ESCOBAS, TEXAS. Escobas is on Escobas Creek and Farm Road 16 nineteen miles northeast of Zapata in Zapata County. The area, which was part of the José de Escandón colony of Nuevo Santander, was originally settled by Mexican rancheros in the mid-eighteenth century. They made no permanent settlement at the site but divided the region into large ranches. By 1897 a local school with one teacher and thirty students served the area. The Escobas townsite was called Laguna de Escobas before the late 1920s, when oil was discovered in the area; by the late 1930s the Texas Company (see TEXACO, INC.), the principal producer in the Escobas oilfield, had built the settlement of Escobas and provided a school there. The community had a post office and was a supply point for the local oil companies. Local students were bused to schools in Zapata after they reached the fifth grade. In 1940 the community reported one business and a population of twenty-five. In 1991 Escobas continued to report a population of twenty-five and had a few small homes and a combination general store and gas station. Oilfields and the Jacinteña and Los Mesquines ranches surround the site. In 2000 the population was three.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Virgil N. Lott and Mercurio Martinez, The Kingdom of Zapata (San Antonio: Naylor, 1953). Florence J. Scott, Historical Heritage of the Lower Rio Grande (San Antonio: Naylor, 1937; rev. ed., Waco: Texian, 1966; rpt., Rio Grande City, Texas: La Retama Press, 1970).
