It’s the sort of 70s-degree January day that draws Winter Texans to the Rio Grande Valley as Cathy Sutton stands on a riverside pavilion at one of the two RV parks she manages in Mission.
It’s the weekly hamburger lunch day at the Chimney Park RV Resort, a Wednesday treat that features live music played by Winter Texans from area parks. Sutton calls it “coming up with ideas on what sets our parks apart” in a community that a recent national survey ranked sixth in the nation for winter visitors. StorageCafe ranks Mission as the top destination among Texas cities for winter visitors.
For Sutton, a Florida native, the attraction of Mission and the Valley became apparent shortly after she arrived in 2019 to oversee the acquisition of Seven Oaks Resort in south Mission. In 2022, her company purchased the nearby Chimney Park. Sutton was also a year-round local resident by that point.
“I came here for a few months but liked it so much that I’m still here four years later,” she said.
Picturesque Setting
Chimney Park is among the more interesting RV parks among the hundreds operating across the Valley.
The park has the Rio Grande as its southern boundary. Border Patrol boats motor down the U.S. side of the river while national guardsmen back their jeeps up to the edge of the river within easy view of Chimney Park’s main office. The border wall stands on a levee above a portion of the park, meaning as Sutton puts it, “we’re on the Mexican side of the wall.”
Chimney Park is in actuality on U.S. soil, and is remarkably both calm and idyllic. Sutton is describing the uniqueness of Chimney Park just steps away from its namesake structure, which in the early 1900s served as a pump station to steer river water to irrigate some of the Valley’s first farm fields.
“We had concerns before we got here,” Sutton said in reference to border security reporting via national cable television channels. “They were alleviated in our minds when we saw it’s nothing like what you see on the news. It’s beautiful here and we feel very safe being here.”
Fostering a Community
Border Patrol agents are welcome at the weekly burger lunches on Wednesdays at Chimney Park and are yearly guests at Thanksgiving lunches. Park residents often travel to Mexican border cities for medical services and prescriptions that are usually more affordable on the other side of the river. And the park’s residents demonstrate the empathy they have for their neighbors by organizing a yearly toy drive for orphanages in Mexico.
“It’s the people,” said Dawn Mundt, a Winter Texan resident and one of the musicians featured at the weekly Chimney Park hamburger lunches. “You look for community and here, when you walk around the park, you hear, ‘Come on over and have a drink with us, or stay for dinner.’ It’s really hard to leave a place like this one.”
Friendly Folks
It’s both that friendliness and welcoming spirit that are keys to making the RGV so attractive to winter tourists, Sutton said.
In her native Florida, she says, winter tourists are referred to as snowbirds and seen “as pests who clog up the roads at restaurants.” These differences in views from South Texas in comparison to Florida is certainly remarkable, Sutton said.
“I was shocked when I came here and saw how they are welcomed in the Valley with festivals and discounts at restaurants,” she said of Winter Texans. “The communities here are far friendlier, and you mix that in with the price and proximity to Mexico for medical services, and you have a great place for them to come.”
And overall, in Texas when it comes to winter tourists, there’s no better place than the Valley. McAllen ranks 17th nationally in the StorageCafe Survey, while Weslaco comes in at 22nd and Mission places in the top 10. The three RGV cities rank as the best ones in Texas for winter tourism, with College Station and Galveston rounding out the top 25 in the national survey.
“Come to Mission, Texas,” Sutton said. “You won’t have to deal with the high prices of Florida and you will be welcomed here in a beautiful part of Texas.”