Jim Hogg County Texas map
27.05° N · 98.75° W · County seat: Hebbronville · 1,136 sq mi
Jim Hogg County is ranch country between Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley: 4,838 people, 1,136 square miles, no incorporated city and no four-lane road. Hebbronville, the seat, grew up around a railroad siding on a Spanish land-grant range and remains a census-designated place rather than a town.
Hebbronville sits near the centre of the county where SH-16 and SH-285 meet. The rail line running east–west through it is the old Texas-Mexican Railway between Laredo and Corpus Christi.
Where Jim Hogg County is
The county sits square in the middle of the South Texas brush, with Duval County to the north, Brooks east, Starr south, Zapata west and Webb northwest. It does not touch the Rio Grande, but Starr and Zapata put it one county away on two sides.
Laredo is about 56 miles northwest, McAllen 67 miles southeast and Corpus Christi 98 miles northeast. The Legislature created the county in 1913 out of Brooks and Duval counties — one of the last new counties in Texas — and named it for James Stephen Hogg, governor from 1891 to 1895 and the first governor born in Texas.
Settlements
The census records no incorporated place in Jim Hogg County. Hebbronville holds most of the population; the rest live on ranches.
| Community | Where it is |
|---|---|
| Hebbronville | County seat, SH-16 at SH-285, on the rail line |
| Randado | West on FM 1017, a land-grant ranch settlement dating to the 1830s |
| Guerra | South of Hebbronville on SH-16 |
| Thompsonville | Northwest toward the Webb County line |
Roads and the railroad
- SH-16 – north through Duval County toward Freer and San Antonio; south to Zapata and the Rio Grande.
- SH-285 – east from Hebbronville to Falfurrias and US-281.
- FM 1017 – west from Hebbronville past Randado toward the Zapata County line.
The Texas-Mexican Railway laid its Laredo–Corpus Christi line across this range in the early 1880s, and Hebbronville began as a shipping point on it, named for James R. Hebbron. The track is still in service under Kansas City Southern's successor, carrying freight between the Laredo border crossings and the coast; it is the reason a town of this size sits where it does.
Ranches, land grants and the vaquero
Land here was parcelled out in Spanish and Mexican grants long before the county existed, and many of the ranches have stayed in the same families since. Randado was established by the García family in the 1830s, and its chapel and stone buildings are among the oldest structures in this part of Texas. The working tradition of the region is the vaquero — the mounted stockman of northern Mexico and South Texas, whose gear and vocabulary the American cowboy inherited more or less whole, from la reata to chaps to the rodeo itself. Hebbronville marks the heritage with an annual vaquero celebration and a downtown of brick storefronts that has changed little in appearance.
The country is thorn scrub: mesquite, blackbrush, guajillo and prickly pear over sandy loam, grazed by cattle and leased in the autumn for white-tailed deer, quail, dove and javelina. Rainfall is light and unreliable, and the ranch water comes from wells.
Gas under the brush
Oil and gas fields have produced in and around Jim Hogg County since the early twentieth century, and natural gas has been the steadier of the two. Wellheads, tank batteries and gathering lines sit among the mesquite on ranches that also run cattle, and mineral royalties are a significant part of local income. Drilling activity rises and falls with prices, but the county has never had a boom town: production supplements ranching here rather than replacing it.