Donna

Sylvia Hector Webber was already living near here before Donna had a name. Held in slavery until 1834, she and her white husband John left Central Texas in 1851 to escape hostility to their marriage and bought land on the Rio Grande in 1853. They built a ferry landing there, and family tradition says Sylvia sheltered people fleeing slavery and helped them reach Mexico. The Webbers are buried at Webber Cemetery, a short distance above the Donna pump. Their neighbors on the next ranch, Matilda and Nathaniel Jackson, were another interracial couple.

What the plaque says

Donna Two East Texas men, T. J. Hooks and A. F. Hester, began developing this area for settlement in the late 1890s. Through formation of the La Blanca Agricultural Company, they set up farms and irrigation systems and advertised the area's favorable climate and resources. In 1904, when a rail line was built here, they founded the town of Donna, named for T. J. Hooks daughter. Ed Ruthven opened the first store and, in 1908, the town incorporated with R. P. Boeye as mayor. Since the earliest days of the 20th century, Donna has developed as one of the leading cities of the Rio Grande Valley. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 7.9 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.
• Museum of South Texas History — 11 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.
• La Lomita Chapel — 17 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.
• Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park — 20 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.

More markers nearby

• 1940 Train-Truck Collision — 3.6 mi
• Cpl. Harlon Block, USMC — 3.8 mi
• Weslaco — 4.2 mi
• Camp Ebenezer — 5.0 mi