Mercedes, Texas

Mercedes was founded on September fifteenth, nineteen oh seven, by the American Rio Grande Land and Irrigation Company, a St. Louis investment group that chartered the company in nineteen oh five with one and a quarter million dollars in capital stock. Their formula was straightforward: dig canals from the Rio Grande, bring in the railroad, sell irrigated farmland.

The settling basin, pumping plant, and first canals were operational by nineteen oh eight, and Mercedes had a population of a thousand people within its first year. It is one of the oldest cities in the Rio Grande Valley. The irrigation company's three canals eventually served tens of thousands of acres of citrus, vegetables, and cotton, turning the semi-arid brush into the agricultural engine that defines the Valley today.