Fronton

Fronton, near the Rio Grande on Farm Road 650 five miles west of Roma-Los Saenz in southwestern Starr County, was founded in the late 1700s. The area was first settled by Francisco Guerra, an eighteenth-century pioneer of the Nuevo Santander colony, and was originally named San Francisco de las Playas by Spanish missionaries. A solid rock bank on the Rio Grande, downstream and across from the settlement, was called La Hacha but later became known as Front?n ("pediment"); the community was named for it. Fronton is on the road over which Col. William S. Fisher traveled in 1842 on the Mier expedition