine
miles to Pharr.
When the farmer drove into the stable
yard, Lewis approached, asking the man if he
had ever considered buying an automobile.
Immediately, one of the daughters said they
had been trying to get him to buy a car for
months. Badgered by his daughters, the man
agreed to the purchase, providing Lewis
would teach one of the girls to drive. The
young salesman happily agreed, recalling
later that the twenty-three-year-old daughter
“wasn’t bad looking.” At that time, teaching a
new car purchaser to drive was essential to
effective salesmanship.
Soon Lewis became known as a super
salesman, though much of his success was
based on hard work and common sense. As he
covered his large territory he watched for men
with good-looking teams, as they could
obviously afford a car.
He sold twelve cars the first month, and
after three years—at the advanced age of
twenty—he obtained a bank loan to purchase
a dealership at Mission, thus becoming the
youngest Ford dealer in the country. After
operating the dealership for two years, he sold
it to Patteson Motor Company of Brownsville,
in exchange for a vice presidency in the
Brownsville dealership. During the next few
years Lewis bought and operated dealerships
in Raymondville, San Benito, Corpus Christi,
Harlingen and McAllen, retaining only the
latter two, which his descendants still operate.
Lewis’ son, Frank N. Boggus, moved to
McAllen in 1950, following graduation from
Texas A&M, beginning work in the sales
department and eventually becoming general
manager. In 1952, after Lewis Sr. purchased
the Corpus Christi Ford franchise, another
son, Lewis. Jr., moved to Corpus to run that
dealership. In 1953 Frank and his wife, Peggy,
moved to Harlingen. After spending time in
the Air Force, they returned to Harlingen with
their daughter, Barbara Sue, a graduate of
Southwestern University, and twin sons, Bob
and Jack.
After his father’s death, Frank took over as
dealer in McAllen, building the facilities the
dealership still occupies on the Expressway. In
1977 Bob graduated from the University of
Texas and Jack from Southwest Texas. Bob
Boggus moved to McAllen to work at the
dealership there, eventually becoming the
general manager, while Jack became the
general manager at Harlingen. Their sister,
Barbara Sue, returned to Harlingen, and also
has been involved with various projects in
the dealerships.
In the earliest years of the Boggus
dealerships, cars and trucks were delivered in
railroad boxcars, and had to be put together
to some extent. In today’s computer age,
vehicles are sold through the Boggus website.
As Lewis did before them, all members of
the Boggus family participate in Rio Grande
Valley community activities and development.
Frank is a past-president of the Harlingen
School Board and present chairman of the
Airport Board. Bob serves as president of the
Fellowship of Christian Athletes and is
chairman-elect of the Rio Grande Valley
Partnership. Barbara Sue was instrumental in
bringing the Ronald McDonald House to the
Valley, and was chairman of its building
committee and a past chairman of the board.
THE MARKETPLACE
339

✧
CAMPECHE
SEAFOOD
PRODUCTS,
INC.
Above: Ivo M. Goga, pioneer of the Mexican
commercial shrimping industry, owner of
Brownsville-based shrimp boat fleet, and
founder of Campeche Seafood Products, Inc.
Below: Ivo J. Goga (center), president of
Campeche Seafood Products, Inc. Seated are
Gregory Goga, and Marie Goga.
In fine restaurants from New York and
Boston to Chicago and Dallas, plump and
flavorful Gulf shrimp are served to appreciative
diners. Campeche Seafood Products Inc., one
of Texas’ largest shrimp marketers and
distributors, operates its own shrimp fleet from
the Port of Brownsville and also buys shrimp
from hundreds of independent shrimp boat
operators trawling the Texas and Mexico Gulf
coasts. This family-owned company is
continuing a tradition of delivering wholesome
Gulf of Mexico seafood from coast to coast.
More than sixty years ago, the foundation was
laid for Campeche Seafood’s success today.
The year was 1939 and nineteen-year-old
Ivo M. Goga arrived in New York aboard a
Yugoslav Royal Naval Academy’s sailing ship. A
native of the ancient walled city of Dubrovnik,
Croatia, young Goga decided to take his
chances in the United States and enlisted in the
U.S. Merchant Marine. He served through
World War II on cargo ships crossing the
oceans, including the torpedo-laced waters of
the infamous Murmansk Run. Following the
war, Goga’s affinity for ships and the sea led him
to become a partner in a shipping line between
New Orleans and Mexico. Intrigued by the
potential of shrimping south of the border, he
helped pioneer the shrimping industry in
Mexico in 1952, initially salvaging and
restoring a sunken American shrimp boat. The
boat, appropriately named El Campechano, was
the first trawler based out of the city of
Campeche. From this modest beginning, Goga’s
enterprise grew into a large commercial fishing
operation. Forging a partnership with a
prominent Campeche entrepreneurial family,
Goga became a part of the “Epoca de Oro,” the
Golden Age of shrimping.
In 1961 Goga brought his family to
Brownsville, Texas, with a vision of building a
commercial shrimping operation and an
import/export seafood company. Although
wooden trawlers dominated the local shrimp
fleet at that time, he gradually built his own
large, steel-hulled shrimp fleet, all equipped
with the latest sonar technology to locate the
tasty crustaceans. In 1969 he expanded from
shrimp harvesting into importing, marketing,
and distributing shrimp products under the
Campeche Seafood Products banner.
In 1980 Goga’s son, Gregory, joined the family
business, concentrating on the management of
the fleet. Son Ivo J. Goga came on board in
1982 to work in the sales, distribution, and
importation divisions of Campeche Seafood. In
1987 the company began processing domestic
shrimp under the label “Texas Treasure” to
complement their prestigious Mexican shrimp
brands. “Our success is a tribute to our dedicated
employees and the loyal fleet owners who
take pride in delivering exceptional quality
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
340

shrimp consistently,” says Ivo J. Goga. He calls
the shrimp producers from the ports of
Brownsville, Port Isabel, and Palacios, the
“backbone of our company.”
Today Campeche Seafood continues to
build the image of Gulf shrimp. Its qualityoriented
product mix offers customers a broad
spectrum of exciting menu choices. The
company is also the exclusive importer of
Mexican shrimp from processing plants in the
coastal cities of Campeche, Ciudad del
Carmen, and Tampico. Campeche Seafood
markets its brands to wholesale distributors,
restaurant chains, and retail grocery chains
nationwide. The company uses strategically
located cold storage warehouses from which
it ships graded, packaged shrimp to meet
customer demand.
Ivo J. Goga became president of Campeche
Seafood Products in 1986, following his father’s
death. Gregory Goga leads the commercial
fishing division while sister Marie assists in
sales and contributes her skills as a computer
analyst. The Goga family is also an original
stockholder in Port Isabel-based Texas Pack,
one of the largest shrimp processing plants in
the United States.
Today the Texas shrimp industry is a $600
million business creating 30,000 full-time
jobs and $327 million in annual payroll.
Over one hundred businesses in the Rio
Grande Valley are directly involved in the
shrimp industry. The local economic impact
is conservatively estimated to be in excess of
$100 million.
Consistent with the company’s desire to give
back to the community, Campeche Seafood is a
principal supporter of the Brownsville
“Blessing of the Fleet and Shrimp Fiesta” held
each June prior to the opening of the Texas
Gulf shrimp season. The company has also
been deeply involved in bi-national sea turtle
conservation efforts that are concentrated on
nesting grounds in Rancho Nuevo, Mexico.
The Texas Special Olympics, the National
Fisheries Institute Scholarship Fund, and the
Gladys Porter Zoo are also beneficiaries of
Campeche Seafood’s community involvement.
Campeche Seafood remains first and
foremost a family business. As U.S. per capita
consumption of shrimp rises, Campeche
Seafood Products Inc. looks forward to
providing more quality seafood from the
Gulf’s pristine waters to the delight of the
American consumer.
✧
Above: Texas shrimp trawlers located
dockside at the Brownsville Shrimp Basin.
Top, left: The Don Ivo shrimp trawler
fishing off the Bay of Campeche was one of
family’s first vessels from the 1950s.
Bottom, right: Robert Goga, chef and owner
of The Lantern Grill restaurant on South
Padre Island, serving some patrons
delectable shrimp dishes from the menu.
THE MARKETPLACE
341

WELLS FARGO
✧
James S. Scott, president and managing
officer of Wells Fargo Bank.
No matter how you look at it, the Wells
Fargo Bank in the Rio Grande Valley has a
long, proud history. Operating through a
series of mergers and a number of different
names since 1914, Mercantile Bank celebrated
its eightieth anniversary as one of the largest,
independently owned banks in South Texas.
Throughout the years, this bank, now a
branch of Wells Fargo, has provided
continuous personal commitment, financial
strength and expert service to the people of
the Rio Grande Valley, the Coastal Bend, and
northern Mexico.
Known first as State Bank and Trust
Company of Brownsville, the bank has
expanded from its modest beginnings into a
major financial institution. Much of its
success has been due to the bold, visionary
leadership of outstanding businessmen.
Its several name changes have included State
National Bank (1922), First National at
Brownsville (1937), Bank of the Southwest
(1972), Mbank (1984), Mercantile Bank (1990),
and now the most historic name of all, Wells
Fargo (1998-). Expanding into both Harlingen
and Corpus Christi in the 1990s, the bank has
continued to grow, with its assets increasing
from its original $60,000 to over $700 million
by the time of its eightieth birthday.
Its purchase in 1998 by Wells Fargo allied
the bank with a company noted over a
century and a half for its commitment to
safeguarding the assets entrusted to its care.
In the 1800s Wells Fargo & Company
transported gold, payrolls, financial
documents, mail and other valuables across
the Great Plains to the coast. The company’s
twenty-first century responsibility, which
centers on moving money, investments,
commodities and people both between and
beyond the country’s coasts, involves a
slightly different “frontier” than was originally
conceived, but the commitment to safety and
top quality service remain in the forefront.
Like the joining of its history with that of
Mercantile Bank, Wells Fargo’s logo—an oldfashioned
horse-drawn stagecoach like that it
once used to transport valuables, with a
contemporary color scheme of red and
yellow—is representative of a proud history
and a bright future.
The Wells Fargo stagecoaches, which once
carried gold, now market the corporate image
of stability and tradition, as well as serving as
a reminder that the company has been a part
of the financial world since 1852, when
Henry Wells and William G. Fargo decided to
apply in the West a business service idea they
had pioneered in the East. Their concept was
a delivery service for businessmen who could
not afford to leave their homes and businesses
to move money or information from one place
to another. Serving as trusted agent for these
businesses, Wells and Fargo had established
The American Express Company in 1850 for
deliveries in the East and Midwest. In 1852,
when the California Gold Rush was at its
height, they and other partners invested in a
joint stock association called Wells, Fargo &
Company to provide an express and banking
business in the West.
The express business served primarily as a
communications and transportation system to
move money safely, while the banking
business centered on buying and selling gold,
converting it into coins with a standard value,
and then into financial instruments such as
checks, certificates of deposit, and bills of
exchange. The transportation business was
substantially lost with consolidation of the
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
342

✧
Wells Fargo Bank Texas, N.A., Brownsville
downtown branch.
federal mail service during World War I, and
Wells Fargo subsequently concentrated on
building its commercial banking business in
the West.
Establishment of Northwestern National
Bank of Minneapolis in 1872 through investors
including John Pillsbury, representing local
investors, and investors representing railroad
interests was instrumental in development of
the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul
into the “flour capital” of the world. An
agricultural depression in the 1920s led to the
closing of many local banks and threats by
Eastern interests to buy a majority interest in
Midwestern community banks, leading to
establishment of a regional banking group set
up under a holding company called Northwest
Bancorporation. Generally called Banco, it
grew dramatically, becoming Norwest
Corporation in 1982, and a part of the Wells
Fargo “family tree” through mergers in 1999.
Corporate responsibility has been a key
factor in the business and mission of Wells
Fargo. “Community commitment” is a
strategic, integrated effort that draws on
business units throughout the bank. In
addition to using corporate resources for
revitalization of the communities the bank
serves, Wells Fargo also provides
opportunities for its employees to contribute
their talents for the good of the communities
where they live. The bank also actively invests
in nonprofit groups engaged in community
development. The ultimate goal in all of these
activities is to build relationships of value and
endurance with the communities. By doing
so, Wells Fargo enhances the company’s
prospects for long-term success.
THE MARKETPLACE
343

PAYNE DEALER GROUP/WESLACO MOTORS
✧
Bud and Jimmy Payne become “actors” for
their “Regardless” commercials.
“Regardless!”
When South Texas television viewers hear
the familiar “Regardless,” they know Bud
and Jimmy Payne are clowning around in
commercials for the Payne Dealer Group,
dressed as pilgrims, old prospectors, or
dozens of other characters. They end their
commercials with an offer of a one hundred
dollar bill to anyone who can beat their
prices—Regardless!
However, regardless of their on-screen
antics, the brothers turn serious when they talk
about the auto dealership started by their father,
E. J. Payne, in 1949, and how they follow his
tradition of bringing a positive attitude to both
business and community service.
Ed Payne was born in a one-room home in
Canada and raised in southern Illinois, where
his father was a Ford dealer. After graduating
from the University of Illinois at the
beginning of World War II, Ed came to the
Rio Grande Valley for fighter pilot training
at the Harlingen Air Base. While in the Valley,
he met and later married Margery Medley of
Harlingen. Soon he went overseas with the
Eighty-fifth Fighter Squadron and flew 104
missions in a P-47 Thunderbolt in North
Africa, Italy and Austria before the war ended.
After the war, the Paynes returned to the Rio
Grande Valley, where he worked for his
brother-in-law, Jim Medley, at Medley Ford in
Weslaco until he purchased K. P. Caskey
Dodge, and Ed Payne Motors was on its way. At
first it was a four-man operation, with Manuel
“Shorty” Garza as his right-hand man. They
sold thirteen cars that first year, as they became
known for their outstanding customer service.
In 1957 before the expressway was built,
Ed Payne Motors moved to its Business 83
location, then surrounded by orchards and
farmland. In the 1950s, Ed Payne offered only
Dodge cars and trucks.
“We grew up, from the age of nine or ten,
dusting parts bins to working on the wash rack,
pretty much all through the dealership,” Bud
Payne said. “We drove trucks from Detroit
when we were fourteen years old. You drive
one, with two other big trucks and a pickup
riding ‘piggyback.’”
After completing their education at the
University of Texas, Austin, sons E. M. “Bud”
and Jimmy Payne joined their father at Ed Payne
Motors, and in 1975, Ed sold the dealership to
his sons. He stayed on for several years to assist
them while he pursued farming and ranching
interests, in which he is still active.
Soon the brothers looked for opportunities
to grow. In 1980 they made their first expansion
by purchasing Weslaco Motors, which was
established in 1935. This became their flagship
dealership when it relocated by the Expressway,
representing Chevrolet, Chevrolet Truck, GMC
Truck, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and also
Mitsubishi-Fuso Trucks.
The company grew, one dealership at a
time. Payne Mitsubishi in Weslaco opened in
1989 and Ed Payne Jeep-Mitsubishi in 1990.
Payne Lincoln-Mercury-Volkswagen-Suzuki in
Brownsville opened in 1991, and Payne/
Weslaco Ford-Mercury opened in 1992.
The seventh and newest Payne dealership,
Payne Volkswagen-Mitsubishi in Mission,
celebrated its grand opening in May 1998
with an invasion of the new Volkwagen Beetle.
“It’s wonderful to see that the automobile
industry has been able to hold on to what was
once an American institution, the family-owned
business,” said Texas Automobile Dealers
Association President Gene Fondren when he
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
344

presented a special plaque to the Payne Dealer
Group at the fiftieth anniversary celebration of
Ed Payne Motors in November 1999. “Texas car
and truck owners still rely on the family and
locally owned franchised dealerships.”
The original dealership now sells Chrysler,
Plymouth and Dodge vehicles, and another
Ed Payne Dodge located on the Expressway
specializes in Dodge Trucks and Jeeps.
During the anniversary celebration, Jimmy
Payne said, “Fifty years ago my dad opened a
car dealership in downtown Weslaco selling
Dodge trucks and cars. He knew if you treated
folks fairly and gave them a great product,
they’d always come back. We also have a
quality full service and parts department to
service our customers after the sale.”
Their service departments are a vital part of
all of the Payne dealerships. Each of the
dealerships has been recognized for outstanding
achievements in automotive sales and service.
“Customer satisfaction is still our number one
priority,” said Bud and Jimmy. “The mission of
our business is to continuously exceed the
expectations of our customers, our employees,
and our community.”
Bud is now the president of the company,
with his brother Jimmy serving as vice president.
Despite the many demands of the business,
community service is still a high priority
for Bud and Jimmy, just as it was for their
father. “We feel we need to give back to the
community,” they said.
And give back they have. They led a drive to
provide safety equipment for the Weslaco Police
Department when they learned the police force
was in need of safety reflection vests and other
accessories. They donated $4,000 for safety
equipment, plus providing an automobile for
the School District’s D.A.R.E. program, plus
many other donations.
Bud has served on the Knapp Medical Center
board and was 1999 chairman of the Rio Grande
Valley Partnership Board of Directors. He is
currently serving on the board of directors for
the Valley Land Fund, Weslaco Development
Committee, and Alamo Bank of Texas. He is on
the Lower Rio Grande Valley Economic
Development Council and was one of the
founding fathers of the Valley Nature Center.
Jimmy is currently the president of the
South Texas Dodge Advertising Association.
He is on the advisory board of the Texas
International Fishing Tournament, the
Planning and Zoning Board of Progreso Lakes,
and is a former director of the Valley Auto
Dealers Association.
“We feel like the place we were born and
raised is extremely important, and very much
a part of our lives,” said Bud. “We are devoted
to trying to make the Rio Grande Valley a
better place and we give thanks to God for His
grace in our family.”
So the next time you see the Payne boys
cutting up on television, remember that offscreen
they are serious businessmen and major
contributors to the civic and community life of
the Rio Grande Valley, Regardless!
✧
Above: Weslaco Motors, established in
1935, became part of the Payne Dealer
Group in 1980.
Below: When Ed Payne Motors celebrated
its 50th Anniversary in November 1999,
Texas Automobile Dealers Association
President Gene Fondren presented a special
plaque to Ed, Bud and Jimmy Payne. The
Paynes are surrounded by some of the more
than four hundred employees of the seven
Payne dealerships over the Valley.
THE MARKETPLACE
345

VALLEY CO-OP
OIL MILL
✧
Valley Co-op Oil Mill Staff
Hollis G. Sullivan, president &
general manager
Gene Taubert, pesticide/chemical
manager
Bobby Crum, sales manager
Dennis Easley, plant superintendent
Lou Etta Macomb, chemical division
office manager
Dion Fernandez, executive assistant
The early days (c. 1946) at Valley Co-op
Mill before the oil mill was built (below)
and the Co-op today (facing page).
After cotton gins separate fluffy cotton
bolls from the cottonseed, about ten percent
of the lint still clings to the seed. South Texas
gins ship their cottonseed to Valley Co-op Oil
Mill in Harlingen to finish the job. By the time
the Co-op has completed the process, every
part has been made into a saleable product:
cottonseed meal, oil, linters, and hulls.
Organized as a cooperative association in
September 1946 by seven member cotton
gins, Valley Co-op Oil Mill built a cottonseed
sterilizer in order to ship cottonseed outside
the pink bollworm quarantine area. The mill
processed 16,999 tons of seed its first season.
The sterilizer was such a success that in 1951
the Co-op financed the opening of a million
dollar cotton oil mill on Wilson Road. By that
time, the Co-op had grown to fourteen member
cotton gins. The increased membership enabled
the oil mill to build storage houses for raw
cottonseed and houses for cottonseed meal, lint,
and hulls. Over the years, Valley Co-op Oil Mill,
also known as Valco, acquired more crushing
equipment and seed storage houses. In a major
expansion in 1980, new delinting, refinery, and
solvent extraction equipment were added,
followed later by bale presses and a meal storage
building. In 1999 Valco purchased an adjoining
oil mill, increasing total raw cottonseed storage
capacity to 195,000 tons. The Co-op’s growth
continues with two additional foundations
poured in 2000.
Forty years ago, Rio Grande Valley farmers
were growing 500,000 acres of cotton. Now the
Valley’s maximum acreage is about 225,000. To
keep processing volume up, Valco expanded its
procurement area, buying cottonseed from the
Coastal Bend, Upper Coast, and Winter
Gardens areas. In fact the Co-op is pulling
cottonseed from a larger geographic region than
any other Texas oil mill. Approximately forty
percent of the cottonseed it receives today
comes from the Valley.
Cottonseed generates two primary
products, cottonseed oil and cottonseed meal,
but none of the byproducts of making meal
and oil go to waste.
Valco receives seed deliveries throughout the
cotton harvest from mid-July to October. Thirty
temporary employees augment the year-round
workforce of eighty-nine during this season as
the mill works day and night. On peak days
during the season, the mill receives two hundred
trucks filled with cottonseed, or five thousand
tons. Each batch is quality tested before being
unloaded into enclosed storage houses.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
346

✧
2000-2001 Valley Co-op Oil Mill
Board of Directors &
Gins Represented
Valco processes 15,000 tons of cottonseed
monthly, eleven months of the year. First,
seeds are taken from dry storage to be cleaned
and delinted. Delinting the seed produces
enough cotton to make 150 to 180 bales daily.
This short staple lint falls into two grades. The
better lint is sold domestically and abroad for
use in currency, high-grade bond paper,
bedding and personal hygiene products. The
balance of the short staple cotton is used in
thousands of products requiring pure cellulose
or fiber. The fiber is processed into everything
from synthetic orange juice pulp and sausage
casings to binders for pharmaceutical tablets
and parts of molded products like steering
wheels and toothbrush handles.
Next in the process, the cottonseeds are
cracked, with the hull byproduct sold to feed
lots as a filler. Then the seeds are cooked,
rolled flat and moved to the solvent plant for
separating the oil from meal.
Cottonseed oil is the most valuable of
Valco’s products. One ton of cottonseed
produces 325 pounds of oil. Each day the mill
squeezes out 150,000 pounds of vegetable oil,
equivalent to a tanker load. Most of the prime,
summer yellow oil is destined for human
consumption, once it has been further tested,
refined, deodorized, bleached, and winterized.
Because of its purity of flavor and long shelf
life, cottonseed oil remains one of the top
three vegetable oils in the U.S.
A ton of cottonseed produces 900 pounds
of cottonseed meal. The high protein meal can
be used as is or formed into pellets, flakes, or
cakes to be fed to animals as varied as cattle
and catfish. The meal is sold on both sides of
the border.
“Mexico is a tremendous trading partner
of this mill. We bring in raw materials,
process them, and ship the product south,”
says Hollis Sullivan, Valco’s president and
general manager since 1978.
“The superior quality of the meal has
helped to develop clients in Mexico.”
As a Co-operative, Valco began supplying
agricultural chemicals to its members in 1962
to provide a reliable supply of quality
products. In 1996 Valco completed
construction of a bulk fertilizer storage facility
at the Port of Harlingen.
Today twenty-two member gins are
represented on Valley Co-op Oil Mill’s Board
of Directors.
“A good board of directors points us in the
right direction,” Sullivan says. That direction
includes possibly building a refinery to further
process cottonseed oil into a finished product
and the potential to expand either storage or
crushing facilities to increase per day processing.
Leonard Simmons, chairman
Rangerville Co-op
Bobby Sparks, vice chairman
Queen City Co-op
Don Ocker, secretary/treasurer
Chapman Ranch Co-op
O. D. Bell
Bayside Richardson Co-op
Robert Walsdorf
Brownsville Co-op
Sidney Beard
Damon Farmers Co-op
Jimmie Barosh
Danevang Farmers Co-op
Stanley Webb III
Ed Cot Co-op
Daryl Kutach
Farmers Co-op, East Bernard
Kenneth McKamey
Gregory Co-op
Jerry Wheaton
Harlingen Cotton Co-op
Jeff Yaklin
Gulf Coast Co-op
Donald Phillipp
La Feria Co-op
Jimmy Ellington
Lyford Co-op
L. E. Morris
Midway Co-op
Andrew Hahn
Moreman Community Gin
J. H. Holcomb
Progreso Co-op
D. B. Horne
Smith Gin Co-op
Jerry Rozsypal
Vanderbilt Farmers Co-op
H. R. Calvin, Jr.
Willacy Co-op
L. H. Laffere
Winter Garden Co-op
THE MARKETPLACE
347

