For all that tropical ease, McAllen is a young city raised on old ranchland. Long before the town this was Coahuiltecan homeland, and then Spanish-grant country: the Santa Anita Ranch traces to a 1797 land grant held for generations by the Ballí family. The modern story starts with John McAllen, an Irish-born rancher from Londonderry who reached the Valley in the mid-1800s, married into the Ballí-Young ranching family, and lent the place his name. When the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway pushed through the brush country in 1904, a townsite was platted along the line and called McAllen; it incorporated as a city in 1911. A ranch, a railroad, and a name — that is how McAllen began.
What turned brush country into a garden was water. The Hidalgo Irrigation Company organized in 1903, and canals soon carried the Rio Grande across the flat valley land. Almost overnight the Valley became one of the most productive farm belts in the country: cotton and sugarcane at first, then the citrus that still defines it — including the Texas Ruby Red grapefruit, sweet enough to become the state fruit. Winter vegetables, palms, and orange groves followed, and McAllen grew up as the trading and shipping hub at the center of it all, the place the Valley's harvest moved through.
Why People Visit McAllen
McAllen offers something rare — a subtropical Texas city where world-class birding, citrus country, and a living bi-national culture all sit within easy reach. Visitors come for the palms and the birds, stay for the food and the warmth, and leave understanding why this corner of Texas calls itself the City of Palms.
