Mission: The Grapefruit Capital
Near Mcallen, Texas
Mission got its name from the La Lomita Mission chapel nearby, a small nineteen-century outpost the Oblate Fathers used when riding circuits through the Rio Grande Valley. When the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway arrived and a town post office opened in December of nineteen oh eight, residents named the new community after that chapel.
The railroad brought settlers who saw the Valley's subtropical climate as an opportunity, and by the nineteen twenties, Mission had become the center of the Texas grapefruit industry. Entrepreneur John Shary rebuilt the local irrigation system and carved farmland from brush country, selling small citrus plots to Northern buyers. The Ruby Red grapefruit, patented in nineteen twenty-nine, became the state fruit of Texas and one of the most commercially successful citrus varieties ever developed. Today Mission still calls itself the home of the Texas grapefruit.