RIOS OF
MERCEDES
✧
Trainor Evans and J. P. “Pat” Moody guide
Rios of Mercedes.
“It’s not just that our boots are handmade—it’s
whose hands made them.”
Rios of Mercedes began its tradition of
making quality, handmade boots in 1853 when
the Rios family of General Teran, Mexico,
became known for the art of bootmaking.
Around the turn of the century, they moved their
shop to Texas’ Rio Grande Valley and continued
perfecting their craft. When the last of the Rios
bootmakers, Zeferino, retired, he sold the family
business, and the experienced craftsmen who
had made Rios boots famous continued to make
quality boots for the new owners. During this
period, Joe M. Evans, who brought in Trainor
Evans to assist him, ably managed the company.
“When we bought this business in 1975, we
saw that all of the bootmakers were in their late
fifties,” said Trainor Evans, CEO of Rios. “We
realized that in six years we would be out of
business unless we trained new craftsmen. We
invited those longtime workers to bring in sons
or nephews as apprentices to sit on the bench
beside them and learn the bootmaking craft. It
worked. Now the average age of our bootmakers
is in the low thirties, and we continue to train
young workers.”
Evans brings an unusual combination to
the business—a ranching background in New
Mexico and university education in Mexico
City. His fluency in Spanish and knowledge of
the people and their culture are valuable
assets in dealing with a largely Hispanic
workforce. It also helps during his trips to
Latin American countries to buy fine leathers.
J. P. “Pat” Moody, president, joined Rios in
1983 from an agricultural, banking and retail
background to work with operations and sales.
He is now a partner. Today, Rios of Mercedes,
under the guidance of Evans and Moody, still
makes boots in much the same way the Rios
family did—by hand, with an assist from
technology in two of the processes. They moved
into new facilities at the Mercedes Industrial
Park in mid-2000, where their craftsmen work
in spacious, clean, temperature-controlled
surroundings with the latest equipment.
Evans and Moody studied the way boots are
made by hand and broke it up into about thirty
processes. This allows them to make more boots
and make them better than in a small shop,
since the craftsmen get skilled in that one step.
Their boots are made of all leather. Though
they use leathers from the U.S. and Mexico
when available, Rios imports many of its fine
leathers from other countries. Australian
kangaroo is tanned in Italy; ostrich leather
comes from Zimbabwe and South Africa;
American alligator is tanned in France; elephant
leather comes from Zimbabwe and Botswana;
and cape buffalo and wildebeest leathers are
imported from Botswana.
The bootmaking process begins in the
cutting room. Formerly painstakingly done by
hand, now that process is done with a click of
a hydraulic cutting machine, which drops
onto open dies. A job that once took hours to
complete is now done in a few minutes.
Technology also has streamlined the
decorative stitching process.
“The fancy stitching is a paradox,” said
Evans. “I have always thought there was nothing
a man couldn’t do better than a machine, but we
were proven wrong in this instance. We found a
computerized robot that would do a better job
of decorative stitching on the shaft of the boot
than it could be done by hand. At one time we
had thirty men doing our fancy stitching in
Mexico. Now we have only three stitchers in the
U.S. Those thirty men were freed up to make
other products at another plant. That shoe
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
348

manufacturing plant in Mexico has grown to
more than 150 employees, so this is where a
machine actually added jobs in the Rio Grande
Valley in both Texas and Mexico.”
The rest of the process is done by hand.
Sewing the pieces together, the linings, soles,
welting, heels, and other procedures are
carefully done by Rios artisans, whose attention
to detail comes from the heart and years of
experience. A last shapes the vamp to fit the foot
of its future wearer. Rios makes boots in sizes
4AAA to 16EEEE in eight toe shapes, so their
warehouse has rows upon rows of lasts, one for
each size, width, and toe shape.
The leather box toe between the vamp and
vamp lining is shaped, sculpted, and sanded.
Then the leather is pulled down over it to
form a perfectly shaped toe.
Small lemonwood pegs are used to connect
the sole to the boot. Every pair of boots is
pegged from the ball of the foot back to where
the heel is nailed onto the boot. This pegging is
important if a boot gets wet, as the lemonwood
pegs will swell up as rapidly as the leather sole
does and stay sealed tightly to the arch.
The heels are made of stacked sole leather
and finished to match the sole to look like one
piece of leather. Since people who buy good
boots will take them off the shelf and look at
the bottom, special attention is given to make
the bottom look as pretty as the top.
“We buy all of our insoles, outsoles, heel
counters, box toes, and shank covers from the
best suppliers available,” said Moody. “Each is
cut for the right fiber length and durability. They
cost a little more, but they’re worth it. Producing
well-made boots takes the best materials, skilled
craftsmanship, and lots of time. We make boots
that look good, fit well, and last long.”
The hands that make the handmade boot take
five times longer than average bootmakers. With
so much hand labor and expensive materials,
Rios boots are not cheap, but a good pair of boots
lasts for years. Though Rios makes some boots
for individuals on special order, most are sold
wholesale through western shops and specialty
stores where proper fitting can be assured.
A companion firm, the Anderson Bean Boot
Company, was started in 1988 and occupies
an adjacent building in the Mercedes Industrial
Park. The owners of Rios of Mercedes Handmade
Boots created it to make available a high quality,
all-leather western boot that would fall in the
medium price range. Anderson Bean has a full
line of boots for every purpose, built with the
comfort and style of a traditional handmade boot
at an affordable price.
Anderson Bean Boot Company also produces
Olathe Boots for the working cowboy. Olathe
traces its roots to the late 1800s, when C. H.
Hyer began making functional everyday boots
for cowboys in the Olathe, Kansas area where
trail drives ended at that time. Many of those trail
drives began in deep South Texas near where
Olathe Boots are now made.
The Rios complex on Expressway 83 just east
of Mercedes also has an outlet store for those
boots that fall a stitch short of passing inspection.
Rios of Mercedes and Anderson Bean
provide employment for over one hundred
people, many of whom have been with them for
several decades. “Take these men that we have
now and those coming up, and they should
keep us in business for a long time, I would
hope,” said Evans.
✧
Above: Adan Ruiz operates the
computerized stitching machine, one of
only two processes no longer done by hand
at Rios.
Below: Felipe Zamora makes leather box
toes, a distinctive feature of boots made by
Rios of Mercedes.
THE MARKETPLACE
349

✧
Above: Marvin Conner (left) and William
Love Hardee (right).
Below: The fishing vessel Captain Will,
named after Sea Garden Sales founder
William Hardee.
SEA GARDEN SALES
In February 1950 William Love Hardee
moved his family and fishing fleet from
Fernandina Beach, Florida, to Brownsville,
Texas, because the once plentiful shrimp of the
Atlantic and Gulf Coast regions were migrating
to the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico.
Hardee, a man of vision and enterprise took
opportunities as they arose and so became a
pioneer of the new South Texas shrimp industry.
In Brownsville’s early days, shrimp boats
docked at the deep water Port of Brownsville.
Growing congestion at the port forced the
Brownsville Navigation District to issue bonds to
allow the dredging of the Shrimp Basin, a
docking area for the shrimp fleet just off the
Brownsville Ship Channel. The Shrimp Basin
opened in 1953 and so did Will Hardee’s marine
supply business, Sea Garden Sales Company.
This company provided the shrimping fleet with
everything necessary for operating their boats.
The marine supply business prospered as the
region’s shrimp fleet grew to over 200 boats,
including Hardee’s own fleet of 35 vessels.
In 1960 Marvin Conner, soon to be Hardee’s
son-in-law, joined the business. Soon after, Sea
Garden opened a facility in Harlingen that sold
a wider range of products including farming,
ranching and industrial supplies. In 1965 the
Hardee team established Southern Shipbuilding,
which turned out offshore steel-hulled vessels at
the shrimp basin. The first boats, which cost
$80,000, were put into service as oil crew boats
and as well as shrimp boats.
The underserved shrimp processing market
also caught Hardee’s attention in the early
1960s. He opened Seaside Refrigeration in
Brownsville and operated it for about ten years
until it was sold. The family made another
shrimping-related acquisition in 1965, Bayside
Net and Twine. Initially the net making
company had only two small net making
machines, turning out cotton nets. The new
owners enlarged the facility so that today ten
large netting machines make nylon and Spectra
netting sold around the world. For Gulf Coast
clients, Bayside turns out shrimp trawls and
turtle exclusion devices. Bayside also knits
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
350

custom nets for the sports world as well as
special nets used by U.S. armed forces.
The 1970s brought Sea Garden Sales new
challenges and opportunities. With changes in
the shrimp industry such as the phase-out of
shrimping permits in Mexican waters, Hardee
and Conner decided to get out of the shrimp
catch business and divested themselves of their
shrimp fleet. Their contacts round the world
through Southern Shipbuilding allowed them to
sell off the fleet to fishermen in New Guinea,
Alaska, Bahrain and New England. Only the
Captain Will, now docked in front of Sea
Gardens’ headquarters, remains from its busy
fleet. Diversifying further from marine supplies,
Sea Garden Sales added a steel warehouse to
their Shrimp Basin facility. Manufacturers and
fabricators who had relied on Sea Garden for
industrial supplies were now able to order steel
plate, tubing, and pipe locally for rapid service.
The company continued to grow, and in 1990
Hardee’s eldest grandson, Bill Conner, brought
his engineering knowledge in the business. In
1994, a second grandson, Dean Conner, joined
the Sea Garden team, becoming the director of
marketing and sales. By 1995 Sea Garden’s
business had shifted to the point where fifty
percent of its revenue came from industrial sales.
The industrial supply division markets
exclusively to Rio Grande Valley customers. On
the other hand, the market for marine supplies,
which has remained steady, now stretches across
the U.S., Mexico, and South America. In 2001
Sea Garden Sales moved into the Florida
market, opening a marine supply business
located in Jacksonville, Florida.
In 1999 Sea Garden opened a retail and
wholesale industrial supply store in Pharr,
providing the company a strategic spread
across the Rio Grande Valley. Recognizing the
direction of the Valley’s growth, Sea Garden
Sales is expanding into structural steel
fabrication and has plans to construct a plant
and new store in Harlingen.
Marvin Conner took over leadership of Sea
Garden Sales Company and the family’s
enterprises on Will Hardee’s death in 1988.
When his sons Bill and Dean Conner joined the
company, they brought additional leadership to
the diversified company. The family-owned and
family-run business has for fifty years been an
active participant in the growth of the Rio
Grande Valley, and it continues to be at the
forefront of development in the border region.
Good service is the nucleus around which the
business was established and good service is at
the core of Sea Garden today. The Sea Garden
family and their dedicated employees look
forward to offering customers the latest
advances in both marine and industrial
supplies. How proud Will Hardee would be to
see that his family has taken his dream from the
1950s into the twenty-first century.
✧
Above: Marvin Conner (center) and his
sons, Dean (left) and Bill (right), the third
generation of the family involved in Sea
Garden Sales.
Below: Sea Garden Sales’ steel distribution
warehouse in Pharr, Texas.
THE MARKETPLACE
351

WALLACE
BOUDREAUX,
THE SHRIMP
KING OF
TEXAS
✧
Above: The Enola B.
Below: Twin City Shrimp Co. founder
Wallace Boudreaux and wife, Enola.
After more than fifty years in Texas, the
Cajun accent and daily helping of rice and
beans still peg Wallace Boudreaux as a native of
St. Charles, Louisiana. He is the oldest son and
second born of the nine children of Arnold and
Lydia Breaux Boudreaux. The Boudreaux
family farmed and worked in sugarcane fields
near Houma, Louisiana. Wallace worked with
his dad to get enough food for the family, so
there was no time for schooling for him or
much money to buy school clothes for the
younger children. But young Wallace had a
friend who owned shoes, dressed well and
worked on a shrimp boat. Inspired at age
fourteen, he left his family and began his
education as a shrimper’s helper. Quick to
learn and lead, Wallace Boudreaux was made
captain of a shrimp boat when he was sixteen.
At the packing plant where he unloaded his
shrimp, Wallace Boudreaux met Enola Morgan,
daughter of Henry and Zelma Solar Morgan.
Because of the unpredictable timing of the
shrimp catch, Wallace and Enola chose to be
married on Christmas Eve 1944. He promised
his bride to spend every anniversary and
Christmas with her and their children, and, for
fifty-six years he has kept that promise.
By 1948, carefully saving his money,
Captain Wallace made a $4,500 for a down
payment on his first boat and financed the
balance of $18,500. The trawler was named
Carlette Ann after their first child. Around
that time, he joined Twin City Shrimp
Company in Berwick, just across the
Atchafalya River from Morgan City, Louisiana.
The next year, with shrimp thinning and oil
exploration seismographers disturbing the
Louisiana shrimp grounds, he decided to
shrimp on a trial basis out of Port Isabel,
Texas, where the shrimp were reported to be
more abundant. That one season was so
profitable that the Boudreaux family and Twin
City Shrimp Company permanently relocated
to Port Isabel.
At one time Captain Wallace owned nine
shrimp boats, most of them named for family
members: W. J. Jr. , for son Wallace, Jr. and
Penny Michael, for daughter Penny Boudreaux
Loupe and son Michael. Shrimpers were
named after grandchildren: Virginia Lynn,
Cathy Ann, Rodney, Bobby, and KDB for Kalei,
Dawn, and Brandy. A devout Catholic family,
they named one boat Vatican and the others
Golden Star and Flaming Star.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
352

In 1963 Wallace Boudreaux stopped going
out with the boats since he found it too difficult
to manage a large business while out in the
middle of the Gulf of Mexico. He started
Fisherman Repair Shop in Port Isabel, aided by
his right-hand man Bobby Bennett and
carpenter Roberto Garcia Pena. Today the
Boudreaux’s sons Michael and Wallace Jr. and
his sons-in-law Howard Hebert and Bobby
Loupe maintain the docks and the Twin City
fleet and daughters Carlette and Penny work
with Michael’s wife Alma in the family’s business
office. First grandson Rodney Hebert has been a
part of the working family since age fourteen.
The queen of the Boudreaux family, Enola, never
played an active part in the company, but she
has been the heart and soul of this close-knit
family. The love of family keeps the children of
Wallace and Enola near. Their parents have been
loving and giving, and the children believe now
is the time to give back to them, if they can.
When Michael Boudreaux began buying
boats, the first was named the Enola B., and the
second Mat B. for grandchildren Michael II,
Adrian, and Tiffany. With the purchase of the
third boat, the Captain Wallace B., the fleet is
complete. But instead of $25,000 that
Boudreaux paid for his first boat in Louisiana,
the trawlers now cost over $500,000.
Other changes have occurred as well.
Wallace Boudreaux recalled his best catch: it
was 1952, and they had twenty thousand
pounds of shrimp in the hold after nine days
and nights at sea. Those days are gone, now
that boats have freezers and can stay out for
two and three months.
As a pioneer of the Texas shrimp fleet,
Wallace Boudreaux worked long hard hours,
maintaining his boats and retaining his boat
captains, some of the best in the Gulf. His
energy, drive and love of his profession have
kept him going when others would have
rested. “I’ll rest when I die,” is the typical
Wallace Boudreaux reply. He served on the
board of the Texas Shrimp Association,
traveling to Washington and Austin to help
form, regulate and manage the multi-million
dollar industry. He is a shareholder in Texas
Pack, a major shrimp packing and storage
plant, and in Hi Seas of Brownsville, a shrimp
brokerage house. He is now sole owner of Twin
City Shrimp Company, guiding his children as
they help him. Wallace Boudreaux’s friend E.
W. Kornegay once described him: “He’s such a
truthful man, always. If he told me the sun isn’t
coming up tomorrow, I’d go buy a flashlight.”
The Boudreaux family welcomes visitors to
their boats at 901 South Shore, Port Isabel.
✧
The Captain Wallace B.
THE MARKETPLACE
353

LOCKHEED
MARTIN SPACE
SYSTEMS
COMPANY
✧
Above: Lockheed Martin Space Systems
Company’s Harlingen, Texas facility
comprises 375,000 square feet of
manufacturing, assembly, test and office
space at the south end of the Harlingen
airport. The facility is located with ready
access to air, rail and barge transportation.
Below: The first Atlas III rocket roars off the
launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station, Florida on its maiden flight on May
24, 2000.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company
is excellence in aerospace structures and
support equipment.
Established in 1987, the Harlingen, Texas,
Operations of Lockheed Martin Space
Systems Company builds key aerospace
structures and support equipment for systems
that are vital to both the burgeoning
international commercial space market and
the defense of the United States. These
programs include the Titan IV—the largest,
most powerful expendable space launch
vehicle in the world; the Atlas family of space
launch vehicles, including the new Atlas III
and Atlas V rockets powered by Russian-built
RD-180 rocket engines; Centaur upper stage
rockets; Athena space launch vehicles; the F-
16 jet fighter; and military and commercial
spacecraft including Lockheed Martin’s
A2100 satellite.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company
builds elements for:
• Atlas II, III, and V rockets
• Titan IV rockets
• Athena rockets
• F-16 fighter aircraft
• A2100 commercial satellites
The first Atlas III rocket roared off the
launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station, Florida on its maiden flight on May
24, 2000. This flight made history because it
was the first American-built rocket to fly
powered by a Russian-built rocket engine. The
Atlas III is powered by the RD-180 engine,
designed and built by NPO Energomash in
Khimky, Russia. Large elements of the Atlas
rockets are built at Lockheed Martin Space
Systems Company’s Harlingen, Texas facility.
The company builds and launches Atlas
rockets for the United States government and
commercial customers worldwide.
Lockheed Martin assembles huge,
clamshell-like Atlas rocket payload fairing
segments, and then tests them in a vertical
assembly tower to ensure that they will
separate properly at a predetermined time
during the rocket’s flight. These Atlas payload
fairings are 14-feet in diameter and 38-feet
tall. During the first few minutes of the flight
as the Atlas roars through the atmosphere, the
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
354

fairing protects the spacecraft from the heat
and buffeting of aerodynamic forces.
Lockheed Martin’s Harlingen facility
comprises 375,000 square feet of
manufacturing, assembly, test and office space
at the south end of the Harlingen, Texas
airport. The facility is located with ready
access to air, rail and barge transportation.
The employees of Lockheed Martin Space
Systems Company’s Harlingen Operations have
established a solid reputation as an outstanding
provider of dependable, innovative and highquality
structural assemblies at extremely
competitive costs. With headquarters in
Denver, Colorado, Space Systems is one of the
major operating units of the Lockheed Martin
Corporation. Space Systems designs, develops,
tests and manufactures a variety of advanced
technology systems for space and defense. Chief
products include space launch systems, ground
systems, interplanetary spacecraft, other
spacecraft for commercial and government
customers, fleet ballistic missiles and missile
defense systems.
Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland,
Lockheed Martin is a global enterprise principally
engaged in the research, design, development,
manufacture and integration of advancedtechnology
systems, products and services. The
Corporation employs 140,000 people with core
businesses in systems integration, space,
aeronautics and technology services. Lockheed
Martin had 2000 sales surpassing $25 billion.
The Harlingen Operations facility features
an experienced, skilled and productive
workforce and management team. They have
demonstrated a dedication to achieving
mission success for their customers and have
developed sophisticated technical expertise in
a variety of fabrication and assembly
processes. By forging partnerships with local
institutions of higher education, including the
Texas State Technical College, the company
has developed an impressive continuous
training and education program to maintain
employees’ high level of competence. The
average tenure of the workforce is eleven years
and ninety-five percent of the structural
assemblers are top-level craftsmen.
The Harlingen Operations also receives
outstanding support from key suppliers that
provide precision machining, sheet metal, roll
forming, composite materials, forgings, heat
treatment, and metal finishing. Lockheed
Martin has produced more than three thousand
airplanes, including the F-16, at Air Force
Plant 4 in Fort Worth. The Corporation also
has made considerable contributions to the
Space Age in Houston and continues to be an
integral part of the Texas economic landscape.
Current operations are located in Harlingen, El
Paso, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth,
and Houston.
✧
Left: The clamshell-like Atlas rocket
payload fairings are 14-feet in diameter
and 38-feet tall.
Below: A structural assembler installs
electrical harnesses on an Atlas rocket
equipment module in the 300,000 class
special clean area. This work is done in a
protected environment to safeguard valuable
satellite payloads from contamination
during flights.
THE MARKETPLACE
355

CARDENAS
AUTO GROUP/
DEVELOPMENT
✧
Above: Cardenas Motors, Inc., Brownsville.
Below: Renato and Mary Rose Cardenas.
The Renato Cardenas family has never
questioned the importance of education. At
age eleven, Renato E. Cardenas, an orphan,
moved from Matamoros to Brownsville to live
with his aunt. At eighteen, he left school to
join the U.S. Air Force and serve in the
Korean War Theater. On his return to
Brownsville he earned a GED, enrolled at
Texas Southmost College and graduated with
an A.B. degree. Renato Cardenas and Mary
Rose Arzamendi met through mutual friends
and married in 1955. By that time, Renato
was enrolled at Pan American University in
Edinburg, planning to become a chemist
while he worked full time at a lab.
In 1960 the Cardenases went into
partnership in a Texaco gas station with a
brother-in-law. Renato Cardenas soon became
sole owner of the full-service garage at Third
and East Elizabeth. The couple’s children—
Reba, Elsa, Rick, and Rene, but not the
youngest, Eldarose—remember evenings
spent playing in the office of the gas station
while their parents finished their long days
working side by side, doing the books.
Cardenas occasionally bought cars from
customers and parked them at the gas station
with a “For Sale” sign. That sideline business
thrived and he opened Ray’s Auto Sales on
East Adams and begin selling car insurance
also. In 1971 Renato Cardenas bought Valley
Buick from Carl Murphy, and Mary Rose
formally joined the business as comptroller.
From its location at Fifth and Elizabeth Street,
Cardenas Motors sold Buick, American
Motors and Jeep. In 1975 Cardenas built a
new dealership showroom and service center
on the Expressway and added GMC, Dodge,
and Isuzu.
Real estate had caught Renato’s interest in
1968 and he started a real estate development
company to develop residential subdivisions. In
1979 the venture was incorporated as Cardenas
Development Co., Inc. From Brownsville to
Rancho Viejo and Harlingen the company has
participated in numerous housing projects:
Roosevelt Estates, Isla de Palmas, Rose Gardens,
Rancho Perdido, and Coakley Estates.
While their family and businesses were
growing and prospering, Mary Rose and
Renato Cardenas were becoming deeply
involved in civic issues, primarily educational
and health questions that were confronting
their community. Renato served on
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
356

Brownsville’s Tax Board and then in 1975 was
elected a City Commissioner, a post he held
for six years. Around that time he also became
a member of the Rio Grande Development
Council and still sits on its loan committee.
With Charlie Trub, Ted Hunt, and Butch
Brittain, Renato Cardenas surveyed the
community’s needs and in 1973 organized the
bond sale that built Valley Community
Hospital in 1975. Cardenas served on the
hospital’s Board of Directors until the hospital
was sold in 1985. The revenue from the sale
was used to create Brownsville Foundation for
Health and Education, which has endowed
the University of Texas-Brownsville/Texas
Southmost College, provided scholarships,
children’s services and, of course, Cardenas is
a board member.
Mary Rose Cardenas joined the hospital
Board when her husband resigned and she
was instrumental in building the $60-million
Valley Regional Hospital on the Expressway.
When she resigned in 2001, her daughter Elsa
Cardenas Hagan came on the Board. The
association with that hospital is continuous
and unbroken for the family.
In 1984 Mary Rose Cardenas began a long,
satisfying relationship as a member of the
Board of Trustees of Texas Southmost College
(TSC.) She served as chairman of the board
three times and was on the committees that
selected Dr. Juliet V. Garcia as president and
helped create the University of Texas-
Brownsville/TSC partnership. Committed to
providing educational opportunities for the
people of the Rio Grande Valley, she has been
called one of the ten most influential people
in Brownsville.
With their parents as role models, the
Cardenas’ sons and daughters have contributed
to the family businesses and to their
communities. In 1985 Rick Cardenas started
Cubco Construction Inc., a construction
company specializing in building infrastructure
for subdivisions and commercial properties.
Reba Cardenas McNair runs Cardenas
Development. During the 1990s Rene Cardenas
bought a Harlingen dealership that is now
Cardenas Autoplex/Cardenas Toyota/BMW,
selling Mercedes Benz, Toyotas, BMWs,
Cadillacs, and Mazdas. Elsa Hagan, a master
speech therapist, has revolutionized the
treatment of dyslexic, Spanish-speaking
children with her program Esperanza that uses
multi-sensory learning. Her husband, Andy
Hagan, is general manager of Cardenas Motors.
Eldarose Cardenas is an attorney in Austin.
While most Cardenas’ offspring are deeply
involved in the family businesses, there is
no question about who leads the family.
“My mother is the comptroller still and
my father runs everyone,” says Reba McNair.
“He spends most of his time with real estate
matters, but he visits the auto sites everyday.”
✧
Top: Cardenas Autoplex, Inc., Harlingen.
Above: Cardenas Toyota-BMW, Inc.,
Harlingen.
THE MARKETPLACE
357

