Hidalgo County Texas map
26.40° N · 98.18° W · County seat: Edinburg · 1,583 sq mi
Hidalgo County held 870,781 people in 2020, which makes it the most populous county in Texas outside the Dallas–Houston–San Antonio–Austin triangle, and it is still one of the fastest-growing. Fourteen incorporated cities run almost continuously along US-83 from Mission to Weslaco, and four bridges cross the Rio Grande to Reynosa and Rio Bravo.
Edinburg is in the middle of the county on US-281/I-69C; McAllen, Pharr, San Juan, Alamo and Weslaco line up south of it along I-2. The Rio Grande is the southern boundary; the northern third is ranch country.
Where Hidalgo County is
The county was cut from Cameron County in 1852 and named for Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the parish priest whose call in 1810 began Mexico's war of independence. It is one of the few Texas counties named for a figure from Mexican rather than Texan history.
Its southern boundary is the Rio Grande, with the Tamaulipas cities of Reynosa and Río Bravo on the far bank. Starr County lies west, Brooks County north, Kenedy County northeast, and Willacy and Cameron counties east. Harlingen is 33 miles southeast on I-2, Brownsville 60 miles southeast by road, Laredo about 150 miles northwest on US-83 and Corpus Christi 145 miles northeast on US-281 and I-69C.
Cities
| City | Population (2020) |
|---|---|
| McAllen | 142,210 |
| Edinburg (county seat) | 100,243 |
| Mission | 85,789 |
| Pharr | 79,731 |
| Weslaco | 40,195 |
| San Juan | 35,325 |
| Alamo | 19,516 |
| Alton | 18,227 |
| Donna | 16,810 |
| Mercedes | 16,262 |
| Palmview | 15,837 |
| Hidalgo | 13,964 |
| Peñitas | 6,465 |
| Elsa | 5,677 |
La Joya, Sullivan City, Granjeno, Palmhurst, Progreso, Progreso Lakes, Edcouch and La Villa are smaller incorporated cities. A large share of the county's population lives outside all of them, in unincorporated colonias and rural subdivisions on the farm roads between the cities — one reason county officials argue the census undercounts the place.
The city of Hidalgo and Hidalgo County are different things: the city is the bridge town on the river, the county seat is Edinburg, 20 miles north.
Roads and bridges
- Interstate 2 / US-83 – the Valley's east–west freeway, entering from Starr County at Sullivan City and running through Mission, McAllen, Pharr, Weslaco and on to Harlingen.
- Interstate 69C / US-281 – north from the Pharr bridge through Pharr and Edinburg and out across the ranch country toward Falfurrias and Corpus Christi.
- US-281 along the river – the old Military Highway, running east from the city of Hidalgo through Progreso and into Cameron County.
- SH-107 – an east–west route across the middle of the county through Edinburg and Elsa.
- SH-336 – 10th Street in McAllen, the main north–south city street continued as a state highway to Edinburg.
- SH-186 – runs east from Edinburg's north side toward Raymondville in Willacy County.
The four road crossings are the Anzalduas International Bridge southwest of Mission, the Hidalgo–Reynosa bridge at the end of US-281, the Pharr–Reynosa International Bridge on the Rise — the produce crossing, and the busiest of the four for trucks — and the Donna–Rio Bravo bridge east of Donna, opened in 2010. West of Mission at Los Ebanos is the last hand-pulled ferry on the Rio Grande, a small wooden barge hauled across on a rope; its operation has been suspended for long stretches in recent years.
Citrus, vegetables and the university
The delta soils south of the old river channel and the irrigation districts that draw from the Rio Grande make this the centre of Texas citrus: grapefruit and oranges in groves around Mission, Weslaco and Alamo, with onions, cabbage, carrots, sugarcane and winter greens in the fields between them. Mission has held a citrus festival since the 1930s. Freezes — 1983, 1989 and 2021 among them — periodically kill back the groves, and each time the acreage comes back smaller.
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley was created in 2013 out of the two older Valley campuses and enrolled its first students in 2015; its largest campus is in Edinburg, and its School of Medicine, the first in the Valley, is based there too. The county is also the medical and retail hub for a much wider area, drawing shoppers from Reynosa and Monterrey to McAllen.
Birds and the river woods
Almost all of the original riverside forest was cleared for farming, and what survives is protected in pieces, which is why birders from all over the country come here. Bentsen–Rio Grande Valley State Park at Mission is the headquarters of the World Birding Center, a network of sites spread across the lower Valley; the park closed its interior to private cars so that visitors walk, bike or ride a tram. Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge south of Alamo protects a block of old subtropical woodland on a river bend, and the National Butterfly Center sits nearby at Mission. Chachalacas, green jays and kiskadees are ordinary here and found almost nowhere else in the United States.