Beatrice de León Edwards EdD - Mercedes

IMAGES
of America

MERCEDES

This map was part of an accordion postcard from 1909 that showed a map of Mercedess location and invited northerners to travel by train to visit and purchase land or start a business. The postcards were commissioned by the Mercedes Commercial Club, forerunner of the Mercedes Chamber of Commerce, as part of an aggressive marketing strategy. Mercedes is located in the southeast corner of Hidalgo County in South Texas, only five miles from the Rio Grande and the border with Mexico. (Courtesy of Vito Buenrostro.)

ON THE COVER: Mercedes celebrates its 25th anniversary on September 15, 1932, with a historic parade. The town was founded in 1907 to serve as the headquarters of the American Rio Grande Land and Irrigation Company. The first residences and businesses were railroad boxcars, tents, and shanties, but by 1932, prosperous shops lined the main street in town and the population had grown to more than 5,000 inhabitants. (Courtesy of the Margaret H. McAllen Memorial Archives, Museum of South Texas History.)

IMAGES
of America

MERCEDES

Beatrice de Len Edwards, EdD

Copyright 2014 by Beatrice de Len Edwards, EdD
ISBN 978-1-4671-3206-0
Ebook ISBN 9781439646946

Published by Arcadia Publishing
Charleston, South Carolina

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014943728

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The Mercedes City Hall and Fire Station, built in 1928, was designed by architect Roscious Newell Waters. The first floor held city offices, and the second floor housed a firemens dormitory and city meeting rooms. The building is in a Gothic style with red brick with the exception of the replacement bricks on the end from repairs after the hurricane of 1933. It features a copper cupola to hold the fire alarm. (Courtesy of the City of Mercedes.)

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many heartfelt thanks go out to all of the individuals who so generously allowed me to scan their personal family photographs and postcard collections for use in this book, including Vito Buenrostro; Carolyn Crenshaw Lpez; Irma Palacios; Rolando Hinojosa-Smith; Sylvia Arteaga Calles; the Riess family; the Garca family; Robert, Loretta, Kenneth, and Debbie Eilers; Rosendo Gonzales; Eddie Howell Sr.; Helen Vogel; and Delia de Len. A very special thanks to Fran Isbell, whose in-depth knowledge of the Rio Grande Valley and its history were warmly shared with the author. Especially helpful also were the staff of the Weslaco Museum of Local History and Cultural Art; the members of the Hidalgo County Historical Commission; Janette Garca of the University of Texas-Pan American; and Phyllis Kinnison and Esteban Lomas of the Museum of South Texas History. All images from the Museum of South Texas History (MSTH) come from the Margaret H. McAllen Memorial Archives of the Museum of South Texas History in Edinburg, Texas. A special thanks to Olga Hinds and Clarissa Martnez of the Mercedes Enterprise; as well as the City of Mercedes; the members of the Mercedes Chamber of Commerce; Dr. Daniel Trevio Jr., superintendent of schools, Alicia Z. Vsquez, district librarian, and Debbie Winslow of the Mercedes Independent School District; Sam MaGee, general manager, and Adell Dufour, museum director, of the Rio Grande Valley Livestock Show; Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church; the Rubn Hinojosa Congressional Office; and Marisol Vidales, library director at the Hector P. Garca Memorial Library of Mercedes, Texas. Also invaluable have been the publications and work by the Mercedes Centennial Book Project Committee. Special thanks to the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas for the use of its tribal seal. More information about this tribe is available at www.carrizocomecrudonation.com. Public domain images from the Library of Congress and the National Archives have also been used. Special thanks also go to Dr. Armando Alonzo, Borderlands historian at Texas A&M University, for reviewing text and making important recommendations. Heartfelt thanks for her patience and assistance go to my acquisitions editor, Stacia Bannerman; David Mandel, production coordinator; and Jennifer Sexton, sales manager, at Arcadia Publishing. Finally, thanks to all my family members for their love and encouragement on this project. Without these entities, this book would not have been possible.

INTRODUCTION

Mercedes, Texas, the Queen City, is located in the southeastern corner of Hidalgo County only five miles from the Mexican border in South Texas in a geographic area known as the Lower Rio Grande Valley. The Valley is not a true valley, but a river delta formed as the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Before the advent of river dams and levees, the Rio Grande flooded annually, much as the Nile did in Egypt, creating rich, fertile soil in a narrow band suitable for limited agriculture.

The earliest known inhabitants of this area were called Coahuiltecans by anthropologists who grouped all of the separate native indigenous groups together. Later studies of the copious annotations of Spanish entradas, or exploratory expeditions, to this area in the 1600s revealed that many different groupings existed, each with their own language and customs. These early explorations noted that there were numerous native settlements the Spanish called rancheras.

Under the leadership of Jos de Escandn, the Count of Sierra Gorda, Spanish colonists migrated in the mid-1700s to the northern reaches of Nueva Espaa, or New Spain, to the region called Nuevo Santander, which reached from Tampico to the Nueces River. On both the southern and northern banks of the lower Rio Grande, Escandn established six villas or townships between 1749 and 1755, and numerous land grants called porciones were apportioned out. These porciones were narrow strips of land that each had access to the river to ensure that water was available to each landowner. Because of the climate, topography and soil composition, these Spanish colonists decided that ranching was best suited to the area, with some subsistence farming in selected areas near the river waters or the resacas through the use of acequias, or irrigation channels, that used gravity to move the water streams.

In 1778, Juan Jos Hinojosa, a captain and chief justice at the villa of Reynosa, petitioned the king of Spain for the Llano Grande land grant on the north side of the Rio Grande where the city of Mercedes is now located. This royal land grant contained 25 leagues of land with 15 miles of river frontage, or more than 100,000 acres. By the time the grant was approved in 1790, Hinojosa had died, and his grant was divided up amongst his eight heirs. Mercedes was later established on what were parts of shares five, six, and seven.

Mexicos separation from Spain in 1821 and the Texas Independence of 1836 disrupted the everyday business of the ranching communities, and many Mexican-heritage inhabitants of Texas began calling themselves Tejanos. The MexicanAmerican War in 1848 profoundly impacted the area when the original landowners, suddenly now US citizens, were forced to protect their land claims in land adjudication courts. Being land-rich but cash-poor, many were able to do so successfully but still lost land when they were forced to pay the American lawyers fees and their property taxes with acreage.