RANCHO VIEJO
RESORT &
COUNTRY CLUB
A golfing paradise in tropical south Texas,
Rancho Viejo Resort & Country Club offers
two of the finest courses in the state. El
Diablo and El Angel, both eighteen-hole
championship golf courses, encourage guests
to swing into par 70 action. Located in the Rio
Grande Valley, which has 340 playable days
per year, Rancho Viejo Resort bestows more
golfing time than anywhere else in the United
States. Spacious southwestern style villas and
suites set in a lush landscape make it easy to
play and stay beneath swaying palm trees. All
the resort’s accommodations are set along the
golf courses and tree-edged resacas. Resort
guests enjoy access to every club facility
including the lighted tennis courts and a
landscaped swimming pool with cascading
waterfall and a swim-up bar. The Delta Dawn
cruises the resaca that flows through the
Resort’s fourteen hundred acres.
For elegant dining experiences, nothing
can compare with Rancho Viejo’s Casa Grande
Supper Club. The historic hacienda, perfect
for a romantic evening or a private business
dinner, offers regional specialties like tequilagrilled
rack of lamb, and the wine collection is
legendary. For more informal meals, the
Ranchero Room in the clubhouse serves Texas
border favorites and home-cooked style
specialties for breakfast, lunch, and dinner as
well as brunches on Saturday and Sunday.
But it is the superb golfing experience, equal
to that of major Arizona and Florida resorts,
which continues to draw golfers to Rancho Viejo.
The two courses challenge the experienced golfer
but allow the average golfer a pleasant round. El
Angel’s rolling fairways demand accurate tee
shots past numerous water and sand hazards. El
Diablo, known as one of Texas’ top ten resort golf
courses, has been given the Spanish name of The
Devil for good reason. Tee times are plentiful so
a golfer never feels rushed. Play on the two
courses alternates daily.
Rancho Viejo’s practice and teaching
facilities include a driving range and putting
and chipping greens. The exceptional pro
shop and clubroom, group clinics and
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
358

tournaments contribute to Rancho Viejo’s
reputation as “the best golf on the Gulf.”
Membership at Rancho Viejo is available at a
fraction of the costs of other southern and
southwestern golf destinations.
For a change of pace, the beaches of South
Padre Island and the exotic atmosphere of
Old Mexico are each less than thirty minutes
away. Also nearby are Civil War and Mexican
War battlefields, museums, and notable
wildlife refuges.
Rancho Viejo translates as Old Ranch and
the property’s history can be traced back to
1770 and the Espiritu Santo land grant. Settled
in 1770 by Jose de la Garza and his wife
Gertrudis, the daughter of pioneer Captain Blais
Maria Falcon, title to the Espiritu Santo Ranch
was awarded by the Spanish Crown in 1781.
The old ranch’s fifty-nine leagues (261,275
aces) spread across the future site of Brownsville
and the acreage that became the Resort and
Town of Rancho Viejo. Heirs bequeathed,
partitioned, and squabbled over the land after
the Mexican and Texas Revolutions, the Civil
War, and throughout the twentieth century.
In 1968 Fort Worth developer Bill Bass
purchased 280 acres of the Casa Grande Tract
and began constructing Rancho Viejo,
envisioning a resort community of vacation
cottages surrounded by championship golf
courses and custom homes. Additional
acquisitions included Espiritu Santo land,
which became part of the golf course, and the
honeymoon cottage of philanthropists Gladys
and Dan Porter, now the Rancho Viejo Pro
shop. The Casa Grande, originally built as a
gambling retreat for Oklahoman oilman L. H.
Prichard, became the Supper Club.
In 1978 retired Kansas City developer
and contractor Ted Trapp purchased Rancho
Viejo Resort & Country Club. He added
the convention center, meeting rooms,
guestrooms, and the fountain which graces the
registration building. His continual updating
and remodeling of the property, including the
golf courses, enhances the tropical country
club lifestyle. Margaret Trapp, who has owned
the boutique longer than the Trapp family has
owned the resort and club, constantly sees to
the overall improvement of the property.
In 1980 the town of Rancho Viejo was
incorporated with its own police and street
maintenance departments. Today the community
boasts 520 homes and 389 condominiums.
Tim Trapp is now the hands-on general
manager of the resort and club, which is
famous for the recreational activities that both
challenge and relax the guests. The
recreational aspect combines well with
business, making the resort an excellent
venue for meetings, accommodating groups
in the fully equipped ballroom or seven
smaller rooms. The ballroom also is an
exceptional setting for a wedding or other
very special event.
It’s true that guests don’t want to leave
Rancho Viejo and often ask to buy the villas
where they stay under the swaying palms.
They agree with the resort’s motto: “Stay a day,
a week, or a lifetime.”
THE MARKETPLACE
359

✧
ATLAS &
HALL, L.L.P.
Above: Morris Atlas, founder, senior and
managing partner of Atlas & Hall, McAllen.
Below: Attorney Gary Gurwitz, Atlas &
Hall senior partner.
When Morris Atlas graduated from the
University of Texas School of Law in 1950, he
began to look for a likely place to establish a
law practice. That he chose the small but
growing city of McAllen turned out to be a
blessing for himself and his family, for McAllen
and the Rio Grande Valley, and for many
educational, cultural and civic organizations.
It was in 1953 that Atlas, Wade Spillman
and Howard Stafford founded the firm that
would become the largest law firm in the Rio
Grande Valley and one of the leading law firms
in South Texas. Since its founding, Atlas &
Hall, L.L.P. has experienced a steady and
substantial growth in size, in the number of
clients it serves, and in the scope of its practice.
Now a firm of twenty-seven attorneys, the
full-service law firm offers a widely diversified
general civil practice, including litigation at
all levels of state and federal courts involving
general and commercial business matters,
products liability and insurance.
The traditional geographic focus of its law
practice has been on South Texas. Over the past
few years there has been an increased awareness
of South Texas as an emerging business and
international center. Because the firm is located
near the U.S./Mexico border, it is positioned to
provide timely, quality legal service with respect
to matters involving Mexico.
A sizeable portion of the firm’s business
involves the representation of corporations,
other business entities and individuals that are
headquartered or require legal services
elsewhere. This has resulted in significant work
in Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, and
Washington D.C., and other places to which
they are called by their clients from time to time.
The firm represents large and small
corporations, banks, financial institutions,
foundations, nonprofit organizations, and
many individuals, estates, trusts and
governmental entities. Its client list also
includes oil companies, insurance defense
clients, school and irrigation districts, and the
major newspapers and television stations in
the area.
Atlas & Hall attorneys also are actively
involved in civic, political, charitable and
professional activities. Seven of the firm
partners have served as president of the
Hidalgo County Bar Association. Three
partners are members of the American College
of Trial Lawyers, and two are members of the
American College of Trust and Estate Counsel.
Firm members have served or are serving on
the Board of Regents of The University of Texas-
Pan American and South Texas Community
College, various committees of the American
and Texas Bar Associations, the board of
directors of the State Bar of Texas; the board of
directors of various banks, corporations, and
hospitals, and the board of directors of various
charitable and cultural organizations.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
360

Morris Atlas, the firm’s founder, senior, and
managing partner, has done much more than
practice law since he moved to the Rio Grande
Valley in 1953. An interest close to his heart is
education, especially improving higher
education opportunities in South Texas. He was
vice chairman and later chairman of the Pan
American University Board of Regents, and was
instrumental in the successful effort to bring that
institution into The University of Texas System.
He is a member of the Development Board
of The University of Texas at Austin, a
member of the University of Texas Centennial
Commission, Chair of the University of Texas
Chancellor’s council, and is a Life Trustee and
Past President of the Law School Foundation.
His dedicated service to the Rio Grande
Valley region, to the State of Texas, and to the
University of Texas has earned him many
honors. In 1988 he received The University of
Texas School of Law Faculty service Award.
He was named Founder’s Day Honoree by The
University of Texas-Pan American in 1990
and Border Texan of the Year in 1991 by the
Hidalgo Chamber of Commerce.
The Jewish National Fund for humanitarian
service honored Atlas with the Tree of Life
Award in 1994. He was recognized in 1995 by
the Rio Grande Council of the Boy Scouts of
America with its Distinguished Citizen Award
and was named Humanitarian of the Year by
Easter Seals Rio Grande Valley in 1999.
In 1997 he was a recipient of the
Outstanding Alumnus Award presented by the
Law Alumni Association of the University of
Texas School of Law. He was named one of the
state’s 102 “legal legends” by the Texas Lawyer in
2000 and awarded “Outstanding Fifty-Year
Lawyer” by the Texas Bar Foundation in 2001.
Just as Atlas is proud of the growth and
accomplishments of the firm he founded, he is
also proud of the city he chose for his home
almost fifty years ago. McAllen is the financial
and cultural heart of the seventh largest
metropolitan area in Texas, which also includes
Edinburg, Pharr, Mission, and other areas of
Hidalgo County. During the last several years
this area has experienced a major economic
boom, and the rate of population growth is one
of the highest of the nation’s metropolitan
areas. McAllen itself has grown from a
population of 23,000 in 1953 to a rapidly
growing city of 110,000.
Atlas & Hall, L.L.P. has been an integral
part of this growth and is poised to be an
important force in the continued development
of the region.
✧
Above: In 1993, Morris Atlas, right, was
one of six UT graduates to receive the
Distinguished Alumnus Award, the highest
honor bestowed by The Ex-Students
Association. Also honored were, from left,
Dan Williams, retired chairman of
Southland Financial Corporation, Dallas;
novelist Shelby Hearon, North White Plains,
New York; Dr. Bud Frazier, Houston
surgeon and researcher; Sam Barshop,
founder of La Quinta Motor Inns, San
Antonio, and Louis Beecherl, Jr., Dallas
investor and rancher.
Below: The Atlas family in 1993 (from left
to right): Debra Atlas; Dr. Jeffrey and Lisa
Genecov and their children, Adam and
Rebecca; Morris and Rita Atlas; Dr. Alan
and Lauren Silverblatt; and Scott and
Nancy Atlas and their children, David
and Ryan.
THE MARKETPLACE
361

✧
VILLALBA
GROUP, INC.
Above: Ramon Villarreal Santos (seated) and
Ramon Villarreal San Miguel in Villaldama,
Nuevo Leon at the family hacienda.
Below: Alejandro Villarreal Alba, Ramon
Villarreal Alba and Alberto Villarreal Alba
at a family gathering in Brownsville, Texas.
Never has the phrase “one thing led to
another” been more appropriate than when
applied to brothers Ramon, Alberto, and
Alejandro Villarreal Alba. Their ability to move
quickly when opportunities arise has enabled
them to transform their managing general
agency, Underwriters MGA, Inc., into the farreaching
conglomerate Villalba Group Inc. In
only thirteen years, the family’s holdings have
expanded to include real estate, property and
casualty MGAs, transportation, import/export
offices, television, telecommunications, and
service companies in Mexico, Texas, and
across the Southwest.
While attending international conferences
on transportation, insurance, agriculture, and
importation/exportation, the Villarreals’
encountered businessmen who needed cargo
insured, moved, and exported. Realizing that
a world of possibilities awaited, they started a
trucking company to serve both American
and Mexican businesses. Then it seemed only
logical, given UMGA’s insurance services, to
become import/export brokers. When some
debts owed to Villalba Group were paid off in
the form of real estate and business, the
Villarreals were suddenly in the real estate
business. By that point, setting up a printing
company was the obvious next step because
the insurance, trucking, real estate, and
import/export businesses required so many
forms and other paper.
Underwriters MGA Inc., which has offices
in McAllen, Harlingen, and Brownsville,
Texas, and La Jolla and San Diego, California
got its start selling insurance to Mexican
nationals and vehicles coming into the U.S.
and also selling tourist insurance for U.S.
vehicles going into Mexico. Today, UMGA
insures seventy percent of the Mexican
vehicles, private passenger or commercial,
that enters the U.S. as well as selling private
passenger insurance for Texas residents with
representatives in Texas, Arizona, New
Mexico and Mexico.
The entrepreneurial spirit that sparked the
growth of the Villalba Group has been apparent
for several generations in Texas and in Mexico.
Ramon Villarreal San Miguel and Aurora
Alba de Villarreal had five children: Ramon,
Alejandro, Alberto, Lorena, and Gustavo. The
children’s maternal grandparents Isaias Alba
Olmos and Dolores Cervantes were large
landholders in Delicias and Jimenez,
Chihuahua. The children’s paternal
grandfather, Ramon Villarreal Santos came
from a respected ranching family in Villa
Aldama, Nuevo Leon. During the Mexican
Revolution, Pancho Villa often raided the
family ranch for beef for his troops. When
diseases also began to decimate the cattle
herd, the grandfather moved the family to
Nuevo Laredo and then to Matamoros and
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
362

started over from scratch. By the late 1970s,
when the family moved to Brownsville,
Ramon Villarreal San Miguel had established
himself as a rancher and owned restaurants
and an import/export company specializing in
heavy machinery.
The breadth of the Villalba Group is
astounding. The insurance sector of their
holdings include Underwriters MGA, Inc. of
Texas and Underwriters MGA West Inc.,
International Insurance Agency, and in
Mexico, Iturbe, Esquinazi and Johnson
Insurance, and Arimex, the south of the
border counterpart of Underwriters MGA.
Having developed software to manage
multiple insurance transactions, Villalba
Group founded Insurance Inventory Software
to market the programs. Their Laredo
Consolidated imports coffee; Villazol
Automobiles sells cars; and Graphic Express
is the in-house printing firm. Vizo Inc is the
investment holding company for the
Villarreals. Under its umbrella are Alba
Enterprises, handling the import/export
business and known in Mexico as
Importacion/Exportacion Vizo; Villalba
Transport, which is the trucking division;
Villazol, owner of a Tamaulipan concessions
for cellular telephones; and Quinto Real
Estate Management, holding commercial and
industrial properties.
Alejandro Villarreal oversees Villa Group
Inc., which has television and telecommunications
ventures under the name Villalba
Media Productions. The counterpart company
in Mexico is Publitel that owns the concessions
for local programming in Tamaulipas for the
national network Azteca.
Although Villalba Group has developed
remarkably in a short period; the Villarreals
predict even greater expansion for the
company in the near future. Underwriters
UMGA is planning to offer property and
casualty insurance in Nevada, Illinois, Arizona,
New Mexico, and Michigan. The import/export
services are poised to extend beyond Canada-
U.S.-Latin America transactions to Europe and
Asia. On the environmental front, Villalba
Group is planning to respond to the huge
demand in Mexico for waste management and
confinement facilities. Additionally, Villalba
Group will enter the tourism marketplace,
taking over a hotel in Mexico, and is also
researching opportunities in the maquiladora
industry and the banking sector in the U.S.
and Mexico.
Villalba Group Inc. received national
recognition when Hispanic Magazine’s 2001
listing of the five hundred largest Hispanic
businesses ranked the company at number
seventy-seven.
✧
Left: Chairman of the Board Ramon
Villarreal Alba giving the welcoming
speech at the annual convention in
London, England.
Below: A family gathering at the La Plaza
Hotel, New York City, New York. Standing
(from left to right): Gustavo Villarreal Alba,
Alberto Villarreal Alba, Alejandro Villarreal
Alba, Norma Lopez de Villarreal, Ramon
Villarreal Alba, and Daniel Hernández.
Seated (from left to right): Claudia Zolezzi
de Villarreal, Irma Montemayor de
Villarreal, Aurora Alba de Villarreal, and
Lorena Villarreal de Hernández.
THE MARKETPLACE
363

TEXAN
GUEST
RANCH
✧
Above: The Texan Guest Ranch clubhouse
and lobby in the 1950s.
Below: Fifty years later, the Texan Guest
Ranch clubhouse and suites.
Nestled among rustling palms and
flowering bougainvillea, the Texan Guest
Ranch has offered south Texas hospitality for
more than seventy-five years. Generations of
guests have been introduced to the tropical
magic of the Rio Grande Valley on the ranch’s
twenty acres of native trees and plants.
In the early 1920s Lloyd Bentsen purchased
the original farmhouse north of McAllen to
convert into a guesthouse. The Bentsens
brought clients from the north to show them
the abundant opportunities for year-round
citrus and vegetable farming and to sell them
land. Guests arriving for tours of the Valley,
Mexico, and South Padre Island would stay at
the Guest Ranch, enjoying family style meals in
the dining room and relaxing on the porch.
North and south wings were soon added
to the former farmhouse and the large
screened veranda with ceiling fans became
the lobby where groups would assemble for
tours. In the 1930s a building with twentyfour
guest rooms was built south of the Guest
House. A separate sales office across the way
aided the writing and completion of land
sales contracts.
In the late 1940s Howard Moffit and Tom
Cross began their association with the Guest
Ranch. They bought a steam engine which in
the dead of winter would sit on a side track
in Iowa farm towns, bell clanging, with a
sign: “This train is going to the sunny Rio
Grande Valley” and the next departure date.
Whenever train passengers arrived in
McAllen, cars brought them to the Guest
Ranch. Then the acres of colorful oranges,
tangerines and grapefruit combined with
the tropical ambiance worked their magic on
the guests.
Several years later, Moffit and Cross
purchased the Guest Ranch and adjoining
acreage. They continued to develop and sell
tracts of land for twenty more years. W. T.
Ellis and Curtis Davis came to work for the
two salesmen and carried on the tradition of
developing and marketing irrigated farm
tracts. Through the 1950s and 1960s military
personnel considering retirement in the Valley
became the focus of their marketing efforts.
Ellis and Davis purchased the Guest Ranch in
1966 and began developing both residential
and farming tracts. Curtis Davis remains a
principal owner and continues to host and
visit over early morning coffee.
In 1981 the twenty-four room units dating
from the 1930s were renovated and enlarged
into spacious apartments with ranch style
kitchens, accommodating guests staying for a
week or a month. In 1994 the North Wing
was rebuilt into the Texan Suites, which are
studio apartments designed for the business
guest who wants more than just a motel room
for an extended stay. Immensely popular, the
Texan Suites have fully furnished kitchens,
sixty-channel cable service, maid and linen
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
364

service, and access to the self-service Laundry
Barn. Notable guests over the years have
included Colonel Sanders and John Y. Brown
of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Peter
Siemens of Germany. During the filming of
Dr. Cleo Dawson’s epic, She Came to the
Valley, Freddy Fender, Sissy Spacek, Dean
Stockwell, and Scott Glen came to the Texan
Guest Ranch. But all the Ranch’s numerous
guests have been special.
On the extensive grounds of Texan Guest
Ranch, guests enjoy a wide range of activities
and relaxations: taking a dip in the sparkling
pool, lounging in the Jacuzzi, jogging or
walking the property or the adjacent road
along the water district’s canal or enjoying the
camaraderie of the patio. Much has changed
on the Ranch, but the lobby and family style
dining room still welcome new and returning
guests in the surrounding of bygone days: the
serape mosaic tile floor, whispering ceiling
fans, and smiling friendly faces.
Texan Guest Ranch stays occupied year
round with business people, maquiladora
specialists, and newcomers checking out the
area, and Winter Texan regulars. Business
guests say they wish they could find lodging
similar to the Guest Ranch elsewhere, but the
ranch is unique.
Currently Texan Guest Ranch has forty-five
studios and apartments, and although it is
expanding, the Ranch will always keep the
atmosphere of southern hospitality. In the pool
area, the South Wing is being rebuilt to provide
more Texan Suites, including high tech
comfort and computer access. In the future
luxurious, spacious Hacienda Executive suites
will be built around a courtyard fountain on
the northern two acres of the property. For
workout enthusiasts, an exercise barn is
planned near the R.V. Corral.
Family owned and operated, the Texan
Guest Ranch offers the special feeling of a
home-away-from-home to its guests. The
Ranch welcomes new friends and old at 8301
North Ware Road, north of McAllen, only six
miles north of Expressway 83. The family and
staff invite you to come and enjoy the magic
of the Texan Guest Ranch during your next
visit to South Texas.
✧
Above: A tropical pool area with sparkling
pool and relaxing Jacuzzi.
Below: The Davis family and staff welcome
you to the Texan Guest Ranch.
THE MARKETPLACE
365

✧
Pull-type scrapers from Reynolds
International have reshaped the world. The
Texas company’s equipment is in demand on
farms, highway and building construction
sites, and land-transforming projects.
REYNOLDS INTERNATIONAL, L.P.
Few companies can claim to have visibly
changed the world the way Reynolds
International, L.P., has. From rerouting
Florida’s Kissimmee River and building
Mississippi catfish ponds to constructing
Highway 100 to South Padre Island and
digging mines in Tennessee, Reynolds’ heavyduty
earth scrapers have covered and
uncovered a lot of ground. Reynolds
International’s rugged equipment design,
quality fabrication, and responsive customer
service has enabled them to dominate the
pull-type scraper market. Surveys show that
in excess of sixty percent of pull-type scrapers
sold are manufactured by Reynolds.
When farmer Glenn L. Reynolds formed the
Reynolds Manufacturing Company in McAllen,
Texas, in 1953, his goal was to produce and sell
agricultural land-forming equipment. Farmers
required equipment that could accurately level
land for irrigation. The demand for Reynolds’
dependable products fueled the company’s
continuous growth. Two years after Glenn
Reynolds’ death in 1958, the company was
incorporated. In the following years, Reynolds
management concentrated on improving the
design and the usefulness of their scrapers.
They established distributorships, revamped
the manufacturing facilities and updated
production techniques. When Hurricane
Beulah ripped through the Rio Grande Valley in
1963, Reynolds scrapers were used to rebuild
the Rio Grande’s broken levees at McAllen.
From 1974 to 1991 the company was a
subsidiary of diverse corporations.
In December 1991 Reynolds International,
L.P., purchased the company’s assets. Since
then, Reynolds International has strengthened
its reputation as the premiere manufacturer
of land forming equipment for the agricultural
market and as an important supplier to the
construction industry. Today ninety-five
percent of the scrapers Reynolds manufactures
are being used on construction projects
because of a simple economic fact. Reynolds
pull-type scrapers move dirt at less than
half the cost of equivalent self-propelled
equipment. As construction costs go up, the
cost effectiveness of using Reynolds systems to
move dirt becomes more obvious. The scrapers
are engineered to reduce fuel consumption and
to achieve an optimum match of earthmoving
capacity and tractor power that insures
continuous, problem-free performance at the
lowest cost per cubic yard possible.
In the last twenty-five years, the standard
capacity of scrapers has increased from ten to
seventeen cubic yards. Reynolds now designs
and manufactures more than forty models of
versatile earthmoving and land forming pulltype
scrapers. They range from heaped
capacities of five cubic yards to eighteen cubic
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
366

yards. Scrapers are now frequently pulled in
tandem or in trains of three scrapers behind a
single tractor.
Reynolds’ products fall into five broad
categories: carry-all scrapers, ejector scrapers
for precision earth moving, finishing drag
scrapers for periodic maintenance work, allterrain
wagons for moving mud and
demolition rubble, and field service equipment
such as water tankers and wedgefoot rollers.
Reynolds equipment builds highways; prepares
industrial, retail and residential sites; operates
at sanitary landfills; constructs golf courses,
airport and seaport sites, and flood control
projects; lays out orchards, row and field crops
for irrigation management; and prepares
landscape sites.
Worldwide Reynolds counts over three
hundred tractor dealerships that distribute
its equipment.
Reynolds’ forty-five-acre facility in McAllen
features a well-equipped manufacturing plant
with over 235,000 square feet under roof. The
company’s approximately four hundred qualityconscious
employees are long-term contributors
to the company’s success. Next to the plant are
the proving grounds where Reynolds’
engineering staff tests prototypes and design
improvements. Reynolds International’s
commitment to continuous improvement and
innovation ensures quality products, superior
service and satisfied customers.
Reynolds’ attention to ISO 9001 certification
is evidence of the company’s solid product
support. The engineering department constantly
modifies and upgrades equipment based on
customers’ comments, listening carefully to
what customers say they need. Often enough a
custom-built scraper requested by one customer
is so successful that the modification is
incorporated into standard models. Features like
innovative hydraulic controls and heavy duty
cylinders designed for laser precision cuts and
fast spreading operations have been added to
Reynolds scrapers along with safety devices such
as lock-outs and holding pins on blades.
Environmentally sensitive sites have
sparked a demand for the company’s
specialized equipment that lessens ground
compaction. Reynolds scrapers with floatation
tires work well in swampy or soft sandy sites
while low ground pressure hauling units are
used to protect remediation sites.
Reynolds International has extensive
experience in contract manufacturing of
heavy-duty components, subassemblies, and
complete products for oil field, agricultural,
construction and mining companies. They
work closely with customers to meet delivery
schedules with competitive pricing and
adherence to strict quality control standards.
Reynolds International’s goals are to
continue growth in the construction
marketplace and maintain their distinction as
the leader in the pull-type scraper market by
developing new and improved products for the
construction market, and as always, since their
inception, to meet the needs of agricultural
land leveling.
✧
Above: For nearly fifty years, Reynolds
scrapers have been operated in single,
tandem, or triples. Reynolds dominates the
market because its equipment represents the
most cost-effective way to move earth.
Below: Reynolds International’s facility in
McAllen cover forty-five acres, including an
extensive manufacturing building and
testing grounds where equipment
innovations go through trials.
THE MARKETPLACE
367

