El Horcon Tract and Rio Rico

Rio Rico's status turned on a rediscovery. In 1967 an Arizona State geographer, James Hill Jr., studying old survey maps, noticed that the 1906 cutoff had left the tract south of the river. The boundary commission and State Department confirmed his finding, and in 1972 the United States formally ceded the land. That year a resident, Homero Cantú Treviño, sued to stop his deportation, claiming citizenship. A judge ruled against him in 1976, but an appeals court held in 1977 that anyone born there from 1906 to 1972 was entitled to American citizenship.

What the plaque says

El Horcon Tract and Rio Rico The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ended the Mexican War (1846-48) designated the main channel of the Rio Grande as the Mexico-U.S. 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 occurences. The International Boundary Commission was established in 1889 to administer the Treaty of 1884. In 1906 the American Rio Grande Land and Irrigation Company dug an unauthorized canal about two miles south of here which altered the natural course of the Rio Grande. As a result, a 419-acre section of U.S. property called El Horcon tract was isolated south of the river. Although still U.S. territory according to the Treaty of 1884, 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 Horcon 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 eventually led to U.S. citizenship for about 200 people born in Rio Rico prior to 1970. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 15 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 — 23 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.
• Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park — 26 mi
  A flat coastal prairie north of Brownsville where Taylor's army and Arista's Army of the North fought the first major battle of the Mexican War on May 8, 1846, now interpreted from both sides.
• Stillman House Museum — 28 mi
  The 1850 Greek Revival house of Charles Stillman, who laid out Brownsville in 1848 beside the army's Fort Brown, and for a century the home of the Treviño family.

More markers nearby

• Battle of La Bolsa — 1.4 mi
• Relampago Ranch — 1.8 mi
• Rancho de Santa Maria — 3.5 mi
• Former Station Site of Spiderweb Railroad — 4.2 mi