Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz is off U.S. Highway 83 four miles east of Rio Grande City in southern Starr County. It was a station on the Rio Grande City Railway and served an irrigated-farm project called Dreamland. Santa Cruz is Spanish for "holy cross"; a large cross at the top of a hill above the community commemorates the rain that broke a drought that reportedly had lasted from 1888 until 1894. The site of the cross is known as Loma de la Cruz. The Starr County Industrial Park is located in the area, as is the Santa Cruz Cemetery. In 1990, though the Santa Cruz population was not recorded in the Texas Almanac, the community had an estimated 1,000 inhabitants and a dozen businesses and stretched between the communities of La Puerta and Olmos.