Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Penitas, TX

Peñitas, in southwestern Hidalgo County about 13 miles west of McAllen on the Rio Grande, traces its founding by local tradition to survivors of the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition of 1520, a group said to include a Fray Zamora, five Spanish officers, and their slaves.

Peñitas is Spanish for "small stones," and a historical marker dedicated by U.S. Congressman Kika de la Garza states that the village has been continuously inhabited by descendants of those first Spaniards since 1520.

By 1850 the site of Peñitas had several well-populated ranches, including those of Rómulo Martínez and Jesús Chapa Cantú, and its first known school opened in 1896 with fifteen students and one teacher.

The St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway reached Peñitas in 1904, but the town stayed tiny for decades, with about 100 residents in 1925 and a peak of only around 300 during the 1950s.

Peñitas began growing when colonias formed there in the 1970s, and it first appeared as a census-designated place in the 1990 census before becoming an incorporated city.

The population of Peñitas exploded in the twenty-first century, rising from 1,167 in 2000 to 4,403 in 2010 and 6,460 at the 2020 census, with Census Bureau estimates putting it near 6,495 by 2025.

Peñitas has about 1,808 households, and its households are large by national standards, averaging about 3.56 people each.

The city of Peñitas covers about 9.4 square miles in Hidalgo County, of which only a small fraction is water.

Children in Peñitas attend the La Joya Independent School District, a district that covers more than 226 square miles of western Hidalgo County.