MADERO, TEXAS. Madero, also known as Wheel City, is off Farm Road 1016 four miles southwest of McAllen and half a mile north of the Rio Grande in southern Hidalgo County. The community is on land that was granted to Ermenegilda Ochoa by Spain in 1767. In 1913 the San Benito and Rio Grande Valley Railway built a line through Madero. A post office operated in the community from 1915 to 1917. Madero had an estimated population of fifty and two businesses in 1933. In 1963 the town had two churches and several dwellings, and in the late 1960s a colonia developed there. The colonia in 1976 had 141 dwellings and an estimated population of 726; by 1986 the number of dwellings had risen to 160, and the population was estimated at 720. In 1990 Madero was still mainly a colonia. Madero is Spanish for "timber."
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Colonias in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas: A Summary Report (Policy Research Project Report No. 18, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, 1977).
