Raymondville's Courthouse Arrived With a New County Map

The courthouse in Raymondville came out of a county-line shuffle, not a simple move from one seat to another. The original Willacy County formed in 1911 with Sarita as its seat. In 1921, nearly all of that territory became Kenedy County and kept Sarita. Present-day Willacy County took land from Cameron and Hidalgo counties, plus a strip about 1.42 miles wide from the original county, and gave the Willacy name to a new map with Raymondville as its seat.

Distance helped drive the change. There was no paved road across the northern two-thirds of the old county, leaving the railroad as the practical route to the courthouse for many northern residents. The new county's commissioners met in the Raymondville State Bank and borrowed a jail cage from the King Ranch. Voters approved a courthouse bond 137 to 15.

Construction began in May 1922. County offices moved in by March 1, 1923, and the building was completed that year. Henry T. Phelps designed both the earlier Sarita courthouse and Raymondville's red-brick courthouse with cast-stone trim. The Raymondville plan had four entrances, crossed corridors, a basement, three floors, and a jail on the third floor. The jail moved to a separate law-enforcement building in 1975.

The courthouse square sat along an old property line between the King Ranch and Ed Raymond's ranch. That makes the site a compact record of the whole rearrangement: a ranch boundary became a civic center, an improvised bank meeting gave way to a permanent courthouse, and the same architect left buildings in both counties created by the split.