Los Ojuelos

Los Ojuelos, or Ojuelos, is on Farm Road 649 some 2½ miles south of Mirando City near the southeastern corner of Webb County. Centuries before Spanish settlers arrived, Indians camped on the site, one of the few locations in the semiarid surroundings where surface water was dependable. The local springs attracted Eugenio Gutiérrez, who received a land grant from the king of Spain in 1810 and eventually attempted to settle in the area. But frequent Indian attacks forced Gutiérrez to abandon the site for the relative safety of his hometown, Guerrero, Tamaulipas. Eugenio's son Isidro returned in 1835 and managed to clear the title for two sitios of land, but the Indian threat once again proved to be insurmountable. In 1850 a company of Texas Rangers, under the command of Capt. John S. (Rip) Ford, established a camp at Los Ojuelos to police the trade road running through the site from Laredo to Corpus Christi. Once the Indians' dominance in the area had been curtailed, José María Guerra, a grandson of Eugenio Gutiérrez, returned to Los Ojuelos. In 1857 he built an irrigation system and a chapel, as well as a stone enclosure to protect the springs from further Indian raids. These amenities and Guerra's efforts to attract new residents enticed many Mexicans from the Rio Grande valley; by 1860 about 400 had settled at Hacienda de los Ojuelos.

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.