Johnson Hecht Co (1 results)

Hardcover. Condition: VG. Promotional brochure and map for Raymondville, Wallacy County, Texas. The folding brochure emphasizes agricultural potential in cotton, onion, citruis fruits, and chicken raising, with numerous views. Mimeograph map of south Texas + printed pictorial brochure and 3 pages of typed carbon letters, signed by A.K. Johnson, with original mailing envelope. Condition is clean and nice. Promotional brochure and map for Raymondville, Wallacy County, Texas. The folding brochure emphasizes agricultural potential in cotton, onion, citruis fruits, and chicken raising, with numerous views of Raymondville, in Wallacy County ("the baby County in Texas, being organized in 1922"). The map is a mimeograph printing of a hand-drawn map showing the Texas - Mexico border area near Brownsville, including Padre Island, with an emphasis on the small towns scattered among this agricultural region of South Texas: San Benito, Harlingen, Sebastian, Lyford, Raymondsville [also Raymondville], La Sara, Hargill, Edinburg, Mission, McAllen, San Juan, Donna, Weslaco, Mercedes, and the like. The typed letter on Johnson-Hect Company letterhead is dated Dec. 21, 1926, and metions a new railroad being built from Raymondville "North and East." The other letter sheet is on St. George Hotel letterhead (Charles Hodges, Proprietor), dated Jan. 13, 1927 though not signed, and mentions "an Italian gentleman" who is "well connected in the City of New York with his countrymen there, who have money and want to come South. and he is a very live wire." Charles R. Johnson was a central figure in the early 20th-century development of Willacy County and surrounding areas in South Texas, combining his roles as publisher of the Willacy County News, land promoter, and later public official. In partnership with W. G. Hecht through the Johnson-Hecht Company, he marketed irrigated farm tracts around Raymondville and produced promotional maps highlighting cotton, onion, and citrus lands, while also helping to lay out the planned town of San Perlita in 1926 with his wife Pyrle providing the landscaping. Johnson went on to serve as Willacy County judge in the late 1930s, mayor of Raymondville in the late 1940s, and was a driving force behind the creation of the Willacy County Navigation District in 1948, which led to the founding of Port Mansfield and the dredging of the Mansfield Cut. His career illustrates the link between private land colonization schemes and public infrastructure development in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Book.