Del Rio Thrives With Diverse Neighborhoods
Del Rio’s most abundant natural assets – artesian springs, a robust creek and the confluence of three rivers – charmed 19th-century pioneers, settlers and investors. Then and now, such factors have motivated people to stay, sink roots in cobbly caliche soil, build and decorate edifices with native limestone blocks and stubbornly safeguard their heritage.
Del Rio’s earliest neighborhoods, San Felipe and south Del Rio, are at once separated and bound by San Felipe Creek – a natural asset that is as beautiful as it is significant to the city's very existence. The creek and the springs that feed it were among the key lures for the city's earliest entrepreneurs, and it still serves as a preferred residential area and focal point for community activities.
San Felipe community pride is evident during events such as Brown Plaza fiestas, large Rotary Park gatherings on the banks of the creek, and Fourth of July festivities at the Dr. Alfredo Gutierrez Jr. Amphitheater.
San Felipe’s cacophony of ranchera, mariachi and Tejano music floats across the narrow creek into the sedate streetscapes of south Del Rio, its avenues overlapped by soaring pecans, oaks and sycamores. Small adobe or frame houses are interspersed with imposing two-story homes encircled by manicured lawns.
Chihuahua is another residential community in the southern part of Del Rio, located just northwest of Garfield Avenue, sandwiched between Las Vacas Street and the Union Pacific Railroad tracks. The cultural and spiritual hub of the barrio is St. Joseph Church, which was established in 1927 by Catholic missionaries. Chihuahua also is known for UCO (United Civic Organization) Park, which is on the northern edge of the neighborhood and includes a baseball diamond, bleachers, picnic shelters and a members’ community center.
As Del Rio grew in response to population and residential demands, newer neighborhoods were developed north of the railroad tracks and the parallel east-west Gibbs Street corridor of commercial development, such as Comalia. Along North Main Street, homes and a school emerged as the North Heights neighborhood in the 1930s and 1940s. There, the area’s popular open space, Star Park, was dedicated in 1932 to the memory of county men who died in World War I. Now it also commemorates the brave U-2 pilots of the Cold War in the early 1960s.
West of North Heights may be found Del Rio International Airport, Val Verde County Fairgrounds, Del Rio High School, and the campuses of Sul Ross University and Southwest Texas Junior College.
A complex of connecting open spaces – Del Rio Lions Park, Buena Vista Park and public swimming pool, and Amistad Trails parkway along Fox Drive and Kings Way Boulevard – provide ample walking and exercise opportunities to residents of the sprawling Buena Vista neighborhood.
According to Realtor® Brenda Hunter, subdivisions within Buena Vista have familiar colloquial names such as “the Indian Reservation,” where the developer attempted a Native American theme with street names such as Arrowhead Trail, Warbonnet, Peacepipe, Tomahawk, Medicine Bow and White Feather. Fox Drive homes, Hunter says, were first developed in the early 1960s, while the Indian Reservation began to flourish in the 1970s and 1980s.
At the far northern margin of Del Rio city limits is the newest, upscale subdivision, Ceniza Hills, straddling both sides of Agarita Drive. The neighborhood’s families are served by Buena Vista Elementary School. Ceniza Hills is easily found with a skyline search for landmark, side-by-side water towers. In wet spells, the desert beyond the towers is ablaze with color from native namesake shrubbery, cenizo, often mistakenly called "purple sage."
