Valenzuela Ranch Headquarters

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Valenzuela Ranch Headquarters, out here in Dimmit County. Now, some ranches in South Texas started small and stayed that way. This one had other ideas.

Back in the 1870s, two men by the names of Thomas Kearney and James A. Carr set something in motion out here in the brush country. Kearney, born in 1810, and Carr together built what would grow into one of the area's largest ranches, a spread of eighty-four thousand, six hundred acres stretching across both Dimmit and Webb counties.

Let that number sit with you a moment. Eighty-four thousand, six hundred acres. That is not a ranch.

That is a small kingdom. Now, partnerships have a way of running their course, and in 1884, Kearney sold his half interest. Carr held on, keeping the western half for himself, and that western portion is what came to be known as Valenzuela.

Carr worked that land until 1894, the year he sold the ranch to a San Antonio merchant named Edward Kotula, born in 1844, a man who by then had already made himself an important figure in South Texas ranching. Kotula, who would live until 1907, was not just acquiring acreage. He was stepping into a place with real character.

And that character shows up most clearly in the ranch house itself. The architecture there draws from Hispanic tradition, featuring a thatched roof, stepped buttresses, and walls of stuccoed sandstone. It is the kind of building that does not apologize for where it stands or what it is.

So the next time you are rolling through this part of Texas and the land starts to feel like it has a memory, you might just be right about that. This ground has been holding its story since the 1870s, and it has not let go yet.

What the marker says

Begun in the 1870s by Thomas Kearney (1810 - 1896) and James A. Carr (d. 1894), this became one of the area's largest ranches, comprising 84,600 acres in Dimmit and Webb counties. After Kearney sold his half interest in 1884, Carr retained the western half of the ranch, which became known as Valenzuela. In 1894 Carr sold his ranch to Edward Kotula (1844 - 1907), a San Antonio merchant and important South Texas rancher. The Hispanic-inspired architecture of the house features a thatched roof, stepped buttresses, and stuccoed sandstone walls. RTHL - 1987