Rio Grande Valley Road Tied to a Folkloric Fire
Combes, TX
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public road; no admission. Adjacent properties are private and should not be entered.
Access
Limited Access
Rural road off U.S. 77 in Cameron County.
Equipment
Photos OK
Combes sits on Business U.S. 77 in northwestern Cameron County, just north of Harlingen and within the Lower Rio Grande Valley. The town was originally the headquarters of the Combes Ranch, named for Charles B. Combes, a Kentucky settler who arrived in the early 1900s. The community developed after 1904 with the arrival of the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway.
Regional accounts published on Rio Grande Valley folklore sites place a small orphanage near what is now Orphanage Road. The accounts describe a couple who, shortly after the First World War, were assigned by Willacy County authorities to care for fifty Black children orphaned in the Valley. The arrangement reflected the social conditions of the period: Black families in the Valley were broadly ostracized, and many fathers had been drawn away by World War I military service.
The accounts further describe a fire that destroyed the dormitory and killed forty-nine of the fifty children. The cause of the fire was reportedly never determined. The named survivor, a child remembered in regional retellings as Hattie, recounted the event in interviews collected in the years after. A small cemetery believed to be associated with the orphanage survives in a grove of trees off U.S. 77 near the Combes exit. Independent historical confirmation of the fire — through county records, contemporary newspaper coverage, or named institutional documentation — has not been located through these sources, and the account should be treated as regional oral history.
Sources
The folklore that travels with Orphanage Road is consistent across local retellings. Drivers who pass the road at night describe hearing the screams and cries of children, attributed by regional accounts to the orphanage fire that local folklore places sometime after the First World War.
The story is one of the more durable Rio Grande Valley legends, retold in regional folklore writing and on Cameron County tourism blogs. The named survivor — Hattie, in regional retellings — anchors the human element of the story. Whether the historical fire occurred as described, or with the casualty count given in oral history, has not been independently documented through county records or contemporary newspaper coverage in the sources reviewed here.
Visitors driving the road should remain on public pavement; the surrounding properties are private. The grove and cemetery are referenced in local accounts but should be approached only with permission from current landowners.
Drive Orphanage Road off U.S. 77 in Cameron County. The road takes its name from a small orphanage that operated in the area after World War I. A small cemetery hides in a grove of trees off the highway near the orphanage exit. Adjacent land is private; visitors should remain on public roads.
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