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It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Orange Grove, Texas. (Discuss)

Historic Orange Grove is only minutes away from beautiful Lake Corpus Christi State Park and the legendary Nueces River.

Orange Grove, at the intersection of State Highway 359 and Farm Road 624, is eighteen miles north of Alice in northeastern Jim Wells County. The site was part of the Ventana Ranch owned by George and Hannah (Compton) Reynolds. In March 1889, the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway reached the area, and the Reynolds family gave fifty-one acres of land to the railroad company as an inducement to build a stop on the ranch.

In 1908 Fennell Dibrell and Max Starcke were hired by George Reynolds, Jr., and Ernest Miller to subdivide and sell 2,500 acres cut from the Ventana Ranch and from Miller's ranch. Dibrell and Starcke platted streets, which they named for their friends. They then sold a large portion of the land to German settlers from other German Texas towns. The developers chose the name Orange Grove for the new town, hoping to lure more settlers to the area by evoking the booming and profitable citrus industry in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

In 1925 the town had a population of 300, and by 1931, some 1,000. During the 1940s the Orange Grove Rifle Club Hall became the social center for the community, with the Annual May Feast and the Annual Harvest Feast held there. The predominant language in Orange Grove continued to be German. In 1939 the population was estimated at 750, and by the early 1940s had increased to 906. By the early 1960s it had risen to about 1,100, then dropped to 1,000 by the mid-1970s. By the early 1990s Orange Grove had an estimated population of 1,175.

The estimated population, in 2003, was 1,356.