Laredo
Heritage Trail: Tropical
County: Webb
Region: South Texas Plains
Laredo is on the Rio Grande in southwestern Webb County in South Texas, about 150 miles southwest of San Antonio and 135 miles west of Corpus Christi. It is served by Interstate Highway 35, U.S. highways 59 and 83, State Highway 359, Ranch Road 1472, and the Missouri Pacific and Texas Mexican railroads. This cosmopolitan city is a major port of entry for international trade and tourism between the United States and Mexico. Laredo was established in 1755, when Tomás Sánchez de la Barrera y Garza was granted permission by José de Escandón to form a new settlement about thirty miles upriver from Nuestra Señora de los Dolores Hacienda in what is now Zapata County. Laredo was the last town established under the authority of Escandón, who had been given responsibility for settling the province of Nuevo Santander. Altogether Escandón saw to the founding of twenty towns and eighteen missions in an attempt to thwart French incursion into Spanish territory and to propagate the Christian faith among the various Indian tribes of the region. Sánchez chose a site downriver from a ford later called El Paso de los Indios but known at that time as El Paso de Jacinto (after Jacinto de León of the San Juan Bautista garrison, who noted it in a report of 1745). About eight miles downriver from Laredo was another crossing, called the Don Miguel or Garza ford (after Miguel de la Garza Falcónqv). The ford upstream could be crossed by a person on horseback, while the one downstream could be forded by sheep and goats. Tienda de Cuervo, who inspected the community in 1757, reported that Laredo was the usual crossing place for those traveling to Texas from Nuevo León and Coahuila. The initial settlement at Laredo was made by Sánchez and three families from Dolores...Read more @ The Handbook of Texas Online
Laredo Points of Interest
Laredo, a south Texas border town, is one of the oldest cities in the state. The San Augustin de Laredo Historic District encompasses what was the original city of Laredo, founded in 1755 by Don Tomá....
Founded in 1911, the mission of the Laredo Little Theater is to preserve, develop and promote the arts and culture in Laredo and our surrounding communities. The scope of the theatre’s programming v....
The Laredo Center for the Arts began as a grassroots initiative by local artist Anne Brennan Vela. She noticed that there was a thriving underground art scene in Laredo, Texas, yet the community-at-la....
The REPUBLIC OF THE RÍO GRANDE Museum is housed in one of Laredo's oldest structures located on San Agustín Plaza in downtown Laredo. The museum is a Mexican vernacular structure, constructed in 183....
Where Is Laredo, Texas ?
