Concepcion

Concepcion is on Farm Road 716 and Macho Creek, fourteen miles southeast of Benavides and twenty-eight miles southwest of San Diego in southeastern Duval County. It was named after Santa Cruz de Concepción, a land grant from the Spanish government to Francisco Cordente. Concepcion is one of the oldest towns in Duval County. Its post office was established in 1873, with Rafael F. Salinas as postmaster. By 1884 Concepcion had 600 residents and three general stores. Around this time Don Julian Palacios established himself as the leading local rancher, owning almost 3,000 sheep. He also served as a justice of the peace. In 1892 the town had a population estimated at 100, four general stores, two blacksmiths, and a shoemaker. In the 1906–07 school year sixty-four pupils attended the Concepcion school. In 1913 Concepcion fell victim to the political maneuvers of Duval County political boss Archer Parr, who sought to split the county to organize Pat Dunn County. Concepcion had had a voting box of its own for more than thirty years, but Parr's supporters, seeking to ensure the selection of Benavides as the seat of the new county, drew a precinct boundary through Concepcion and forced its voters to travel either to Mazatlan, about ten miles away, or to Benavides to cast their ballots. Pat Dunn County never became a reality because the legislation authorizing it violated the state constitution. In 1914 the population of Concepcion was estimated at 150, and over the next fifteen years estimates varied from a low of seventy-five in 1925 to a high of 500 in 1927. From the mid-1930s until the mid-1960s the population was usually reported as seventy-five. In the late 1940s the town had six businesses and was a trade center for the Concepcion oilfield. The Concepcion school was consolidated with the Benavides Independent School District sometime between 1955 and 1968, when the town had a few scattered dwellings, a church, and one business. In the early 1970s Concepcion's population was estimated at twenty-five, where it remained through 1990. By 2000, however, the population had grown to sixty-one.