La Grulla, TX

La Grulla is a city in Starr County, Texas, three miles south of Alto Bonito and U.S. Highway 83 in the southeastern corner of the county. The 2020 census counted 1,222 people. The community grew from Spanish pioneer settlement along the Rio Grande; local accounts place Juan Santiago Longoria's move to the site in 1836, while the Handbook of Texas traces the settlement's origins to the 1780s. La Grulla takes its name from the Spanish word for crane, recalling sandhill cranes that once gathered at ponds north of town. Those ponds were drained for farming by 1988, and the post office established in 1912 uses the shorter name Grulla.

The town incorporated around 1966, and Rio Grande City Grulla Independent School District serves local students. Earlier descriptions of the community mention vegetable farms, small businesses, Holy Family Catholic Church, and Iglesia Hermanos Mennonitos de Grulla, giving the place a working agricultural and Spanish-speaking context. The city office sits on FM 2360, while the Rio Grande remains the geographic reference behind the town's older settlement story. The local scoop is a small Starr County city whose name preserves the crane ponds, whose history reaches back before the modern border, and whose schools and churches still organize local life.