Santa Maria Journal

How the Guerras lost Los Ojuelos

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My great great grandfather José María Guerra, the grandson of Eugenio Gutierrez, was the first of the Guerra-Cañamar family to successfully settle the 8,856-acre Los Ojuelos tract in 1857. José María’s father Isidro and grandfather Eugenio had previously tried to settle the land, but had been deterred and discouraged by Indian raids, and they subsequently returned to Guerrero Viejo (Revilla). José María settled Los Ojuelos with his brothers Dionicio and Juan Nepumoceno. They raised sheep and cattle and used the springs there to irrigate crops that sustained the settlement. A town of about 400 eventually grew up around the ranch of stone houses.

Sincerely, L. Cohen

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The dusk sky is awash in a furious, persistent orange blaze to the west. Its lesser glows of apricot and rose catch on the metal roofs, gates, and fence posts of the house pasture. The spectacle is a glory that charges irrepressibly by rote to remind me how much a part I am of this wild landscape and it a part of me. The stillness of the hour and the pungency of damp earth conjure a powerful nostalgia for the first days I came to this ranch in retreat from a broken heart and ruptured finances. When I take that long look back, I understand that my life in Austin and Wimberley, even as a 40-year-old, was a protracted interlude in Never Never Land.