McAllen City Hall is located at 1300 Houston Avenue, McAllen, TX 78501.
Phone: 956‑681‑3111.
The City of McAllen [†] began as a private ranch in the late 19th cen- tury. The city was not officially incorporated until 1911, several years after the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway established a depot on ranch-donated land.
Neighborhoods
At the request of President Woodrow Wilson, 20,000 soldiers from New York were deployed to McAllen in 1916 to help quell border disturbances. The area sub- sequently boomed, with the population growing from 1,200 to 6,000 by 1920.
McAllen’s economy was primarily agriculture based, with some oil exploration, in the early 20th century. In 1941, the city built a suspension bridge across the Rio Grande to Reynosa, Mexico. The McAllen–Hidalgo– Reynosa International Bridge increased tourism and trade, helping establish McAllen as an important port of entry.
The discovery of oil in the Reynosa area in 1947 prompted a large in-migration from the Mexican inte- rior, boosting tourism and providing McAllen with an inexpensive labor supply. The McAllen Foreign Trade Zone—the first inland foreign trade zone in the United States—was established in 1973. International trade and tourism remain important to the region’s economy.
† www.dallasfed.org, accessed June, 2021.
Nearby Towns: Edinburg City •