It is unclear when Candelaria was founded, but the area was occupied by Native Americans before farmers began to grow crops on the irrigated floodplain of the Rio Grande. It was known initially as Gallina ("chicken" in
Spanish) before being renamed as Candelaria. In 1868, an entrepreneur named William Russell came to the area to establish a farm worked by the local people, selling the grain to the
US Army at
Fort Davis and
Fort Stockton. Cotton was also grown locally. With the town's population increasing steadily, it became the seat of one of Presidio County's three school districts in 1893. By 1911 it had grown to two stores, a church and a school, with 307 pupils in the school district and a general population of 1,842, though only a minority of these actually lived in the town. The remoteness of the area led to concerns about its security during the
Mexican Revolution. The US Army responded in 1916 by establishing an army post, Camp Candelaria, that was garrisoned until late 1919. The town's fortunes waned thereafter; with its poor transport links along a 50-mile dirt road to
Presidio, its
small-scale agriculture could not compete with the industrial farms elsewhere along the Rio Grande. ==Climate==