Mission City Hall is located at 1201 East 8th Street.Mission, TX 78572 Phone: 956-580-8650
Photo: La Lomita Church, circa 1865, 1899, located on Farm to Market Road 1016 in Mission. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. Photographed by User: Andres Gonzalez (own work), 2019, [cc‑4.0] via Wikimedia Commons, accessed August, 2025.
Neighborhoods
The roots of the City of Mission [†] trace back to the Spanish colonial period when missionaries worked to establish a Christian presence in the Rio Grande Valley. The area gained its defining religious landmark in 1865 when missionaries constructed La Lomita Chapel along with modest living quarters on a local ranch. This chapel served as a strategic waystation for traveling priests making their rounds through the valley on horseback—part of what was known as the "Cavalry of Christ"—while major missionary operations remained centered in Brownsville and Roma.
The actual settlement that would become Mission was founded in 1907, built near an earlier mission that the Oblate Fathers of the Franciscan order had established in 1824. The town's name pays direct homage to this missionary legacy that stretches back to the late 1700s when Spanish missionaries first began creating religious outposts throughout the region to bring Christianity to Native American populations.
The landscape around Mission bears the imprint of Spanish colonial planning through its distinctive land division system. For nearly two and a half centuries, descendants of the original Spanish colonizers have maintained ranches on massive land grants called porciones. These elongated parcels measured nine-thirteenths of a mile in width along the Rio Grande and stretched northward up to sixteen miles, creating a unique territorial pattern that influenced how the region developed over time.
Mission sits in Hidalgo County within South Texas's Rio Grande Valley and forms part of the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metropolitan region. The city holds historical significance as the site of the First Lift Station operated by the Mission Canal Company, an irrigation system that brought water to 15,000 acres of valley farmland. This water infrastructure proved essential to transforming the area into an agricultural powerhouse.
The city's educational landscape reflects its growth, with most areas falling under the Mission Consolidated Independent School District, which runs both Mission High School and Veterans Memorial High School. Some outer portions of the city extend into the La Joya Independent School District and Sharyland Independent School District, showing how the community has expanded beyond its original boundaries.
Mission evolved into a vital shipping and distribution hub for the Rio Grande Valley's abundant agricultural output. The combination of rich valley soil and extensive irrigation networks enabled the transformation of the surrounding area into highly productive farmland, with Mission serving as a central point for moving these agricultural products to market.
Today's Mission represents a distinctive fusion of Spanish colonial missionary traditions, indigenous heritage, and contemporary agricultural and residential development, making it a representative example of the Rio Grande Valley's complex cultural landscape.
*dagger; Adapted from: www.claude.ai, accessed August, 2025.
Nearby Towns: McAllen City •