Weslaco, Texas

Weslaco is a city named for a land company. In December nineteen seventeen, the W. E.

Stewart Land Company of Kansas City purchased thirty thousand acres of brush-covered delta land for ninety dollars an acre and set about selling it to farmers. The name Weslaco is simply W. E.

S. L. A.

Co., the company's initials compressed into a word. Stewart built a clubhouse on Llano Grande Lake to entertain prospective buyers.

In September nineteen nineteen, three Couch brothers and a business partner bought land from Stewart and platted the town. Lots sold that December for fifty to four hundred dollars. By nineteen twenty-one the city was incorporated, and within a decade Weslaco had become well-known for citrus production.

The orange and grapefruit groves that once covered the surrounding land made the Rio Grande Valley famous across the country, and Weslaco sat at the center of it.