Harlingen ( HAR-lin-jin) is a city in Cameron County in the central region of the Rio Grande Valley of the southern share of the U.S. state of Texas, about 30 miles (48 km) from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The city covers higher than 40 square miles (104 km²) and is the second-largest city in Cameron County, as capably as the fourth-largest in the Rio Grande Valley. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 71,892.

Harlingen is a principal city of the Brownsville–Harlingen metropolitan area, which is allocation of the larger Brownsville–Harlingen–Raymondville combination statistical area, included in the Matamoros–Brownsville metropolitan region.

Harlingen’s strategic location at the intersection of U.S. Route 77 and U.S. Route 83, co-designated as Interstate 69 East and Interstate 2, respectively, in northwestern Cameron County, fostered its expansion as a distribution, shipping, and industrial center. In 1904, Lon C. Hill (a man of Choctaw ancestry) envisioned the Rio Grande as a poster waterway. He named the town he founded on the north bank after the Frisian city of Harlingen, in the Netherlands. The town’s publish office was traditional that year. The first teacher opened in the declare of 15 pupils in 1905 close the Hill home, the first dwelling built in Harlingen. Harlingen incorporated upon April 15, 1910, when the population totaled 1,126. In 1920, the census listed 1,748. The local economy at first was just about entirely agricultural, with the chief crops vegetables and cotton.

World War II military installations in Harlingen caused a jump in population from 23,000 in 1950 to 41,000 by 1960. Harlingen Army Air Field preceded Harlingen Air Force Base, which closed in 1962. The city’s population fell to 33,603 by 1972, then climbed to 40,824 by 1980. Local enterprise, focused on the buy and use of the solitary base and connected housing, laid the groundwork for continuing momentum through a diversified economy. The estimated population in July 1985 was 49,000, of which approximately 80% was Hispanic. In the late 1980s, income from tourism ranked second on your own to citrus fruit production, with grain and cotton next in order. The adjunct of wholesale and retail trade, light and medium manufacturing, and an array of serve industries has broadened the economic base. Large-scale construction for multifaceted retirement communities is a further phase of industrial development.