Old San Antonio

Jim Hogg County is in the Rio Grande Plain region of South Texas twenty-eight miles north of the Mexican border and sixty-six miles west of the Gulf Coast. The county, named for Governor James Stephen Hogg, is bordered by Webb, Duval, Jim Wells, Brooks, Starr, and Zapata counties. Its center lies at 27°05' north latitude and 98°43' west longitude. Hebbronville, the largest town and county seat, is at the junction of State highways 16, 285, and 359, in the north central part of the county. Other communities include Agua Nueva, Altavista, Guerra, Randado, and Thompsonville. The county comprises 1,136 square miles of flat to gently rolling terrain vegetated with mesquite, scrub brush, grasses, and chaparral. Elevations range from 200 to 800 feet. In the east, soils are sandy, with areas of light color, or have loamy surfaces over very deep reddish or mottled clayey subsoils. The rest of the county has loamy surfaces over deep reddish or mottled clayey subsoils, with limestone near the surface in some areas. In the early 1990s more than 90 percent of the land was devoted to farming and ranching, with 2 percent of the farmland under cultivation and 21 percent irrigated; only 1 percent of the land in the county is considered prime farmland. Mineral resources include caliche, clay, uranium, oil, and gas. Temperatures range from 44° F to 69° in January and 73° to 99° in July; the average annual temperature is 73°. Rainfall averages twenty-three inches a year, and the growing season lasts 305 days.

The area of Jim Hogg County has been the site of human habitation for perhaps 11,000 years. Among the oldest artifacts found in the region are stone implements and human remains dating from the Paleo-Indian period (9200 to 6000 B.C.). During the Archaic period (6000 B.C. to A.D. 1000) the local Indian population seems to have increased, and many hunter-gatherers apparently spent time in the area. During this period the inhabitants subsisted mostly on game, wild fruits, seeds, and roots. They carved tools from wood and stone, wove baskets, and made rabbit-skin clothing. The hunting and gathering way of life persisted into the Late Prehistoric period (A.D. 1000 to the arrival of the Spanish), though during this time the Indians in the area, who belonged to the Coahuiltecan linguistic group, learned to make pottery and hunted with bows and arrows. By the early 1800s the Coahuiltecans had succumbed to disease, intermarried with the Spanish, or been driven out by the Lipan Apaches.