Archer Park

McAllen began as two rival towns. A townsite company formed in December 1904, after the railroad reached the Santa Anita Ranch that John McAllen had managed since 1859. In 1907 William Briggs, O. E. M. Jones and John Closner founded another town two miles east. By 1911 the eastern town had around 1,000 people and the older site had faded, so the survivor took the McAllen name and a charter. Real estate sales policies kept the growing town segregated, and Mexican American children were held in separate schools through fifth grade until the late 1920s.

What the plaque says

Archer Park This one-block-square tract of land was deeded to the city of McAllen for use as a public park in 1917, six years after the town was incorporated. The donor, Mayor Oliver Percy Archer (1869-1930), was a prominent local businessman and civic leader. The site was officially named for him in 1933 by the McAllen Board of City Commissioners. From 1936 to 1949 the McAllen Public Library was housed in the basement area of the bandstand. The site of many community activities and celebrations, Archer Park serves as a reminder of the early days of McAllen. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• La Lomita Chapel — 6.8 mi
  A small sandstone chapel on the Rio Grande levee, built by Oblate missionaries in 1865 and rebuilt at this site in 1899, the landmark that gave the city of Mission its name.
• Museum of South Texas History — 8.1 mi
  Edinburg's regional museum, begun in 1967 in the 1910 Hidalgo County jail and now telling the Rio Grande's story from fossils and native peoples through steamboats to the 20th century.
• Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park — 9.3 mi
  A 587-acre stand of Rio Grande woodland near Mission, once part of a Spanish porción, given to the state by the Bentsen family in 1944 and now headquarters of the World Birding Center.
• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 10 mi
  About 2,000 acres of river forest on the Rio Grande's north bank, the surviving part of Benigno Leal's 1834 land grant, kept as a refuge since 1943 where two bird migration routes meet.

More markers nearby

• Site of Casa de Palmas — steps away
• Campsite of the "Fighting 69th" — 0.4 mi
• Bethel Baptist Church — 0.9 mi
• Floyd H. (Slats) Rodgers — 1.7 mi