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.

It may not be the absolute end of commercial citrus farming around the old estate.

Most of the orchard acreage near Shary Mansion is owned by Sharest Ltd., which doesn’t own Shary Mansion or the chapel.

Sharest Ltd. Manager Charles Mueller said last month that the property’s owners recognize the value of that land and don’t currently plan on developing it — a fate several citrus insiders feared for the property.

“We’re distraught to have to be tearing them out,” Mueller said. “But between the bugs and the lack of water and the freezes and just general difficulties of a farming tract in the city, we’re turning it to hay. So it’s most disheartening, because that’s really, really fabulous soil for citrus.”

Replanting citrus trees on the land could, Mueller said, one day be a possibility.

“If the water situation improves, then it’s possible,” he said. “I mean, it’s fabulous, fabulous soil. And (it could happen) if they come up with a cure for the greening disease, or at least a preventative measure. Those are the two biggies.”

A pest-borne ailment with no cure, citrus greening disease has obliterated Florida’s industry on an “apocalyptic” scale.

The disease was first reported in South Texas in 2012 — six years after it was confirmed in Florida — and so far, its spread has been better resisted locally.

More immediately, Valley growers have been grappling with the water situation, Mueller said.

Drought conditions and a failure by Mexico to fulfill treaty obligations to deliver water it owes the U.S. have left Valley orchards desperately parched. 

Despite optimism about attention being paid to the Valley’s water issues and some progress on treaty obligations earlier this year, Valley growers say the problem is far from fixed.

“So the problem with the deals that have been struck and Mexico’s plan to repay us, is frankly they’ve used the water,” Texas Citrus Mutual President Dale Murden said. “You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip. Supposed to make a payment. With what? They ain’t got any water. They’ve used the water.”

Despite remaining a significant economic force, Murden estimates that water in particular and other stressors on the industry have diminished the physical footprint of orchards in the Valley by a third over the past decade.

The orchards around Shary Mansion joined that third this summer.

“We planted tens of thousands over the years, trying to keep it a viable grove — and we did, until recently,” Mueller said. “But just the lack of water, more than anything else. The bugs are hard to contend with, too. We’re distraught, frankly.”

Hidalgo County Historical Commission Chairman Gabriel Ozuna says the loss of those orchards and other formerly agricultural land around them that once made up the Shary Estate is worth being distraught over.

“It’s a shame that it was subdivided and sold off a piece at a time,” he said. “With the removal of the iconic cultural landscape, acres of citrus interspersed with palm trees, the integrity of the entire area will be permanently affected and our history diminished.”

Earlier this year, a drive down Shary Road offered a glimpse of what Ozuna meant. Past Shary’s mansion, the road dipped into a basin where, for a few moments, you could look out your window and see an oasis—green orchards, palms, irrigation lines stretching toward the horizon. It was a flash of what much of the Valley once looked like, back when citrus was king, the way it appears in old postcards and paintings. It was the Valley when citrus was mighty.

Today, that vision is fading.

Murden is grateful that Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz has carried the industry’s water concerns to Washington. In the 1950s, it was Washington that came here. Citrus held enough sway that President Dwight D. Eisenhower became the first sitting president to visit. He spent two nights at the Shary Mansion as the guest of Texas Governor Allan Shivers, who had married Shary’s daughter. Eisenhower’s staff didn’t give the press his itinerary for his South Texas trip. The Shary Estate’s manager did.

The orchards by the Shary Mansion weren’t just picturesque. They represented a point of pride and permanence in an industry that’s had a significant history but that’s now, in many ways, on the back foot.

That’s the way, at least, many Valley citrus growers saw them.

Earlier this summer, Murden drove through those orchards and saw the dozers moving.

“And I damned near cried,” he said. “That just gutshot me. It’s one of those things: you always think there’s gonna be citrus around the Shary Mansion. But nope. Times change.”