✧
Above: The Southwestern Bell Telephone
Central Office in Mercedes, 1933.
COURTESY OF SBC COMMUNICATIONS ARCHIVES.
Below: The Southwestern Bell Telephone
Central Office in Mission, 1933.
COURTESY OF SBC COMMUNICATIONS ARCHIVES.
SBC COMMUNICATIONS INC.
Southwestern Telegraph and Telephone
Company, which obtained exclusive rights to
Bell telephone patents in Texas and Arkansas
in 1881, laid the foundation for telephone
service to the Rio Grande Valley over 120
years ago. Actual local telephone service
began in Brownsville in 1882 with a manual
magneto switchboard, probably serving fewer
than forty customers.
The number of telephone subscribers grew
slowly, with 60 in Brownsville in August 1883,
and 200-250 in December of 1908. Two
copper-wire circuits were completed in 1911
between Brownsville and Harlingen (which
had thirty-four subscribers), allowing
Brownsville subscribers long-distance access to
other Texas cities. A Brownsville newspaper
called this an important improvement to Valley
communications, and noted that it marked the
start of a general upgrade of equipment. With
conversion from magneto to common batterytype
switchboards, customers no longer had to
crank their wall phones to signal the operator.
Harlingen’s service expanded from daytime-only
to twenty-four-hour access in 1913,
during a period when “homeseekers” were
arriving by train to view properties advertised
by the Rio Grande Land Corporation.
Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, the
successor organized in April 1920, provided
phone services in Texas, Arkansas, Kansas,
Missouri, and Oklahoma, and by 1926
Brownsville had 1,345 telephones and
Harlingen had 408. A completely new system
was built to meet Harlingen’s demands for
service. A new toll line, built in 1927 between
Alice and McAllen, stretched 109 miles over
mostly desolate terrain.
Brownsville became the first dial exchange
in the Valley in 1948. Harlingen also
registered a couple of “firsts” in 1955-56–the
first city in Texas with Direct Distance Dialing
(DDD), allowing customers to call other Rio
Grande Valley exchanges without operator
assistance, and the first Texas city with
nationwide DDD.
As a result of the AT&T divestiture in 1984,
Southwestern Bell Telephone Company became an
operating subsidiary of Southwestern Bell Corp.
(known today as SBC Communications Inc.).
Through the years the company has earned
laurels for service during emergencies and
special events, from fighting along the border to
severe hurricanes to Presidential visits. During
the Battle at Matamoros in 1913, the
Brownsville office manager reported, “In less
than fifteen minutes after the first shot I had all
six [operators in service]…. I have seen the
public aroused in times of fire or storm, but
never anything like that day….” A hurricane in
1933 destroyed six telephone exchanges,
including both Harlingen and Brownsville.
During Hurricane Beulah in 1967, essential
service was maintained, even though ten
exchanges were destroyed, “telephone poles
snapped like toothpicks and lines lashed the air
like giant whips.”
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
368

CINGULAR
WIRELESS
Cingular Wireless, formerly known as
Southwestern Bell Wireless, has been an
instrumental player in the development and
dynamic growth of the Rio Grande Valley
community since it first introduced wireless
service in 1988. Through the years, the
company has offered wireless technologies
that have enabled global communication for
the community. Cingular has also invested
back into the community through various
programs and the support of different causes
and local organizations.
Before Cingular introduced wireless service
in 1988, the Rio Grande Valley area had very few
wireless capabilities. The region was dependent
on expensive long distance landline phone calls
and time-consuming services for conducting
business across the U.S. and internationally. This
not only proved to be a setback for companies
but for the overall economy of the Valley region.
With the introduction of Cingular’s wireless
services, the doors of communication were
opened and the residents of the Valley were finally
able to enjoy a whole new arena of advanced
wireless services. Nation and Texas-wide toll-free
calls were introduced, state-of-the-art digital
quality and wireless Internet capabilities linked
people together and great rate plans allowed more
talking freedom for customers.
In addition to providing wireless services,
Cingular Wireless has also been a dedicated
community partner and has supported many
organizations and causes within the Valley.
Cingular Wireless’ commitment to community
stems from the same spirit that drives the
company’s dedication to helping customers
express themselves.
In the Rio Grande Valley area, Cingular has
been a proud partner of Special Olympics Texas
since 1995 and a sponsor of Team USA in
Special Olympics. The company has also
supported organizations such as Scouting, Boys
and Girls Club, 4-H and FFA. Cingular is also a
strong advocate in preventing drug, alcohol and
child abuse as well as charitable causes such as
March of Dimes and Sunny Glen Children’s
Home. Cingular has provided financial aid to
schools and given immediate support during
community disasters.
The Texas Legislature recognized Cingular’s
outstanding corporate citizenship in the Rio
Grande Valley with a resolution honoring the
company. In September of 1989, State Senator
Eddie Lucio presented the company with an
official flag from the state capitol.
Today, Cingular Wireless is the second largest
wireless carrier in the U.S. and is dedicated to
self-expression and customer-friendly service.
As a leader in mobile voice and data
communications in 2001, Cingular, a joint
venture between SBC Communications and
BellSouth, serves twenty million customers
nationwide. Details of the company are available
at www.cingular.com.
✧
State Senator Eddie Lucio (right) recognizes
Cingular Wireless by presenting Ken Lee,
director of external distribution, with a
plaque and official state flag in 1989.
THE MARKETPLACE
369

OLIVAREZ
RANCHES
BY KATHY
OLIVAREZ
Olivarez Ranch is now in its fourth
generation of ownership by the same family.
Owners quietly celebrated its hundredth
birthday in the family in 1998. It is located
approximately forty miles northwest of
Mission near San Isidro.
The ranch had its beginnings in 1898 when
the great grandparents of current owners Ben
and Sam Olivarez, purchased about six
thousand acres of dry brushland. Cayetano and
Crisanta Barrera settled next to her mother,
Crisanta Guerra, to form La Reforma Ranch.
Originally from Mier, Mexico, Guerra had
moved north to Falfurias and raised her
family there. After her husband died, she
wanted to move closer to home. So the family
moved south and purchased the large tract of
land that became La Reforma Ranch.
The ranch was given its unusual name
because most of the ranches in the area were
named after Catholic saints. A traveling
minister had converted Guerra to Methodism
so she named her ranch, La Reforma.
The land was covered in deep sand and is
semi-arid. Mesquite trees, cactus, brush, and
tall grasses provided a habitat for the
indigenous wildlife such as whitetail deer and
quail. It also provided food for the cross bred
cattle raised on the ranches.
When the Barreras died, their section of the
ranch was divided between their fourteen
children. One share of the land went to their
daughter, Romula, who married Hilario Olivarez
and had nine children. When they died in the
1940s the ranch was once again divided.
Their second child, Miguel Olivarez,
received one-ninth of the property. Although
he lived in Mission where he owned Barrera’s
Supply Company, an automotive, hardware,
and plumbing supply, Miguel had a deep love
of the land and a fondness for the raising
cattle. He purchased the land belonging to his
siblings and added to his holdings.
In the 1950s Miguel decided to change the
crossbred cattle operation for a purebred
operation. The King Ranch in Kingsville had
developed a breed of cattle called Santa
Gertrudis, which are especially suited for the
climate. Miguel purchased a few cattle to
experiment and found them to his liking. He
started one of the first Santa Gertrudis herds.
Ben, who now runs the ranch, has developed
the herd into some of the finest Santa Gertrudis
around, winning awards at local, state, and
national competitions. Because it is recognized as
a leading South Texas ranch, the Olivarez brand
was burned into the wall of the new agriculture
building at Texas A&M several years ago.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
370

The new millennium brought a new name
to Hidalgo Federal Credit Union: Security
1st Federal Credit Union. Though now diversified
to serve more than eighty select
employee groups, Security 1st originated in
1947 to benefit civilian federal employees.
Ned Jackson, Robert McDonald, and three
others spurred the establishment of Hidalgo
Federal Credit Union that opened in August
1947 in Jackson’s home in Pharr. Jackson
served as president for nine years while
McDonald was the first secretary-treasurer.
Back then, the maximum limit on an unsecured
loan was $100. Within ten years, HFCU
had grown to 520 members, moved to McAllen,
and hired a part-time employee. By 1968, assets
had climbed to $1 million with members
receiving six percent dividends and a fifteen
percent interest refund.
In the 1970s, the need for funds to meet the
growing loan demand prompted changes in the
charter regarding membership: state employees
in Hidalgo and Starr Counties were added. The
first Weslaco branch opened in 1979.
Through the 1980s, Hidalgo Federal added
services such as direct deposit, money market
accounts, night depository, drive-thru banking,
credit cards, automated teller machines, and
insurance services. Loan policies were broadened
to include mortgages, guaranteed student loans,
and home improvement loans. While other
financial institutions faced difficult conditions,
Hidalgo Federal increased its membership
through mergers. Regional company credit
unions including Burton Auto Employees, Coca-
Cola of the Rio Grande Valley, Knapp Memorial
Medical Center, Varmicon Industries Employees,
Postal Employees and Mission Teachers Federal
Credit Unions, joined forces with HFCU.
By 1990, Hidalgo Federal had emerged as a
vital financial institution with assets over $40
million and $20.67 million in outstanding
loans. Today, Security 1st’s McAllen headquarters
stands in the heart of the city’s financial
and business district.
“We are focused on providing our membership
with security of their funds as well as efficient
and cost-effective financial services,” says
President and CEO Al Beltran. He recognizes
that communication, education, and delivery of
financial services through electronic mediums
are essentials for customer satisfaction.
Given the Rio Grande Valley’s economic
growth, Security 1st plans to expand across
the four county area, providing convenience
to its members while adhering to the credit
union philosophy of “people helping people.”
Even with over seventy employees and five
branches, Beltran says “Security 1st Federal
Credit Union will never lose sight of taking care
of its members, their assets and their financial
well-being. Security 1st’s new name reflects its
years of financial soundness and steady growth
directed at meeting its members’ needs.”
SECURITY 1ST
FEDERAL
CREDIT UNION
FORMERLY
HIDALGO
FEDERAL
CREDIT UNION
✧
Above: In 1947, Ned Jackson founded
Hidalgo Federal Credit Union, known today
as Security 1st Federal Credit Union.
Below: Security 1st Federal Credit Union
Management Team. Standing (left to right):
Vice President of Marketing Annette
Espinoza, President and CEO Al Beltran,
Chief Financial Officer Martin Fraering,
and Assistant Vice President of Human
Relations Sandie Vandever. Seated (left to
right): Vice President of Lending Norfelia
Garza, Vice President of Accounting Terry
Richards, and Vice President of Operations
Cindy Ramos.
THE MARKETPLACE
371

THE WALSH
FAMILY &
MISSION
SHIPPERS, INC.
Born in Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1912, Jim
Walsh moved with his family to the Rio Grande
Valley in 1925. His father Emmett Walsh, a
master carpenter, built many churches across
the Valley. In 1936 Jim married Edna Lee Platt,
the daughter of successful San Juan
businessman and realtor Floyd Platt. After
years of employment with the McAllen Citrus
Association and the federal government, Jim
began his entrepreneurial career in 1948 in the
cotton business and developed an outstanding
reputation as a fair and honest businessman.
He was elected president of both the Valley and
Texas Cotton Ginners Association.
In 1953, Jim Walsh purchased Mission Fruit
& Vegetable, Inc., and began shipping tomatoes
and onions. The name was later changed to
Mission Shippers, which is now synonymous
with the Texas citrus industry. Jim was a founding
member of Citrus Committee of the Texas Citrus
and Vegetable Association and eventually served
as director and president. In recognition of his
contributions to the citrus industry, the Texas
Citrus Fiesta in 1971 crowned him King Citrus,
starting a family tradition. His sons Richard and
Pat were similarly honored in 1979 and 1989,
respectively. Jim was named to the Texas Produce
Hall of Fame in 1989.
Jim retired in 1990, leaving Mission
Shippers in the capable hands of his adult
children: Pat, Buddy, Richard, Bill, Barbara, and
Judy. Each has lent distinctive and considerable
talents to help the family business prosper. Jim
died in 1995 and is survived by his six children,
24 grandchildren, and 18 great-grandchildren.
Mission, Texas, is known as the “Home of
the Grapefruit,” and Mission Shippers helped
establish this reputation. Shipping two million
boxes of Texas citrus annually, Mission Shippers
is one of the Valley’s largest citrus packers.
Located on twenty-two acres, the company has
over 120,000 square feet of receiving, packing,
shipping, and cold storage facilities. Rio Grande
Valley citrus, under the Mission Shippers label,
is distributed nationwide. Mission Shippers
supplies Texas citrus for Harry & David,
America’s largest gift fruit business. In addition,
Mission Shippers maintains its own high-profile
gift fruit business.
Jim Walsh’s legacy lives on through his
children as they strive to carry on the dream
of their remarkable father. Guided by the
paternal spirit of this pioneer of the citrus
industry, they have positioned Mission
Shippers to continue on its path of excellence.
✧
Above: Seen with the first bale of cotton in
1952 are (from left to right) Jim Walsh,
Dan Caughlin, and Gus Davis.
Bottom: The new Walsh generation at
Mission Shippers in 2001 (from left to
right): Richard, Bill, Pat, Buddy, Barbara,
and Judy.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
372

One more year will mark half a century of
activity for Texair Company, Inc., in the air
conditioning industry. Elmer, Calvin and Marge
Bentsen chartered Texair March 1, 1952, in
Pharr, Texas. Neil Madeley (engineering), Bill
Kennedy (sales), and Mickey Alleyn (service and
installation) made up the operating team. Neil
and Bill left soon to establish Coastal
Engineering. Shortly, Bob Helbing came aboard
to handle engineering and sales, with Mickey in
service and installation.
Bob and Mickey began buying Texair stock
in 1960. Jim Webb came aboard in 1968 and
worked up to service manager. Bob and Mickey
negotiated a buyout with Calvin in 1973, and
brought Jim in as a partner.
Texair began operation from the historic
Texan Hotel Building in Pharr, and then built
at 1714 South Tenth Street (now the Inter
National Bank), McAllen, in 1960. In 1976
Texair built the present location at 2201 West
Expressway, McAllen.
Sales began with Servel gas-fired equipment,
gradually moving to electric with U.S. Airco
and Westinghouse. The company also became
involved with Mathes and the gas engine-driven
Weatherbuster. Only those who are closely
associated with this industry can appreciate the
challenge presented by Servel, Mathes and
Weatherbuster. Texair became a Carrier dealer
in 1965 and moved into mechanical
contracting, which involved larger and more
complex projects.
The company is proud to have air conditioned
two of McAllen’s three “sky scrapers,” together
with many other significant projects, such as
McAllen, Harlingen and Brownsville Airports;
original Edinburg Hospital; Edinburg Court
House expansion; both McAllen City Halls,
numerous schools; and manufacturing facilities.
Four of the most challenging projects were:
• Texas State Bank Tower: A twelve-story
high-rise with two 270-ton screw-type
chillers located on the roof.
• University of Texas-Pan American: one
1500-ton and one 700-ton centrifugal
chiller.
• Texas Commerce Bank (now Chase Bank):
An eleven-story high-rise with two 320-ton
centrifugal-type chillers located in the
basement.
• McAllen High School: A “Total Energy” system
with two 1,100-HP gas turbines generating the
school’s power. Waste turbine exhaust heat
produced steam feeding a five-hundred-ton
absorption chiller for air conditioning.
In 1980 Texair built the first 100-ton
emergency, portable chiller for rent in the Rio
Grande Valley. Today the company has a fleet of
seven rental units ranging from 40 to 175 tons.
Texair has established an enviable reputation
for top quality installation and service, together
with fair and honest business practices.
Customers can always speak directly with Bob,
Mickey or Jim. This policy has been a hallmark
for the company’s success. Texair’s owners
pledge to continue providing the area’s most
qualified, competent service and installation
organization as they meet the challenge of
change in the construction industry, and to
continue emphasis on the safety and well being
of their employees and the community.
✧
Below: Texair’s building at 2201 West
Expressway in McAllen.
Bottom: Jim, Mickey, and Bob with 175-ton
Portable Chiller # 7.
TEXAIR
COMPANY,
INC.
THE MARKETPLACE
373

JONES,
GALLIGAN,
KEY &
LOZANO,
L.L.P.
✧
Seated (from left): Matthew L. Jones,
Julie Crockett Graham, Anita G. Lozano,
Rebecca Gay Jones, and Paul M. Guinn.
Standing (from left): Lance A. Kirby,
Forrest L. “Champ” Jones, Robert L.
Galligan, Terry D. Key, and
Mark W. Farris.
The law firm of Jones, Galligan, Key &
Lozano, L.L.P. strives to reach the best and
most efficient resolution of any matter for its
clients. “We identify the main issue, whether it
be in law or in fact, and attempt to resolve the
issue as quickly as possible which results in a
reduction of cost and exposure for our client,”
says Forrest L. Jones, who attributes the firm’s
success to this strategy.
Founded in 1984 by Forrest L. Jones and
Robert L. Galligan, the Weslaco firm’s name
now reflects the addition of partners Terry D.
Key in 1986 and Anita G. Lozano in 1996.
Half of Jones, Galligan, Key & Lozano’s
roots are in real estate and business law, two
areas that have enabled the firm to participate
in the development of Weslaco and the Valley.
The balance of the firm’s expertise is in litigation,
particularly general civil defense and
school law. The firm represents diverse private
and commercial clients, including banks, agricultural
interests, school districts, and utilities.
Managing partner Forrest L. Jones heads
the non-litigation section, specializing in business,
real estate, and probate law. A member of
a pioneer Valley family, Jones attended
Southern Methodist University, earning his
J.D. degree in 1965. He has practiced law in
the Mid-Valley since then, being named
“Young Lawyer of the Year” by the Texas Young
Lawyers Association in 1972 and was president
of the Hidalgo County Bar Association in
1978. He is currently chairman of the board of
directors of Alamo Bank of Texas.
Robert L. Galligan received his J.D. degree
in 1973 from St. Mary’s University and has
managed the litigation side of the firm since its
founding. He has been associated with Jones in
the practice of law since 1975, except for a
two-year period when he was Associate
Professor of Law at St. Mary’s. Galligan has
served as director of the Hidalgo County Bar
Association and is currently a director of City
National Bank in Weslaco.
Terry D. Key earned his law degree from
Baylor University in 1975 and practiced law
in McAllen until 1984 when he joined Jones
and Galligan. A member of the Texas Trial
Lawyers Association, he has served as director
of the Hidalgo County Bar Association.
Anita G. Lozano, a Weslaco native,
received her J.D. degree from the University
of Texas, Austin, in 1987. She has served as a
director and as secretary of the Hidalgo
County Bar Association.
Since 1991, Jones, Galligan, Key & Lozano
has welcomed six associate attorneys to the
firm: Julie Crockett Graham, Mark W. Farris,
Matthew L. Jones, Lance A. Kirby, Rebecca
Gay Jones, and Paul M. Guinn.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
374

The City of Alamo was incorporated on April
26, 1924, through an election in the city commission-four
years after First State Bank of
Alamo opened its doors for business. When it
was chartered, the bank held $25,000 in capital
stock, 250 shares offered at $100 each. The
largest shareholder was George L. Jones with
seventy-one shares; Renfro B. Creager held sixty
shares. The first board of directors included E.
H. Reichert, George L. Jones, C. A. Phillips, W.
E. Boehme, and Renfro B. Creager.
The bank weathered the Great Depression
and numerous economic downturns, maintaining
a philosophy of conservative but
steady growth. By 1951, capital stock had
increased to $75,000, deposits to $225,000.
In 1965, ownership was changed when a
group of individuals from Brownsville purchased
the bank from the owners, including the
Knapps, one of Alamo’s pioneer families.
Hurricane Beulah, in 1968, was another
economic blow, but Alamo Bank continued its
steady growth. In the early 1970s, a group of
investors from Hidalgo County purchased the
bank from the Brownsville owners. In 1974 the
name of the bank was changed to Alamo Bank
of Texas.
The 1980s saw many banks fail in Texas;
however, Alamo Bank’s assets have continued
to grow from $60 million in 1986 to its
present $170 million.
In the year 2000, the members of the Board
of Directors are: Truman Angel, Efraim Barrera,
James C. Brown, Jr., Michael F. Coggins, Terry
Gray, Robert N. Johnson, Forrest L. Jones, S.
Foss Jones, Marvin Kautsch, Robert L. Lozano,
Ira Matt, Ben D. Olivarez, E. M. (Bud) Payne,
M. D. (Ronnie) Round, and President and CEO
M. Allen Shields III.
On February 17, 2001, Alamo Bank celebrated
its eighty-first anniversary, making it the
oldest locally-owned and operated bank in the
Valley with seven convenient locations (and two
off-premises ATMs.) The bank will continue
expanding to new locations to meet the needs of
the phenomenal growth of Valley business.
Always dedicated to upholding the ideals of the
founders, Alamo Bank constantly implements
innovative new financial services and always
offers its customers competitive rates.
ALAMO BANK
OF TEXAS
✧
Above: Alamo Bank is the oldest locallyowned
bank in the Valley with seven
convenient locations.
Left: This was the C. H. Swallow Land Office.
After J. P. Blalock founded Ebenezer, he
discovered there was a lack of water supply
for the railroad company’s boilers. The
community then moved east, and a series
of name changes followed, including
Swallow, Forum, and , finally, the current
name, Alamo.
PHOTO COURTESY OF BRIAN ROBERTSON
THE MARKETPLACE
375

RIO GRANDE
VALLEY SUGAR
GROWERS, INC.
The Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers, Inc.
processes more than a million tons of sugarcane
annually, utilizing a sophisticated and
highly coordinated process, requiring the
cooperation of growers, employees, suppliers,
and the general public. Today’s procedures are
vastly different from those used here in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Five
major sugar mills operated in the area by 1913,
but, by 1921, the last mill closed, a victim
of adverse economic and political conditions
following World War I.
In the early 1960s, the Lower Rio Grande
Valley’s combination of subtropical climate,
fertile soils and excellent irrigation system again
created interest in sugarcane. The Texas
Agricultural Experiment Station in Weslaco
and the U.S. Department of Agriculture began
a ten-year study confirming a high economic
potential for the crop, and, in 1970, over a
hundred farmers formed a cooperative. Each
grower/member pledged funding and cropland
toward sugarcane culture, the construction of a
sugar mill, purchase of equipment, and hiring
of qualified personnel. The $28 million mill
was completed in 1973 and the first year’s
harvest began.
Each grower/member is responsible for
planting and caring for the sugarcane, which
requires at least twelve months from planting
to maturity. The crop is mechanically harvested,
chopped in foot-long pieces, and dropped into
specially designed “boxes” holding ten tons
each. These boxes are transported by field
tractor to a transfer point, hoisted onto highway
trucks and delivered to the mill. A computerized
process allows identification of the farmer who
owns each load.
At the mill, each box is dumped onto a
moving conveyor, the cane is washed, crushed
by a series of large rollers, and the crushed
cane is used as fuel to generate steam and
electricity. Extracted juice is heated for
clarification, and concentrated into heavy
syrup that is heated in vacuum pans holding
14,000 gallons each. Sugar crystals produced
in the syrup are separated from the molasses by
a high-speed centrifuge.
The raw sugar (750-1,000 tons daily) is
conveyed to a warehouse, and the blackstrap
molasses is pumped into one of several
million-gallon storage tanks. Raw sugar is
sold and shipped by barge to a refinery. The
molasses is sold as cattle feed and shipped by
rail or highway tanker.
The co-op produces 150,000 tons of raw
sugar and 55,000 tons of blackstrap molasses
each year, has a total operating budget of over
$24 million, an annual payroll exceeding $9
million, and employs 240 permanent and an
additional 330 seasonal personnel.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
376

BEST WESTERN
PALM AIRE
HOTEL &
SUITES
Set amid lush, tropical landscaping, the
Best Western Palm Aire Hotel & Suites in
Weslaco offers resort style amenities to
business and leisure travelers. On their
arrival, guests receive a unique welcome from
the Palm Aire’s two resident blue-headed
Amazon parrots. Window boutiques brighten
the lobby with changing displays from the
mid-Valley’s leading clothiers. It’s easy for
guests to savor the feeling of having arrived.
Palm Aire’s full service health club is open
to all hotel guests and members. They can
enjoy three swimming pools, the steam and
sauna rooms, indoor racquetball, hot and cold
spas, a tennis court, complete workout equipment
and a shuffleboard court. After the exercise
comes pampering time with visits to
shops within the hotel: the massage therapist
or the beauty salon and barbershop. The
pleasures of the Palm Aire include browsing at
the Klein Gray Trading Company, a gift shop
that offers keepsakes and artifacts of South
Texas and Mexico. Enterprise Rent-A-Car also
maintains an office at the hotel.
Palm Aire satisfies its guests’ quests for good
food and entertainment right on the premises.
The Courtyard Restaurant features a unique
cook-to-order breakfast buffet, a buffet or
menu lunch and a full service dinner. The wine
selection is large and inviting. The Courtyard
Lounge presents a spectrum of live music
Friday and Saturday evenings.
The Palm Aire’s 193 rooms include 60 tworoom
suites complete with microwave and
refrigerator and 121 rooms equipped with
either two queen beds or one king bed. Every
room has a coffee maker. The hotel also offers
twelve fully furnished apartments with two
bedrooms and two baths.
Palm Aire gladly puts its event planning
services to work to arrange seamless, wellorganized
events for businesses and groups
using their five meeting spaces. For small
meetings of 20 to large sessions for 400
people, the staff handles the details including
catering. The hotel also provides off-premise
catering from their mid-valley location to
anywhere in the Rio Grande Valley.
Weslaco is close to cultural, historical, and
recreational attractions of the Rio Grande
Valley and Mexico. Palm Aire has developed a
large corporate client base and a strong leisure
market, particularly eco-tourists drawn by the
wildlife in nearby Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge
and Weslaco birding sites. All guests can take
advantage of the hotel’s partnership with
renowned Tierra Santa Golf Club. Golf
packages are available through the hotel.
THE MARKETPLACE
377

