San Antonio and Rio Grande Railway; "Old Flossie"

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. There's a railway story down in Hidalgo County that deserves to be told slow, because the people who rode those cars and shipped their goods on those flatbeds, they built something out here in the brush country that didn't last forever, but it mattered while it did. The railroad in question went by two names.

The proper one was the San Antonio and Rio Grande Railway Company. The beloved one was Old Flossie. You can guess which one stuck.

Operations began in 1909, and for a few years Old Flossie ran on her own terms. Then in 1912 she became a branch of the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway.

Absorbed, you might say, but not forgotten, because that nickname followed her right on through. Now, what Old Flossie did during those early years was no small thing. She connected the new towns of Chapin, which you know today as Edinburg, and San Juan, and she did it during what the marker calls a crucial time in the area's development.

Freight and passengers both, moving through a part of Texas that was still finding its shape. That's a lot to ask of one railroad, and she answered the call. But here's where the story turns, the way these stories tend to.

After World War II, passengers started finding other ways to get where they were going. Service thinned out. By 1956 the Missouri Pacific system had absorbed the line entirely.

And then, quietly, the late 1960s arrived. All service to San Juan and Edinburg ceased. The rails were removed.

The depots were razed. Old Flossie was gone, not just retired, but taken apart, piece by piece, until there was nothing left to point to and say, there, that's where she ran. Sometimes the land just swallows a thing whole.

But the marker's still out there in Hidalgo County, and now you know her name.

What the marker says

Beginning operations in 1909, the San Antonio and Rio Grande Railway Company became a branch of the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway in 1912. Nicknamed "Old Flossie," it provided freight and passenger transportation to the new towns of Chapin (Edinburg) and San Juan during a crucial time in the area's development. Passenger service decreased after World War II, and the line was limited to freight service. It was absorbed by the Missouri Pacific system in 1956. By the late 1960s all service to San Juan and Edinburg ceased, the rails were removed, and the depots were razed. (1991)