Ramireno

Ramireño is on U.S. Highway 83 and Ranch Road 3169 five miles southeast of San Ignacio and eight miles northwest of Zapata in Zapata County. Originally it was two miles south of its current site on the banks of the Rio Grande. The property was granted to José Luis Ramírez in 1784 by the king of Spain. It was not assigned in 1767, when most of the Revilla grants were made, because incursions of Comanche Indians made the area uninhabitable. Ramírez and his wife, María Bacilia Martínez, lived with their family in Revilla (Old Guerrero) until 1810, when they built a house of native hand-cut sandstone on their property across the river. The building stood until it was inundated by the International Falcon Reservoir in 1953. Ramireño, named for Ramírez, grew up around the ranch headquarters during the 1800s and early 1900s, but when Falcon Dam was built in 1953, it was relocated to its present site on U.S. 83, near the Arroyo Burro. In 1990 Ramireño had 100 residents. Ramireño Water Supply, formed in 1979 with an FHA grant and loan, operates in the town. Originally there were two towns of the same name, one in Starr county and one in Zapata county. They were known locally as Ramireño de Arriba and Ramireño de Abajo. In 1915 a post office was established at the latter town, which to avoid confusion took the name of Falcon for the wife of the Ramírez, a brother of José Luis, on whose land that village was formed. The upper village kept its old name. A historical marker for old Ramireño was placed on Highway 83 in 1989. In 2000 the population was twenty-five.