Through the 20 th century Hidalgo remained insignificant and boasted under twenty thousand inhabitants, surviving off of outlying agricultural operations and catering to those using the town as a gate between countries.
After incorporation, Hidalgo remained a small border town which served as a gateway to Texas for many travelers and traders and an exit from Texas for cattle herds and men on the run. The town was always small and would don the names La Habitación, Rancho San Luís, San Luisito, and Edinburgh before officially becoming Hidalgo when it was incorporated into Hidalgo County in 1876. In the first lustrum of the 1860s, Hidalgo flew the flag of the Confederate States of America during the War Between the States and would later fly the flag of the Union again in the spring of 1870. After the Mexican-American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the town became part of the United States, specifically the state of Texas.
Hidalgo’s roots trace back to early Spanish colonial colonization of what was then Mexico or ‘New Spain’ as they called it when Spanish colonists founded it in 1749.
