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 Old Hidalgo Courthouse and Buildings - Hidalgo, Texas Posted by:  JimmyEv
N 26° 05.972 W 098° 15.773
14R E 573707 N 2886915
Four vernacular buildings from the late 19th century - the second county courthouse, the second county jail, the Rodriguez Store, and a former post office - make up the Old Hidalgo Courthouse Complex, giving this town a decrepit, historic air.
Waymark Code: WM3N9N
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 04/24/2008
Views: 90
Salome Balli was a descendant of early Spanish settlers. She inherited a few of the Spanish land grants extending from the banks of the Rio Grande River into Texas. John Young was a merchant from Scotland. He immigrated to Matamoros during the Mexican War. After the war, as became customary for a period of time between Anglo and Mexican families, Young married Balli, consolidating his monetary fortune with her land fortune.
 Former Post Office
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On one of Balli’s land grants, husband and wife platted the town of Edinburgh along the Rio Grande, built a ferry across, and established a small store. When Hidalgo County was organized in 1852, Edinburgh, which was the only town in the county, became the county seat. A rudimentary county courthouse and jail were built along the banks of the river. In 1886, both the courthouse and jail were moved from the banks of the river to the corner of Flora and First Streets. The move was fortunate for the county - the next year, 1887, the original Hidalgo County Courthouse and Jail Buildings were swept away when the Rio Grande flooded.
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A decade or so after the courthouse was built, a number of Americans with big dreams settled in the Valley. Instead of acquiring land through marriage to Spanish families, they employed a variety of machinations to wrest control of many of the original Spanish land grants that hadn’t been consolidated under American-Mexican family dynasties. These developers brought the railroad, and created an extensive irrigation system, bringing water from the Rio Grande inland to the arid inner reaches of Hidalgo County. They then began marketing the land to midwestern farmers, using tactics just as questionable as their acquisition of the land.
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From 1904 until after World War II, sales agents would travel the Midwest, extolling the virtues of the Valley - the sunny climate, the year-round growing season. They were peddling 40 to 80 acre tracts of farmland. Excursions were arranged for interested farmers. An all-expense-paid trip to the Valley, for both husband and wife, was the enticement. Once in the Valley, the farmers stayed at club houses, and were given tours of ‘model’ farms, all the while listening to a sales pitch. What they saw was controlled by the development company. Most of the homeseekers, locally derided as ‘homesuckers,’ signed on the dotted line of a contract purchasing a 40 to 80 acre tract, sight unseen. When the settlers actually moved to their new land, they discovered something vastly different than the model farms. They had to start from scratch, building their own model farm all by themselves with what little capital they had after the land purchase. These Valley promoters may well have been the inspiration of modern timeshare salesmen.
John Closner was a Hidalgo County Sheriff and Tax Assessor, as well as one of these promoters. He took advantage of both political positions, purchasing several Spanish land grants at questionable auctions. He created his townsite in arid Hidalgo County, north of Hidalgo, and dubbed it Chapin. He and his partners - other members of the Hidalgo County government - extended both the railroad and irrigation canals to Chapin. To bolster sales of townsites and farmsites around Chapin, in 1908, Closner and his partners easily voted to move the county seat from Edinburgh to Chapin. Other developers building the town of Mercedes protested the vote, but Closner and his partners loaded carts of county records and hauled them to Chapin. Not only did they manage to move the county seat to Chapin, they also took the name of the county seat. Since Edinburgh (Chapin) had usurped the name of the town, Edinburgh (on the river) changed it’s name to Hidalgo. This even confuses natives, who seem to be of the mind that the old Hidalgo County Courthouse was a structure in Edinburg of which only pictures remain in the South Texas Museum of History. But the actual old Hidalgo County Courthouse is still intact - in Hidalgo, a few hundred yards from the Rio Grande River.
Both the courthouse and the jail , built in a plain, square, vernacular style, were erected using handmade brick imported from across the river in Reynosa, Mexico. A courtyard joined the courthouse and jail; all that remains of the courtyard are the original brick walkways and remnants of the brick walls. Texas State Bank wraps around both buildings, neither of which has ever been equipped with plumbing. Across First Street sits the mercantile, home to the town’s post office from 1839 until 1913. Catty-corner is the Rodriguez Store (N26° 06.004 W98° 15.718), built in 1890.
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 Rodriguez Store
 Courthouse
 Jail
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These beautiful, decrepit buildings are one of the most evocative spots in Hidalgo County, seeming to just ooze history. They remain vacant and falling-apart. Hidalgo is a relatively poor town, and doesn’t have the funds to restore the buildings, or even maintain them. As the NRHP narrative ends, “While interest in saving the courthouse complex buildings is high, the community lacks the funds for major preservation or restoration efforts.”
Sources:
Texas Historical Commission, "Hidalgo Courthouse and Buildings, Old"
Texas Historical Commission, "Louisiana--Rio Grande Canal Company Irrigation System"
Both available at Texas Historical Atlas
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Street address:
Flora and 1st Streets
Hidalgo, TX USA
County / Borough / Parish: Hidalgo County
Year listed: 1980
Historic (Areas of) Significance: Event, Architecture/Engineering
Periods of significance: 1875-1899
Historic function: Correctional Facility, Courthouse, Specialty Store
Current function: Vacant/Not In Use
Primary Web Site: [Web Link]
Privately owned?: Not Listed
Season start / Season finish: Not listed
Hours of operation: Not listed
Secondary Website 1: Not listed
Secondary Website 2: Not listed
National Historic Landmark Link: Not listed
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Visit Instructions:
Please give the date and brief account of your visit. Include any additional observations or information that you may have, particularly about the current condition of the site. Additional photos are highly encouraged, but not mandatory.
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