Santa Monica

Santa Monica is on Farm roads 1018 and 1420 at the end of the Missouri Pacific spur, fourteen miles southeast of Raymondville in southeastern Willacy County. Some of the ranches in the surrounding area date back to the early 1800s. The community was named for Santa Monica, California, by Clarence Ayers, president of the American Life Insurance Company, which in 1925 furnished capital for the development of the area. In 1940 Santa Monica had two stores and forty inhabitants, and by 1945 its population was reported as fifty. In 1987 the dispersed rural community had three businesses and a school; no population estimates were available. By 2000 the population reached seventy-eight.