The gold hunters of long ago saw glittering visions of the Seven Cities of Cibola and
their legendary hoards. The men of the cross envisioned a multitude of savages to be
Christianized for the greater glory of God.
Between them, they explored and settled the route that is now U.S. Highway 89 along
the shallow Santa Cruz from Nogales to Tucson.
Frey Marcos de Niza crossed into Arizona at Lochiel, 30 miles east of Nogales, 415
years ago, He was chaplain of a Spanish expedition that returned to Mexico without
colonizing and without finding gold.
A year later, in 1540, came Coronado and a small army in quest of the Seven Cities
and their gold.
In 1687, Padre Eusebio Kino arrived on the Arizona scene with instructions to
convert the Indians, establish ranches, build missions, and develop permanent settlements
in the Pimeria Alta (southern Arizona and northern Sonora).
Father Kino founded 21 missions and taught the Indians weaving, building,
and agriculture. He visited the village of Bac near Tucson in 1692. Eight years later, he laid
the foundations of a mission two miles north of the present Mission of San Xavier del
Bac.
The present structure, completed in 1797, is a model of missions architecture in the
United States. It is served by Franciscan priests and sisters who carry on Father Kino's
ministry to the educational and spiritual needs of Indians.
Father Kino's example wrought a permanent change in the culture and habits of the
Indians of the area.
However, the Apaches encountered by tough old Pete Kitchen when he established a
ranch on Potero Creek in 1855 obviously had not come under Padre Kino's gentle
influence.
Kitchen's son was killed near the ranch. Most of his neighbors were stampeded by
Indian raids. But Kitchen posted a lookout atop his house and sent his farmhands
into the fields carrying rifles across their plow handles. Despite the Apache menace,
Kitchen turned out 13,000 pounds of hams and bacon and 5,000 pounds of lard in a single year for
valley residents and the army.
Travelers between Tucson and Magdalena, Sonora, made Kitchen's stronghold a
regular overnight stop. Col. and Mrs. Gil Proctor own the ranch today, and Proctor has
turned Pete's original, one-room adobe into a museum dedicated to the memory of a
dauntless pioneer rancher.
Another of the Santa Cruz Valley's historic ranches is the Baboquivari Cattle Co.'s
Agua Linda Ranch, owned by Carlos Ronstadt. It was founded in 1787 by Toribio de
Otero, who was sent to Tubac by the Spanish government at Arispe, Sonora, to establish
a school.
Otero equipped his ranch with brush dams and irrigation ditches carrying water from
the Santa Cruz. The ranch remained in the Otero family until 1941.
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