Sugarcane and the Valley
Norman Rozeff
March 2010

Sugarcane has been raised in the Valley for centuries. Some may find that fact surprising but have to realize that the conqueror of Mexico, Hernan Cortes, was a cane grower in the 1500s. As settlements moved north toward the Rio Grande, sugarcane advanced with them. Agriculture in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas started with the exploration and colonization of the region in 1747. Outside of modest plot-sized agriculture the land was used primarily for ranching, since wide-scale irrigation wasn’t practiced. Since the region was sparsely populated and transportation was difficult, the demand for agricul-tural products was light.

At some unknown point in time it is likely that sugarcane was grown in garden plots for home consumption. It was sold by the stalk in the markets by enterprising individuals. Still later, primitive 2-roll mills extracted the juice to be concentrated by a series of open pan boilings then drained in cone-shaped forms to make loaves called piloncillo. [In Latin America this type of sugar is called panela.] This production method is still being prac-ticed in many parts of the world including Mexico, Colombia, and India.

In the region of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Sgt. Major Carlos Cantu with his activities in 1692 in Nuevo Leon is given credit for the first documented sugar mill or trapiche. A trapiche is a human or animal powered cane grinding wheel or roll. Since, however, sugarcane had been introduced into Nuevo Leon about 1616 it is very likely small mills existed prior to 1692.

One unusual piece of history tells of Whitfield Chalk, one of the survivors of the ill-fated Mier Expedition, a retaliatory raid by Texans into Mexico in 1842.Chalk was one of only two survivors. After managing to escape, he avoided recapture by hiding under a pile of sugarcane which was awaiting milling.

From LeRoy P. Graf we learn more of cane activities in the region: Early in the Mexican War, the American Flag [An English language newspaper being published by expatriates in Matamoros in the years 1846-48] drew the attention of its readers to the excellence of the cane being displayed in the Matamoros Market. The editors asserted that two Louisiana planters thought it the equal to the cane grown in their home state. Moreover, the cultivation of cane in the Valley yielded a crop greater per acre with less attention than in Louisiana. Sugar plantations were begun as part of the enthusiasm of the boom of 1848 but were probably abandoned soon after, for toward the end of the fifties two hun-dred hogsheads [A hogshead varied from 63 to 140 gallons, so production at minimum may have been about 126 tons.] of sugar on John Young’s plantation were mentioned as the product of the only sugar plantation on the river. Some other cane was grown, but it was of a poor variety and only indifferently cared for

Cane culture had spread from south to north of the river over time. Pedro Bustamante’s grandson, Dionicio, was raising sugarcane at the Bustamante Ranch northeast of Zapata in the late 1800s.

William H. Emory in compiling his epic 1850 survey of the Rio Grande boundary pointed out that the area around Brownsville "would no doubt produce the sugar-cane in great luxuriance" and later "Up as high as Reynosa, the belt of alluvial soil subject to the influence of the moisture from the river is considerable in width, and in addition to corn, the sugar-cane has been planted with success. The foliage on this portion of the river indicates a richer soil, and the trees assume very much the dimensions of those alluvial bottoms of the Mississippi."

Paula Losoya Taylor, one of the founders of what was to become Del Rio, together with her husband James, initiated the first major irrigation canal in their area and raised sugarcane. They prospered and added not only a sugarcane mill to their hacienda, but also a flour mill and gin. This occurred in the early 1870s. With the addition of a Mexican candy factory, she became rich and carried out many social and philanthropic endeavors after she was widowed in 1876.

The first organized commercial attempt to grow sugarcane in the lower Valley was made by John McAllen on land owned by Scotsman John Young. At the age of twenty-six in 1828, Young had taken passage to America. Over time he established mercantile stores in Matamoros, Brownsville and the old Edinburgh (now the city of Hidalgo). Young married Salomé Ballí de Garza, a native of Reynosa, in November 1853; he was fifty-one years old and she twenty-five. Over a twelve year period he had amassed considerable real estate throughout the Lower Rio Grande Valley, elsewhere in Texas, and even out of the state. With his wife now an active partner he continued to accumulate land only to die prematurely at age fifty-seven in Brownsville on May 11, 1859.

John McAllen, a Scots-Irish native of Londonderry, Ireland in 1826, had immigrated to America in 1845, having made at least one earlier voyage to the U.S. After several years of hardship adventures in the U.S. and Mexico, McAllen took employment with John Young about 1851. He worked as bookkeeper and salesman. On his own he began to acquire land starting in 1855.

After two years as a widow, thirty-two year old Salomé Ballí de Young married the thirty-five year old John McAllen on July 19, 1861. In this same year he purchased 2 ½ leagues of La Blanca Grant land from Peter Doud. It was adjacent to La Hacienda lands in Agostadero del Gato already owned by his wife.

John Young had been growing sugarcane on some of his property, but it was John McAllen who, in 1858, made the first commercial attempt to produce sugar in the Valley. He did so on La Hacienda, also later called Hacienda de McAllen and the McAllen Plantation, while the property was still in John and Salomé Young’s names. Its location was along the river nearly directly south of the present day city of San Juan. Bordering it on the east was Webber’s Ranch. As indicated by the inventory of assets upon Young’s death, the implements and equipment were also Young’s. Among the sugar-related articles were one cast iron mill, with cylinders for six mules, four sizes of sugar kettles, and four piloncillo kettles along with two new ox carts and three old ones. Likely the carts were used to haul sugarcane stalks from the fields to the mill. Young’s papers also indicate that on the 14,000 acres he owned in the Llano Grande Grant there was a brick sugar house, a one-story brick dwelling house, 21 feet by 27 feet, and one brick kitchen, all valued at $4,910. Obviously Young had a small sugarcane operation at this location as well as at La Hacienda.