VILLA DE CORTEZ
✧
Right: Larry and Patti Dittburner.
Below: 1997 Cortez Hotel.
Bottom: 1999 Villa de Cortez.
From its gracious Spanish Colonial Revival
design to its bustling business trade and social
activity, the four-story Villa de Cortez symbolizes
both commercial progress and cultural achievement.
A landmark from the days of steam
engines and passenger trains; it has been transformed
from a dilapidated, seventy-year old relic
to reclaim its former grandeur as the crown jewel
of downtown Weslaco. The restored Villa de
Cortez reopened with a gala New Year’s Eve banquet
and dance on December 31, 1998, exactly
seventy years after its inaugural celebration.
Tours are offered to the public to view the
remarkable transformation from a seedy, dilapidated
building to a showpiece that attracts business
to its tenants, as well as tourists seeking a
peek into the past.
The Villa de Cortez is now a mixed-use office
building whose fresh exterior is enhanced by
palm trees, lavish landscaping, and a magnificent
fountain. Inside the former hotel’s lobby, a
gourmet restaurant serves lunch and dinner on
tables beneath spectacular crystal chandeliers
and ornate vaulted ceilings. A traditional
Mexican restaurant, Old West-style barbershop
and a fine jeweler share the first floor.
Realizing that the existing seventy-five bedrooms
could not compete in today’s market,
the owners, Larry and Patti Dittburner, transformed
the deteriorated nine-by-twelve foot
rooms into deluxe office suites on the third and
fourth floors. They remodeled the second floor
to include an elegant ballroom in Mexican Villa
decor, as well as a living room, fireplace room,
family room, Rio Bravo Cantina, and a wine
cellar. The original ballroom, with its original
wood floor, can be viewed through three brick
arches from the dining room and chapel. It is
decorated with hand-carved pieces from
Mexico—the neighbor just five miles to the
south. Memories of the building’s many associations
with social, economic, and cultural life
of the Rio Grande Valley persist on both sides
of the border through almost three-quarters of
a century.
A comprehensive plan for intense downtown
redevelopment required construction of a
parking facility, and was possible through public-private
cooperation by the Dittburners, the
City of Weslaco, and the Weslaco Economic
Development Corporation. The result is a
multi-story, multi-facet parking garage spanning
a public street to connect with the second
floor of the Villa de Cortez. This diverse facility
has been used for street dances and tailgate parties,
with ample parking on the second floor.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
378

Just as the Rio Grande Valley emerged from
the twentieth century as a major metropolitan
market, K-10 has also emerged as a company
with a worldwide reputation for quality safety
products. It seems like only yesterday when, in
fact, it’s been nearly thirty years since Bob and
Lorraine Kolenda first introduced the K-10
Hemisphere ® Safety Mirror to the healthcare
market. This unique dome style mirror, which
provides 360 degrees of total observation, was
rapidly adopted by hospitals for corridor
safety and traffic control monitoring.
Due to the enthusiastic response and demand
for the Hemisphere ® Mirror, K-10 developed
larger Hemispheres ® ranging in sizes up to fortytwo
inches in diameter for use in manufacturing
and warehouse facilities. Through advertising,
trade show marketing, and by word-of-mouth,
government agencies and safety engineers from
General Motors, Procter & Gamble, John Deere,
and many other companies recognized the
improved safety vision provided by the
Hemisphere over traditional convex styles.
Although convex mirrors are still in use today,
they’re primarily used for specific applications
where detailed viewing is required. Convenience
stores, in particular, continue to use K-10
convex mirrors for general surveillance and
merchandise theft control.
Energized by K-10’s success and weary of
Chicago winters, Bob and Lorraine decided to
move their base of operations to the south.
They had visited South Texas previously and
found the semi-tropical climate and lifestyle of
the Rio Grande Valley to be an ideal place to call
home. In 1979 they made the “big move,”
relocating their headquarters to the Valley. Little
did they realize that, in twenty years, K-10
would grow into a promising multi-million
dollar corporation, while the Valley itself would
develop into one of the fastest growing regions
of the country.
Inspired and encouraged by K-10’s
continuing growth, Bob began to look for other
markets and new mirror applications. By early
1980 he had developed a revolutionary new
concept for the transportation industry—an
eight-inch diameter mirror designed to
eliminate dangerous blind spots on trucks,
delivery vans, school buses, etc. This new mirror
was christened the K-10 “Eyeball ® ” Mirror.
Bob took the “Eyeball ® ” Mirror to nearly
every major truck fleet in the country and
convinced many of them that the “Eyeball ® ”
could save lives by helping to prevent dangerous
right turn and lane change accidents. The rest is
history, as thousands of drivers from major
fleets, like J. B. Hunt, CFI, Wal-Mart, Watkins,
and others, now benefit from the increased
safety vision of the K-10 “Eyeball ® ” blind spot
mirror which is positioned on the front of their
vehicles for maximum wide-angle viewing.
In 1986 Federal Express also recognized
the safety benefits of the “Eyeball ® ” mirror and
installed it on the left rear corner of their delivery
vehicles as an aid in preventing backingup
accidents. To this day, every FedEx delivery
van continues to have a K-10 “Eyeball ® ” Mirror
installed before it leaves the manufacturer.
In order to maintain its leading position
in the field of safety and surveillance, K-10,
together with its faithful and dedicated
employees, continues to develop new and innovative
mirrors and associated products. Whether
it’s a mirror for the U.S. embassy in Moscow or
a maquiladora manufacturing plant in Mexico,
K-10’s ISO 9002 Certification, a worldwide
Quality Systems Standard, ensures that K-10
will continue to emphasize quality and customer
satisfaction well into the twenty-first century.
K-10 ENTERPRIZES, INC.
✧
Above: The owners and staff of K-10
Enterprizes, Inc. Front row (from left to
right): Joel Rocha, Ruben Urive, Mary
Bindner, and Donna Mudd. Back row: Bob
and Lorraine Kolenda, Maurecio Límon,
Jose Barrera, Armando Urive, and Joel
Geshay, director of operations.
Below: This brochure features K-10’s
Hemisphere ® style mirrors for plant safety
and is an example of several types of
brochures distributed or mailed by K-10 to
prospective customers.
THE MARKETPLACE
379

BARBEE-NEUHAUS IMPLEMENT COMPANY
The history of Barbee-Neuhaus Implement
Company stretches back to 1939 in downtown
Weslaco and Clifford Implement Company.
That John Deere dealership became Sherry-
Barbee Implement in 1956 when Kenneth
Sherry and Joe Barbee bought the business
from Kenneth Sherry’s father. In 1961, Earl
Neuhaus, a young Texas A&M University
student, went to work at Sherry-Barbee and,
after graduation, worked in sales for the
company. In 1974 Neuhaus became Joe
Barbee’s partner and the company has been
known as Barbee-Neuhaus Implement
Company ever since. Neuhaus and his sons—
Paul, Lance, and Kevin—bought out the
Barbees in 1996, making the Neuhaus family
sole owners of the business.
Barbee-Neuhaus earned its reputation as the
premier supplier of farm and homeowner
equipment for the lower Rio Grande Valley and
northern Mexico with superior products and
unequaled service. As agriculture in the Valley
is changing with farming land decreasing
and development booming, Barbee-Neuhaus
is also changing to meet its customers’ needs.
Diversifying from a concentration on agricultural
equipment, the company now supplies
some construction equipment and a complete
line of lawn care equipment. Industrial
customers select from reliable John Deere
industrial scrapers and skid loaders.
Commercial managers of golf and turf rely on
Barbee-Neuhaus products and services to
handle challenges like football and soccer fields.
Homeowners and farmers have responded to
the safety features, which are engineered into
John Deere mowers, chainsaws, and hand-held
tools. Barbee-Neuhaus sponsors owner-operator
clinics in English and Spanish. Full after-market
service is their specialty, from the smallest lawn
mower to the largest tractor and earthmovers.
Agricultural equipment at Barbee-Neuhaus
has become more fuel efficient, more environmentally
friendly, highly computerized, and
easier to operate. Global positioning systems
integrated into sprayers and harvest equipment
can control the speed and application rates
of fertilizer and chemicals and also monitor
yields of each square foot of ground. More
technologically complex equipment means
more highly skilled service technicians. Field
service trucks now have laptop computer
equipped with diagnostic programs.
In 1976 the company moved to its current
thirty-acre location on Expressway 83 in
Weslaco. Barbee-Neuhaus has since grown
to include eighty-six employees and John
Deere dealerships in Raymondville, Harlingen,
and Brownsville.
Barbee-Neuhaus is one of the few major
farm equipment dealerships in the Valley that
is locally owned. Proud of the business’
products, Earl Neuhaus quotes a John Deere
slogan: “Still reliable, still John Deere” and
serviced by the best…Neuhaus and company.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
380

In 1926 the town of Weslaco was seven
years old with a population of thirty-five
hundred. With only forty blocks of paved
streets and not many cars in use, Cleveland
Burton opened Burton Auto Supply, a
wholesale and retail auto parts business, in
Weslaco in August 1926.
After only three years of business, the stock
market crashed and the Great Depression
began. Burton Auto persevered and survived,
thanks in part to the Ford Model-T, known as
the “workingman’s car.” Rather than buy new
cars, Valley consumers were repairing their
old cars. The Model-T became the company’s
mascot, and to this day a Model-T is used by
Burton Auto for publicity purposes.
When Burton retired in 1945 he sold the
business to J. S. McManus and Reeves Russell. By
1948, Gene Vaughan and Floyd Ennis had been
added as partners and, by 1958, they had a new
location in Weslaco plus stores in Raymondville,
Brownsville, Harlingen, and McAllen.
With the agricultural and industrial markets
continuing to grow in the Valley, a Bearing and
Industrial Division was added. Then
automotive machine shops with qualified
mechanics were opened to perform precision
machine work on parts and engines for
automobiles, trucks, farm equipment, shrimp
boats, and even airplanes. In 1968, Vaughan
bought controlling interest of the Burton
Corporation. New stores were added, and the
Service Parts Warehouse was opened in 1969,
serving Burton stores plus other auto parts
stores in South Texas and Northern Mexico.
The company suffered a major blow in 1983
when Gene Vaughan passed away after
complications from heart surgery. His sons—
Richard, Eddie, and Charlie—assumed active
leadership roles and moved to meet other
challenges of the 1980s. These included the
devaluation of the Mexican peso, several hard
freezes which crippled the Valley economy, and
entry into the Valley market of big national
chain stores.
To help meet these challenges, Burton joined
a national association of independent auto parts
businesses that allowed it to be competitive
with big national stores. It became a distributor
for air compressors, with a factory-trained staff
of salesmen and technicians to sell and service
air systems in the U.S. and Mexico. Burton also
entered the imported auto parts business and
expanded its truck parts business.
Burton Auto moves into the twenty-first
century with a new ownership team. Richard
Vaughan, Brian Humphreys, Gene Vaughan III,
and Scott Vaughan have acquired the interests
of Eddie and Charlie Vaughan. They are excited
about the possibilities of the new millennium.
They will continue to look for new business
areas in which to expand as they provide the
best selection of quality products at competitive
prices and employees with the technical
expertise to solve their customers’ problems.
BURTON
AUTO SUPPLY
✧
Above: Burton Auto Supply founder
Cleveland Burton.
Below: Gene Vaughan with a 1926
Model-T Ford.
THE MARKETPLACE
381

✧
Weaks Martin, original owner and founder
of Weaks Martin Implement Company,
c. 1999.
WEAKS MARTIN
IMPLEMENT COMPANY, INC.
In 1938, Weaks Martin, a Tennessee native
purchased the Mission, Texas, John Deere
dealership known as the Peabody Implement
Company. During World War II, Roscoe
Watkins, an Iowa farm boy assigned to Moore
Army Air Field as an instructor, met Weaks
Martin at the Presbyterian Church in Mission.
Roscoe liked the fact that he didn’t have to
shovel snow in the Rio Grande Valley. He
stayed in the Valley after the war, working for
Weaks Martin Implement Company as a parts
man, eventually working his way up to
general manager. In 1972 Martin sold the
tractor dealership to Roscoe Watkins but the
name remained.
Roscoe Watkins’ son John started working
weekends at Weaks Martin when he was
eleven years old and continued part-time
until he graduated from college with a
degree in mechanical engineering in May
1976. In 1979 Roscoe Watkins made his
long-time minority partner Harvey Mutz and
John Watkins equivalent partners.
“I give my Dad a lot of credit for being
a very conservative operator,” said John
Watkins, whose father retired from the
company in 1981. “The fact that we’re still in
business shows how successful he was at
keeping Weaks Martin on a steady course,
never over-extending the company.”
The Valley farmer is the primary customer
for Weaks Martin Implement Company. The
company’s tractors and farming implements,
made by John Deere and several small brands,
have been used to raise dryland sorghum,
cotton and grain for over sixty years. The
closely held operation has weathered peso
devaluations, the grain embargo and oil crisis,
agricultural boom years and the urbanization
of farmland to survive and thrive in the
twenty-first century. Weaks Martin is known
for its experienced sales force that
understands the equipment and the
requirements of farming in the region. The
parts department has earned a reputation for
reliability and skill.
Changes in the Rio Grande Valley have
brought new customers to Weaks Martin.
One growing segment is lawn and garden
tractors and related tools, in demand as the
population moves on to former farmland.
The expanding bilingual market has also
become a significant sector of the business
with vegetables that were once farmed north
of the Rio Grande now being raised further
south with equipment from Weaks Martin.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
382

Valley Fruit and Vegetable Company, Inc.,
traces its roots back to 1928 when Jack Williams
and his wife, I. M. Weir, started packing gift fruit
in the family’s garage. In 1935, given the Rio
Grande Valley’s abundant citrus production,
Valley Fruit & Vegetable began its commercial
operation in a packing shed at the intersection of
Business 83 and U.S. Highway 281 in Pharr.
Subsequently, Roy Weir, Williams’ stepson,
joined the family partnership. In 1947 the
packing company constructed a new facility on
U.S. 281 in Pharr. Devastating freezes in 1949
and 1951 forced the company to move its
operations to Eustis, Florida, where Valley Fruit
Company operated for three years. Returning to
the Rio Grande Valley, a new partnership was
formed by Roy Weir, Dan Seitz, Sr., Rudy Ogden,
and Dick Eubanks. In 1956 the company built
a cotton gin and expanded the main facility
to process and pack fresh vegetables. With
another major expansion in 1958, Valley Fruit &
Vegetable Company became the largest agricultural
packing facility under one roof in the
world. The plant covers approximately 250,000
square feet and includes refrigerated storage and
packaging equipment. In time, the partnership
evolved into Valley Fruit & Vegetable Company,
Inc., incorporating in June 1962. Roy Weir and
Dan Seitz, Sr., were the company’s two remaining
shareholders when Dan Seitz, Jr., became a
shareholder in 1971. The Rio Grande Valley
experienced a major freeze in December 1983,
which reduced the Valley’s 75,000-acre citrus
crop by about fifty percent. When Roy Weir and
Dan Seitz, Sr., retired in 1988, Dan Seitz, Jr.,
acquired the company.
In 1989 another freeze ravaged the Valley,
decreasing citrus acreage to approximately
14,000 acres. With no citrus production for several
years, the company focused on vegetable
packing and importing produce, resuming citrus
packing in 1992. Valley Fruit & Vegetable
Company, Inc., now features Rio Star ® grapefruit.
“The Rio Star ® grapefruit is unique in its
taste and deep red color. Our tropical climate
and soils make the Rio Star ® extremely sweet
and juicy,” say Dan Seitz, Jr.
From September until May, the company is
immersed in fragrant grapefruit from the Rio
Grande Valley. The company’s marketing area
includes retail stores and wholesalers in the
United States and Canada, with some exports to
Western Europe, and the Pacific Rim.
Valley Fruit & Vegetable Company, Inc., also
houses KY FARMS, a gift-packing company that
ships hand-selected fruit direct to consumers
for holiday gifts and special occasions. The
company’s website is www.valleyfruit.com.
✧
VALLEY
FRUIT &
VEGETABLE
COMPANY, INC.
Above: Valley Fruit Company, 1935.
Below: Valley Fruit Company, 1950.
THE MARKETPLACE
383

SEBASTIAN
COTTON &
GRAIN
CORPORATION
✧
Above: The first bale of cotton ginned at
Sebastian Cotton & Grain Corporation in
1959. From left to right: Dan O’Brien,
Leroy Graham, Weldon Haynes, and
Jack Funk.
Below: Aerial view of Sebastian Cotton &
Grain facilities.
The largest family-owned cotton gin
operating in Texas, Sebastian Cotton & Grain
Corporation serves Rio Grande Valley farmers
from its Willacy County office. The Funk
family, farmers themselves, understands and
meets their customers’ needs by providing full
cotton and grain services including
processing, warehousing and marketing.
Jack Funk who came to the Rio Grande Valley
in 1930 with a land excursion party and
purchased land outside Harlingen founded
Sebastian Cotton & Grain Corporation in 1957.
His son Tommy Funk, Sr., took over the business
in 1980. The third generation of the family, son
Tommy Jr., and son-in-law Scott Matlock, is now
actively involved in managing the company.
Sebastian Cotton & Grain’s forty-acre facility
includes the gin, an oil mill, and cotton bale
warehouse plus grain elevators in Sebastian,
Progreso and at the Port of Harlingen. As an
independent gin, Sebastian Cotton & Grain
offers its customers farm land rental, cottonseed
feed products, and the capability to catch
cottonseed during ginning and to store it until
planting time. Customers also benefit from
Sebastian Cotton & Grain’s alliances with the
Beltwide Cotton Marketing Association and
Mexican grain importing companies.
The company’s modern, high volume gin
produces better turnouts while keeping ginning
costs truly competitive, customers report. The
gin processes over 35,000 bales of cotton
annually, producing 15,000 tons of cottonseed.
The oil mill operates nearly year-round with
most of the production going to the Mexican
market. South Texas feedlots and ranchers are
the primary consumers of the mill’s cottonseed
meal products. The company’s grain elevators
have a capacity of five million bushels, much of
which is shipped into Mexico.
Satisfied customers tend to be loyal
customers. Weldon Haynes has been a
Sebastian Cotton & Grain customer since
1957, Tommy Funk, Sr., points out. Moreover,
sons and grandsons of original customers still
bring their ginning and grain business to the
Sebastian facility. At a time when Valley gins
have consolidated and more and more
farmland is urbanized, Sebastian Cotton &
Grain continues to endure and thrive.
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
384

In the mid-1950s, Edinburg had a
population of seventeen thousand, was the
busy county seat of fast-growing Hidalgo
County, the home of Pan American College,
and an agricultural center for fruit and
vegetable processing and packing, cotton
ginning, and general services to agriculture.
Then winter tourists, who had discovered
that the Rio Grande Valley’s climate was much
like that of Miami, except that living costs
were considerably below the national average,
began coming to the area in increasing
numbers. Edinburg became the palm-lined
“Gateway to the Valley” and began to build
recreational facilities for the visitors.
The major effort to attract tourist business
was heroic. City leaders realized they needed a
resort hotel to attract visitors and to provide
banquet and meeting facilities for Edinburg
citizens. With a simple belief in themselves and
their community, eleven hundred citizens joined
forces to form Edinburg Community Hotel, Inc.,
buy stock, and build the Echo Motor Hotel.
When it opened in the late 1950s, it was
called “The Magic Valley’s most outstanding
hotel, beautifully situated in the heart of the
international year-round vacationland.” In
addition to providing an outstanding resort for
tourists, the new hotel provided Edinburg
with distinguished restaurant and banquet
facilities, conference rooms with five-hundredperson-capacity
and a headquarters for many
civic activities.
When Edinburg was first named an “All-
America City” in 1969, the Echo celebrated
along with the city. The hotel, with its beautiful
swimming pool, served as the backdrop for
photographs to publicize the achievement. It
has also joined in similar celebrations in 1995
and 2000, when Edinburg again achieved the
“All-America City” designation.
At the same time that tourism was
increasing in Edinburg, Pan American College
was growing by leaps and bounds. As it
became Pan American University, and then the
University of Texas-Pan American, its
enrollment and influence grew, bringing more
and more professional people to the city and to
the Echo Hotel.
Now privately owned, the Echo continues
to be a gathering place for Edinburg citizens
and visitors. Redecorating and remodeling are
among recent projects. As an example of its
service to the community, the hotel provided a
Sunday meeting place and office space for
Edinburg’s First United Methodist Church
while it was temporarily homeless as a new
church was built.
With Edinburg’s population nearing fifty
thousand, its economy widely diversified, its
county seat busier than ever, and its
recreational activities now including the
Roadrunners’ professional baseball team,
there are a healthy demand for hotel facilities.
The Echo Motor Hotel invites visitors to
stay with them while in Edinburg and citizens
to meet, relax, dine, and enjoy the hotel made
possible by their leaders of the 1950s.
ECHO
HOTEL AND
CONFERENCE
CENTER
✧
Below: Echo Hotel located at 1903 South
Closner. For more information, please call
800-422-0336.
Bottom: Banquet facilities are available for
local civic activities.
THE MARKETPLACE
385

✧
VALLEY
ARMATURE &
Above: Corporate officers for Valley
Armature & Electric Co. are, seated (from
left to right): Boo Boo Lewis, Sharon
Vanderpool, and Larry Lewis, the firm’s
president. Standing (from left to right) are
sons Kris, Kasey, and Dale Lewis.
Below: Valley Armature & Electric Co.
personnel relax in their shop after a busy
day. All strive to offer their industrial
customers a complete service center with the
best quality possible.
ELECTRIC
CO., INC.
Valley Armature & Electric Co., Inc. was
founded in 1977 by Bobby H. Etchison, K. L.
“Larry” Lewis, Kenneth Taylor, and Jack
Morris as an industrial electric service center
specializing in industrial electric motor repair.
The original facility was located on North
Twenty-third Street in McAllen, Texas.
Before its first expansion in 1982 into a
10,500 square foot facility located at North
McColl and Trenton Roads, Jack Morris
had left the company. As the years passed,
and with the insight and leadership of
then-Vice President K. L. “Larry” Lewis, the
company diversified into many other
industrial services. Larry’s technical background,
pride in craftsmanship, and absolute
insistence on quality have helped the company
to grow.
Larry has been involved through the years
in the industrial electrical apparatus industry.
He worked with Sun Oil Company
(Sunoco) for many years training their
maintenance personnel as part of Valley
Armature’s educational outreach. He taught
the Sunoco personnel at both their Dallas,
Texas training facility and their Taft,
California facility. He also has been involved
with Electrical Apparatus Service Association
(EASA), which is the worldwide trade
association of industrial electric service
facilities. He served as a district director for
four years, another four years on the executive
board, and as president of the Southwestern
Chapter in 1989-1990.
The company successfully diversified to
include a complete sales force, including
international sales into Mexico, machine
shop, pump, and fabrication divisions and a
complete field services division, including
preventive maintenance programs, along with
engineering and design capabilities.
In 1998-99, Larry Lewis purchased the
corporation’s assets and outstanding shares
and is president of Valley Armature &
Electric Co., Inc. His wife Boo Boo is a
corporate officer, as is Sharon Vanderpool,
executive administrator. Dale Lewis, the
oldest son, is operations/shop manager
and son Kris works in production as a
technician. The youngest son, Kasey, attends
college and works part time on special
projects. All strive to offer their industrial
customers a complete service center with the
best quality possible.
For its third major expansion, the
company has purchased a five-acre industrial
site on which it will build a twentythousand-square-foot
facility. The new complex
will accommodate the existing divisions
and will allow for further growth and
development. Completion is targeted for
early 2002.
“Quality first. If better is possible, good is
not enough.”
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
386

