Jesus Pena and his big sisters Carmina and Sonia knew the sights and sounds of the downtown Harlingen of their growing up years. They grew up on Monroe Street, within walking distance of downtown, as well as their schools, churches and stores. Jesus recalled a neighborhood barber shop on Van Buren Street where his father took him as a child. It’s just down the street from the former barber shop…
Danny Smith was taking a holiday break in New Mexico when one of his sons called with devastating news on the first day of 2022. “Dad, your shop is on fire,” Smith recalls upon hearing his 125,000-square-foot Matt’s Building Materials store in Pharr was engulfed in flames. Baldo Arriaga, a 20 year-plus employee of Matt’s, got to the store 30 minutes after the blaze was reported to the local fire…
The Storybook Garden sits on a corner of Texas Boulevard just a moment’s walk from Business 83 in Weslaco. It’s main street Weslaco and an appropriate place to find an independent bookstore with deep ties to its community. The historic hotel site suits the purposes and goals of Sarah Cuadra, the bookstore’s owner. “We want to be a place for families to come and meet and develop a love for…
Mission within a year will have direct access to a full-service, cross-border international bridge. The city, anticipating new opportunities in international trade, has hired an economic development executive with expertise in that field. Teclo Garcia is the new chief executive officer for the Mission Economic Development Corporation. He comes to the job after a three-year stint as Laredo’s economic development director in dealing with the Mexican business community and international…
The block of West Van Buren Street where Don Gollito sits in Harlingen stirs a nostalgic feel. The Tex-Mex restaurant is down home all the way, “Harlingen-style,” as one of its owners, Fred Uribe, puts it. He co-owns the restaurant with Rick Silva, a self-described “jack-of-all-trades” of the local restaurant scene. On Van Buren, vehicles park at an angle that’s reminiscent of small-town America of previous eras. It’s appropriate since…
The population of Los Fresnos nearly doubled from the 2010 Census to the one done a decade later. The city’s current population of over 8,000 residents is a jump from the 4,500 in 2010. Los Fresnos at 47 percent population growth ranked second behind Edinburg among Rio Grande Valley cities in measuring 2020 over 2010 increases. The gross numbers are far below Edinburg’s as that city has gone over 100,000…
The over 100,000-square-foot space of the former Valley Fruit Company is a place in motion with forklifts motoring between towering rows of canned goods. The Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley runs its operations from the historic warehouse site where citrus and vegetables were once processed and packaged. Today, millions of pounds of foodstuffs and produce are shipped out from the same Pharr location to food pantries and nonprofit…
Manuel Alvarez and his wife, Nadia Escalante, started out with an at-home bakery in Brownsville, creating their Pastel Japones. Said another way, they are Japanese cotton cheesecakes. The popularity of the fluffy sponge-looking cake would take off. In part it was due to the uniqueness of the product in the Rio Grande Valley market. It’s a region filled with pan dulce shops and custom cake bakeries. It’s difficult to find…
Farming and ranching history and heritage runs deep in Mercedes. The city was founded in 1909 by a land company which built some of the first canals in the Rio Grande Valley to irrigate farm fields and attract agricultural interests from the Midwest. The Rio Grande Valley Livestock Show would find its home in Mercedes in the late 1930s and continues running strong to the present. The Farm Fest this…
The Rio Grande Valley communities between McAllen and Brownsville for much of their history lacked a local higher education option to college campuses a long commuter drive away. Donna, Mercedes, Weslaco and surrounding Mid-Valley communities with their high school graduates may have seen a college education, or technical training, as being out of reach. In the late 1990s, the gap began to be addressed with the launch of the Mid-Valley…