Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Quemado, TX

Quemado is an unincorporated census-designated place in northwestern Maverick County, on U.S. Highway 277 about a mile and a half east of the Rio Grande and 18 miles northwest of Eagle Pass.

The community takes its name from the surrounding Quemado Valley, and Spanish expeditions passed through the area as early as 1675 with the Bosque-Larios expedition.

Swedish farmers and dairymen settled the valley in the 1870s after a prominent landowner subdivided his property into small farms in 1871, and by 1897 Quemado had a one-room schoolhouse with one teacher and 30 pupils.

The Maverick County Irrigation Canal began delivering water in 1932, turning Quemado into an irrigated truck-farming center; a post office was established in 1934, and by 1936 the community had five grocery stores, three filling stations, a tourist camp, a community canning plant, a tile plant, and a school.

Irrigation helped Quemado's population soar to an estimated 950 in the mid-1950s, when much of Texas was suffering through drought, before it fell back to 426 by the late 1960s.

In 1981 the Quemado Valley elementary school was renamed Maude Mae Kirchner Elementary School for a beloved educator who had taught local students for more than four decades, and Quemado children are served by the Eagle Pass Independent School District.

Quemado first appeared as a census-designated place in the 2000 census with 243 residents; the count slipped to 230 in 2010 and to 162 at the 2020 census.