THE MARKETPLACE
387

A
A History of San Benito, 110, 111
Abilene, Texas, 125
Abram, Texas, 151
Addington, Stanley, 104
Advance News Journal, 140
Agostadero del Gato Grant, 87
Agostedero del Àlamo (Pasture of the Alamo),
133
Agriculture Discovery Center (Weslaco), 127
Agricultural research agencies (Weslaco), 164
Agua Negra, 112
Agustín I, 28
Al Parker Land Company (La Feria), 121
Al Parker Securities Company (La Feria), 120
Alamia, Teresa Chapa, 67
Alamo Bank of Texas, 134
Alamo Community Church, 135
Alamo Inn Bed and Breakfast, 134
Alamo Land and Sugar Company, 87, 133-134
Alamo News, 135
Alamo River, 14, 18
Alamo Townsite Company, 134
Alamo, Texas, 27, 64, 133-135, 139
Alamo, The, 29-30, 134
Alaniz, Leonardo “Leo Najo”, 148
Aldama, Juan, 24-25
Alice, Texas, 67, 98, 106, 112, 115, 128
Allen, Beatrice, 179
Allen, Gertrude, 179
Allen, Paul, 179
Allen, William, 179
Allen, Willis, 179
Allende, Ignacio, 23-25
Allred, James V., 175
All-Valley Regional Airport, 177
aloe vera production, 163, 164
Alvarez, Sara Ann, 123
Álvarez, Juan, 80
Amador, Jose, 165
American Airlines, 177
American Baseball Players Association, 148
American Electric Power, 178
American Land and Irrigation Company, 87,
99
American Legion Border Post 107 (Donna),
132
American Red Cross, 94
American Rio Grande Land and Irrigation
Company, 99, 122, 178
Amfels, Inc. (Brownsville), 182
Amistad Dam (Del Rio), 100, 168
Amoco Chemicals Corporation, 182
Ampúdia, Pedro de, 32, 33, 37
Ampuero Mission, 7
Anglo Americans, 42
Anglo developers, 159
Annexation to the United States, 34, 35, 70
Anzalduas Diversion Dam (Mission), 168
Anzalduas International Bridge (Mission), 151,
172
Anzalduas Irrigation Canal, 168
INDEX
Apache, The, 54
Archer, O. P., 142, 143
Arista, Mariano, 37
Arizona, 40, 87, 137
Arkansas, 74
Armstrong Ranch, 106
Armstrong, John B., 96
Army of Observation, 35
Arnold, Olga Baxter, 125
Arroyo, Texas, 114
Arroyo Canal Company, 132
Arroyo Colorado, 71, 106, 109, 114-115,
128, 175
Arroyo State Bank, 111
Audiencia de México, 13, 14
Austin, 34, 70, 73, 103, 107, 174
Austin Texas Democrat, 70
Austin, Moses, 27
Austin, Stephen F., 6, 27-28, 87
Avila, Manuela, 129
Avila, P. R., 133
Avila, Severiano, 129
Ayers, Attlee B., 153
Azadores Ranch, 128-129
Azpiazu, Joseph, 138
Aztec Building (San Benito), 111
B
B&P Bridge Company (Progreso), 170
Bagdad, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 22, 46, 49, 50,
70, 74-76
Bailey H. Dunlap Memorial Library (La Feria),
120, 291
Baker, A. Y., 151
Baldridge, Lillian Weems, 102, 118, 139, 140
Ballí, José María, 133
Ballí, Juan José, 21-22, 26
Ballí, Nicolás, 26, 69-70
Ballí Dominguez, Gregoria, 83
bandit raids, 78, 93, 132, 142
Baptist General Convention of Texas, 186
Barbera, Juan Bautista, 149
Barrera Drug Store, 185
Barrera, Cayetano E., 184
Barrera, Cayetano E. III, 184
Barrera, Pedro, 184
Barrett, James L., 123
Barrett, Theodore H., 75
Barrientos, Ramona Valente, 67
Battle of Buena Vista, 39, 42, 48
Battle of La Bolsa, 71-72
Battle of Mier, 33
Battle of Palmito Ranch (Brownsville), 70, 75
Battle of Palo Alto (Brownsville), 37-42, 61
Battle of Resaca de la Palma (Brownsville), 38-
39, 41-42
Battle of San Jacinto, 30, 32
Battle of Santa Gertrudis (Camargo), 61, 81
Battle of The Alamo (San Antonio), 29
Baxter Seed Company (Weslaco), 125
Baxter, Walter H., Jr., 125
Baxter, Walter H., Sr., 125
Bay of San Jacinto, 30
Bazaine, Francois Achille, 81
Beamer, John T., 133
Beaumont, Texas, 128, 130-131
Bee, H. P., 74
Beeville, Texas, 106
Belden, Samuel A., 45
Ben Hur, 41
Benitez, Miguel, 126
Bentsen Development Company (Mission), 147
Bentsen Palm Development Company
(Mission), 150
Bentsen Palm Village, 150
Bentsen Rio Grande Valley State Park, 147,
150
Bentsen, Beryl, 160
Bentsen, Calvin, 90
Bentsen, Elmer, 90, 147
Bentsen, Kenneth, 155
Bentsen, Lloyd, Jr., 148, 160
Bentsen, Lloyd, Sr., 90, 127, 147-148
Bentsen, Peter, 147
Bentsen, Tina, 147
Bessie, 50
Bessie, Texas, 109
Big Bend, Texas, 5
Biggers, Harry, 144
Bill Bunton Auto Supply and Machine, Inc.
(Mercedes), 123
Bixby Station (La Feria), 120
Bixby, W. H., 120
Bixby, Texas 120
Black Bean Lottery (Mier Expedition), 33, 34
Blalock, Peter Ebenezer, 133
Block, Harlon, 108
Boca Chica Beach, 10
Boggus, Lewis, 108
Bonaparte, Joseph, 23
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 23
Border Bank (Hidalgo), 64-65
Border Theater (Mission), 149
Borderland Hardware (Mercedes, Weslaco),
123-124
borderlands, 44, 58, 83
Borginnis, Sarah “The Great Western”, 41-42
Borman, Bill, 137
Borrego, José Vásquez, 17
Bowman, Albert, 42
Bracero Program, 180
Bragg, Braxton, 42
Brand, Othal, 184
Brando, Marlon, 59
Brazos Harbor, 49
Brazos Island, 66, 67, 74, 75
Brazos Santiago Pass, 10, 12, 50, 65-67, 69,
74, 116, 174
Brazos Santiago, 45, 48-50, 86, 95, 174
Breedlove, Cleve, 114
Breedlove, Ura, 114
Briggs and Smith, 141
Briggs, William, 141
Britton, Forbes, 60
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
388

Brooks County, 6, 20
Brown, Jacob, 36, 37
Brown, Kate Purvis, 110
Brown, Scott, 110
Brownsville Art League, 46
Brownsville Deepwater Project, 116
Brownsville Foreign Trade Zone, 118
Brownsville Herald, 105
Brownsville Historical Association, 45, 98
Brownsville Medical Center, 184, 186
Brownsville Municipal Airport, 117, 176
Brownsville Navigation District, 116
Brownsville Public Utilities Board, 179
Brownsville Town Company, 45
Brownsville, Texas, 13, 20, 28, 39-41, 43-50,
52-54, 56-57, 59-60, 67-68, 70-78, 82-86,
90, 93-98, 104,-106, 109, 111-118, 122,
128-130, 138, 160, 166, 169-170, 172,
174-176, 178-179, 182-185, 188, 190
Brownsville-Alice Stage Line, 89
Brownsville-Matamoros International Bridge,
93, 115, 169
Brownsville-South Padre Island International
Airport, 176
Brulay Plantation, 85
Brulay, George, 85-86, 89, 160
Bryan, William Jennings, 145-147
Buchanan, Celeste, 154
Burgos Mountains, 71
Burnet, David G., 30
Bush, George W., 169
Bustamente, Anastasio, 28
Butt, H. E., 108
Butterfly Garden (Alamo), 135
Butterfly Park (Mission), 150
C
Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Nuñez, 11, 12, 184
Cadereyta, Nuevo León, Mexico, 13, 16
Cage, W. E., 139
California, 31, 39, 40, 42, 45, 46, 87, 137,
147
Calvert, Texas, 126
Camargo, Diego de, 10
Camargo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 16-20, 22, 33,
39, 46, 48, 54, 56, 60-61, 71, 81, 126, 171
Camarillo, “Kino”, 46
Cambridge, International, 183
Cameron County, 6, 20, 34, 43-44, 68, 73,
77, 84, 90, 104-105, 114, 116, 169, 173,
189
Cameron County Courthouse, 44, 115
Cameron County Hall of Justice, 115
Cameron County Medical Society, 185
Cameron, Ewen, 33, 34, 44
Cameron-Willacy Medical Society, 185
Camille Playhouse, 118,
Camp Llano Grande, 94
Campbell, Elouise, 21
Canales, Antonio, 31
Canales, Servando, 72
canning industry, 162
Cano, Antonio, 87
Cano, Mauricia, 87
Cantú, Carlos, 16
Cantú, José Antonio, 145
Capen, E. A., 132
Capisallo Ranch (Mercedes), 122
Capisallo Town and Improvement Company,
122
Capisallo, Texas, 122
Capone, Al, 170
Card, Bill, 184
Cardenas, Juan, 31
Cardenas, Whitis & Stephen (McAllen), 98
Carlos I, 11
Carlota (empress of Mexico), 80-82
Carnestolendas Ranch, 60
Carnestolendas, Texas see Rio Grande
City, Texas
Carranza, Venustiano, 92, 93
Carrizo, The, 6, 7
Carthage, Texas, 181
Carthage Hydrocol, Inc. (Brownsville), 181-
182
Casa Blanca Hotel, 94
Casa de Palmas Hotel (McAllen), 143
Castillo de la Nueva Apolonia, 91
Castillo Maldonado, Alonso del , 11
Castle of Perote (Mexico), 33, 34
Catholic Diocese of Brownsville, 145
Cavalry of Christ, 47, 145
Cavazos, Doña Refugio, 71
Cavazos, Francisca, 45
Cavazos, Lino, 128
Cavazos, María Josefa, 45
Cavazos Gallegos, Angelita, 128
Celaya Brothers, 77
Celaya, Simon, 67
Central Park (Alamo), 135
Central Power and Light Company, 111, 178
Centralist system (Mexico), 29, 31
Cerralvo, Nuevo Léon, Mexico, 18, 33
Challenger Learning Center (San Benito), 112
Chamberlain, Hiram, 47, 48
Champion Building (Port Isabel), 67
Champion Hall, 118
Champion Store (Run), 129
Champion Store (Port Isabel), 67-69
Champion, A. A., 118
Champion, Andrew, Jr., 129
Champion, Andrew, Sr., 129
Champion, Charles, 67-68, 85
Champion, David, 133
Champion, Ellen, 129
Chapa, José Florencio de, 18
Chapin, Texas, 64, 90, 136, 151-152
Chapin, D. B., 136, 151-152
Chapultepec Palace (Mexico), 81
Charles III, 22
Charco Hondo, 112
Charles Stillman 1810-1875, 45
Charro Days (Brownsville), 117, 118
Chatfield, W. H., 63, 64, 84
Chattelle, Miriam Swann, 113
Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad
Company, 104
Chihuahua, Mexico, 35, 81
Chisholm Trail, 52-53, 56, 164
Cinco de Mayo, 80
Cisneros Drugstore, 178
citrus production, 147, 161, 162, 181
City National Bank (Weslaco), 126
Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, Mexico, 168
Ciudad Mante, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 91
Ciudad Miguel Alemán, Tamaulipas, Mexico,
59, 60
Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 26, 39,
71, 169
Civil War, 10, 22, 41, 45, 49, 52-54, 61-62,
66, 69-70, 72-78, 80, 87, 128, 174
Civil War cotton trade, 22, 49, 53, 55, 66, 70,
73-76
Clark, R. L., 126
Clarksville, Texas, 50, 74, 76
Claudio, Ramon, 13, 22
Clos, José María, 47
Closner, James J., 151
Closner, John, 83, 89, 104, 128, 136-137,
142, 151-152, 160, 178
Coahuila y Texas, 28
Coahuila, Mexico, 15, 17, 18, 28, 31, 35, 168
Coahuiltecan, The, 6, 7
Cobolini, Louis, 116
Cole, A. B., 176
Cole, George, 170
Colegio de San Nicolás Obispo, 24-25
College of Zacatecas, 15
Collier, W. G., 128
Colonel Cross, 48
Columbus, Christopher, 9, 69
Columbus, New Mexico, 93
Combes, Fred, 105
Combes, Joe, 106
Combes, Texas, 102, 105-106
Comonfort, Ignacio, 80
Concepción de Carricitos Grant, 20, 90
Conde, Carlos D., 111
Confederacy, The, 22, 41, 52, 55, 73-75
Confederate Air Force World War II Museum
(Brownsville), 176-177
Congregación del Refugio, 26
Continental Airlines, 176, 177
Continental Divide, 5
Convent of the Incarnate Word and Blessed
Sacrament, 47
Conway, John J., 145, 146, 147
corn production, 163
Corpus Christi, 12, 35-36, 41, 43, 50, 53, 55,
59, 66-67, 69, 72, 77, 86, 95-97, 105, 107-
108, 112, 114-115, 152, 173, 175, 178,
188
Corregidora Garden (Querétaro), 23
Correo del Río Bravo del Norte, 31
Cortés, Hernán, 9-11
Cortez Hotel (Weslaco), 125, 126
Cortina Wars, 70-71
Cortina, Juan Nepomuceno, 41, 70-73, 82
Corvette, 48
Cos, Martín Perfecto de, 29
cotton production, 162-163
Couch, Dan R., 124
Couch, Edward C., 124-125, 156
Couch, R. C., 124
Cox, Noah, 58
Creager, R. B., 134
creoles, 23, 24, 25
Crow, Frank G., 142
INDEX
389

Cruse, W. W., 128
Cryer, John, 87
Cuba, 9, 10
Cuervo, José Tienda de, 19
Cuevitas, 151, 180
Culiacán, Mexico, 11
D
Dallas Cowboys, 148-149
Dallas, Texas, 120, 126, 147-148, 156, 176
Daniel Webster, 73
Davidson Hotel (Raymondville), 103-104
Davis Landing (Rio Grande City), 44, 60
Davis, Dale, 126
Davis, Henry Clay, 60
Davis, Jefferson, 41
Dawson, Cleo, 146
Day, W. D., 152
de la Garza, E. “Kika”, 148, 160, 165
de la Garza, Francisco, 60
de la Garza, José Salvador, 71
de la Peña, Silverio, 62
de la Rosa, Hector “Buddy”, 125
de León, Alonzo, 13-14
de León, Doña Juána Ponce, 12
de los Dolores, Miguel Santa María, 7
Dean Porter Park, 118
DeJulio, Rick, 144
Del Rio, Texas, 168
del Valle, Mamie Neale, 46
Delta Area, 155-156
Delta Lake (Monte Alto), 104, 158
Delta Orchard Clubhouse (Monte Alto), 104-
105, 158
Devil’s River, 5, 168
Diaz Ordaz, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 171
Diaz, Texas see Mercedes, Texas
Diaz, Texas see San Benito, Texas
Díaz, Porfirio, 72, 80, 82-83, 91-92, 122, 132
Dieciséis de Septiembre, 25, 133
Dishman, James, 105, 106
Dittburner, Larry, 126
Dittburner, Patti, 126
Divine Providence Hospital, 185
Dobson, James C., 111
Dodge City, Kansas, 103
Doffing, Nick, 134
Dolly Vinsant Memorial Hospital (San Benito),
111, 186
Dolores, Guanajuato, Mexico, 24
Dolores, Texas, 18, 24, 56
Dominguez, Miguel, 23
Donna Hidalgo County No. 1 Irrigation
District, 132
Donna Hooks Fletcher Historical Museum,
131, 133
Donna Hotel, 131-132
Donna Independent School District, 130, 133
Donna Sugar Mill, 132
Donna Women’s Club, 132
Donna, Texas, 27, 87, 99, 124, 128-133, 160,
162, 168, 172
Dorantes, Andrés, 11
Dorcas Society (San Juan), 137
Doss, Porter, 126
Dougherty, Ada, 83
Dougherty, Edward, 87
Dougherty, James L., 89
Dougherty, Walter, 151
Driscoll Children’s Hospital (Corpus Christi),
188
Driscoll Ranch, 96
Driscoll, Robert, 96
Driscoll, Robert, Jr., 96
Driscoll, Robert, Sr., 96
Dunlap, Bailey H., Sr., 120
Dunn, Pat, 69
Durango, Mexico, 22, 31
E
E. Manautou Dry Goods, 132
Earhart, Amelia, 117, 176
Earl C. Sams Foundation, 118, 190
Earl C. Sams Foundation gifts, 118
East Donna, Texas, 129
East McAllen, Texas, 141
Ebenezer, Texas see Alamo, Texas
Echo Motor Hotel (Edinburg), 154
Edcouch Enterprise, 156
Edcouch, Texas, 87, 123, 125, 155-157
Edcouch-Elsa High School, 157
Edcouch-Elsa Independent School District,
156-157
Edinburg Chamber of Commerce, 155
Edinburg Economic Development Corporation,
155
Edinburg Hospital, 187
Edinburg International Airport, 177
Edinburg Junior College, 148, 154
Edinburg Regional Medical Center, 187
Edinburg Regional Medical Plaza 1, 187
Edinburg Roadrunners, 155
Edinburg School District, 154
Edinburg, Texas, 7, 44, 64, 67, 78, 83, 86,
90, 95-98, 102, 104, 136, 138, 140, 147,
149, 151, 153-155, 173-174, 179-180,
182, 187
Edinburgh, Texas see Hidalgo, Texas
Edith L. Whipple Memorial Library (Los
Fresnos), 112-113
Eilers, Kenneth, 124
Eilers, Robert, 124
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 123, 147, 166-167
El Cantaro Ford, 14, 18
El Desierto de los Muertos (The Desert of the
Dead), 44
El Frontón de Santa Isabel, 65
El Horcón Tract, 99
El Paso, Texas, 42, 93, 172
El Ranchito, 111
El Sal del Rey/La Sal Del Rey, 21, 22, 171
Elsa Canning Company, 156
Elsa State Bank and Trust Company, 156
Elsa, Texas, 87, 123, 155, 156, 157, 158
Emigrantes De Asturias: The Story of the de la
Viña Family, 153
Escandón colonization, 13, 159
Escandón, José de, 14-21, 26, 42, 56, 63, 83,
151, 159
Esparza, Elfego, 111
Espíritu Santo Grant, 20, 71, 112
Estevanico, 11
F
F. H. Vahlsing, Inc. (Elsa), 156
Fairfield Marriott Hotel (Weslaco), 126
Falcon Dam, 19, 100, 147, 150, 166-168, 172,
182, 190
Falcon Dam construction, 166-168
Falcon Dam International Crossing, 172
Falcon Dam Reservoir, 2, 17, 19
Falcon Lake and Park, 17, 168, 172, 190
Falcon-Amistad Reservoir System, 184
Family Land Heritage Program, 83
Family Land Heritage Registry, 83
Farm Security Administration, 166
Farmer’s State Bank (San Benito), 111
Fatherree, Tom, 184
Federalist system (Mexico), 29, 31
Fehrenbach, T. R., 111
Fender, Freddy, 111
Ferdinand Maximilian (emperor of Mexico),
61, 72, 80-82
Ferdinand VII, 23
Fernández, Amador, 87
Fernández, Bartolo, 90
Fernández, Eugenio, 90
Fiesta Edinburg, 151
Fifth Army, Eighty-eight Division, 46
Fifth Infantry Regiment, 38
Fifty Years of Agricultural Research in the Rio
Grande Valley of Texas, 165
First Battalion, Twenty-fifth Infantry Regiment,
117
First National Bank (Pharr), 140
First State Bank & Trust Co. (McAllen), 143
First State Bank of Alamo, 134-135
Fisher, William S., 32-33
Fletcher, Donna Hooks, 128, 131
Focus on the Family, 112
For We Love Our Valley Home, 113
Ford, John Salmon “Rip”, 67, 70-73, 75, 76
Fordyce, Sam, 122
Fort Brown (Brownsville), 36-37, 39, 41-42,
44-46, 63, 73-77, 84-85, 117-118, 129-
130, 178-179, 185, 251
Fort Jessup, Louisiana, 35
Fort Polk (Port Isabel), 36-37, 66
Fort Ringgold (Rio Grande City), 39, 41, 50,
60-61, 63, 76, 84-85, 129-130, 178
Fort St. Louis, 14
Fort Texas see Fort Brown
Fort Worth, Texas, 143
Fort Yuma, Arizona, 42
Forty-Niners (Gold Rush), 42, 46
Forum, Texas see Alamo, Texas
Foster, William, 121-122
Fourth Artillery Regiment, 61
Fragoso, Agustín, 17
Francis Joseph (emperor of Austria), 80
French colony in Texas, 13
French intervention in Mexico, 80, 82
Frontón de Santa Isabel, 36
Futuro McAllen, 144-145
G
Gaines County, 109
Galveston Island, 8, 11-12
Galveston, Texas, 46, 65, 67, 77, 89, 128, 129
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
390

Garay, Francisco de, 9-10
Garceño, Texas, 18
García, Don Rafael, 65
García, José Moreles, 67, 69
Garcías, Texas see Roma, Texas
Garza Falcón, Blas María de la, 16, 18
Garza Falcón, José de la, 60
Garza Falcón, José María de la, 15
Garza Falcón, Miguel de la, 15
Garza Ranch, 60
Garza, Francisco de la, 151
Garza, Leo, Jr., 123
Garza, Maria Hilaria de la, 60
Garza, Reynaldo, 118
Garza, Ruben, 123
Garza, Ygnacio, 118, 184
Gateway International Bridge, 52, 169
Gem of the Valley Hotel (Pharr), 139-140
General Telephone Company (Verizon), 178
General Visit of the Royal Commission of
1767, 19
George, Elsie, 156
George, J. R., 114
George, R. A., 157
George, William, 156
Gift of the Rio, 22, 83
Gigedo, Revilla, 19
Gilbert, Minnie, 22
Gill, S. Lamar, 104-105
Gill, Sarah, 104-105
Givens, H. L., 142
Gladys Porter Zoo (Brownsville), 118, 190
Glover, Lloyd, 140
Goliad, Texas, 27, 29, 30, 31
Gómez, José Manuel, 83
Gonzalez, I. Miley, 165
Gooch Insurance Agency, 327
Gorgas Administration Building, 117-118,
185
Gorgas, William C., 77, 185
grain sorghum production, 163
Grandview Hospital (Edinburg), 187
Grant, Ulysses S., 36, 41
Great Depression, 68, 70, 104, 111, 135, 140,
156, 180
Great River-The Rio Grande in North American
History, 5
Greer, Dewitt C., 173
Greyhound Bus Lines, 174
Grito de Dolores, 24, 25
Grotto of Lourdes replica (Rio Grande City),
62-63
Guajardo, Francisco, 157
Guanajuato, Mexico, 24
Guaranty Fund Bank (La Feria), 120
Guaranty State Bank (Edcouch), 124
Guardado see Garceño, Texas
Guerra, Manuel, 59
Guerra, Vicente, 17
Guerrero Viejo see Guerrero, Tamaulipas, Mexico
Guerrero, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 2, 7, 17-20, 25-
26, 31, 32, 56, 167-168, 172
Guerrero, Vicente, 25, 26, 28
Gulf Intracoastal Canal, 3, 116, 197
Gulf Intracoastal Canal System, 107, 175
Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, 105, 115, 175
Gulf of Mexico, 5, 6, 12, 13, 38, 44, 56, 105,
116, 167
Gutierrez, Ricardo, 174
Gutiérrez de Lara, José Bernardo, 25
H
H&H Foods (Mercedes), 123
Hackland, Keith, 134
Haggar Manufacturing Company, 182, 182
Hammond, Frank, 138, 139
Handy, Angelita Cavazos, 128
Handy, Chauncey, 128
Handy, Sylvia, 128
Handy, Thomas J., 128
Harding Foundation (Raymondville), 105, 158
Harding, Glenn, 158
Harding, Laura, 104-105
Harding, Rollo, 104, 158
Harding, William A., 104-105, 158
Harding-Lindahl Land Company, 104
Harlingen Air Force Base, 108, 177
Harlingen Air Gunnery School, 107
Harlingen Chamber of Commerce, 108
Harlingen Country Club, 177
Harlingen Press, 185
Harlingen State Chest Hospital, 186
Harlingen State Tuberculosis Hospital, 186
Harlingen, Texas, 10, 90, 95, 97-98, 100, 106-
109, 112, 114, 118-119, 122, 131, 155,
160, 169, 173-175, 177, 182, 184-186,
188, 190
Harlon Block Park, 127
Harper’s Weekly, 73
Harvey Richards Air Field (Harlingen), 177
Hauseman, Art, 108
Hawkins, George T., 133
Hawthorne, S. C., 134
healthcare institutions, 184-188
Heart of the Rio Grande, 149
H-E-B, 108, 131
Heintzelman, Samuel P., 71
Hensz, Richard, 162
Heritage Foundation of Hidalgo County, 65
Hernandez, Joe, Jr., 133
Hester, A. F., Sr., 99, 128-32, 160
Hester, Forrest, 130
Hester, Mary, 130
Hester, Mary Richardson, 130
Hester, Tom, 130
Hicks, Benjamin, 109
Hicks, Oliver, 109
Hidalgo and Cameron County Water Control
and Improvement District No. 9, 100, 123
Hidalgo City Hall, 66
Hidalgo County, 6, 20-21, 25, 44, 63-64, 73,
83, 89-90, 95, 104, 119, 128, 133, 136-
137, 148, 151-153, 158, 160, 164, 166,
171, 173-174, 180, 184, 185
Hidalgo County Bank (Mercedes), 123
Hidalgo County Centennial, 133
Hidalgo County Courthouse, 65, 136, 152
Hidalgo County Historical Commission, 64-65,
149, 171
Hidalgo County Historical Museum, 7, 83, 92,
153, 155
Hidalgo County Historical Society, 64
Hidalgo County Irrigation District No. 2, 64,
65
Hidalgo County Jail, 65
Hidalgo Pumphouse Heritage and Discovery
Park, 64, 66, 100
Hidalgo Telephone Company, 178
Hidalgo Water District No. 2, 133
Hidalgo y Castillo, Miguel, 24-25, 44
Hidalgo, Texas, 25, 44, 63-66, 84, 89, 90, 100,
141, 152, 170-173, 178
Hill of the Bells, 82
Hill, Eustacia, 106
Hill, George, 106
Hill, John C. C., 32
Hill, Lon C., Sr., 106-108, 112, 122, 128, 131
157, 160
Hill, Lon C. “Mose”, Jr., 112, 118
Hill, Paul, 106
Hill, Austine Segrado, 32
Hinojosa de Ballí, Doña Rosa María , 119
Hinojosa, Guadalupe, 126
Hinojosa, Juan H., 62
Hinojosa, Manuel, 148-149
Hinojosa, Ophelia, 126
Hinojosa, Rubén, 123, 165
Hinojosa, Salvador M., 123
Hispaniola, 9
Historia de Mexico, 9, 24, 80, 82
Historic Brownsville Museum, 98
Historical Heritage of the Lower Rio Grande, 62
Hockaday, J. A., 68
Hodes, Mike, 108
Hofmokel, F. W. “Fritz”, 116
Hoit, J. W., 145
Holloway, Milton, 129
Hooks, T. J., 99, 128-132, 160
Hoover, Herbert, 116
Hord, Edward, 59
Horgan, Paul, 5
Horn, R. E., 143
horticulture, 163
Houston, Sam, 28, 30, 31
Houston, Texas, 56, 111, 148, 174, 176
Huerta, Victoriano, 92, 93
Humble Oil Company (King Ranch), 55
Hunt Valley Development (Mission), 150
Hunt, Ted R., 189
Hunter, John H., 72
Huntington, C. P., 32
Hurricane Alice, 168
Hurricane Allen, 183
Hurricane Barry, 183
Hurricane Beulah, 168, 182
Hurricane Bret, 183
Hurricane Gilbert, 183
Hurricane of 1867, 46, 50, 76-77
Hurricane of 1874, 76
Hurricane of 1933, 46, 70, 85, 111, 113, 121-
122, 135, 137, 179, 180
Hurricane of 1967, 121, 135
Hutchison, Kay Bailey, 165
Hynes, L. J., 84-85
I
Illustrated London News, 29, 75
Immaculate Conception Church (Brownsville),
INDEX
391

