By Andrew Somerville

Colorful characters and odd circumstances converged to produce the unique O RO ranch and its magnificent horses. This story connects an ill-fated explorer, the claim of a sheep ranching family, one ranching family ruined by lack of water and another determined to will the ranch into existence.

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca apparently treated his Indigenous American hosts well and learned from them during his wandering on the continent after his Spanish expedition’s 1542 shipwreck. He appears to have developed the reputation of being a faith healer to tribes he met along his journey. Later, he was appointed governor of Rio de la Plata (Paraguay), attempted to treat the Indigenous peoples there fairly, angered Spanish settlers and was charged with misrule. He died in poverty in Spain, c.1560.

Don Luis María Cabeza de Baca, seemed very different from the celebrated Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca he claimed as his ancestor. He was a wealthy sheep herder with a family hacienda in Peña Blanca, in what is now New Mexico, where the Indigenous Puebloans accused him of intimidation and fraud. He was likely killed in 1827 by a Mexican soldier over refusing to surrender contraband pelts belonging to an American. The Americans, among various other foreigners, often hunted pelts illegally in what was then Mexican territory in the 1820s.

He married three times and had 22 children. In 1821 he successfully petitioned Spanish authorities to grant him and his 17 sons a parcel of 500,000 acres of land. However, Spain didn’t approve the grant until after Mexico won independence. Mexico didn’t confirm de Baca’s grant until 1825. Indigenous Americans in the area succeeded in driving de Baca back to Pena Blanca. Meanwhile, other settlers applied for a land grant of the same area claimed by de Baca, and the Mexican government granted them the same land.

After 1848 the United States took much of the southwest following the Mexican American war. They found both the claims of the Cabeza de Baca family and the newer settlers to be valid and allowed the settlers to stay while telling the Cabeza de Bacas that they had to leave but could claim five 100,000-acre tracts (called floats) in areas of their choosing throughout the southwest. Lawyer and land speculator, John S. Watts, hired by the Cabeza de Baca family, selected the five 100,000-acre parcels for the family and bought the land from them less than a month after the selections were approved. 

Float number five is located northwest of Prescott. Watts and other subsequent owners could not seem to make a profit from this land. Edward B. Perrin and son tried to raise cattle there in the 1880s, but the land was without permanent water sources. Robert L. Sharp, in his book, Bob Sharp’s Cattle Country, Rawhide Ranching on Both Sides of the Border, claims Charles E. Wiswall, general manager of the Greene’s Cananea Cattle Company in Mexico, said the water problem with the Baca float and adjoining Mahon Ranch could be “whipped by scraping out deep dirt catch tanks in strategic areas that will hold water the year around.” The Greene Cattle company combined Float number five and adjoining Mahon Ranch and did just that, creating the massive O RO ranch. Horses brought from Cananea to O RO were mixed with excellent horse stock from Texas and other areas. These horses worked the rough terrain of O RO ranch making them valued by ranchers and horse enthusiasts.

The Irwin family ranching on this land today still works the ranch with these well-adapted ranch horses instead of relying heavily on motorized vehicles. They continue a long ranching history that floated into Arizona.

“Days Past” is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners International (www.prescottcorral.org). This and other Days Past articles are also available at www.archives.sharlothallmuseum.org/articles/days-past-articles/1. The public is encouraged to submit proposed articles and inquiries to dayspast@sharlothallmuseum.org Please contact SHM Research Center reference desk at 928-277-2003, or via email at archivesrequest@sharlothallmuseum.org for information or assistance with photo requests.