LA CASITA, TEXAS. La Casita is a Spanish-speaking community adjoining Garciasville on Farm Road 1430, a mile south of U.S. Highway 83 and ten miles east of Rio Grande City in southern Starr County. The community lies within the boundaries of the original Spanish land grants given north of the Rio Grande to José de Escandón'sqv colonists in Camargo, Mexico, in the mid-eighteenth century. La Casita apparently was a township by 1882, and in 1899 it had a public school with one teacher and fifty-three students. In 1966 La Casita had an estimated population of 600 and was a mile from Garciasville. By 1991 the community had grown to an estimated several thousand residents, and its limits had reached those of Garciasville, with which it shared Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church and Union Elementary School. La Casita also had a Spanish-language Assembly of God Church and two dozen stores.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Agnes G. Grimm, Llanos Mesteñas: Mustang Plains (Waco: Texian Press, 1968). Lawrence Francis Hill, José de Escandón and the Founding of Nuevo Santander (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1926). 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). J. Lee and Lillian J. Stambaugh, The Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas (San Antonio: Naylor, 1954).
Dick D. Heller, Jr.
