Old Falcon
Falcon, Zapata County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1746, Col. Jose de Escandon was commissioned by the Viceroy of New Spain to lead the colonization of this area. The first settlers arrived 3 years later and were assigned land on which to build their homes. A survey conducted in 1767 resulted in the allocation of individual land grants to the settlers, which marked the start of private property ownership in the area. About 1800, Jose Eugenio Ramirez established a ranch on the north bank of the Rio Grande and named his headquarters Ramireno. The settlement that grew up around his home was plagued throughout the 19th century with Indian raids, particularly when military protection was withdrawn during the years of the Mexican Revolution (1810-1821). In the early 1900s, Ildefonso Ramirez opened a general store, and, when a post office was established in 1915, the name of the village was changed to Falcon in honor of Jose Eugenio's wife, Maria Rita de la Garza Falcon. After Falcon Dam was completed in 1952, the town was flooded, and residents were forced to relocate to this site. The history of Old Falcon, however, with its ties to 18th-century Spanish colonialism, remains an important part of their heritage. (1983)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1746 the Viceroy of New Spain commissioned Colonel José de Escandón to colonize this stretch of the Rio Grande, and the first settlers arrived three years later; an official 1767 survey converted their holdings into individual land grants, beginning private land ownership in the region. Around 1800 José Eugenio Ramírez founded the Ramireño ranch here, and the community that grew around it was renamed Falcon in 1915 for his wife, María Rita de la Garza Falcón. When Falcon Dam flooded the townsite in 1952, residents carried their history to higher ground at this relocated village.
Why it matters
Old Falcon links eighteenth-century Spanish colonial land grants to the mid-twentieth-century dam projects that reshaped the border, showing how a community's heritage can outlast the ground it stood on.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · José de Escandón
- · José Eugenio Ramírez
- · María Rita de la Garza Falcón
Related events
- · Construction of Falcon Dam (1952)
- · Spanish land grants of 1767
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
In the Vicinity of this Site was Mission Revilla a Visita
Zapata, TX
In 1750, the Spanish crown pressed north of the Rio Grande under José de Escandón's ambitious plan to colonize the frontier province of Nuevo Santander. A visita — a chapel served periodically by a priest riding out from a parent mission — was established here to draw the region's Indigenous people into Spanish settlement and the Catholic faith. The State of Texas placed this marker in 1936, its Centennial year, to remember one of the earliest European footholds in the lower Rio Grande country.
Colonization of the Lower Rio Grande Area
Zapata, TX
In 1746 Spanish officials chose José de Escandón, a proven soldier and administrator, to colonize the lower Rio Grande Valley, then the northern frontier of New Spain. Leading more than 700 settlers, soldiers, and missionaries, he founded a string of towns — including Laredo, San Ygnacio, and others — in a district named Nuevo Santander after his home province. Escandón parceled the land into long riverfront tracts called porciones, and the General Visitation of 1767 confirmed private ownership, seeding the ranching culture from which South Texas's great cattle industry grew.
Jose De Escandon
Rio Grande City, TX
In the mid-eighteenth century, the Spanish colonizer José de Escandón explored the country from Tampico to the San Antonio River and planted some two dozen towns, many of which survive today. He founded missions, opened roads, and settled families across what is now the lower Rio Grande borderlands, earning from the Spanish crown the title Conde de la Sierra Gorda.
Agua Nueva Cemetery
Hebbronville, TX
On land granted by the Spanish crown along the twin lakes of southeastern Jim Hogg County, the Ramírez family worked the range for generations from their base in Ciudad Mier, Tamaulipas. As raiding threats eased in the late 1800s, the vaqueros and their families began staying permanently, and heirs of the Agua Nueva de Arriba and de Abajo land grants settled here. The cemetery's earliest graves — cowboys and children marked with mesquite crosses, and stone bóvedas dated to 1900–1904 — hold six generations of border families.