Dunlap House
La Feria, Cameron County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Rio Grande Valley developer W.E. Stewart began construction of this adobe brick and stucco residence in 1912. Before it was completed, he sold the house to his employee Bailey H. Dunlap (1886-1957), a native of Illinois. Dunlap started La Feria's first bank, the Cameron County Bank, and was involved in real estate dealings throughout the valley. He served as La Feria's first mayor in 1915 and participated in numerous civic and religious organizations. In the 1920 and 1930s, the structure was enlarged and remodeled by W.E. Strickland, the original contractor.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Valley developer W. E. Stewart began this adobe-brick and stucco house in 1912 but sold it before completion to his employee Bailey H. Dunlap, an Illinois native. Dunlap founded La Feria's first bank, dealt in real estate across the Rio Grande Valley, and served as the town's first mayor in 1915, and the home was enlarged over the following decades.
Why it matters
The Dunlap house marks the boom era when developers and bankers rapidly transformed the Rio Grande Valley from ranchland into a network of farm towns.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1900s, the lower Rio Grande Valley was going through one of the most dramatic makeovers in Texas history. For generations the land near the river had mostly been cattle country: huge ranches, scattered settlements and long distances between neighbors. Then the railroad arrived early in the century, and suddenly the region's rich soil and long growing season looked like a fortune waiting to happen.
Developers moved quickly. They bought up ranch land, dug irrigation canals fed by the Rio Grande, laid out townsites and sold farm tracts to newcomers. Many of those buyers came from the Midwest, often brought down on promotional excursions to see the green fields for themselves. Within a few years, a string of small farm towns grew up across what promoters would come to call the "Magic Valley."
Nationally, this was the Progressive Era, a time of fast growth, new banks, booster clubs and a strong belief that planning and capital could build prosperity from scratch. The Dunlap House, begun in 1912, went up in the middle of that boom, when towns like La Feria were still being invented.
People & events
The house started as the project of W. E. Stewart, one of the developers working to turn the Valley into farmland and towns. He began building this adobe brick and stucco home in 1912. Before it was finished, though, he sold it to a man who worked for him, Bailey H. Dunlap.
Dunlap was born in Illinois in 1886, so he was still in his twenties when he got the house. He was one of many Midwesterners who came to the Valley to seek their fortune, and he found it in finance and land. He started La Feria's first bank, the Cameron County Bank, and did real estate deals all across the Valley. In a boom economy built on land sales, those two lines of work went hand in hand.
Dunlap also helped build the town's civic life. When La Feria chose its first mayor in 1915, it was Dunlap, and he was active in many civic and religious groups. The house grew with the family. In the 1920s and 1930s W. E. Strickland, the contractor who had built it in the first place, came back to enlarge and remodel it. That continuity is a small, telling detail about how close-knit these new communities were.
Its place in the American story
The story of the Dunlap House is a small piece of a very American pattern: the planned boomtown. Across the West and South, railroads, land companies and local boosters created towns almost overnight, and the first banker, the first mayor and the first grand house usually belonged to a handful of energetic founders. Dunlap's career follows that pattern closely.
The Rio Grande Valley boom also shows how irrigation changed American agriculture in the early twentieth century. Water turned semi-arid ranch country into some of the most productive farmland in the nation. It supplied citrus and vegetables to faraway markets and pulled thousands of settlers into a borderland region.
The house's adobe brick and stucco construction is worth noticing too. It reflects building traditions suited to the hot South Texas climate and rooted in the region's Spanish and Mexican heritage, adopted here by newcomers from the Midwest. In one building you can see the cultural blending that still defines the border region.
If you visit
La Feria is a small Cameron County town set among the fields and orchards that made the Valley famous. When you stop at the marker, look at the house's thick-walled adobe and stucco construction. It was a practical choice in a place where summer heat is serious business, and it sets the home apart from the frame houses common elsewhere in Texas.
This is most likely a private residence, so enjoy it respectfully from the public right-of-way. Try to imagine the town around it in 1912: newly platted streets, a young banker with big plans and a community that did not yet have a mayor.
The marker fits well into a slow drive through the Rio Grande Valley's string of farm towns. Many of them were founded in the same boom years, so as you go from town to town, look for the older downtown buildings, irrigation canals and citrus groves that still carry the story of the Magic Valley.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · W. E. Stewart
- · Bailey H. Dunlap
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of First Bank in La Feria
La Feria, TX
La Feria's first bank opened in this building soon after its 1912 founding, just as the Rio Grande Valley's railroad-fed farm boom was drawing settlers and capital south. Founded by Illinois-born Bailey H. Dunlap — who became the town's first mayor in 1915 — it won a state charter, was rechartered as a national bank in 1925, and moved to new quarters by 1927.
Rosalio Longoria House
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La Feria's oldest residence was built in 1909 by local carpenter Felipe Perez for Rosalio Ponce Longoria, a contractor who cleared land so developers could lay railroads and other improvements across the Rio Grande Valley. The original board-and-batten house held two main rooms, two small bedrooms, a long front porch, and a kitchen with a brick chimney for a wood stove. A bathroom, a small porch, and a family room were added around 1950.
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