24/7 Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup in Roma, TX

Roma is a city in Starr County on the Rio Grande in South Texas, directly across the river from Ciudad Miguel Alemán, Tamaulipas, Mexico, and it is popularly known as Roma-Los Saenz because the incorporated city also absorbed the Los Saenz settlement.

Roma was established in 1821, when the area was still part of the Spanish province of Nuevo Santander, and its site was a convenient Rio Grande crossing known as El Paso de la Mula — the Pass of the Mule — long tied to the salt trade with Monterrey.

From 1850 to 1900, Roma was the westernmost port on the Rio Grande for the flatboats and steamers carrying cotton downstream, and the region grew wealthy on the cotton trade during the Civil War.

Roma had the only post office in Starr County in 1848, the year the area became part of the United States, and its name was suggested by the Oblate missionaries who founded a mission there in the 1850s.

Because the railroads bypassed Roma, the town stagnated economically — and that neglect inadvertently preserved one of the best remaining Spanish colonial townsites in the lower Rio Grande Valley.

The Roma National Historic Landmark District contains more than 30 structures built before 1900, including the old Customs House and the Filomeno Gongora House from around the 1830s, the oldest house in Roma.

The Roma Historical Museum, organized in 1971 when Roma was designated a national historic district, is housed in a structure dating to 1840.

Roma was incorporated in 1936 and now serves as a port of entry through the Roma–Ciudad Miguel Alemán International Bridge, at a spot where the Rio Grande channel is less than 200 feet wide.

Roma had 11,561 residents at the 2020 census, living in 3,760 households, and about 98.5% of its residents are Hispanic or Latino.

Roma is a popular birding destination — a site of the World Birding Center sits on Portsheller Street across from city hall.