Street Smarts: Ruelas Ranch and Spring named for prominent ranching family

In the Santa Rita Mountains, about 35 miles south of Tucson, are the former Ruelas Ranch and nearby Ruelas Spring. The name for both derives from Feliz Ruelas, a member of a prominent ranching family.

Feliz Ruelas was born to Francisco and Sacramento (Cruz) Ruelas on May 21, 1860, in Tucson, Arizona County, Territory of New Mexico. The couple already had children Petra, Placido, and Felipa, and would later have Sotero, Francisca, Maria, Gregoria and Encarnacion.

His father, Francisco, was a farmer, owning a large piece of land west of Tucson, and is known to have owned a house in the village of Tucson.

His widowed grandmother, Teresa Siqueiros, was a schoolmistress in the village. It’s likely she worked at a private school run by schoolmaster Jesus Garcia in Tucson. This school existed years before Augustus Brichta and John Spring opened their schools.

Little is known about Feliz Ruelas’ childhood, but it was likely similar to that of other boys in the sunbaked adobe village. After doing his chores, he likely ran with his siblings in the dirt streets bearing names like Calle de las Milpas (Street of the Fields, which led to the agricultural fields west of Tucson), or played games in Calle del Arroyo (Wash Street, now Pennington Street), the wash that at one point likely ran through the village to the Santa Cruz River.

In January 1868, his brother Placido attended Augustus Brichta’s public school, which taught 55 boys and was located in a dirt-floored adobe building. It’s possible that Ruelas attended it with his brother. By 1870, it is known that Ruelas was in some type of school, probably private.

In late 1870, his father, who was fairly wealthy by this point, owning about $10,000 (about $233,000 today) worth of property, was elected to the Pima County Board of Supervisors. Francisco Ruelas took office on Jan. 2, 1871, but resigned from the board on Jan. 20, 1871, for unknown reasons.

A few months later, Francisco Ruelas was one of 146 people engaged in a retaliatory attack against the Aravaipa Apache that came to be known as the Camp Grant Massacre. His involvement was likely connected with the killing of his brother Pedro by the Aravaipa Apache in 1847.

By 1876, Francisco had purchased the old Point of Mountain stage station and some surrounding land about 18 miles northwest of Tucson (in the Marana area) and had the “El Charco del Yuma” ranch.

The name of the ranch existed before this time and was probably a shortening for “El Charco del Camino Yuma,” likely because there was a pool of water (charco) that was permanent or semi-permanent. It was an important water source near Yuma Road, which ran northwest from Tucson to the Gila River and then southwest to the Colorado River, where Fort Yuma and the Yuma Indians (Quechan) were located.

The name “El Charco del Yuma,” or just “Charco Yuma,” around this time was also applied to two former Hohokam settlements there, divided by the tail end of the Tucson Mountains. To the west of the Tucson Mountains was Charco Yuma East (now called the Huntington Ruins by some), and to the east of the Tucson Mountains was Charco Yuma West (now called Los Morteros). It’s possible that people around this time believed the village ruins, which undoubtedly had catchments, were once inhabited by the Yuma instead of the Hohokam.

Francisco’s son, Sotero, spent much of his teenage years at the old stage stop and ranch and, by 1895, had a ranch just north of his father’s ranch in the area of what is now called El Rio Preserve.

It’s possible that Francisco or Francisco and Sotero drove their cattle to a verdant canyon in the Tortolita Mountains during the drier seasons and pastured them there for many years, and that this later led to the naming of Ruelas Canyon.

In August 1878, Feliz Ruelas bought a one-half interest in the Crittenden Ranch on the old Camp Crittenden Military Reservation in the Sonoita Valley, east of the Santa Rita Mountains. This purchase included the old sutler’s store. The following month, his brother Placido bought the other half interest. The brothers would utilize the eastern slope of the mountains as pasturage for their cattle.

In May 1880, Placido sold his half of the ranch to Ruelas for $5,000 and moved back to Tucson.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Ruelas’ cattle ranged with those of the nearby Empire Ranch (likely the namesake of the Empire Mountains) outfit, and he got to know Edward and Walter Vail (namesakes of Vail, Arizona), owners of the Empire Ranch.

In September 1893, Ruelas purchased a half interest in a ranch referred to as the Santa Rita Ranch that was a few miles north of the future Helvetia townsite.

By 1900, Ruelas ran the Helvetia Store, a mercantile establishment in the Helvetia mining camp.

In the early 1900s, Ruelas settled a few miles south of the Helvetia mining camp and just west of the mouth of Box Canyon in the Santa Rita Mountains and drove about 800 cattle down this rugged narrow pass, from Greaterville, a mining community in the same mountains. He built a small house and at one point also planted fruit trees near the ranch home.

He dug a well near the ranch home and, within a year or two, found the mountain spring about a mile away that later would come to be known as Ruelas Spring, either named for Feliz Ruelas or the Ruelas family. This spring was commonly used by the Ruelas family as a source of water. (Ruelas Spring #2 & Ruelas Spring #3, several miles away, were likely named for him or his family as well).

In 1904, Ruelas married Cleofe Mendoza of the Greaterville mining camp. They would go on to have nine children: Adelina, Eva, Feliz Jr., Victoria, Francisca, Armida, David, Placido, (Rudy) and Otilia (Tillie). Many of these children grew up on the ranch or at least spent summers there.

In 1911 he became a member of the Pima County Central Committee for the Republican Party representing Helvetia, Arizona. He was joined by others, including Estevan Mendez of Rincon, Gus Schneider (creator of George Hand’s Tucson 1870-1880 map) of Tucson and E.O. Stratton (namesake of Stratton Canyon, Stratton Camp Spring and Stratton Mine in the Santa Catalina Mountains) of Condon, Arizona.

In 1915 he became one of three ranchers, including William Nicholson & W.B. MacBeath given the privilege by the U.S. Forest Service, as a co-operator, to graze cattle in the experimental range on the west side of the Santa Rita Mountains, which had been closed for several years. This range is known today as the University of Arizona Santa Rita Experimental Range.

In 1921, Ruelas shipped half a train-car load of steers from Casa Grande to Nebraska for pasturage. These bovines likely came from the experimental range owned by the U.S. Forest Service near Ruelas’ ranch and likely were sent for experimental purposes.

Ruelas, within a couple of years, also bought seven Hereford bulls selected by the U.S. Forest Service grazing examiner from the George Burgess farm in Casa Grande. These bulls were brought to the experimental range to breed with the Hereford breeding cows.

One of these bulls would become Ruelas’ favorite and was named Beau Boniface or Bonito for short.

By this time, Ruelas had a residence at 237 S. Fourth Avenue in Tucson. This might have been due to the need of schools for his children since the school in Helvetia closed its doors, and the mining camp became essentially a ghost town.

In 1925, on account of a prolonged drought, Ruelas and his neighbor to the south, Henry Proctor, were forced to sell their cattle to Texas feeders. However, this was only a temporary setback and later in the year Ruelas applied for a new cattle brand that was represented by a large capital letter “R” to be applied to his bulls and cows on their left hips and left thighs.

Soon after, Ruelas was back in the cattle business and is known to have “shipped a carload of fat cows to the Palace Meat Company at Phoenix.”

In 1930, Ruelas died at St. Mary’s Hospital. After his death, his wife Cleofe ran both the ranch in Box Canyon and the ranch a few miles north of the ghost town of Helvetia for many, many years with her sons Feliz Jr., Placido and David.