Zapata County Texas map
27.00° N · 99.18° W · County seat: Zapata · 1,058 sq mi
Zapata County has a county seat that is not where it used to be. When Falcon Dam closed in the early 1950s and the reservoir began to rise, the town of Zapata, the county cemetery and several river villages were abandoned and rebuilt on higher ground to the east. Sixty of the county's 1,058 square miles are now water, and the shoreline is its main asset.
The Rio Grande and Falcon Reservoir form the entire southwestern boundary. US-83 runs the length of the county a few miles inland; Zapata is roughly halfway along it.
Where Zapata County is
The county was created in 1858 out of Starr and Webb counties and named for José Antonio Zapata, a rancher on this stretch of the river who took up arms against the central Mexican government and was a colonel of the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande in 1840.
It has only three Texas neighbours: Webb County north, Jim Hogg County east and Starr County southeast. Everything southwest is Mexico — the state of Tamaulipas, and Nuevo León at the upstream end. Laredo is about 50 miles northwest on US-83, McAllen roughly 95 miles southeast on the same road, and Harlingen 135 miles southeast.
Communities
Zapata County has no incorporated city at all. Every settlement in it is an unincorporated community or census-designated place, and the county government in Zapata is the only local government most residents have.
Zapata, the seat, holds most of the population and sits on US-83 above the reservoir. San Ygnacio, 15 miles upriver toward Laredo, was founded in the 1830s and kept its stone ranch buildings because the flooding stopped short of it; its historic district, including the Treviño–Uribe fortified rancho, is a National Historic Landmark. Falcon, Lopeño, Medina and Siete Lomas are strung along the lake road south, and Bustamante and Las Palmas sit inland on SH-16.
Roads
- US-83 – the only through route, entering from Webb County in the north, running the length of the county past Zapata and San Ygnacio and continuing southeast into Starr County toward Rio Grande City. There is no interstate in the county and no four-lane alternative.
- SH-16 – runs northeast from Zapata into the ranch country toward Hebbronville in Jim Hogg County.
- Farm-to-market roads – short spurs drop southwest off US-83 to the reservoir shore, the boat ramps and the lakeside settlements at Falcon, Lopeño and Medina.
Falcon Reservoir and the dam
Falcon Dam was built jointly by the United States and Mexico through the International Boundary and Water Commission and dedicated in October 1953. The reservoir behind it backs up the Rio Grande for about 60 miles, most of it along Zapata County, and it is split down the middle by the international boundary — the Texas half is managed from this side, the Tamaulipas half from the other.
Filling it drowned the old river towns. Zapata and Lopeño were relocated wholesale; on the Mexican bank, the colonial town of Guerrero Viejo was abandoned and still surfaces in dry years. The international bridge that used to link the county to Mexico went under with them, and the crossing now is at the dam itself, at the reservoir's southern end in Starr County.
What the lake gave back is fishing. Falcon has a long-standing reputation for largemouth bass, and the tournament traffic, the RV parks and the winter visitors who come down US-83 are a significant part of the local economy.
Gas under the brush
Away from the water, Zapata County is dry brush country — mesquite, huisache and prickly pear over caliche, grazed by cattle on large ranches. Under it is natural gas. Wells in the Wilcox sands have been produced here since the mid-twentieth century, and the deep Lobo trend that runs across Zapata and Webb counties has kept the drilling rigs and compressor stations working since. Gas royalties and school-district taxes from that production do a great deal of the work in a county of fewer than 14,000 people.