Louisiana-Rio Grande Canal Company Irrigation System

The Louisiana-Rio Grande Canal Company irrigation system, including both the first-lift and second-lift pumphouses and the associated historic irrigation canal network, is significant at the state level. The system contributed to the early 20th-century agricultural revolution in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Private irrigation systems, like the one constructed by the Louisiana-Rio Grande Canal Company, transformed the arid brushland of the Lower Rio Grande Valley into a vast patchwork of 20- to 80-acre irrigated farms within two decades following the 1904 arrival of the first railroad to the isolated area. Once established, the successful produce of those farms defined South Texas as one of the nation's three largest winter agricultural regions, until a killing freeze in 1949 destroyed the area's harvest and dispelled the myth that it was "the land of no winter." The rapid transition from ranch land to irrigated farms not only transformed the region's agricultural prospects but also contributed to a major upheaval of the traditional social, economic, and cultural relationships established since the American annexation of the area in 1846. Toward the end of the 19th century, and increasingly in the early 20th century, Anglo-American newcomers obtained large tracts of vast ranch lands that descendants of Spanish grantees historically owned. They subdivided the arid tracts for agricultural development and town building and installed extensive irrigation canals. Promoted primarily to midwest farmers, the irrigated farms attracted an enormous influx of Anglos who soon outnumbered established Anglo pioneers and Mexican-American ranch families. The influx of newcomers altered traditional political, economic, and social relationships throughout the region. A period of adjustment, from about 1910 to 1920, coincided with the Mexican Revolution and was fraught with land speculation, financial disaster, social unrest, and violence.
The period of significance extends from John Closner's construction of the first portion of the canal system, in 1904, through the great freeze of 1949 that effectively ended citrus' unchallenged supremacy in the valley. Because the 1949 end date represents a logical break in the history of the irrigation system and its operation, an exception to the 50-year age limit for National Register eligibility is justified.

When completed, the canal system extended over a 17-mile range throughout the valley and brought water to approximately 45,000 acres of formerly arid land (Norton and Brown, 1988:2). Except for Lateral D, which was removed for a road through the valley, the canals still water much of the original 45,000-acre tract. Today, Hidalgo County Irrigation District No. 2 operates the second-lift pumphouse and irrigation system that the Louisiana-Rio Grande Canal Company built. The second-lift pumphouse is equipped with modern machinery but many original features of the early pumping station survive. The City of Hidalgo owns the first-lift pumphouse on the banks of the Rio Grande. The building and early machinery are being restored for public interpretation. The pumphouses and canals vividly represent the historic means by which the Lower Rio Grande Valley was transformed from a sparsely populated ranching and subsistence-level farming community to a thriving truck and citrus production and processing region through irrigation. With their towering brick smokestacks, the pumphouses are a particularly evocative symbol of the agricultural transformation that revolutionized the life and economy of the entire Lower Rio Grande Valley from the 1910s through the 1940s. Former arid ranch land was promoted as the "Magic Valley" throughout the country. In addition, the first-lift pumphouse contains the valley's only surviving historic irrigation machinery. The first-lift pumphouse is also eligible for listing as an outstanding industrial interpretation of Mission Revival architecture and for its rare surviving irrigation machinery.