In addition to the sugarcane, McAllen raised cotton on the several hundred cultivated acres and erected a cotton gin to process it. According to the testimony of Louis Rutledge, a longtime area resident, both cotton and cane mills then serviced McAllen and also small farmers up and down the river.

The very first year McAllen is said to have produced 280 hogsheads of brown piloncillo sugar. The sale of the piloncillo form of sugar was a profitable business locally at this time. The milling ceased after several years. Although cotton may have been shipped overseas, it is unlikely that any of the low-quality sugar would have been worth the effort. In fact, McAllen himself advertised the arrival of goods on a schooner and included "choice Louisiana sugar", indicative that even the locals wanted the option of buying better grade sugar.

Mary M. M. Amberson notes that McAllen dismantled the mill and gin and moved to the Santa Anita Ranch located about 45 miles north of the plantation upon which he left tenants. She also relates that in 1866 McAllen and his wife Salomé developed some land which she had inherited about 1 ½ miles upriver from Brownsville. It was known as the Ramireño. On 90 acres of cleared land watered by a windmill’s pump, eight employees grew cotton, corn and sugarcane. McAllen was also a pioneer in experimenting with various truck crops new to the Valley. He continued to raise these crops for about ten years. In November 1869 McAllen apparently planted some cotton and sugarcane on his La Blanca land though his milling operations had been closed after the 1865-66 winter. When, in May 1870, McAllen was queried about drought-resistant crops by the editors of the Daily Ranchero, they noted "He promptly said broom corn and sugar cane. This is the experience of the planter of the longest experience with the lands of our valley." The editors then recommended that these crops be planted more extensively.

In 1877, 7,030 pounds of sugar worth $283 had been exported to the U.S. from Matamoros, but none changed hands in 1875, 1878, or 1879.

The Texas census of 1885-87 indicates that Hidalgo County by that time had only eleven acres of sugarcane. From them, five barrels of sugar had been obtained. With a value of $11.50 a barrel, this was worth a total of $115.

Another indication of cane being grown on a small scale comes from a lengthy legal deposition in a book of abstract compilations. Florencio Saenz [then 48 years old], grandfather and great-grandfather of modern day cane growers James and Michael Fernandez, was noted to be growing corn, cotton, sugarcane, beans, and other crops after 1885 at the Toluca Ranch [now south of the town of Progreso] on 400 cleared acres. Undoubtedly he sold cane stalks and made panela sugar for sale in his mercantile store on the ranch.

Adela Villareal Ramirez, in a reminiscence, confirms the activity at the Toluca Ranch. She recounts how her grandfather, Antonio Navarro and grand-uncle, Leonardo Navarro, emigrated from Spain to Matamoros in the 1880s. Crossing over to Brownsville in search of work, they learned that Toluca was seeking laborers for sugarcane work. They were soon employed and, later in the harvest season, enjoyed the three to five day wagon trips to transport cane for sale in Corpus Christi.

Recognition of the first solid and ongoing success for the commercialization of sugarcane goes to George Brulay of Brownsville. He grew his first crop southeast of the city in 1875.(The photo is the Valley's first industrial-sized and very successful sugar mill, that of George Brulay. It was located southeast of Brownsville along the Rio Grande.)

Federal sugar policy later entered the picture. In 7/1891 a sugar bounty was initiated. It provided for a payment of 2 cents per pound on sugar produced in the United States. This alone resulted in a greatly increase acreage of sugarcane in the South. However, after the Texas legislature passed a bill to comply with certain conditions made by the U.S. Government in order to accept the bounty, Governor James Stephen Hogg, claiming that the federal government had no right to grant bounties, vetoed the measure.

Progressive farmers Emilio C. Forto and the Longoria brothers by 1890 used a 6" centrifugal pump to irrigate 150 acres of sugarcane in the Santa Maria area. Later they expanded into other crops too.

John Closner’s San Juan Plantation grew from a small farm in 1893 to a major enterprise over a period of a decade. His heralding of its success promoted interest in the building of additional mills.

It was to be followed by the Ohio and Texas Sugar Company mill north of Brownsville in 1909, Lon C. Hill’s 1911 Harlingen factory, Sam Robertson’s San Benito Sugar Manu-facturing Company mill at San Benito in 1912, and the Donna Plantation Company’s mill also in 1912, the efforts of the Louisiana-Rio Grande Sugar Company south of Pharr after 1910, and finally a large ribbon cane/sweet sorghum syrup mill south of Las Milpas in 1918.

The last of the turn of the 20^th Century mills was that in Donna. It ceased to operated in early 1922. It wasn't until 1972 that the sugarcane industry resumed here in the Valley. Valley farmers looking for alternatives to low price cotton first considered raising sweet sorghum then with the aid of the Texas A & M Experiment Station and USDA in Weslaco settled upon sugarcane. Over 100 farmers worked and invested together to form the Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers, Inc., an enterprise with a cooperative financial structure. The world's most modern processing factory was built west of Santa Rosa and with it came mechanical equipment that set the standard for sugarcane industry modern- ization around the world. Despite weather-related setbacks from time-to-time the sugar cooperative has flourished for 38 years and been a sizeable economic plus for the Valley.

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