ADOBES, TEXAS. Adobes is located on Farm Road 170 and the Rio Grande near Arroyo Borracho, six miles southeast of Chinati in southwestern Presidio County. It developed as a farming community in the 1870s. Antonio Madrid was an eleven-year-old boy when he came to Adobes from Mexico to herd sheep in 1882. He grew to adulthood there and married Panfilia Estrade de Anda from the Borracho community. The Madrids raised eight children at Adobes. By 1914 irrigation and cotton growing had revolutionized the community's agricultural methods. Adobes had 750 acres of irrigated cottonfields in 1930. The community operated a school in 1939 as part of the Presidio school district. In the late 1980s Adobes remained a small farming community.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: John Ernest Gregg, History of Presidio County (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1933). Cecilia Thompson, History of Marfa and Presidio County, 1535–1946 (2 vols., Austin: Nortex, 1985).
