Mirando City

Mirando City is on Ranch Road 649 thirty miles east of Laredo and 110 miles west of Corpus Christi in eastern Webb County. The elevation is 600 feet above sea level. The townsite, on land originally granted to Nicol?s Mirando, was previously occupied by a small ranching community. When the Texas-Mexican Railway built through the area in 1881, the community acquired a small siding that enabled it to ship cattle and sheep. In addition to livestock, the area around Mirando City has also long supported the peyote cactus. Webb, Zapata, Jim Hogg, and Starr counties contain the only commercial range of peyote in the United States. Area residents known as peyoteros have harvested and supplied peyote for religious ceremonies to Indians in the United States since the nineteenth century. Indians also travel to Mirando City from across the country to harvest the cactus themselves.