[4] It is named for Burr H. Duval, a soldier in the Texas Revolution who died in the Goliad Massacre.

In 1804, six years before Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla launched Mexico's successful independence movement from Spain, Jose Faustino Contreras, surveyor general of San Luis Potosi, charted the county's landscape, which attracted colonists from Mier, Tamaulipas.

The Texas Almanac of 1867 reported that Duval and nearby Dimmit County had only four stock raisers and their population was unlikely to grow much, absent the discovery of mineral wealth.

The Hotel Martinet's Sunday feast drew patrons from Corpus Christi, 50 miles (80 km) to the East.

Although some died under the code duello, most of Duval County's deaths were murders that primarily victimized the legacy Spanish-speaking population.

In April of 1878, a large Indian raid carried out by the Kickapoo, Seminole, and Lipan Apache ended up in the deaths of more than 10 people.

When the Texas Mexican Railway began operating in 1881, its San Diego station served as an important hub for trading hides, wool and cotton, but the boom evaporated when sheep began dying during the Winter of 1886–1887, triggering the Sheep Wars that once again primarily victimized the legacy Spanish-speaking population.

Duval County was a longtime Democratic stronghold like most of heavily Hispanic South Texas.

(George Parr simultaneously arranged the more famous electoral fraud for Johnson in Alice, Texas.

)[23] Duval County is notorious for corrupt politics, particularly during the early and mid-20th century, when it was largely controlled by the political machine of Texas State Senator Archie Parr and his son George Parr, each in his turn called El Patrón or the "Duke of Duval".

[25] Meanwhile, then Texas Attorney General John Ben Shepperd brought some three hundred state indictments against county and school officials.