46-48, 63, 84
Immaculate Conception School and Church
(Rio Grande City), 62
Incarnate Word Academy (Brownsville), 48
International Boundary and Water
Commission, 99, 167
International Venture Center (Weslaco), 126
Ipana Troubadours, 125
Irrigation systems, 64, 65, 83, 85, 94, 98, 99,
100, 101, 112, 121, 123, 130, 139, 147
Iturbide, Agustín de, 25, 26, 28
Iwo Jima Monument and Visitor Center
(Harlingen), 108
J
jacale, 16, 76, 78-79, 85, 129
Jackson, Jeffrey, 109
Jamaica, 9, 10
Jefferson, Thomas, 30
Jim Hogg County, 6, 179
Jiménez, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 15, 17, 20
Joe E. Pate and Associates, 171
John Knox Village (Weslaco), 126-127
John Vale-Noah Cox House (Roma), 58
Johnson, Charles R., 104
Johnson, E. E. “Jack”, 124
Juárez, Benito, 72, 80-82
K
Kansas Pacific Railroad, 52
Karankawa, The, 6-8, 12-13, 69
Karle, Fred, 122
Karle, Frederick George, 122
Kaufman County, 105
Kearny, Stephen Watts, 39
Kell/Muñoz/Wigodsky Architects, 148
Kelley, Looney, Alexander, and Sawyer, 174
Kelley, Rogers, 174
Kelly, Anna Mae, 139
Kelly, John C., Sr., 138-139
Kelly, John C., Jr., 139
Kelly, Nora, 185
Kelly, William, 50
Kenaf Industries, 164
kenaf production, 164
Kendall, George Wilkins, 41
Kenedy County, 6, 20, 43-44, 56, 183
Kenedy Ranch, 106
Kenedy, Florence, 90
Kenedy, John G., 96
Kenedy, Mifflin, 48-50, 54-56, 74, 76-77, 90,
95
Kentucky Fried Chicken, 146
Keralum, Pierre “Peter”, 47, 48, 57, 84, 89
Key to the Gulf General Store (Port Isabel), 67-
69
KGBT, 120
Kika de la Garza Subtropical Agricultural
Research Center, 126, 148, 165
Kilgore, Joe, 160
King Ranch, 52-56, 90, 103, 106, 153, 164,
173
King, Henrietta Chamberlain, 47, 54, 55, 56
King, Kenedy & Company, 49
King, Richard, 41, 47-50, 52-56, 74, 76-77,
90, 95, 103
King, Richard II, 96
Kingsville, Texas, 54, 56, 96
Kinney, Henry Lawrence, 53
Kleberg County, 183
Kleberg Ranch, 96
Kleberg, Caesar, 96
Kleberg, Robert J., 96
Kleberg, Robert, Jr., 55
Kleberg, Robert, Sr., 55
Kleiber, Joseph, 67
Knapp Family Foundation (Weslaco), 126
Knapp Medical Center (Weslaco), 126-127,
186-187
Knapp Memorial Methodist Hospital
(Weslaco), 127, 186-187
Knapp, Charles T., 134
Knapp, Everett, 126
Krenmuller Farms, 87
KRGV-TV5 (Weslaco), 126
L
L’Illustration, 80
La Bahía del Espíritu Santo (Goliad), 13, 14,
27
La Blanca, Texas, 128
La Blanca Agricultural Company (Donna), 99,
128, 130, 132
La Blanca Grant, 87
La Blanca Tract (Donna), 128, 129
La Bolsa Bend, 71-72
La Borde House (Rio Grande City), 61-63
La Casa Blanca, 84-85
La Coma Ranch (Edinburg), 90, 136, 153
La Donna Canal Company, 132
La Feria Grant, 119
La Feria Hotel, 119-120
La Feria News, 120
La Feria Townsite Company, 120
La Feria Water District, 121
La Feria, Texas, 119, 120, 121, 122, 178, 291,
327
La Golondrina, 139-140
La Grange, Texas, 34
La Habitación (Hidalgo), 63
La Joya, Texas, 151, 180
La Lomita Grant, 145, 151
La Lomita Land Company (Mission), 145
La Lomita Mission, 145 , 151
La Lomita Ranch, 47
La Perla Florería and Yerbería (Weslaco), 126
La Reforma Ranch, 184
La Sal Vieja, 21, 22
La Salle, Robert Cavelier Sieur de, 13
La Villa High School, 158
La Villa, Texas, 123, 155, 157-158
La Virgen de San Juan de los Lagos, 138
Laborde House Restaurant, 49
Laborde, Eva Marks, 61
Laborde, Francois, 61
Lafitte, Jean, 8, 65
Lafitte, Pierre, 65
Lafitte’s Well, 66
Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, 115
Laguna Madre, 3, 6, 29, 65, 68, 77, 105, 175,
190, 197
Laguna Seca, 22, 86, 153
Laguna Seca Ranch (Edinburg), 87
Lake Charles, Louisiana, 141
Lamar, Mirabeau B., 31
land developers, 94, 99, 101, 119, 134
Landrum Plantation/Rancho Cypress/El Rancho
Ciprés (San Benito), 90-91
Landrum, Frances Powers, 91
Landrum, James F., 109
Landrum, James L., 90-91
Landry, Tom, 148-149
Lane, Walter P., 34
Langley, Jack, 144
Langley, Ralph R., 136
Laredo, Texas, 18, 29, 31, 32, 43, 44, 50, 56,
57, 58, 60, 77, 95, 174, 182, 185
Las Cuevas Ranch, 78
Las Majadas Ranch, 103
Las Yescas, 112
Lavaca Bay, 13
Law of April 6, 1830, 28
Lawler, Marion R., Jr., 185
Lawler, Marion R., Sr., 185
Lawler, Mrs. Marion R., Sr., 185
Lee, Robert E., 41, 61, 71, 75
Lee, Thomas, 112
Lee, Thomas F., 118, 119
Leeland-Stuart Place Clubhouse, 118-119
Leopold I, 80
Lerdo de Tejado, Sebastián, 82
Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 27, 72, 74
Levi-Strauss Manufacturing Company, 182
Lewis, Gideon “Legs”, 54
Lightner, Camille Sams, 118
Lincoln, Laura, 133
Lindahl, A. A., 104
Lindbergh, Charles, 117, 176
Lino Ramirez Residence and Store (Roma), 59
Lipscomb, W. L., 83
livestock production, 164
Llano Grande Center for Research and
Development (Edcouch), 157
Llano Grande Grant, 20, 27, 124
Llano Grande Lake, 124, 179
Llano Grande Tract, 128
Lone Star Fair (Corpus Christi), 53
Long, Bill, 149
Long, Gen, 149
Longhorn cattle, 51, 52, 53, 56, 84, 119
Longoria, Rosalio Ponce, 119
Longoria, Yrineo, 119
Lonsboro, Texas, 122
Looney, J. Cullen, 174
Lopez, Olga H., 126
Los Caminos del Rio Heritage Corridor, 58, 60
Los Ebanos, Texas, 151, 171
Los Ebanos Ferry, 78, 171
Los Ejidos de Reynosa Viejo, 151
Los Fresnos High School, 113
Los Fresnos PRCA Rodeo, 114
Los Fresnos State Bank, 112, 114
Los Fresnos, Texas 112-114, 161
Los Indios Free Trade Bridge, 109, 112, 169
Los Indios, Texas, 109, 112, 169
Los Kineños (The King People), 54
Los Llanos de la Feria, 119
Los Saenz (Roma), 57
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
392

Los Tomates, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 169
Lott Town and Improvement Company
(Donna), 131
Lott, Uriah, 95, 96, 97, 98, 106, 131
Louisiana, 42, 74, 85, 89, 160
Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exposition (St.
Louis), 89
Louisiana Rio Grande Sugar Cane Company,
139
Louisiana-Rio Grande Canal Company, 64,
101, 133
Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge, 22
Lower Rio Grande Valley Baptist Association,
186
Lower Rio Grande Valley Historical Society, 72
Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas and Northern
Mexico, 156
Lower Rio Grande Valley Planning Board, 127
Lozano, Santos, Sr., 119
Lugar de Mier, 18
Lula Sams Girl Scout Camp, 118
Lundberg Hotel (Raymondville), 103
Lyford, Texas, 20, 104
Lyford, William, 104, 105
Lyons, George, 45
M
M. Kenedy & Company, 48
Madero, Francisco, 92
Magee, Anne L., 83
Magic Valley Electric Cooperative, 123, 179
Manifest Destiny, 40
Mannering, Dr., 133
Mansfield Bill, 105
Mansfield, Joseph J., 105, 175
Manuel Guerra Store (Roma), 59
maquiladora program, 65, 112, 118, 144, 169,
170, 175, 176, 183
Marcy, William, 35
Mariachi Los Coyotes (La Joya), 151
Marine Military Academy (Harlingen), 108
Marks, Ernest, 61
Martin Drug Store (San Juan), 137
Martinez Mercantile Store (San Juan), 137
Martinez, Carmen, 110
Martinez, Felix T., 171
Martinez, Manuel, 137
Martinez, Narciso, 111
Martinez, Victoria, 137
masa (corn flour), 163
Matagorda Bay, 8, 14, 29
Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 26-30, 32-33,
36-39, 44-46, 48-50, 55-56, 59, 66, 71-78,
87, 95, 115, 117-118, 169, 172, 176, 183,
190
Mattar, S. M., 125
Mattar’s Store for Men, 125
Mayfield, Tom, 137
Maximillian see Ferdinand Maximillian
McAllen Foreign Trade Zone, 144
McAllen International Museum, 144
McAllen Medical Center, 187
McAllen Municipal Hospital, 187
McAllen Ranch (Linn), 83, 84
McAllen Townsite Company, 141
McAllen, Argyle, 83
McAllen, Carlota, 86
McAllen, James, 83-84
McAllen, John, 63, 83-84, 86, 141, 152, 160
McAllen, Margaret, 83
McAllen, Salomé Ballí Young, 83, 84, 86
McAllen, Texas, 50, 64, 98, 122, 136, 137,
139, 141-145, 149, 152, 170-172, 177-
180, 182-184, 187-190
McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge,
65, 144, 171
McAllen-Miller International Airport, 144, 177
McCalip-Ivy Hospital (Weslaco), 186
McColl, A. J., 136
McCreery Aviation Company, Inc., 177
McDonald, Laurier, 49
McManus, J. S., 125
McNail, Eddie Gathings, 120
McNelly, L. H., 78, 103
Meade, George Gordon, 41
Mejía, Tomás, 81
melon production, 160, 161
Mena, Marcos de, 13
Mendéz, Joseph, 32
Mendiola, Juan, 54
Mendoza, Antonio de, 11, 12, 23
Mercedes Electric Light Company, 178
Mercedes Enterprise, 123
Mercedes General Hospital, 186
Mercedes Industrial Park, 123
Mercedes Surgical and Obstetrical Hospital,
186
Mercedes, Texas, 20, 47, 87, 89, 94, 99-100,
109, 121-124, 164, 170, 179, 185-186,
197
Mercy Hospital (Brownsville), 184-185
mescal, 7
mestizos, 23, 92
Mexican National Railway, 77, 95
Mexico, 5-6, 9-13, 15, 17, 19-28, 30-35, 37,
39-43, 46, 48-50, 52, 54, 57-58, 60-62,
65, 67, 69-74, 76-78, 80-83, 87, 89, 91-
94, 98-100, 107, 109, 112, 115-116, 118,
123-124, 127, 132-133, 137-138, 140-141,
143-144, 148, 155, 163, 166-177, 179-
180, 182-183, 185, 189-190
Mexico City, Mexico, 6, 10-11, 13, 18, 23-29,
33-35, 39, 40, 72, 81-82, 92-93, 117, 119,
176
Mid-Valley Hospital Development Corporation,
186
Mier Expedition, 32, 34, 44
Mier, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 14, 17, 18, 20, 30-
33, 54, 56, 58, 59, 60, 184
Military Highway, 41, 173
Military Telegraph Road, 129
Miller Hotel, 138
Miller Municipal Airport, 144
Miller, Marjorie, 144
Miller, Sam, 144, 177
Mission Business Park, 162
Mission Doctors Plaza, 188
Mission High School, 148-149
Mission Historical Society, 149
Mission Hospital, 187, 188
Mission Times, 146
Mission, Texas, 11, 22, 47, 90, 94, 97-98, 109,
145-151, 162, 166, 168, 172, 179-180,
185, 190
Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, 46-
47, 57, 145
Missouri (as part of New Spain), 27
Missouric Pacific Depot (San Juan), 137
Missouri Pacific Railroad, 98, 139
Monitor, The, 184
Monroe, James, 25
Montalvo, San Benito, 109
Monte Alto, 104-105, 155, 157-158, 166
Monterrey, Nuevo Léon, Mexico, 18, 33, 39,
42, 58, 59, 60, 77-78, 141, 148, 152, 170,
175
Montijo, Eugenie Marie de, 80, 82
Moore Air Force Base, 149, 166
Moore Field (Mission), 149
Moreles, José Maria, 25
Moreno, Rafael, 109
Morgan City, Louisiana, 139
Morgan Steamship Line, 67, 77
Morrison, William H., 114
Morrow, Bobby, 112
Moseville, Texas see Los Fresnos, Texas
Muñoz, Candelario, 132
Muñoz, Dionicio, 129, 132
Museums of Port Isabel, 67
Mussina, Simon, 45
N
Nacogdoches, Texas, 27
Nacogdoches County, 44
Napoleon III, 80-82
Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center, 111
Narváez, Pánfilo de, 10-12
National Audubon Society, 85-86
National Park Service, 39, 40
National Register of Historic Places, 62, 115,
144
National University of Mexico, 11
Nature Conservancy of Texas, 190
Neale, William, 46
Neale, William A., 46
New Iberia, Louisiana, 138
New Mexico, 5, 39, 40, 41, 137
New Orleans Picayune, 41
New Orleans, Louisiana, 27, 35, 41, 46, 47,
59, 65, 66, 67, 77, 86, 91
New Spain, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 23, 51
New York and Brownsville Improvement
Company, 45
New York Guard, Squadron A (McAllen), 142
Nixon, Richard, 111, 168
North American Butterfly Association, 150
North American Free Trade Agreement, 98,
141, 184
Norton, Robert E. “Bob”, 65
Nueces County, 43, 44
Nueces River, 6, 14, 17, 30, 31, 35-36, 39, 43,
53-54
Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Reynosa, 16
Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, 17
Nuestra Señora del Refugio, 19
Nuevo Guerrero, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 17, 19,
167, 172
Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 77
INDEX
393

Nuevo León, Mexico, 14, 15, 16, 31, 130, 148
Nuevo Progreso, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 124,
127, 169-170, 190
Nuevo Santander, Mexico, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20,
25, 26, 56
nursery industry, 163
O
O. P. Archer Hotel (McAllen), 139
Oaxaca, Mexico, 80, 82
Obregón, Álvaro, 92-93
Odin, Jean Marie, 46
oil and gas production, 180-181
Old Country Store (Combes), 105
Old Flossie, 136, 152
Old Rattler Limited, 136
Old Rough and Ready, 62
Olivarez, Reducindo, 126
Ordaz, Díaz, 168, 183
Ortiz, Doña Josefa, 23
Our Lady of Refuge Church (Roma), 57
Our Lady of Visitation Chapel, 84
P
Pablo Ramirez Residence and Store (Roma),
59
Padre Island, 8-9, 12, 26, 68-70, 105, 175
Padre Island shipwrecks, 12, 13, 69
Palm Grove Plantation-Ranch (Brownsville),
85-86
Palmito Ranch (Brownsville), 70, 75
Palmview, Texas, 151
Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Site
(Brownsville), 40
Pan American College (Edinburg), 154
Pan American University (Edinburg), 154
Pan American World Airways (Brownsville),
176
Panuco River, 10
Panuco, Veracruz, Mexico, 13
Parker, A. F. “Al”, 120
Parker, Lyle, 188-189
Parker, P. C., 188-189
Parker, R. S., 188-189
Parkview Hotel (Donna), 131-132
Paso Real Ferry, 114, 128
Paso Real Stagecoach Inn (Rio Hondo), 108,
114
Patton, George, 93
Payne Dealer Group (Weslaco), 126
Payne Motor Company (Weslaco), 126
Payne, Ed, 126
Pecos River, 5, 168
peninsulares, 23, 24
Peñitas, 11, 151
People’s Store, The, 125
Pepsi Sports Park (Mission), 150-151
Pershing, John J., 93
peyote, 7
Pharr Canal System, 139
Pharr Industrial Park, 141, 170
Pharr Press, 140
Pharr, Henry N., 138, 139
Pharr, Texas, 64, 83, 136, 138-141, 170, 171,
173
Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge, 141, 170
Pharr-San Juan-Alamo Independent School
District, 135, 139, 140
Phillipe (count of Flanders), 82
Phillips, Tom, 121
Piat, Jules, 47
Pierce, Franklin, 41
piloncillos, 85, 89
Piñeda, Alvarez de, 9-10
Pittman, H. Minat, 45
Plan of Iguala, 25
Plan of San Diego, 137
Platt, F. C., 136
plaza, 15, 16, 17, 29, 32, 33, 57, 58, 59, 60, 167
Plaza Hotel (Donna), 131-132
Pless, Ernest, 105
Poage, Bob, 160
Pocket Park (Raymondville), 22
Point Isabel, 36-37, 41, 46-47, 66-68, 73-75,
77, 106, 115, 116, 128, 129, 130
Polk, James K., 34, 35, 39
Ponce, José Jesús “Joe”, 153
Pope, Dorothy Lee, 134, 135
porción, 19, 20
Porción 67, 138
Porción 72, 133
Port Brownsville, 68, 116, 162, 175, 181-182
Port Harlingen, 107, 115, 175
Port Isabel Historical Museum, 36, 67, 69
Port Isabel Lighthouse, 66-68
Port Isabel Townsite Company, 68
Port Isabel, Texas, 3, 50, 65, 67-69, 84, 86,
95, 114, 174-175, 178, 179, 190
Port Isabel-San Benito Navigation District, 175
Port Mansfield Annual Fishing Tournament,
105
Port Mansfield, Texas, 105, 175, 184, 190
Port of Brazos de Santiago, 67, 77, 178
Port of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 66
Port of Veracruz, Veracruz, Mexico, 66
Porter, Gladys Sams, 118, 190
Portscheller, Heinrich “Enrique”, 58-59
Portsmouth, 49
Powers, Stephen, 54, 90, 109
Presidio La Bahia, 29
Priest, Lew, 121
Pro Football Hall of Fame, 149
Progreso International Bridge, 87, 127, 169-
170
Progreso Post Office, 124
Progreso, Texas, 87-88, 124, 170
Public Works Administration, 116
Puckett, P. N., 73
Puebla, Mexico, 80
Punta del Monte Ranch, 56, 106
Purísima Concepción Church, 20
Q
Queen Isabella Causeway (Port Isabel), 3, 68,
189-190
Querétaro, Mexico, 14-15, 23-24, 80, 82
Quinta Mazatlán, 190
R
Rabb, Frank, 85-86
Rabb, Lillian M. Starck, 85-86
Raimond, Vance D., 107, 174
Rainbow Era on the Rio Grande, 134
Ramirez Hospital, 59
Ramírez, Alfonso R., 79
Ramírez, Emilia Schunior, 78
Ramirez, Lino, 59
Ramirez, Pablo, 59
Ramos, Basilio, 137
Ranch Life in Hidalgo County After 1850, 78
Ranchero, 49, 71-72
ranching, 78, 79, 83
Rancho de Buena Vista (Donna), 56
Rancho de Carricitos (Brownsville), 39
Rancho de Los Saenz (Roma), 56
Rancho de Santa María, 50, 84
Rancho Parajito (Donna), 129
Rancho Santa Cruz, 69
Rankin, Melinda, 48
Ranking, H. H., 131
Raymond, Edward B., 103-104
Raymondville Historical Museum and
Community Center, 104, 291
Raymondville State Bank, 103
Raymondville Town and Improvement
Company, 103
Raymondville, Texas, 13, 20, 22, 44, 97, 103-
105, 173, 175, 178, 291
Read, F. P., 96
Reber Memorial Library, 104
Reber, John O., 104
Reber, Lou Emma, 104
Reber, Winnie, 104
Red Fish Bay Landing, 105, 175
Red Gate Ranch see La Coma Ranch
Redman, Bill, 75, 76
Reeves, Almeda Couch, 124-125
Reeves, Robert L., 124-125
Refugio, Texas, 31
Relampago Ranch, 87
Relampago, Texas, 87
Renaissance-Casa de Palmas Hotel (McAllen),
143
Rentfro, R. B., 116
Republic of Mexico, 26, 28, 34
Republic of Texas, 6, 22, 30, 31, 32, 34, 43
Republic of the Rio Grande, 31
resaca, 109, 110, 112
Retamal Diversion Dam (Donna), 168
Revilla see Guerrero, Tamaulipas, Mexico
Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 16-20, 26, 33,
44, 56, 63-66, 71-72, 86, 119, 123-128,
130, 141, 144-145, 151, 169-171, 174,
183, 190
Ridge, Naomi Vivian, 158
Rincon de Santa Gertrudis, 54
Ringgold Barracks (Rio Grande City), 60, 71,
75
Ringgold, Samuel, 38-39, 61
Río Bravo del Norte, 5
Río Bravo Irrigation Company (McAllen), 141
Río Bravo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 133, 172
Rio Concho, 5
Río de las Palmas, 9, 10
Rio Farms, Inc., 164, 166
Rio Grande, 5-7, 9-10, 13-23, 25-33, 35-40,
42-45, 48-50, 53-54, 56, 58, 60, 63, 65,
67, 70-71, 73-74, 77-78, 84-85, 87, 91,
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
394

