The
Valley
Photographs
By
Jomando
Cruz
Texas’ southernmost region
embraces an enchanting new era
Home is where the palm trees greet me like old friends. Their towering silhouettes in the distance come into focus as I make my way south on US 281, signaling my arrival in a land unlike anywhere else in Texas: the Rio Grande Valley.
Everything’s a little different here. Though the days are hotter, an evening breeze atones for the sun’s brutality. With no mountains, hills, or skyscrapers in sight, the land seems to go on forever. Proximity to the coast turns everything a little sticky, but in a way that makes me nostalgic for bike rides along the canal behind the duplex where I grew up. It’s as if the Valley exists in an endless state of summer.
Even when it’s supposed to be cold, it never really is. Such is the case in December as I make my way from Austin to my hometown of McAllen—the “City of Palms” a sign on the side of the highway touts. The Valley, also called the RGV, encompasses the nearly 5,000-square-mile strip of borderland at the tip of South Texas. It’s made up of four counties—Starr, Hidalgo, Cameron, and Willacy—that include nearly 200 cities and communities such as McAllen, Edinburg, Brownsville, and Harlingen.
For over 100 years, locals have referred to it as the “Magic Valley”—a phrase coined by developers in the early 20th century to attract newcomers as agriculture became the region’s main industry. The area is known for its citrus production, South Padre Island beaches, and world-class birding. It often appears in national news as the site of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket launches and of heated debates over border security.
The Valley is home to one of the highest populations of Latinos in the country. Currently the area is inhabited by more than a million people—over 90% of which identify as Hispanic. The area is largely bilingual, with a Spanish-speaking majority, and largely bicultural. It’s also one of the fastest-growing regions in the state. The population is expected to nearly double in the next 20 years.
And yet, most people I’ve met outside the Valley have never visited. I’ve lived in Austin for more than a decade, and when I talk to friends about South Texas, they seem unaware of anything past San Antonio. But roughly 250 miles south—past the sprawling ranch lands, past the oil refineries, past the tiny towns—there’s a booming and colorful metropolis.
There’s never been a more exciting time to get to know the world on the tip of South Texas. It’s much richer and more complex than what you hear on the news or read about online. It’s made up of vast expanses of natural spaces to explore, thousands of locally owned businesses with distinctly Valley personality, a thriving university, and a close-knit community that loves to throw a good party. It’s a place filled with rich history, residents brimming with pride, and, yes, its own kind of Valley magic.
But I’ll let you in on a not-so-secret secret: The Valley isn’t really a valley. And iconic as they might be, the soaring palm trees and abundance of citrus were never supposed to be here.
Growing up, I couldn’t wait to leave home and maybe land in New York City or Europe. Instead, in 2012 I ended up much closer, in Austin at the University of Texas. Still, I felt like a stranger in a strange land. The people in Austin looked different, talked different. Cultural references were often lost on me. And even back then, Austin’s skyline was daunting—to this day there’s only one “skyscraper” in McAllen, and it’s all of 17 stories tall. Eventually, I adapted, and I’ve spent the last 12 years building a life in Austin. But these days I find myself daydreaming about life down south. A friend recently called me a sort of “Valley evangelist,” spreading the good word of the RGV.
Like any dutiful missionary, I need to start at the beginning. Any tour of the Valley should begin with the Museum of South Texas History in Edinburg, a beautiful Spanish stucco building dedicated to telling the history of the region. Inside, the museum’s timeline extends from prehistoric times to when Indigenous people first entered the land, and from Spanish colonization through present day.
I learn the Valley as it exists today is a relatively recent development. In 1883, a Midwesterner named John Closner came to the area to help develop the railroad. He began buying land where he could, even becoming sheriff in Hidalgo County to ensure he could seize land from those who didn’t pay their taxes. By 1904, he’d managed to acquire 45,000 acres and, along with other developers, had harnessed the power of the Rio Grande by creating the largest privately-owned irrigation system in the world (roughly 141 miles of canals still run through the RGV and Mexico). Then, that same year, he took his sugarcane to the World’s Fair in St. Louis and won a gold medal for having the best crop in the world. Word of his product marked a turning point for South Texas—investors wanted in on the goods.
“Land development companies came to South Texas, and they sold the bill of goods to people in the Midwest,” says Francisco Guajardo, the museum’s CEO and a Valley native. “They said, ‘Come and build your fortune.’ It became a bonanza. It became a place of dreams. This is how the Valley took off.”
