Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Placedo Placedo, TX

Placedo is an unincorporated census-designated place in Victoria County, on U.S. Highway 87 about fourteen miles southeast of Victoria.

Both Placedo and Placedo Creek are named for Plácido Benavides, a Tejano rancher who joined Martín De León's colony — the only Mexican empresario colony in Texas — in 1828.

A settlement has existed at the Placedo site since the Republic of Texas era, and the San Antonio and Mexican Gulf Railway established a station there in 1860.

In 1906 the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway crossed the old line and the station became Placedo Junction; landowners E. E. Pickering and John W. Henderson platted the modern town in 1910, adding gutters and sidewalks to recruit new citizens.

By 1920 Placedo's roughly 300 residents supported a bank, a school, a cotton gin, a pharmacy, a hotel, and other businesses, but a hurricane in the 1920s damaged most of the town and the population fell to about 100 by 1925.

Oil and gas development beginning in 1935 revived Placedo, and by the 1940s it had eighteen businesses and about 400 residents.

Placedo was first counted as a census-designated place in the 2010 census with 692 people, and the 2020 census counted 625 residents packed into just 0.6 square miles — a density of over 1,100 people per square mile.

Placedo's own elementary school, Placedo Elementary, is part of the Bloomington Independent School District.

Placedo is the hometown of John Sharp, who served as Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts from 1991 to 1999 and went on to become chancellor of the Texas A&M University System in 2011.

Hurricane Carla's flooding in 1961 left Placedo under water, an episode captured in well-known photographs of the community after the storm.