94, 99-100, 105, 107, 109-114, 119-120,
124, 127-130, 133, 151-152, 159-160,
166-168, 171-173, 185
Rio Grande City Chamber of Commerce, 62
Rio Grande City Independent School District,
61
Rio Grande City, Texas, 5, 16, 18, 22, 39, 44,
47-50, 58, 60-63, 70-71, 75, 78, 81, 89,
97-98, 129, 151, 157, 171, 174, 178, 184,
188
Rio Grande City-Camargo Bridge, 172
Rio Grande Clarion, 139
Rio Grande Female Institute, 48
Rio Grande Flood of 1909, 129-131, 146, 151
Rio Grande international bridges, 59-60, 65,
87-88, 109, 112, 115, 118, 127, 133, 141,
144, 151, 168-173
Rio Grande Railroad Company, 50, 67-68, 77,
86, 95, 115, 174, 178
Rio Grande Regional Hospital (McAllen), 187-
188
Rio Grande settlements, 31
Rio Grande State Center for Mental Health and
Mental Retardation, 186
Rio Grande tributaries, 5, 168
Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival, 108-109
Rio Grande Valley boundaries, 6
Rio Grande Valley Chamber of Commerce
(Weslaco), 102, 127, 148, 184
Rio Grande Valley Citrus Exchange, 126
Rio Grande Valley climate, 6
Rio Grande Valley Empowerment Zone, 158
Rio Grande Valley Gas Company, 179
Rio Grande Valley geology, 6
Rio Grande Valley land, 6
Rio Grande Valley Livestock Show, 122-123,
164
Rio Grande Valley Museum, 10, 106-108, 114,
185
Rio Grande Valley Partnership Weslaco), 126-
127, 148, 174, 184
Rio Grande Valley Planning Board, 148
Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers Cooperative,
122, 158, 160
Rio Grande Valley Whitewings (Harlingen), 155
Rio Grande Wildlife Corridor, 190
Rio Grande: U.S.-Mexico boundary, 40
Rio Hondo, Texas, 114-115, 177
Rio Red grapefruit, 161, 162
Rio Rico Kennel Club, 170
Rio Rico, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 99, 100, 170
Rio Rico, Texas, 99
Río Santander, 17
Río Soto la Marina, 9
Rio Theatre, 149
Rio Valley Canning Company, 162
RioFest (Harlingen), 109
Rios of Mercedes, 123
Rip Ford’s Texas, 70
Ripley, C. A., 122
Robert E. Lee House (Rio Grande City), 61
Robert E. Norton Visitor Center, 65
Robert L. Savage Mercantile Store, 136
Roberts, J. B., 128, 131
Robertson, Sam A., 69, 91, 96-97, 109-111,
114, 136, 160
Robinson, Charles III, 110, 111
Robstown, Texas, 96
Rock Island-Frisco Lines, 95
Roettele, Carl, 156
Rogers, Roy, 149
Roma Plaza, 57, 59
Roma Plaza National Historic Landmark
District, 57, 58
Roma Restoration Project, 58-59
Roma, Texas, 47, 48, 50, 56-60, 75, 84, 157,
161, 170, 172, 178
Roma-Ciudad Miguel Alemán International
Suspension Bridge, 59-60, 172
Roosevelt, Theodore, 117
Royal Land Grants North of the Rio Grande:
1777-1821, 62
Ruiz Cortines, Adolfo, 166-167
Ruiz, Manuel, 72
Run School, 131
Run, Texas, 128-132, 160
Runn, Texas see Run, Texas
Rusk, Thomas Jefferson, 30
Ruthven, Ed, 129, 131
Ruthven, George, 129
S
Sabal Palm Refuge (Brownsville), 85-86
Saenz Fernández, Manuela, 87
Saenz, Don Florencio, 87-88
Salado River/Río Salado, 5-6, 14, 17
Salado, Coahuila, Mexico, 33-34
Salinas, Alonzo, 129
Salinas, Daniel II, 129
salt lakes and the salt trade, 21-22
Salt Trail, 22, 171
Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico, 21, 28, 31, 33, 39,
42, 78
Sam Fordyce, Texas, 90, 95, 97
Sams Stadium, 118
Sams, Earl C., 118, 190
San Antonio de Béjar, 14, 27, 28, 29
San Antonio River, 13
San Antonio, Texas, 31, 32, 41, 62, 71, 75, 77,
95, 107, 134, 148, 152, 173-174, 176, 182
San Augustín Plaza, 31
San Benito Airport, 111
San Benito and Rio Grande Valley Railroad,
114
San Benito Bank and Trust, 111
San Benito High School, 111
San Benito Irrigation District, 110
San Benito Land and Water Company, 109-
110, 178
San Benito News, 110
San Benito, Texas, 20, 69, 90-91, 97, 109-112,
160, 169, 173, 178, 182, 186, 327
San Diego, Texas, 137
San Felipe de Austin, 28
San Felipe Parish, Guanajuato, Mexico, 24
San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 26
San Isidro, Texas, 123
San Juan Chapel, 20
San Juan de Carricitos Grant, 20
San Juan de los Lagos, 24
San Juan Hotel, 136-137
San Juan People’s Church, 137-138
San Juan Plantation, 83, 89, 104, 128, 136-
137, 152, 160, 178
San Juan River/Río San Juan, 5-6, 14-16, 22,
130, 182
San Juan Townsite Company, 136
San Juan, Texas, 64, 87, 90, 95, 133, 136-139,
144, 152
San Juanito Ranch, 84, 133
San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico,
24
San Patricio County, 43, 44
San Pedro de Roma, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 56
San Perlita, 104
San Román, José, 46
San Salvador del Tule Grant, 20-22
Sanborn Travelogs, 189
Sanborn’s International Travel, 189
Sanborn, Bill, 189
Sanborn, Dan, 189
Sánchez, Don Tomás, 18
Sanders, Colonel, 146
Santa Ana de Camargo, 16
Santa Anita Grant, 83, 84
Santa Anita Ranch, 133
Santa Anna, Antonio López de, 26, 28-32, 34,
80
Santa Gertrudis cattle, 55-56, 164
Santa Gertrudis Creek (King Ranch), 53-55
Santa Gertrudis, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 96
Santa Margarita, 104
Santa María, Texas, 84-85, 129
Santa María de Aguayo, Tamaulipas, Mexico,
26
Santa Rosa High School, 121, 251
Santa Rosa Ranch, 121
Santa Rosa Signal, 121
Santa Rosa, Texas, 119, 121-122, 158, 160
Santander, Nuevo Santander, Mexico, 15
Santo Domingo, 9
Santos Coy, Don Nicolás de los, 18, 22
Schnorenberg, S. J., 119-120
Scott, Emory Owen, 62
Scott, Florence Johnson, 50, 62
Scott, Winfield, 39, 41-42
Sebastian, 104
Sebastian, John, 104, 105
Second Texas Cavalry, 70
Security State Bank (Pharr), 140
Seno Mexicano, 13-14, 16
Shary, John H., 146-148, 161
Shary, Mary, 147
Sharyland Business Park, 151
Sharyland Plantation, 147, 150
Sharyland, Texas, 147, 167
Shawn, Jim, 141
She Came to the Valley, 146
Sheerin, Larry, 62
Sheridan, Phil, 76
Shivers, Allan, 147, 161, 167
Shivers, Marialice Shary, 147
Sibson, Tom, 121, 122
Sigle, David, 136-137
Sigle, Glenn, 136-137
Sigle, Mary, 136-137
Sigler, Dave W., 120
Silver, S. P., 122, 152
INDEX
395

Silverio de la Peña Building (Rio Grande City),
62
Singer, Johanna, 69
Singer, John, 69
Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed
Sacrament, 48
Skloss, Joyce, 154
Slidell, John, 35
Smith, A. Newman, 124
Smith, Dell, 149
Smith, E. D., 63
Smith, Erastus “Deaf”, 30
Smith, Robert N., 149
Smith, W. H., 114
Smitty’s Jukebox Museum (Pharr), 141
Snow, Walter, 132
Somervell, Alexander, 32
South Padre Island, Texas, 3, 6, 68-70, 109,
118, 182-183, 189-190, 197
South Texas Better Business Bureau, 126
South Texas Community College, 126
South Texas Health System, 187
South Texas Hospital (Harlingen), 186
South Texas Independent School District, 124
Southern Contracting Company, 96
Southern Pacific Depot (Brownsville), 97-98
Southern Pacific Depot (Edinburg), 98, 155
Southern Pacific Depot (McAllen), 98
Southern Pacific Railroad, 97-98, 113, 121-
122, 152, 155-157
Southern Union Gas Company, 179
Southmost Family Medical Center, 188
Southwest Airlines, 177
Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, 178
Spain, 9-10, 12-14, 22-23, 25, 27, 51, 66, 80,
90-91, 119, 132, 145, 149
Spanish cattle, 51
Spanish colonies in Texas, 27
Spanish colonists in 1848, 43
Spanish customs and culture, 46
Spanish island settlements, 9
Spiderweb Railroad, 98, 110
Sprague Ranch, 136
Sprague, William Frederick, 90, 136, 152-153
St. Joseph the Worker Church (McAllen), 50
St. Joseph’s Church, 88
St. Joseph’s College, 47
St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico Railroad,
56, 68, 96-98, 104, 115, 131, 136, 139,
141, 174
St. Louis, Missouri, 89, 96, 99, 112, 120, 122,
153
St. Mary’s University, 148
St. Peter’s Novitiate (Mission), 145
Stanolind Oil and Gas Company, 181-182
Star Ruby grapefruit, 161-162
Starck, Fred, 85
Starr County, 6, 20, 43-44, 60, 62-63, 73, 167,
180, 188
Starr County Hospital District, 188
Starr County Industrial Foundation, 62
Starr County Medical Society, 185
Starr County Memorial Hospital, 188
Starr, James Harper, 44
Starr-Camargo Bridge Company, 171
Starr-Camargo International Bridge, 171
Stars Drive-In Restaurants, 123
State of Texas, 22, 45, 166
steamboats, 48,-50, 57, 59-60, 67, 70, 75, 77,
85, 172
Stephens, Joe, 125
Stewart, W. E., 124
Stillman House Museum (Brownsville), 45, 46
Stillman, Charles, 45, 46, 48, 49, 55, 104
Stillman, Chauncey, 45
Stillman, Elizabeth Pamela Goodrich, 45
Stillman, Isabel, 45
Stillman, James, 45
Stillman, Texas, 104
Stonewall Jackson Hotel, 110, 111
Stuart Place, 118
Stuart, C. E., 118
Stuart, Robert, 118
sugarcane production, 132, 160
Sullivan City, Texas, 151
Summers, Bill, 174
Sun Country Airlines, 177
Sun Deck Apartments, 121
Swallow Company, 134
Swallow, Texas see Alamo, Texas
Swallow, C. H., 134
Swallow, F. A., 134
Swann, E. C., 112
Swann, Eunice, 113
Swann, Frances, 113
Swann, James, 113
Swann, Susie, 112
T
Tabasco, Texas, 151
Tabasco Folkloric Group (La Joya), 151
Tamaulipas, Mexico, 14-15, 26, 31, 35, 45, 56,
71-72, 78, 91, 128
Tamm, Alfred, 114
Tampacuas Ranch/Rancho Tampacuas
(Mercedes), 47, 87
Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 10, 13, 15, 80,
137
Tandy Hall, 114
Tandy, A. N., 114
Tandy, Cleve, 114
Tandy, Clyde, 114
Taormina, A. F., 133
Taylor, Zachary, 35-44, 48, 62, 66, 84, 114,
129, 171, 173
Texan Hotel (Pharr), 140
Texas A&I University, 165
Texas A&M Experiment Station, 126
Texas A&M Research and Extension Center,
94, 163-166
Texas A&M University, 160, 161, 165
Texas A&M University-Kingsville Citrus
Center, 165
Texas A&M-Kingsville Citrus Center, 126, 162
Texas Air Museum (Rio Hondo), 115, 177
Texas Christian University, 130, 132
Texas Citrus Exchange, 150, 162
Texas Citrus Fiesta (Mission), 149
Texas Citrus Fruit Growers Exchange, 147
Texas Citrus Mutual, 150, 161, 162
Texas Department of Agriculture, 83
Texas Department of Public Health, 186
Texas Department of Transportation, 67, 141,
173, 190
Texas Department of Transportation District
16, 173
Texas Department of Transportation District
21, 159, 173
Texas Fruit Growers’ Exchange, 146
Texas Historical Commission, 52, 111
Texas International Airlines, 177
Texas International Fishing Tournament, 68
Texas Medical Association, 185
Texas National Guard, 142
Texas National Guard Super Armory, 126
Texas Parks & Wildlife, 56, 150, 190
Texas Plastics (Elsa), 156
Texas Produce Association, 150
Texas Rangers, 70, 71, 78, 142, 171
Texas Rio Grande Valley Onion Festival
(Weslaco), 127
Texas Secession Convention, 70, 73
Texas State Bank (Hidalgo), 64-65
Texas State Bank (McAllen), 143
Texas State Historical Association, 71
Texas State Technical College (Harlingen), 108
Texas Vegetable Association, 150
Texas Water Rights Commission, 100
Texas-Louisiana Baseball League, 155
Texas-Mexico Railroad, 50
TexaSweet Citrus Marketing, 150, 162
Texsun Citrus Corporation (Weslaco), 126,
162
Third Infantry Regiment, 38
Thompson, Albert, 122
Tichenor Media System, 120
Tichenor, McHenry, 120
Tio Cano Lake (Santa Rosa), 121
Tip-O-Texan, 102, 118
Tobin, W. G., 71
Toluca Ranch (Progreso), 87, 124
Tornel, José Maris, 32
Torrejón, Anastacio, 38
tourism industry, 60, 108-109, 118, 124, 133,
141, 144-145, 153-154, 162, 166, 188-
189, 190
transportation, 48, 49, 53, 57, 77, 109, 116,
145, 152, 171, 173, 174, 175, 181
Trans-Texas Airways, 177
Treasures of the Gulf Museum (Port Isabel),
67, 69, 175
Treaty of 1884, 99
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 18, 20, 40, 42,
44, 60, 61, 99, 167
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provisions, 42
Treaty of Velasco, 30, 34
Tres Norias, 112
Treviño de Yturria, Felicitas, 46, 56
Treviño, Berta, 154
Tribune, The, 123
Tri-Cities Municipal Airport, 149
Trist, Nicholas P., 40
Tropical Texas Center for Mental Health and
Mental Retardation, 145, 187
Turner, W. H., 128
Twin Cities of the Border and the Country of the
Rio Grande, 63, 84
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
396

U
U.S. Army at Hidalgo, 63
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, 167
U.S. Customs Service (Hidalgo), 46, 63
U.S. Department of Agriculture, 55, 126-127,
148, 149, 160, 164-166, 169
U.S. Department of the Interior, 39
U.S. Highway 281, 52, 85, 141, 173
U.S. Highway 77, 104, 169, 173, 188
U.S. Highway 83, 97, 119, 138-139, 141, 151,
173, 180, 188
U.S. Highway I-69, 173-174
U.S. Industrial Chemicals, 181-182
U.S. State Department, 40
U.S.-Mexican War, 20, 22, 35, 39-40, 54, 57,
61, 68, 99, 174
U.S.-Mexico Water Treaty of 1944, 167
U.S.S. Iwo Jima, 177
Union Carbide Corporation (Brownsville),
181-182
Union Pacific Railroad, 98, 169
University of Texas at Austin, 157
University of Texas Regional Academic Health
Center, 108, 185-186
University of Texas System, 154
University of Texas-Brownsville and Texas
Southmost College, 76-77, 114, 117-118,
185, 251
University of Texas Pan-American (Edinburg),
147-148, 154-155, 189
Urrea, José de, 29
USDA Agricultural Research Service, 165
USDA Fruit and Vegetable Products Laboratory,
162
USDA Pink Bollworm Research Center, 165,
166
USDA Screwworm Eradication Project, 166
V
Valdes, A. G. “Tony”, Sr., 125
Vale, John, 58
Vale, Sam, 184
Valente, Antonio, 67
Valente, Ramona Dominguez, 67
Valladolid, Yucatan, Mexico, 24
Valley Air Care (Harlingen), 188
Valley Baptist Health System (Harlingen), 108,
185-186
Valley Baptist Hospital, 186
Valley Baptist Medical Center, 185-186
Valley Community Hospital, 188
Valley International Airport (Harlingen), 108,
177
Valley Proud History-Cookbook, 158
Valley Regional Medical Center (Brownsville),
188
Valley Telephone Cooperative, 178
Valley Transit Company, Inc., 107, 174
Valley Zoological Society, 190
Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 142
Vargas, Joe, 123
Vargas, Sylvia, 123
Vásquez, Francisco, 13
Vaughan, Ben F., 86
vegetable production, 110, 122, 160, 161
Vela, Crisoforo, 171
Vela, Leonor, 87
Vela, Macedonio, 86
Vela, Mercedes, 86
Vela, Salvador, 87
Velasco, 30, 34
Velasco, Luis de, 23
Velásquez, Diego, 9
Veracruz, Mexico, 22
Veracruz, Veracruz, Mexico, 9, 10, 12, 30, 33-
34, 39, 65, 80, 81
Verizon, 178
Veterans International Bridge (Brownsville),
169
Victoria, Guadalupe, 26, 28
Victoria, Texas, 31
Vietnam War, 115
Villa Cápital de Santander, 20
Villa de Cortez (Weslaco), 126
Villa Maria Clinic, 188
Villa Santa Ana de Camargo, 16
Villa, Francisco “Pancho”, 92-93
Village Mills, 128
Villareal, Raul, Jr., 123
Viña, Juan Manuel de la, 153
Vincent, Vern, 189
Vinsant, Wilma “Dolly”, 186
Virgen de San Juan del Valle Shrine, 138
Viva Zapata, 59
Volz, Mrs. Charles, 145
W
W. E. Stewart Land Company-Weslaco, 124
Waco, Texas, 138
Wade, Jim, 155
Wallace, Lew, 41
Waller, M. L., 143
War of the Reform, 80
Waters, Newell, 127
Washburn, Dale, 133
Washington County, 78
Washington-on-the-Brazos, 29, 34
Weaver, Walter W., Sr., 132
Webb County, 44
Webb, James, 44
Webber Ranch, 87
Webber, John F., 87
Webber, Silvia Hector, 87
Webber’s Prairie, 87
Weems, W. Z., 102, 107
Wehmeyer, Freda, 120
Wehmeyer, Laura, 120
Wells Fargo Bank (Los Fresnos), 112, 114
Wells Fargo Bank (Pharr), 140
Wells, James B., 68, 96
Wells, Jim, 122
Weslaco Bicultural Museum, 108, 127, 178
Weslaco City Hall, 127
Weslaco Hotel, 125-126
Weslaco Mid-Valley Airport, 126, 177
Weslaco Public Library, 127
Weslaco Town Center, 126
Weslaco Trailer Park, 188-189
Weslaco, Texas, 20, 94, 100, 123-127, 148,
156-157, 162, 164-165, 170, 178-179,
182, 186, 188-190
Wesley Manor, 127
West, Duval, 122
Western Union, 178
Whipple, Harry, 112-113
Whitley, David, 124
Wilcoxon Grocery Store (Santa Rosa), 121
Wild Birds Unlimited, 190
Wild Horse Desert, 31, 35-36, 44, 51-52, 54,
95
Willacy County, 6, 20, 21, 43, 44, 56, 73, 103,
104, 105, 164, 166, 178
Willacy County Courthouse, 104
Willacy County Navigation District, 175
Willacy, John, 44
Willamar, 104
William C. Gorgas, 117
William, John Jefferson, 75
Williamson-Dickie Manufacturing Company,
182
Wilson, Woodrow, 93, 146
Woll, Adrián, 31
Wood, Edward A., 156
Woods, Otto, 180
World Birding Center (Brownsville), 190
World Birding Center (Mission), 109, 150, 190
World Birding Center (Weslaco), 127, 190
World War I, 93, 115, 132, 143, 147
World War II, 46, 93, 107, 111, 125, 135,
148, 149, 161, 177, 180, 186
Y
Yates, H. L., 116
Ye Old Clock Museum (Pharr), 141
Yoakum, B. F., 95, 98, 109, 122
Yoakum, Dwight, 123
Yorktown, 129
Young, John, 44, 63, 83, 152
Yturria Bank, 46
Yturria Garcia, Isabel, 56
Yturria, Daniel, 56
Yturria, Francisco, 46, 56, 96
Yturria, Frank, 56
Yuma, Arizona, 42
Z
Zacatecas, Mexico, 22, 31
Zapata, 167
Zapata County, 6, 167
Zapata, Emiliano, 92
Zapotec, The, 80
Zaragosa, Ignacio, 80
Zavala, Lorenzo de, 30
Zedillo, Ernesto, 169
Zumarraga, Juan de, 11
INDEX
397

HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
398
SPONSORS
Alamo Bank of Texas.............................................................................................................................................................375
Aloe Farms by Mark Berry ....................................................................................................................................................336
Atlas & Hall, L.L.P. ................................................................................................................................................................360
Barbee-Neuhaus Implement Company ..................................................................................................................................380
Best Western Palm Aire Hotel & Suites .................................................................................................................................377
Boggus Ford ..........................................................................................................................................................................338
Brownsville Regional Medical Center ....................................................................................................................................302
The Brownsville & Matamoros Bridge Company...................................................................................................................240
Wallace Boudreaux, The Shrimp King of Texas .....................................................................................................................352
Burton Auto Supply ..............................................................................................................................................................381
Campeche Seafood Products, Inc. .........................................................................................................................................340
Cardenas Auto Group ...........................................................................................................................................................356
Cardiovascular Associates......................................................................................................................................................314
Catholic Diocese of Brownsville ............................................................................................................................................292
Cingular Wireless ..................................................................................................................................................................369
City of Brownsville................................................................................................................................................................198
City of Donna .......................................................................................................................................................................222
City of Edcouch ....................................................................................................................................................................224
City of Harlingen ..................................................................................................................................................................202
City of Hidalgo and Hidalgo Economic Development Corporation.......................................................................................226
City of La Feria .....................................................................................................................................................................228
City of McAllen .....................................................................................................................................................................218
City of Mercedes and Economic Development Corporation of Mercedes ..............................................................................206
City of Mission ......................................................................................................................................................................210
City of Pharr and Pharr Economic Development Corporation...............................................................................................230
City of Raymondville.............................................................................................................................................................232
City of Roma .........................................................................................................................................................................234
City of San Benito .................................................................................................................................................................236
City of Weslaco .....................................................................................................................................................................238
COSTEP and STHEA.............................................................................................................................................................264
Deborah Case Dance Academy..............................................................................................................................................289
Echo Hotel & Conference Center..........................................................................................................................................385
Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District.............................................................................................................274
Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley, Inc. ..............................................................................................................................320
Golden Palms Retirement & Health Center...........................................................................................................................300
Greater Mission Chamber of Commerce................................................................................................................................221
The Harding Foundation.......................................................................................................................................................323
Heart Clinic, P.A....................................................................................................................................................................322
H-E-B....................................................................................................................................................................................328
The Hester-Jones Family .......................................................................................................................................................324
John Knox Village .................................................................................................................................................................306
Jones, Galligan, Key & Lozano, L.L.P. ...................................................................................................................................374
JP Morgan Chase...................................................................................................................................................................195
K-10 Enterprises, Inc. ...........................................................................................................................................................379
KRGV-TV5 ............................................................................................................................................................................330
The Krishnan Family.............................................................................................................................................................309
La Joya Independent School District .....................................................................................................................................252
The Lloyd Bentsen Family.....................................................................................................................................................310

Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company ...........................................................................................................................354
Marion R. Lawler, Jr., M.D. ...................................................................................................................................................301
Magic Valley Electric Cooperative, Inc...................................................................................................................................244
Marine Military Academy ......................................................................................................................................................286
McAllen Independent School District....................................................................................................................................270
Mercedes Independent School District ..................................................................................................................................282
Olivarez Ranches by Kathy Olivarez......................................................................................................................................370
Paseo de la Resau ..................................................................................................................................................................195
Payne Dealer Group ..............................................................................................................................................................344
Pharr/Reynosa International Bridge .......................................................................................................................................246
Planned Parenthood Association of Cameron & Willacy Counties ........................................................................................319
Planned Parenthood Association of Hidalgo County .............................................................................................................318
Rancho Viejo Resort & Country Club ...................................................................................................................................358
Raymondville Independent School District ...........................................................................................................................272
Region One Education Service Center...................................................................................................................................288
Reynolds International, L.P. ...................................................................................................................................................366
Rio Grande City Consolidated Independent School District ..................................................................................................280
Rio Grande Valley Partnership...............................................................................................................................................249
Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers, Inc...................................................................................................................................376
Rios of Mercedes ...................................................................................................................................................................348
Roma Independent School District ........................................................................................................................................276
San Benito Independent School District ................................................................................................................................266
SBC Communications Inc. ....................................................................................................................................................368
Sea Garden Sales Company ...................................................................................................................................................350
Sebastian Cotton & Grain Corporation .................................................................................................................................384
Security 1st Federal Credit Union formerly Hidalgo Federal Credit Union ...........................................................................371
Sharyland Independent School District .................................................................................................................................258
South Texas Community College ..........................................................................................................................................268
South Texas Independent School District ..............................................................................................................................278
South Texas Vo-Tech .............................................................................................................................................................256
St. Paul Lutheran Church......................................................................................................................................................305
Starr-Camargo Bridge Company ............................................................................................................................................242
Texair Company, Inc. ............................................................................................................................................................373
Texan Guest Ranch................................................................................................................................................................364
Texas A&M and USDA Research Centers ..............................................................................................................................284
Texas Citrus Fiesta ................................................................................................................................................................325
Texas State Bank....................................................................................................................................................................332
Texas State Technical College Harlingen................................................................................................................................287
Town of South Padre Island ..................................................................................................................................................214
University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College ..........................................................................................254
The University of Texas Pan-American..................................................................................................................................262
Valley Armature & Electric....................................................................................................................................................386
Valley Baptist Medical Center ................................................................................................................................................296
Valley Co-op Oil Mill ............................................................................................................................................................346
Valley Fruit & Vegetable Company, Inc. ................................................................................................................................383
Valley Grande Manor Nursing & Rehabilitation....................................................................................................................312
Valley International Airport ...................................................................................................................................................248
Valley Regional Medical Center .............................................................................................................................................321
Villa de Cortez ......................................................................................................................................................................378
Villalba Group, Inc................................................................................................................................................................362
The Walsh Family & Mission Shippers, Inc. .........................................................................................................................372
SPONSORS
399

Weaks Martin Implement Company, Inc. ..............................................................................................................................382
Wells Fargo ...........................................................................................................................................................................342
Weslaco Independent School District ....................................................................................................................................260
Whataburger .........................................................................................................................................................................334
HISTORIC RIO GRANDE VALLEY
400

ISBN: 1-893619-22-2