Mirandocity.com

Mirandocity.com

Articles on the history of Mirando City and surrounding area.

MIRANDO CITY, TEXAS. Mirando City is on Ranch Road 649 thirty miles east of Laredo and 110 miles west of Corpus Christi in eastern Webb County. The elevation is 600 feet above sea level. The townsite, on land originally granted to Nicolás Mirando, was previously occupied by a small ranching community. When the
Texas-Mexican Railway built through the area in 1881, the community acquired a small siding that enabled it to ship cattle and sheep. In addition to livestock, the area around Mirando City has also long supported the peyote cactus. Webb, Zapata, Jim Hogg, and Starr counties contain the only commercial range of peyote in the United States. Area residents known as peyoteros have harvested and supplied peyote for religious ceremonies to Indians in the United States since the nineteenth century. Indians also travel to Mirando City fromacross the country to harvest the cactus themselves.

In April 1921 Oliver Winfield Killam brought in the first commercial oil well in the area. Killam, who had already promoted the town of Locust Grove in Oklahoma, bought land in Mirando Valley and started laying out the town of Mirando City in September 1921. Several months later, in December, a gusher at another drilling site ushered in an oil boom. Lots began selling rapidly, and the town quickly became the hub of activity in the oilfield. A post office was established in 1922. Mirando City had the distinction of being one of the few towns
established in Texas without a nearby water supply. Until the fall of 1922 all of the drinking water for the town was hauled from the neighboring community of Bruni at a cost of $13.00 per tank car. Two tanks and a pump were furnished by O. W. Killam and located near the Mirando City Lumber Company, which Killam had established earlier that year. Also in 1922, William W. Sterling and John Long organized the first water company in Mirando City. They dug wells in the nearby village of Los Ojuelos, which had flowing springs. The
partners then laid a pipeline to Mirando City, constructed a 500-barrel storage tank, and installed the town's first water meters. The heavy water use dropped the water table, however, and the springs at Los Ojuelos dried up. Although deepened several times, the wells themselves dried up in the 1930s, and other wells were drilled farther east to supply Mirando City.

In the fall of 1922 a power plant was built to furnish electricity to the community. After eight months of operation the plant closed, but on May 12, 1923, Richard C. Young, a resident of Mirando City, purchased the plant, and power was subsequently resumed. The Mirando City Bank operated from June 1922 to May 1923. During
the 1930s, successful businesses in Mirando City included H. F. Danmier Trucks, founded by Herbert F. Danmier in 1923; Long Brothers Drilling Company, founded by John D. Long in 1923; and the Border Foundry and Machine Company, founded by Edgar and Conrad Mims in 1922. The Mirando City Record, the unincorporated town's only newspaper, was established by Weldon Pharr on June 12, 1939. The newspaper, published every Friday, reached a peak circulation of 1,500 in September 1939. After a successful two-year run, the newspaper ceased publication in 1941.

During the expansion years of the town, prominent residents included Deputy Sheriff William W. Sterling, independent oil operator George L. Buck, Triangle Garage owner Richard C. Young, and R & S Truck
Company owner Gus A. Becker. Because there was no school district, town residents, along with Killam, organized to form the first school. Killam agreed to pay half the salary for a teacher, while the residents
agreed to pay the other half and find an appropriate building in which to conduct classes. In September 1922, the school opened with fifteen pupils from the first through sixth grades. The Mirando Independent School District was established in March 1923. The first commencement exercises were held on May 10, 1927. Three years later Mirando High School was accredited by the state of Texas.

Throughout the early years of Mirando City, several neighboring communities played a pivotal role in the success of the town's development. Aguilares, six miles west of Mirando City, supplied the fledgling town with dry goods during the first few months of its existence. Bruni, ten miles east of Mirando City, provided a meat
market and several restaurants. Oilton, two miles northeast of Mirando City, was a source of firewood. Los Ojuelos, three miles south of Mirando City, provided drinking water for several months before a water company was established in the town. With the development of the South Texas oil industry, the town's population soared from fewer than 100 residents in 1922 to more than 1,000 by 1925. In 1929 the population peaked at an estimated 1,500. In 1990 the population of Mirando City was 559.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Michael F. Black, ed., Mirando City: A New Town in a New Oil Field (Laredo: Laredo Publishing, 1972). Stan Green, The Rise and Fall of Rio Grande Settlements: A History of Webb County (Laredo, Texas: Border Studies, 1991). George R. Morgan and Omer C. Stewart, "Peyote Trade in South Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 87 (January 1984). Hermilinda Murillo, A History of Webb County (M.A. thesis, Southwest Texas State Teachers College, 1941).

Laura Lamar Ramirez

Copied from the University of Texas web pages, Texas Handbook Online.

LOS OJUELOS, TEXAS. 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 sitiosqv of land, but the Indian threat once again proved to be insurmountable. In 1850 a company of Texas Rangers,qv under the command of Capt. John S. (Rip) Ford,qv 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.

The Texas-Mexican Railway in 1881 bypassed the town a few miles to the north, and when it connected with the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway in 1885, freight headed to and from Laredo was shipped mostly by rail instead of passing through Los Ojuelos. An Ojuelos post office opened in 1894, but the population of the settlement had declined to 178 by 1904. In 1910 Eusebio García, a commissary operator who had lived in Los Ojuelos during the 1880s, bought the ranch properties and townsite. The Ojuelos post office was discontinued in 1917, and Los Ojuelos remained quiet until O. W. Killam discovered oil nearby in the early 1920s. Killam established Mirando City just north of Los Ojuelos, and children from the new town attended the Los Ojuelos
school through the 1940s. The 1948 county highway map shows an active school and eight homes in Los Ojuelos. The oil boom temporarily expanded the community's population, but quiet returned to Los Ojuelos once drilling at the Mirando City oilfield stopped. From the 1950s through the 1980s Los Ojuelos remained virtually abandoned; its buildings were used by local ranchers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: T. Lindsay Baker, Ghost Towns of Texas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986). Ellis A. Davis, and Edwin H. Grobe, comps., The New Encyclopedia of Texas (4 vols. 1929?). Frank W. Johnson, A History of Texas and Texans (5 vols., ed. E. C. Barker and E. W. Winkler [Chicago and New York:
American Historical Society, 1914; rpt. 1916]). S. G. Reed, A History of the Texas Railroads (Houston: St. Clair, 1941; rpt., New York: Arno, 1981).

Lea Anne Morrell
From University of Texas Web Pages, Texas Handbook Online.