Developers began to market the region as the “Magic Valley of the Rio Grande.” To make the area more romantic, they imported tall Washingtonia robusta palm trees from Cuba and the Caribbean—the only palm native to the region is the stouter Sabal mexicana. And they enhanced irrigation systems, improving the land’s fertile soil. The semiarid climate, year-round sun, and new system made for perfect farming conditions. The developers had created a profitable paradise. As a 1920 Valley promotional song goes, “I’ve found the way to Texas, far away from ice and snow. Where the climate’s mostly balmy, and the golden grapefruit grow.”
In actuality, the Valley is a delta, a point where the river flows into the ocean. To this day, it’s never received regular rainfall. Before the 20th century, the region was relatively inhospitable. The land was dry, the native plants and wildlife aggressive, and the temperatures too high. Still, humans first began crossing through the region some 12,000 years ago. Native tribes who voyaged through the area were the Coahuiltecans, from the state of Coahuila and the Karankawa. They were hunters who would follow herds of bison and migrating fish from the Rio Grande.
“What the native people did is they interacted with the earth,” Guajardo says. “When the Spanish came, their worldview was to make the earth fit their value system—colonize the environment.”
Spanish colonizers arrived in the 1500s. Settlements began growing along the river in the 1700s, igniting the area’s population. Eventually, steamboats were used to connect trade routes between northern Mexico and the Valley, from Brownsville to Rio Grande City, two of the oldest towns in the region. Then in July 1904, the railroad arrived, connecting the RGV with the rest of the country. The construction of the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico Railway spurred a region-wide boom in development. Cities like McAllen, Harlingen, Edinburg, Mission, and most everything in between were created as railroad stops. Today, when you look at the cities on the map, they run along a straight path.
Guajardo points to a sign at the start of the museum’s tour. It features a quote from Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who had been shipwrecked along the Gulf Coast and held captive by a native tribe in the area. He wrote about his experience in his account La Relación. The sign reads, “These [Indian] people love their offspring the most of any in the world and treat them with greatest mildness.”
To Guajardo, Cabeza de Vaca’s description is still true of the Valley today. He says it’s symbolic of how the Valley takes care of its own people and future generations. The people who live here are descendants of those who have survived numerous battles and the harshest of conditions, and traveled far and wide.
“It’s the most simple quote, and yet it is the most profound observation. What a lovely thing to write,” Guajardo says. “Five hundred years later it’s like, oh my God—this is the salient quality of the region.”
I don’t know what to expect when my friend and I step into the Texas Rose Bar in La Feria, a small town of nearly 7,000 people. It’s a Friday night in February around 9 p.m. Located in a seemingly quieter part of the Valley, the honky-tonk has been around since the early 1980s. Inside, there’s a hodgepodge of characters, including a group of Winter Texans cackling in a corner, a saxophone-playing musician wearing a fedora, and a few 20-somethings shooting pool. I approach the bar, which turns out to only serve wine and beer. If you’re looking for liquor, you’re welcome to bring your own, the bartender tells me.
A friendly man with a mic and cowboy hat stumbles over, nudging us to pick a song and sing. I politely decline, and he tells us to find him if we change our minds. “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” starts playing over the speakers and I laugh—I can’t help but think it was queued up just for us.
Despite the region’s sheer size and growing population, the RGV maintains an inexplicably tight-knit community where no one feels like a stranger. I think of what Cabeza de Vaca wrote. Most of us who were raised here come from generations of Valley natives or immigrants from just across the border. You’re probably one or two degrees away from everyone here—much like a small town, except the town happens to include more than a million people. We’re raised with an understanding that our culture—isolated from the rest of the state, neither fully Texan or Mexican—is special.
“People here are very proud of the language, the culture, the food, and you have a lot of expressions of that pride,” says Jamie Starling, a borderlands history professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Starling is originally from El Paso but has lived in the Valley for the past 11 years. “You see Mexican flags, you see Mexican symbolism, but at the same time, I think a lot of people here have a very strong U.S. identity. It’s a unique identity that blends the two so seamlessly.”
From the food to the architecture, the Valley’s Mexican heritage is on recurring display. Compared to other border towns, Starling says what sets the RGV apart is the part of Mexico that it borders. The Valley is closer to central Mexico, across from urban cities like Reynosa and Matamoros. “I think the border experience is just so intensely felt because of where we are,” he says.
People about a decade older than me still reminisce over mythic nights in high school when they’d cross the border to party in the early 2000s. Folks used to travel more frequently into Mexico to shop for goods, get cheaper prescription drugs, go out to eat, and receive medical care. My first time traveling to Mexico was a day trip with my mother to Reynosa in 2006. I was 11 years old and remember shopping the market for produce, Mexican ceramics, and little watermelon lollipops covered in chile the kids in middle school used to upcharge for in class. Then, a year later, the U.S. rattled border regions by requiring passports to cross—for years all you’d needed was a form of government ID. My first time in Mexico was also my last.
