Weslaco

In the 1928 county election, Judge A. W. Cameron, whose win was in doubt, rejected the Weslaco ballot box and testified that Mexican American voters had been intimidated by a crowd shouting that they should not be let in; the Handbook says the Citizens Republican Committee allegedly led it. The Valley Experiment Station opened in 1923. Civic plans of 1936 required downtown buildings to be remodeled in Spanish colonial style, and neon outlines earned the nickname City with the Neon Skyline. In 1939 the government opened a camp north of town built for migrant farmworkers.

What the plaque says

Weslaco Located on part of a Spanish land grant known as Llano Grande, Weslaco was founded in 1919 by a partnership composed of R. C., Dan, and Ed Couch and Robert L. Reeves. The city's name is take from the initials of the W. E. Stewart Land Co., which held title to the site from 1917 to 1919. Weslaco had a post office by 1920 and was incorporated in 1921. Founded nearly ten years after most other valley cities in the area, Weslaco depends on a wide variety of businesses for its economic base. Descendants of some of the early settlers still live here. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 10 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 — 15 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 — 21 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 — 24 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

• Cpl. Harlon Block, USMC — 1.2 mi
• Citrus Fruit Developed in Rio Grande Valley - Red-Meat Grapefruit — 1.7 mi
• Camp Llano Grande — 1.8 mi
• Donna — 4.2 mi