First Pharr School

Pharr's earliest schools were separate. By 1915 Mexican students attended the six-grade East Juárez school, which after its site moved became Pharr Grammar School for Mexican Children. No junior or senior high was provided for them, because Mexican children were not expected to go past grammar school. In 1925 Mexican students asked to attend high school with the other children. District schools stayed segregated into the 1970s, defended as a matter of language, geography and economics, with Anglo families living south of the railroad tracks and Mexican and Black families north.

What the plaque says

First Pharr School Erected in 1911 as a one-story structure, this building housed the first school in Pharr. John Bales, the contractor, built a number of the town's early structures. Classes were held here until 1915, when enrollment had grown from nine students to almost 80. During that time, the building also served as a community church. In 1915 Pharr and San Juan joined to construct a two-story school on the east edge of Pharr. This structure was used for many years as a residence. It was remodeled as a convalescent center in 1949. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of South Texas History — 7.8 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.
• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 8.1 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.
• La Lomita Chapel — 9.5 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 — 12 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

• City of Pharr — steps away
• The Pharr Riot — 0.5 mi
• San Juan Townsite — 1.5 mi
• Tom Mayfield — 1.6 mi