Del Rio grew on irrigation. In the 1860s a group of landowners formed the San Felipe Agricultural, Manufacturing and Irrigation Company and built dams and ditches to carry San Felipe Creek to farms and vineyards, and the canals still run. One flows through the Whitehead Memorial Museum. The museum is a village of historic buildings gathered on shady grounds along it.
The oldest is the Perry Store of 1870, with its living quarters, period goods and military collections. A 1905 wood-frame office holds exhibits on the Black Seminole scouts, who served from Fort Clark and the border posts, and on the high-powered border radio of the 1920s and its most notorious figure, John R. Brinkley, the goat-gland doctor. The 1925 office of Dr. Simon Rodriguez, the town's first Hispanic physician, stands nearby, along with a log cabin, a blacksmith shop, a barn of Native American artifacts, farm machinery and a windmill.
Roy Bean, the Law West of the Pecos, died at Langtry in 1903 and was buried in Del Rio. He and his son now lie on the museum grounds, near dioramas of his life and a replica of the Jersey Lilly. The grave is a public one and part of the visit, but the museum is about the town more than the judge: its seasonal events range from Dia de los Muertos altars to a living history day.
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