But the sharing of two cultures transcends border disputes, and the people here are adaptable. In the ensuing years, Mexicans began opening businesses in the RGV, attempting to preserve their livelihoods.
“You’ll have restaurants that are like someone airdropped them out of Monterrey,” Starling says. “I think 20 or 30 years ago, there was a huge difference between eating out in Mexico and having a Mexican restaurant in the United States. But now if you come here, it’s a very authentic dining experience. And you don’t get that even in other parts of Texas.”
Enjoying this article?Locals joke that because it’s so isolated, the Valley is years behind in terms of music, pop culture, and other trends. But in the past decade, it has started to catch up. A younger generation of Valley natives is seizing the opportunity, partly with the mission of modernizing their hometowns while keeping true to their roots. In fact, you’re more likely to happen upon a locally owned business than a chain. There are fewer barriers for entry than in cities like Austin, making the Valley a region open for opportunity. Its potential for entrepreneurial success is aided by the growth of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Since 2022, it has leapt 72 positions on the U.S. News and World Report 2023-2024 Best Colleges list (putting it at No. 227 in the country).
“There’s a lot to learn from our area,” says Sam Sanchez, a San Juan native who runs The Rio Grande Podcast, showcasing locals working to improve the RGV. “You feel the resilience of the people here. It’s flourished from little border communities to really a metroplex. And it’s taught me that you can do anything if you have the determination.”
I see that ambition as I meander through Brownsville, touted as the second-most historic city in Texas after San Antonio. In the past 10 years, the city has been working to revitalize the area, which is now designated as a part of the National Main Street America program. New locally owned businesses have popped up from a cute coffee shop called Sweet Co. in an old Coca-Cola bottling facility to Búho, the city’s first bookstore in over a decade.
Efforts to restore the area to what it once was—an open-air market surrounding the Spanish Colonial-style Market Square building—have been successful over the last few years. Many of the businesses are owned either by people who have always lived there or those who returned home with a stronger appreciation for where they came from.
“We really have something special here, and I think the community now sees it and embraces it,” says Miriam Suarez, who was raised in Brownsville. She’s the former community development manager for the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation, an economic development agency. A self-described preservationist, she’s dedicated most of her career over the last decade to restoring and protecting Brownsville’s historic integrity. “The Valley has a lot to offer,” she says. “I feel like the rest of the region is also experiencing this renaissance.”
Brothers Michael J. Limas and Fabian Limas Jr. are part of the effort to revive Brownsville’s downtown. They’re founding partners of Las Ramblas at Market Square, which was nominated for a James Beard Award the past two years. The bar is the first from the Rio Grande Valley to be recognized by the organization.
“The way I perceive South Texas is it’s very fertile,” Michael says. “That’s a huge motivator to help really elevate our space. I always felt that the talent has always been in the Valley, but there was never really a track to run on to produce what we experience in other places. And so one of the driving forces for us is to give our community something that is a cut above the rest.”
Rio Grande City and Harlingen are also a part of the Main Street America Program. Founded in 1848, Rio Grande City has created trolley tours through its historic downtown where businesses, old and new, are flourishing. Harlingen, meanwhile, has revitalized its main plaza on Jackson Street.
“We just fell in love with Harlingen and saw opportunity here,” says Rene Garcia, who co-owns Bandera Coffee Co. with his wife, Ashley. The shop, which serves artisan Ethiopian, Kenyan, Colombian, and Mexican coffee and cocktails, opened in 2018. Inside, the white minimalist setup is accented by distinct Valley touches. A black banner on the wall features an outline of the four counties that make up the Valley. Cups come branded with a “956” sticker—the RGV’s area code. “We just want to celebrate the Valley,” Garcia says.
They were among the first wave of locals who sought to bring something new to the city. Along with Bandera, there are new shops, restaurants, and community events downtown.
“When Elon Musk moved to town, he said there was a lot of land and not a lot of people—it broke my heart,” Garcia says, referring to the billionaire’s divisive establishment of a SpaceX launch site in Boca Chica Beach outside Brownsville in 2014. “Do people still not notice the Valley? There’s so much culture here. We’re doing this to usher it into the next generations. We have a 4-year-old son, and we want him to be able to connect with his home.”
