Marsha and I now live in The Village at Rancho Viejo – a
Home Owner Association (HOA) Community in Santa Fe, New Mexico. When we first purchased our then sixteen-year
old house in September 2017, I mistakenly believed that Rancho Viejo was simply
a development made up of three HOAs – the other two being Windmill Ridge and
Entrada. When I began researching the
history of RV however I quickly discovered that the “Old Ranch” (as it would be
called in English) was in fact a 23,000-acre (39 square mile) parcel of land south
of I-25 in Santa Fe County, New Mexico – which, in addition to the three HOAs,
currently accommodates enterprises such as Santa Fe Community College; Santa
Maria de la Paz Roman Catholic Church; the Institute of American Indian Arts
(IAIA); and the Amy Biehl Community School; as well as several others, and more
empty space than I can visualize. The
magnitude of some of these southwestern land holdings boggles my provincial,
small town Connecticut mind. Our former
hometown of Wethersfield, for comparison measured 13.1 square miles including
.8 square miles of inlet cove and river water.
The size of our old Connecticut acreage would be a mathematical rounding error in the
southwest land equation. And as I continued my investigation I discovered that
Rancho Viejo, while three times the size of our former home base, was nowhere
near the biggest chunk of land in Santa Fe history.
During most of the twentieth century RV and its surrounding
real estate had been a succession of ranches the sizes and shapes of which ebbed
and flowed as a series of buyers and sellers purchased or sold entire
properties and parts thereof. The
current “Rancho” was purchased in 1981 by Adeline Meyer, Larry Meyer, Leland
Thompson, William (Bill) Kennedy and Fred Chambers operating as Rancho Viejo
Limited Partners. As far as I have been
able to determine this is the first use of that moniker in this area.
This chapter tells the story of Rancho Viejo’s genesis and
the immediately history of the land leading up to that purchase. Subsequent sections go back in time to tell
the story of the land and its occupants from pre-history up to RV’s creation –
and others discuss the evolution of the property from its 1981 establishment,
to its current state of development in 2018.
800 Head of Cattle and 10,000 Ewes on 115,000 Acres
In the early part of the 1900s the RV land was a part of the
Mocho Family Ranch – owned and run by Jean Baptiste (“James”) and John Mocho
who were turn-of-the-century immigrants from the Basque Country.
In 1910 the Mocho brothers purchased a ranch in Encinoso
Lincoln County, in the foothills of the Capitan Mountains. “The initial ranch, formerly the Charles
Spence ranch, sat on 160 acres of deeded land, had two good springs and a
permit to graze two thousand ewes during summer months on Forest Service Land,”
according to Jim’s son Pete.
When New Mexico became a state the once open lands had some
new government controls placed upon them, which the Mocho brothers did not know
how to negotiate. “Their lack of
knowledge in such matters benefitted from political competition between the
Democrats and Republicans who had seen the territory become a state.” New Mexico’s first Governor was W. “Bill”
McDonald, owner of the neighboring Block Ranch – whom the Mochos regarded as a
competitor for the open land.
Pete Mocho continued, “In Lincoln County, the republicans,
under leadership of Mr. Andrew Huspeth, a lawyer, and Mr. Charles Spence, a
banker, seized on the opportunity of limiting Governor McDonald’s expansion of
his Block Ranch by taking Dad and uncle John to Santa Fe and helping them file
on state range land and against Governor McDonald’s expansion of his Block
Ranch…[the Mochos] were the only landowners near Governor McDonald who were
authorized to claim a commensurate righ to the new state lands.” As a result
the Mocho Ranch grew to 160,000 acres of choice land.
Other ranchers came in and settled the land between Mocho
Ranch and Block Ranch – among them Thomas Shoemaker whose daughters Nora and
Ora married John and Jim Mocho in 1914 and 1916 respectively. The two families soon outgrew the 1890s
u-shaped house on the ranch that they shared – and over a four-day period in
1917 Jim and John Mocho “ sold the whole operation on Monday for cash to Pete
Etchevery and George Walker.” The ranch
had, by then, grown to 800 head of cattle and 10,000 ewes, which brought $80 a
head and $14 each.
James Mocho then purchased the “Bonanza Grant” in Santa Fe,
and John joined him in raising sheep and cattle on the family ranch. According to an article on newmexico.org, “The
chain of title is confused, but the lands, sometimes called La Bonanza, Bonanza
Creek, Cerrillos Ranch, or old Cerrillos, as well as the recorded grant names,
were in the hands of the Padilla and Rio Grande Livestock Company when
purchased by the Mochos.” The combined owned
land and leased land that comprised the Mocho sheep and cattle operation at one
time apparently totaled 115,000 acres.
The article continues, “Jim Mocho [John’s son] says that his
father built many of the fences in the Rancho Viejo area and tried to convince
others to do so as well, once buying an entire railroad car full of barbed wire
in Albuquerque.”
The Mocho homestead was broken up and sold off in part due
the effects of Great Depression, and partly due to the decrease in open
grazing land caused by public spaces being given over for housing and highway
department usage. In 1951 part (or
possibly all) of the Mocho family ranch plus, over time, three other properties
– the Dody, Morrow and Calvin holdings became the Jarrett Ranch.
According to the June 2006 “San Marcos District Community
Plan” – “The remaining area in the district is residential/agricultural land
ranging in lot sizes varying from less than an acre to several hundred acres.
The settlement pattern is a result of the breakup and sale of several large
ranches over time, the largest of these being the Jarrett Ranch.”
