The Valley's history is a rich one; it was home to
conquistadores, cowboys. In the beginning the Rio Grande Valley was a grassy delta. It has always been a crossroad for different
cultures, first the Spanish and the Indians, the the Mexicans and finally the Americans. The founders of the Valley decided
that "delta" didn't sound as nice as "Valley," so they changed the name to the Rio Grande Valley.
With the advent of railroads and the development of irrigation systems from the Rio Grande river.
The valley was first explored by a Spanish conquistador, Alonzo
Alvarez de Pineda. He named the river Rio de las Palmas but others called it the Rio Bravo. Later, it came to be called the
Rio Grande as it is still known today among Americans. The Mexicans continue to refer to it as the Rio Bravo.
Armstrong Sperry, in 1967, wrote that the Valley was the true heart
of the American Southwest. It was filled with little red-gold adobe villages surrounded by fields contaning many crops, but
the most important of which was corn.
