Starr County Texas map
26.53° N · 98.74° W · County seat: Rio Grande City · 1,229 sq mi
Starr County is the upriver end of the Rio Grande Valley, where the delta farmland gives out and the brush and bluffs begin. Roma stands on a sandstone bluff above the river with a block of 1850s buildings that is a National Historic Landmark district, and at the county's northwest corner Falcon Dam holds back the international reservoir.
US-83 runs along the river through Roma and Rio Grande City in the southern strip of the county. The northern two-thirds is ranch country with almost no through roads.
Where Starr County is
Starr was one of the counties organized from Nueces County in 1848 once the Rio Grande became the boundary, and it is named for James Harper Starr, secretary of the treasury of the Republic of Texas. The towns are older than the county: Roma and the settlements along the river grew out of the Spanish colonial settlement of the lower river, and the porciones — long, narrow grants running back from the water, surveyed in 1767 — still show in the property lines.
Neighbours are Jim Hogg County north, Brooks County northeast, Hidalgo County east and Zapata County northwest; Tamaulipas lies across the river to the south. McAllen is about 45 miles east on US-83, Edinburg 39 miles east and Laredo roughly 100 miles northwest on US-83 through Zapata.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| Rio Grande City (county seat) | City | 15,354 |
| Roma | City | 11,546 |
| Escobares | City | 2,580 |
| La Grulla | City | 1,239 |
Those four incorporated cities hold under half the county's 65,920 people. The rest live in the long line of unincorporated communities along the river road and the farm roads behind it — Garciasville, Fronton, Salineño, Falcon Heights, El Sauz — and in the colonias between them. Starr County is consistently among the lowest-income counties in the United States by median household income.
Roads
- US-83 – the only federal highway in the county and the only continuous east–west route, running from the Zapata County line through Falcon Heights, Roma, Rio Grande City and La Grulla into Hidalgo County. East of Rio Grande City it is a divided four-lane; west of Roma it narrows.
- Farm roads north – FM 755 climbs north out of Rio Grande City into the ranch country toward Hebbronville and Jim Hogg County; it is the only paved road across the northern half of the county.
- The river road – a chain of farm-to-market roads follows the bank between US-83 and the water, linking Salineño, Fronton and the small river settlements.
Roma and the steamboat river
Before the railroad reached the Valley, the Rio Grande was navigable by shallow-draught steamboat from Brownsville up to Roma, and Roma was the head of navigation. The merchants who ran that trade built in brick and sandstone on the bluff, and enough of their work survives around the plaza that the Roma Historic District was designated a National Historic Landmark. The town stood in for a Mexican border village in Elia Kazan's 1952 film Viva Zapata!. The Roma–Ciudad Miguel Alemán International Bridge crosses below the bluff; a second crossing, the Rio Grande City–Camargo bridge, is 15 miles east.
Rio Grande City grew around Fort Ringgold, a U.S. Army post established in 1848 on the east side of town and used on and off until after the First World War; its parade ground and officers' quarters are now school district property.
Falcon Reservoir
Falcon Dam sits at the county's northwestern corner, an earth-fill dam built jointly by the United States and Mexico and dedicated in 1953. The reservoir behind it runs upstream along Zapata County; its lower end and the dam are in Starr County, along with Falcon State Park, which has campsites, boat ramps and lake shoreline near Falcon Heights. A port of entry at the dam crosses to Nueva Ciudad Guerrero.
The river below the dam is also a birding destination out of proportion to its size: the woods at Salineño and the Roma bluffs draw people looking for species — ringed and green kingfishers, red-billed pigeons, Audubon's orioles — that reach the United States only on this stretch of water.