Turning left from Brownsville, one winds through the Lower Rio Grande Valley, where groves of Texas’ famed delicacy, pink grapefruit, and hugely clustered oranges and lemons provide tempting and fragrant scenes along the highway. Also, in this tropical valley, and with little coaxing, papayas, bananas, avocados, cantaloupes, mangos, and strawberries flourish. In many of the citrus groves signs invite tourists to pick fruit at bargain prices, such as a dollar per bushel, while the rest of the nation is still trying to ward off the assaults of winter. Here is a seventy-mile stretch of palm-lined Highway 83, framed in tropical splendor, which runs from Brownsville at the east end of the Valley to its west end, through an almost unbroken chain of cities, including La Feria, Mercedes, Weslaco, Donna, Alamo, San Juan, Pharr, McAllen, and Mission. The first stop down this main street is LA FERIA, a pleasant residential community. Then on to MERCEDES, home of the Rio Grande Valley Livestock Show and World Championship Rodeo. It, also, is a friendly city endowed with an abundance of flowers, where Sunrise Hill Memorial Bowl holds, for the whole Valley, sunrise Easter services in its amphitheatre. Next to Mercedes is WESLACO, central point of the Lower Rio Grande Valley and a city of modern urban charm. DONNA is the home of the South Texas Sheep and Land Exposition held during the winter months. A townsite which has been moved away from the Rio Grande after the disastrous flood of 1909, it is a city of many new civic buildings. Like a pendant in the string of Valley pearls, presides ALAMO (meaning cottonwood tree in Spanish), a city of bougainvillaea, poinsettias, and lush tropical greenery. Just across the street is SAN JUAN, site of the beautiful NUESTRA SENORA DE SAN JUAN church, completed in 1954. Its exquisite altar was a gift from Spain. “’Tain’t far to Pharr from anywhar,” is the inadequate slogan for PHARR, home of the Valley Vegetable Show, held each December. Many fruit and vegetable processing plants are here. Eleven miles southeast is the SANTA ANA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, with two inland lakes maintained for waterfowl and wildlife. Some of the two hundred eighty-eight species which have been sighted in it are considered quite rare. It is a veritable tropical jungle, with ebony trees said to be the largest in the United States. Next comes McALLEN, “City of Palms,” favorite of the tourists, and the oil and gas center of the Valley. The city is built on one of the richest natural gas deposits in Texas. Only eight miles from the border, McAllen is often called one of the gateways to Old Mexico.