RIOS, TEXAS. Rios is a ranching community on Agua Poquita Creek and Farm Road 1329 thirteen miles southeast of Benavides in southeastern Duval County. The town was founded sometime before 1938; that year a post office was established with Felipe V. Rios as postmaster. The town is said to have been named for Calletonio Rios, who patented land in the area in 1896. During the early 1940s the community had a population of seventy-five and four businesses; it was called La Garcia on a 1948 map of the area. On maps made in the mid-1950s, however, the community is shown as Rios. Its estimated population remained at seventy-five in the early 1960s. By the late 1960s the local school had been consolidated with the Premont Independent School District, and Rios had scattered dwellings and the Vera Cruz church. The estimated population remained at seventy-five in 1980 and 1990. By 2000 the population reached 100.

Martin Donell Kohout