Texas Southmost College

Texas Southmost College is a public junior college located in Brownsville, Texas. It was the first successful institution of higher learning organized in Brownsville.

Texas Southmost College was established in 1926 under the name of The Junior College of the Lower Rio Grande Valley and admitted its first class on September 21 of that year. The school was originally a subsidiary of the local school district in Brownsville. It has been located in Brownsville since its inception; from 1928 to 1948 it was housed with the Brownsville High School and Elementary Schools on Palm Boulevard between Washington Street and Jefferson Street. Despite hard times during the Great Depression the college continued to maintain nominal levels of enrollment. The name of the college changed in 1931 to Brownsville Junior College then again to Texas Southmost College in 1950. During World War II due to wartime mobilization enrollment dwindled, with the number of graduates halved from 1943–1945. A major improvement came in 1948 when the city of Brownsville acquired the lands formerly comprising the decommissioned army base known as Fort Brown, which had been closed in 1946. By 1948, when the college had an enrollment of around 1,250 students, their own campus, and a generous budget, talks had started within the school district about creating a separate district for the college. It was decided that the new district would cover southern Cameron County. In 1950, on the silver anniversary of the college, the Brownsville Independent School District handed over the deed to the college over to the newly formed Southmost Union Junior College District.