Donna

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Two men out of East Texas, T. J.

Hooks and A. F. Hester, looked out at the lower Rio Grande Valley in the late 1890s and saw something most folks would've walked right past.

Potential. Real, cultivatable, irrigable potential. So they got to work.

Through the La Blanca Agricultural Company, they set up farms, laid in irrigation systems, and started advertising the area's favorable climate and resources to anyone who'd listen. And people listened. Then came 1904, and with it, a rail line.

A rail line changes everything, as any old Texas town can tell you. When that line came through, Hooks and Hester founded a town right there on the spot. They called it Donna, named for T.

J. Hooks' daughter. There's something to that.

A man builds a town from raw South Texas land and gives it his daughter's name. You don't do that unless you believe it's going to amount to something. Turned out he was right.

A man named Ed Ruthven opened the first store, which meant commerce, which meant permanence. By 1908, Donna incorporated, with R. P.

Boeye stepping in as its first mayor. From those earliest days of the twentieth century, Donna kept growing, kept reaching, until it stood as one of the leading cities of the Rio Grande Valley. T.

J. Hooks named a town for his daughter. She must've been proud.

What the marker says

Two East Texas men, T. J. Hooks and A. F. Hester, began developing this area for settlement in the late 1890s. Through formation of the La Blanca Agricultural Company, they set up farms and irrigation systems and advertised the area's favorable climate and resources. In 1904, when a rail line was built here, they founded the town of Donna, named for T. J. Hooks daughter. Ed Ruthven opened the first store and, in 1908, the town incorporated with R. P. Boeye as mayor. Since the earliest days of the 20th century, Donna has developed as one of the leading cities of the Rio Grande Valley. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986