Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Hidalgo, TX

Hidalgo is one of the oldest communities in South Texas — Spanish colonists led by José de Escandón first settled the area around 1749, when it was known variously as La Habitación, Rancho San Luis, and San Luisito.

In 1852 Scotsman John Young renamed the town Edinburgh after his birthplace, and it became the first county seat of Hidalgo County.

The town was incorporated in 1876 and renamed Hidalgo in 1885; it lost the county seat to Chapin — soon renamed Edinburg — in 1908.

The shifting Rio Grande repeatedly flooded Hidalgo, forcing residents to move the town's buildings inland until the original townsite was completely inundated by 1940.

A ferry linked Hidalgo to Reynosa, Mexico, until an international toll suspension bridge was built across the Rio Grande in 1926.

Hidalgo sits at one of the southern ends of U.S. Highway 281, where the Hidalgo–McAllen–Reynosa International Bridge makes it one of the busiest passenger-vehicle ports of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Hidalgo had 13,964 residents in the 2020 census, up sharply from 11,198 in 2010 and just 7,322 in 2000.

Hidalgo has roughly 3,900 households that average nearly four people each, among the largest household sizes of any Texas city.

The Old Hidalgo Pumphouse, built in 1909 to pump Rio Grande water into irrigation canals and retired in 1983, is now a museum and a World Birding Center site.

The first documented colony of Africanized "killer bees" in the United States was found just outside Hidalgo in 1990, and the city later erected a roadside statue billed as the world's largest killer bee.