Old Lopeno

Lopeño's mail went by horse. From 1900 until he died in 1908, Andrés Serna carried it from Zapata, and he could not read. Residents read him the names and destinations, and he sorted every letter himself without a single wrong delivery, the Handbook of Texas says. Lopeño got its own post office in 1908 under the spelling Lopeña, corrected in 1909. Before the church was built, people drew water and prayed at a limestone shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe beside the well at the Ramírez ranch called El Tigre.

What the plaque says

Old Lopeno Development of this area began about 1749 when Col. Jose de Escandon began bringing colonists to establish permanent settlements along Mexico's northern frontier. When parcels of land were granted to the colonists by the Spanish government in 1767, Ysabel Maria Sanchez, widow of early settler and rancher Joseph Lopez, was allotted more than 6,000 acres. The village of Lopeno that later developed on part of the land was named in honor of the Lopez family. During the early 1800s, part of the Lopez land passed to the ownership of the Ramirez family, founders of the nearby village of Falcon. In 1821 Benito Ramirez built a combination home, fort, and chapel that later came to be called Fort Lopeno. Federal troops briefly occupied the fort during 1856 while in the area helping to ease border disturbances. The general store established in Lopeno in the early 1900s by Serafin Benavides served as the area's only supply point at the time. A post office was established in 1920, and in 1934 oil and gas wells were successfully drilled just outside the village. When Falcon Reservoir was created in 1952, residents relocated their village to this site. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Falcon State Park — 8.9 mi
  A 576-acre state park at the foot of the Falcon International Reservoir, made by the dam Presidents Eisenhower and Ruiz Cortines dedicated in 1953, known for bass fishing, camping and brush-country birds.
• Zapata County Museum of History — 17 mi
  The museum of a county whose old town of Zapata went under Falcon Reservoir, keeping the photographs, artifacts and natural history of the families who were moved.
• Roma Historic District — 22 mi
  A bluff-top Rio Grande steamboat port, now a National Historic Landmark District where Heinrich Portscheller's molded brick and walled stone compounds face Ciudad Miguel Alemán across the river.
• San Ygnacio Historic District — 31 mi
  A Rio Grande village of sandstone houses on land granted in 1750, home to the Treviño-Uribe Rancho, a fortified family compound begun in 1830 and a National Historic Landmark.

More markers nearby

• Old Falcon — 4.9 mi
• Old Zapata — 16 mi
• In the Vicinity of this Site was Mission Revilla a Visita — 16 mi
• Colonization of the Lower Rio Grande Area — 16 mi