San Benito was the brainchild of Colonel Sam Robertson, railroad engineer turned Valley entrepreneur. The town was platted in 1907 at the juncture of the incoming rail line and the Resaca de los Fresnos, which follows an ancient course of the Rio Grande and meanders through the city grid as a landscaped park. San Benito illustrates the new, early-twentieth-century design elements brought to the region, including the wide Sam Houston Boulevard that bisects the urban grid with its palm-lined median in the image of Southern California.
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