Prehistoric San Benito A Story from Pineda to the Hurricane of '33 taken from the Story of San Benito, by Charles Robinson III for a project by Marcos Alaniz & Alex Cardenas Jr. 7th Graders at Berta Cabaza Middle School Preface Bandits Indians WW I Spanish Conquest KKK Spanish Colonization 1920s-1930s Texas Independence 1933 San Benito Conclusion Photo Gallery Credits Projects Menu

San Benito Hotel c1910. Automobile excursions gathered to take northerners to survey the country side for future land purchases. See the auto to the extreme right. Photo courtesy of San Benito Historical Society The Rio Grande is an old river, old enough to have cut a channel 1,800 miles from the mountains of Colorado to the Gulf. First running south, then turning southeast, it cut canyons in the Big Bend before arcing up to the northeast. There were other turns and bends until it finally reached its destination, half a continent from where it began. There are many sidestreams and tributaries, the last one being the San Juan about 150 miles from the mouth. Below that, the Rio Grande once branched out into a delta, with innumerable streams leading to the different mouths. Gradually these streams closed off and formed dry river beds. The early Spaniards called them just that-in their language "rios secos"-dry rivers. Eventually "rio seco" was run together and became "resaca" One of these resacas took the name "fresnos" or ash, after the trees along the old banks. Here an ambitious people laid out a town... the Resaca City of San Benito.