McAllen, Texas map
26.20° N · 98.23° W · Hidalgo County · elev. ~120 ft · Central Time
McAllen is the 22nd-largest city in Texas, the largest city in Hidalgo County and the retail center of the Rio Grande Valley. It sits about seven miles north of the Rio Grande on the US-83 expressway, close enough to Reynosa, Tamaulipas — a city of well over half a million — that Mexican shoppers are a permanent part of its economy.
The expressway across the frame is US-83 / I-2. The river and the Hidalgo bridge are just off the bottom edge; Mission is west, Pharr east.
Where McAllen is in Texas
McAllen is in the western half of the Rio Grande Valley, roughly 60 miles west of Brownsville and 150 miles southeast of Laredo. It is the middle of a nearly continuous 60-mile band of towns that runs along US-83 from Mission and La Joya in the west through McAllen, Pharr, San Juan, Alamo, Weslaco and Mercedes to Harlingen and San Benito.
Its own metropolitan area — McAllen–Edinburg–Mission — is exactly Hidalgo County, and at 870,790 people in 2020 it is the largest metro in Texas outside the Texas Triangle. Edinburg, the county seat, is 13 miles north; Mission adjoins McAllen on the west and Pharr on the east, with no gap between them.
The land is old Rio Grande delta: flat, irrigated from the river, and originally citrus and vegetable country. The river itself runs along the southern county line and is walled off by a levee system; the strip between the levee and the water holds several tracts of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
Expressways and border bridges
- US-83 / I-2 (Expressway 83) – the Valley's main east–west road, from Mission through McAllen and Pharr east to Harlingen.
- US-281 / I-69C – north from Pharr through Edinburg toward Falfurrias and, eventually, San Antonio.
- SH-336 (10th Street) – the north–south spine through McAllen, running from the Edinburg line south to the Hidalgo bridge.
- Ware Road (FM-2220) – the western north–south arterial toward Mission and the Sharyland district.
- Bicentennial Boulevard and Jackson Road – the other long north–south city streets, either side of 10th.
- Anzalduas Highway – southwest from the expressway to the Anzalduas International Bridge, a non-commercial crossing built to relieve Hidalgo.
Three bridges serve the immediate area. The McAllen–Hidalgo–Reynosa International Bridge, at the end of 10th Street about seven miles south of downtown, is the main passenger crossing. Anzalduas, southwest near Granjeno, takes overflow traffic and southbound trucks. The Pharr–Reynosa International Bridge, east of the city, is the commercial crossing that handles most of the produce moving north.
Areas and districts
| Area | What's there |
|---|---|
| Downtown / 17th Street | The original grid, the entertainment district and the bus terminal for Reynosa traffic |
| North 10th Street | La Plaza Mall at the expressway, hotels and the densest retail strip in the Valley |
| Nolana Avenue | East–west commercial corridor north of the expressway |
| Ware Road / west McAllen | Residential west side running into Sharyland and Mission |
| Convention center district | McAllen Convention Center and performing arts venue north of Nolana |
| South McAllen | Older neighborhoods between the expressway and the levee, toward the airport |
| McAllen International Airport | Commercial field on South 10th Street, on the road to Hidalgo |
| Quinta Mazatlán | A World Birding Center site in a 1930s adobe house south of the expressway |
Retail, citrus and birds
McAllen was laid out in 1904 when the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway reached this part of the delta, and was named for John McAllen, whose ranch land the town was built on. Irrigation from the Rio Grande turned the county into a citrus and winter-vegetable district within twenty years, and the produce trade is still the reason for the Pharr bridge's truck volume.
The modern draw is retail. La Plaza Mall and the 10th Street corridor pull shoppers from across northern Mexico, and the city's sales-tax base is far larger than its own population would produce. The third industry is birding: the Valley's position at the meeting point of temperate and tropical ranges gives it species found nowhere else in the United States, and Quinta Mazatlán in McAllen is one of the World Birding Center sites strung along the river from Roma to South Padre Island.
Distances from McAllen
| City | Road miles | Route |
|---|---|---|
| Edinburg | 13 | US-281 / I-69C N |
| Harlingen | 40 | US-83 / I-2 E |
| Brownsville | 60 | I-2 E / I-69E S |
| Corpus Christi | 150 | US-281 N / SH-44 E |
| Laredo | 150 | US-83 NW |
| San Antonio | 240 | US-281 N |
| Houston | 350 | US-77 N / US-59 (I-69) N |