LA TINA RANCH, TEXAS. La Tina Ranch, or La Tina, is a community on Farm Road 106 five miles east of Rio Hondo in northeastern Cameron County. In the late 1940s the area had scattered farms, and by 1956 it had several dwellings and a cemetery. In 1970 it had twenty-eight homes. The first population estimates were available in 1976, when the community had sixty-one dwellings and 319 residents. At that time the area had no public water supply. In 1986 La Tina had fifty homes and an estimated population of 225. By then it received water from the East Rio Hondo Water Supply Corporation. In 2000 La Tina Ranch had a population of 732 and was part of the Los Fresnos Consolidated Independent School District. Tina is Spanish for "earthen jar."

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).

Alicia A. Garza