L. E. Snavely House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just as it stands. Picture the Rio Grande Valley back in 1919, before the highways, before the subdivisions, before any of that. This particular stretch of Cameron County was just dense chaparral, mesquite and ebony trees pressing in from every direction, thick enough to make a person wonder what they were even looking at.

That's the land Levi Elmer Snavely and his wife Lenna Edmondson Snavely bought that year. Now, Levi was born in 1869 and Lenna in 1872, and by the time they got to the Valley they were no strangers to starting fresh. They'd already made one big move, leaving Oklahoma for Harlingen back in 1909, and they came with a purpose: grow citrus, and sell it under a label they called La Bonita.

That name, pretty as it sounds, meant something to them. They worked that land, turned chaparral into orchards, and built a life around that fruit and that name. Then, nearly two decades after they first arrived in Harlingen, they did something that would outlast the both of them.

In 1928, they commissioned architect Birger A. Elwing to design them a house. And Elwing didn't give them something ordinary.

He gave them a Norman Style house, picturesque is the word the marker uses, and that word earns its keep. The structure is hollow tile, faced with brick, and here and there accented with rough boulders, just enough to remind you that something wild once stood on this ground. They called the house La Bonita, same as the fruit label, same as the dream they'd carried down from Oklahoma.

Lenna passed in 1938, Levi in 1939, and the house they built together is still standing in Cameron County, brick and boulder and all, telling the story right where they left it.

What the marker says

This land was a dense chaparral of mesquite and ebony trees when it was bought by Levi Elmer (1869-1939) and Lenna Edmondson (1872-1938) Snavely in 1919. They had moved to Harlingen from Oklahoma in 1909 to grow citrus and market the fruit under the label "La Bonita." In 1928, architect Birger A. Elwing designed for them this picturesque, Norman Style house, which they called La Bonita. The hollow-tile structure is faced with brick and accented with occasional rough boulders. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1986