Town of La Feria

La Feria's founders stole a railroad depot. G. J. Schoenberg, a land developer, laid out the town in 1909, and its post office opened that year. When the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway came through in 1911, the stop was named Bixby and sat a mile off. In July 1912, the Handbook says, La Feria's founding fathers took the Bixby depot and hauled it to the new townsite. By 1915 the town had 200 people, a bank, two churches and a weekly paper, the La Feria Leader. It was incorporated in 1933.

What the plaque says

Town of La Feria Site is on land surveyed 1777 for Spain's grants to Don Juan Hinojosa and Jose Mari Balli, ancestors of priest for whom Padre Island was named. Rancho raised cattle, sheep, goats. By 1790's it had a fairground (Hence name, La Feria) for Fiestas, horse racing, and other sports. After Mexican War (1846-48), Balli heirs had title confirmed by Texas. In 1850, Nathaniel White (d. 1901), cattleman and reputed smuggler, opened anglo ranching here. In 1906, townsite of La Feria was platted under original name. It is now a trade center for a thriving agricultural area. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 20 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 — 24 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 — 27 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

• The American Rio Grande Land and Irrigation System — 5.6 mi
• Dr. Hector P. García — 5.6 mi
• Mercedes Enterprise — 5.7 mi
• The Hidalgo County Bank and Trust Company — 5.7 mi