Legacy orchards near Shary Mansion wiped out

PALMHURST — Bulldozers this summer tore out the symbolic heart of the Rio Grande Valley’s citrus industry.

Those bulldozers cleared 300 acres of citrus orchards in Palmhurst that surrounded the Shary-Shivers Mansion, land that a century ago was the epicenter of John H. Shary’s agricultural empire — and arguably the birthplace of the Valley’s citrus industry.

For decades, those storied orchards withstood various challenges to the Valley’s citrus industry while urban sprawl steadily crept in around them.

Now, with the exception of a few hundred trees north of the mansion and the adjacent Shary Memorial Chapel, the citrus trees around the old estate are stacked up in gnarled brown clumps in a barren-looking field.