Pharr: Sugar Dreams on the Rio Grande

Pharr was founded in nineteen nine by John Connally Kelley, who had partnered with Louisiana sugarcane grower Henry Newton Pharr to develop sixteen thousand acres along the Rio Grande. Kelley named the town for his partner and formed the Pharr Townsite Company, building an irrigation canal from the river to make a sugar plantation viable. The plan did not survive the collapse of the Rio Grande Valley sugarcane industry, but the canal infrastructure remained, and the Magic Valley, as boosters called it, pivoted to citrus and vegetables, crops that have defined the region ever since. Pharr incorporated in nineteen sixteen, grew steadily through the twentieth century, and today is one of the largest cities in the Rio Grande Valley with a population of nearly eighty thousand.