I’m making my way into Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park in Mission for the first time one morning when I decide to follow the turkeys. The park, which opened in 1962, is one of nine World Birding Center sites and one of four state parks in the RGV. I’ve never been a birder—in fact, I had no idea the RGV was a popular spot for enthusiasts until a couple years ago. But today, I’m giving it a go.
The turkeys seem unfazed by my presence as I stroll down the main road that leads to nearly 800 acres of nature preserve. To my left, I see the looming border wall. To my right is La Parida Banco, a small oxbow lake left behind by the Rio Grande just a few miles away. I’m surrounded by Montezuma bald cypress, mesquite, Texas ebony, and anacua trees. The park is one of multiple nature preserves throughout the Valley dedicated to restoring the region to its natural glory.
You see, when Closner and ensuing developers—which included Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park’s namesakes, brothers Lloyd and Elmer Bentsen—began repurposing the Valley’s land, they destroyed thousands of acres of its natural wild flora and fauna. Today, the region is facing the aftereffects. This year, the Valley’s last sugarcane factory closed due to low water levels in the Rio Grande. As water resources dwindle, the futures of many farmworkers are at stake.
“By [the early 20th century], the Rio Grande was already running dry. Were it not for the creation of the dams in the 1950s and ’60s, many of us would not live in the Valley today,” Guajardo says. Current water levels are even lower. Agriculture, the literal bounty of the Valley, is struggling. “[The Valley] is a complex ecosystem—ecological and economic and cultural and political,” he adds.
Destruction of the land isn’t the only mark left by early 20th-century developers. The influx of Midwestern farmers caused local civil unrest. As Anglo farmers took over the lands, Tejano ranchers grew increasingly angry. The newcomers, accustomed to Jim Crow laws further north, implemented racial hierarchies and took control of county governments. The agricultural boom was devastating for small Tejano landowners—to this day Anglo proprietors still dominate.
“Tejanos couldn’t afford the irrigation fees, the water, the railroads,” Starling says. “On top of that, you had violent incidents where the people who challenged this takeover of the area were killed or driven off their
own property.”
But the Valley has always been embattled. Disputes over border security cause unease, like most border towns in Texas. But nearly everyone I spoke with felt compelled to point out that’s not the Valley they’ve experienced.
“I think they typecast us because we’re on the border,” Michael J. Limas says. “If anything, the people who are coming, they’re stimulating our economy. They’re flying out of our airports. They’re using our bus stops. They’re going to our restaurants. You know, they’re going to the mall. It hurts business because people assume it’s a war zone. And it’s like, no—we’re just having cocktails here.”
The scent of grilled fish and fajitas wafts through the air on an early Friday evening in May. I’m approaching the McAllen Convention Center with my parents and friends, who I’ve convinced to attend MXLAN, a packed three-day festival celebrating the Valley’s Latino culture. “These are our roots, we are the flowers,” the event’s slogan reads.
We’ve signed ourselves up for a special event called Sabor de Mexico, featuring vendors serving an array of area cuisine. Hosted by the city of McAllen, the festival was created in 2019 with the intention to promote goodwill between the Valley and our neighbors to the south.
MXLAN also showcases the RGV’s culture and talent. A DJ blasts Latin band Grupo Frontera, a viral sensation that came out of Edinburg two years ago, while people gulp down micheladas. Stands are set up along the walkways in a Mexican street market style featuring handmade goods and treats. A large stage in the distance showcases local musicians, and inside the center, children’s dance groups perform folklórico. Over the next couple of days, there will be a walking parade, mezcal tastings, and a Lucha Libre smackdown. The evening winds down and I take a moment to appreciate this festive display of Valley spirit. My mom takes my hand as we continue through the market. I’m home.
It’s anyone’s guess what the RGV’s future holds. On one hand, agriculture is struggling, border politics are polarizing, and a growing population is bound to bring unfamiliar change. But a flourishing university, an energized new generation, and efforts to rewild public land hint at promising possibilities. The Valley has reinvented itself many times throughout the millennia. But in every iteration, one thing has remained the same: its indomitable spirit.
“This era is like the last era and the era before. This is a place of hope, and this is a place that’s deeply redemptive,” Guajardo says. “I think the Valley has exported the best of what it is in humanity. I know I sound like a romantic here, but I believe it.”
What Closner and his peers at the turn of the century didn’t understand when they attempted to bend the RGV to their will was that the magic was never in the world they were creating. It wasn’t in their farming practices, the imported trees, or the flashy marketing. It’s in the region’s biculturalism, its ability to be two things at once; the people who built it, their ancestors who’ve been here for centuries, and their descendants writing its next act. It’s the Tejano music blasting at a party, the food we serve, the urge to take care of our own, and the land in all its wild, magic glory.
