From Mosasaurs to ‘Magic Valley’: A peek inside the Museum of South Texas History

The Museum of South Texas History is located in Edinburg in the Rio Grande Valley. Francisco Guajardo, chief executive officer of the museum, says that each exhibit is named for the important role the Rio Grande served in that time period.

The start is known as the “River Frontier.” Children are often excited to see a school bus-sized skeleton model of a baby Mosasaur, a dinosaur that swam the Earth millions of years ago, hanging overhead in the exhibit. Next to it, a mammoth looks down at would-be visitors starting their museum journey. 

“We have a good amount of literature that helps us to shape the stories” says Guajardo. “One classic in world literature was authored in 1542 by a Spanish explorer named Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.”

One thing Cabeza de Vaca wrote in his travel and time spent lost and wandering what is now South Texas is mention of a “great river” – the Rio Grande.

“He obviously wasn’t the first one to see the river because people lived here 10,000 years before. And the river was a source of life for those people who lived here for 10,000 years. Native people, tribal communities that Cabeza de Vaca actually described,” Guajardo said.

“He described 33 different tribal communities and as an ethnographer he was actually quite descriptive about those people. And so in the absence of writings that the native people left us, then we have to search for other people observing them.”

In the “River Highway” exhibit, the importance of the steamboat on the Rio Grande is prominent. A steamboat replica is built in the museum and houses famous names like “King” or “Stillman” who built their wealth off of these vital vessels during the 1800s. 

What is also mentioned is how later, when Mexico abolished slavery, steamboats would be used by families like the Webers and the Jacksons who would use the vessels and area during this time to foster an Underground Railroad to Mexico for those who were enslaved. The Webers and Jacksons, themselves, were formerly enslaved.

“We feature interviews of family members from the Webers and the Jacksons, both. One of them is Ramirez and the other is Treviño [now.],” Guajardo said. “So the Jacksons and the Webers came from slave women, would then become very mexicanados – very Mexican, Mexican-American, borderland people today.”

The display also features Cheno Cortina, who was fighting people who were trying to take his family lands in that era, says Guajardo. 

“Thats an issue of great controversy in 19th century South Texas history – the issue of ‘Well, what happened to the old Spanish land grants that people like Richard King were taking?,’”Guajardo said. “And so that’s an issue that needs to be delved into and so we delve into it as a museum can in an exhibit.”  

The 20th century exhibit, called “River Crossroads,” explains how the railroad and the adaptation of the irrigation pump system brought agriculture and crops to the Rio Grande Valley – marking a change from the ranching/ranchero economic lifestyle that rule the area until then.

A man named John Closner had a vision to plant sugar cane, entering it in the World’s Fair in 1904. He won the gold medal and opened the door to worldwide business endeavors. Soon the area would be marketed to others wanting to invest in this plentiful paradise as “The Magic Valley.” 

“The culture and the icons that would come out of that gripped not just Texas, but the world,” Guajardo said. 

This story is part of the kickoff of our Texas Museum Map. We’re traveling the state and highlighting what we find.

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