BLUETOWN, TEXAS. Bluetown is a dispersed rural community on the Missouri Pacific tracks off the junction of U.S. Highway 281 and Farm Road 506, six miles south of La Feria in southwestern Cameron County. A rail line connecting Fernando to Santa Maria was built through the area in 1913 by the San Benito and Rio Grande Valley Railway. The Bluetown community was established in the early 1940s as a local market for citrus fruit and various other crops. In 1945 Bluetown had three stores and a population of seventy-five, and by 1950 it had an estimated population of 100, a few dwellings, a church, and a cemetery. Its population continued to be reported at 100 until 1972, when it dropped to forty. Bluetown in 1984 had scattered dwellings, three businesses, a church, and a cemetery. In the early 1990s its population was still estimated at forty. A colonia^qv developed in the area during the 1960s, and by 1976 it had eighty dwellings and an estimated population of 396. In 1986 the colonia, also known as Bluetown, had ninety-one homes and an estimated population of 410. By 2000 Bluetown was recorded as Bluetown-Iglesia Antigua. It had a population of 692.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Colonias in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas: A Summary Report (Policy Research Project Report No. 18, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, 1977).