History
from the Texas State Historical Association Handbook of Texas Online ...... "Nomadic Coahuiltecan Indians inhabited the region for 11,000 years. The Karankawa Indians lived along the coast. Willacy County is in the area of Texas first known to white men. In 1519 the coast was mapped and named Amichel by Alonzo Álvarez de Pineda. In the 1530s it was crossed by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. In 1554 a fleet of twenty ships was wrecked on South Padre Island, which is within the borders of Willacy County. The area of the county was under the jurisdiction of Nuevo Santander, and a survey was made as early as July 1790. Extant records show that three land grants were made in the Willacy County area by the Spanish and Mexican governments. The earliest Spanish land grant was El Agostadero de San Juan Carricitos, made to José Narciso Cabazos on February 22, 1792. Cabazos immediately settled the land and stocked his ranch with 900 cattle; his grant contained more than a half million acres and included much of the area of future Willacy County and parts of Hidalgo and Kenedy counties. Two other land grants in the Willacy County area were made to Vicente de Ynojosa by Spain in 1798. At the time a salt lake known as La Sal Vieja supplied all of the area of what is now South Texas and northern Mexico with salt. When Cabazos died he left his property to his heirs, who kept the land under their control until about 1811, when hostile Indians drove them off. Indians were a problem for those grantees farthest away from the river. In 1821 a trade road was built from Matamoros through the future Willacy County to San Patricio. The county area fell within the territory between the Rio Grande and Nueces River, disputed after the Texas Revolution. Gen. Zachary Taylor crossed the Arroyo Colorado at Paso Real when he was in the area during the Mexican War. The route he took to cross the lower Rio Grande valley became known as "General Taylor's Road" to area residents. This road and the Old San Antonio Road west of La Sal Vieja were the only routes overland into the lower Rio Grande valley. During the Civil War Paso Real became an important crossing point for Confederate cotton exports. When federal coastal blockades cut off imports and exports for the entire South, this road moved cotton down to Matamoros, where it was exchanged for guns, ammunition, medicines, cloth, shoes, blankets, and other vital goods. When Philip H. Sheridan reached the area with his cavalry in May 1865, he quipped, "If I possessed both Texas and Hell, I'd rent out Texas and live in Hell."
"Oranges were introduced to the Willacy County area by a ranchman named Cantú, who brought seeds from Montemorelos, Nuevo León, to his ranch near La Sal Vieja around 1886. Ranching was introduced to the region in the early nineteenth century by Spanish settlers. The Ballí family was particularly successful in this enterprise. The few nineteenth-century Anglo settlers in the area socialized and intermarried with the leading Hispanic families, learned Spanish, and joined the Catholic Church. Most of these new settlers were welcomed by the ranchers in the region. The real surge of Anglo settlement came after the building of the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway into the lower Valley in 1904. Close behind the tracks came the land promoters, who worked enthusiastically to convert pastures to plowed fields. Among them were W. A. Harding, Samuel Lamar Gill, Uriah Lott, and Adam Davidson. The Gulf Coast Irrigation Company, the Southern Pacific Railroad, the Kleberg Town and Improvement Company, and the Rock Island line also participated in settling the area. The railroad companies, more aggressive than land promoters, bought large tracts of land, subdivided them, and sold them to customers they recruited elsewhere. Magazines, pamphlets, and brochures with photographs of the happy and easy life that awaited the new settler in the area were scattered throughout the Mississippi valley. Between 1905 and 1910, on the first and third Tuesday of the month, prospective farmers could purchase thirty-day round-trip tickets from St. Louis and Kansas for twenty dollars and from Chicago for twenty-five. The excursions would take them to investigate the possibilities of the "Magic Valley." They bought land, settled in communities planned by ranchers or land developers, chose the most profitable cash crop that could be cultivated, and began to recruit Mexican day laborers" ...