“By the Mid 1970s the isolated ranch house was mostly a
thing of the past. While still very rural in nature, the San Marcos district
had probably picked up another fifty or sixty families. Subdivision, in all of
its guises, was rampant, although building was not. The giant Jarrett ranch was
split in two after the death of Mr. Hughes, with Rancho Viejo Partnership
purchasing the eastern half of the ranch.
Both halves however, continued to be run as working cattle ranches.”
Value Unclear, But Hefty
Rancho Viejo itself was formed from a portion of the 36,000-acre
Jarrett Ranch, which was located between Santa Fe and Madrid, south of I 25,
east of La Bajada, and west of US 285. Richard “Jim” Jarrett and his wife Tillie
bought the property in 1951 and then Jim died in a traffic accident in 1957
after which the entire spread went to his wife.
Tillie married an Albuquerque Chiropractor named Sam Lord shortly after
which she died of cancer leaving the ranch to her sister Sue Hughes who soon
after also died of the same disease. The
land then went to Sue’s husband Glen and son Bobby who decided to sell some of
the land to pay the inheritance taxes.
In his Memoirs Larry Meyer writes, “Reporter Steve Terrell
wrote an article for The New Mexican newspaper when we bought Rancho
Viejo. The title was ‘Three ‘Old
Republicans’ Buy the Ranch,’ and in it Terrell implied that we were all
Texans. Leland is from Kansas
originally, and I am from California. In
the article, Terrell called us carpetbaggers, despite the fact that, at the
time, I think Leland had been here for about 25 years, and I had been here for
30 years! Fred Chambers indeed was from
Texas, but Fred didn’t take part in the day-to-day decisions. It was more or less Leland and I who managed
the operation.”
In Santa Fe Larry Meyer had established and run the L.E.
Meyer Company, originally a mechanical contracting firm, and later a real
estate development company in 1951. He
and his wife, Adeline, were well known for their generous support of higher education,
the Santa Fe Opera, Santa Fe Garden Club, and other community efforts.
Leland Thompson was named one of “The 25 Richest People in
New Mexico” by CROSSWINDS, “New Mexico’s Largest Alternative Newspaper” in
October 1996 – “LELAND THOMPSON, Santa
Fe. Transplanted Texas oilman owns with partners lots of land around Interstate
25. Value unclear but hefty.” In Midland
Texas Thompson, Chambers and Kennedy were involved in the oil business with
George H.W. Bush in the 1950s. Leland
and “HW” were both “wildcatters,” and Thompson reportedly gave a young “W” Bush
his first ride in a small airplane. Leland
Thompson was also a founder of Santa Fe Preparatory School, and involved in a
major way in the establishment of the Santa Fe campus of St. John’s College.
The San Marcos Plan goes on to say, “Most of the [Rancho Viejo] holding continued
as a 200 to 400 head cattle ranch leased to Mr. Henry McKinley. The partners
concentrated their development efforts in the northern sections (outside the
San Marcos District).” Cattle farming
ceased as in the mid-1980s as new land use codes were enacted.
Prior to the development of the Rancho Viejo HOAs, RVLP donated
the lands for the establishment of Santa Fe Community College, Santa Maria de
la Paz Roman Catholic Church, and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) as
well as The Turquoise Trail Elementary School and the County Fire Station across
from San Marcos Feed Store.
There
is more information on the five members of Rancho Viejo Limited Partners in the
chapter by that name. But my quest for a
history of Rancho Viejo will continue, as, among other things, I attempt to:
learn the actual boundaries of the Mocho Ranch; find out more about the Jarrett
Ranch, including its dimensions; and still possibly trace RV’s chain of
ownership back to the original Spanish Land Grant(s).
Recently Marsha and I attended a talk by Abiquiu New Mexico
author Lesley Poling-Kempes about her latest non-fiction work Ladies of theCanyons – “intrepid women whose lives were transformed in the first decades of
the twentieth century by the people and landscape of the American Southwest.”
She talked about the difficulty of researching the history
of people who are not famous – such as the four main subjects of her book. Stuff just is not written about them. But in this case one of the Ladies, Natalie
Curtis, was a friend and professional acquaintance of President Theodore
Roosevelt and is mentioned in works about him – e.g. introducing him to the
Hopi Indian Snake Dance at Walpi Arizona in 1913.
This absence of source material also seems to be the case
with looking into the history of the land on which our property sits. There was no “Battle of Rancho Viejo Hill” with
tales of Rough Rider daring-do for historians to recount. Then, when some documentation is uncovered it
sometimes contradicts other accounts of the same event. But that is what makes researching fun – even
at the amateur level.
As Sir Winston Churchill describes it, “History with its flickering
lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to
revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.”
Additional Note: Bonanza Creek Ranch – “one of the premiere [movie and TV filming] locations in the western United States” and about twelve miles south of our address (as the raven flies) was was also acquired from the Jarrett Ranch in the 1980s. The film “Cowboy” starring Glenn Ford and Jack Lemmon was the first movie filmed here in l958. 1,200 Corriente steers were brought up from up from Mexico to use for the cattle drive scenes.
Sources:
Windmills and Dreams: A History of the Eldorado Community
and Neighboring Areas
Eldorado Community improvement Association
New Mexico in Maps, University of New Mexico Press
The Memoirs of Larry Myer
June 2006 “San Marcos District Community Plan”
Ladies of the Canyons, Lesley Poling-Kempes, University of
Arizona Press
Capitan, New Mexico: From the Coalora Coal Mines to Smokey
Bear, Gary Cozzens, books.google.com/books
