Arizona Republic, 1954:

Cradle of our History

God, Gold Sought in Santa Cruz Valley
Avenue of avarice and highroad of religion.
The Santa Cruz Valley, cradle of Arizona's recorded history, was both in the 16th Century.
It was the main stem for a motley parade of Spanish treasure seekers and port of entry for pioneering missionary priests.
Today the Santa Cruz Valley is a happy mixture of the oldest of our history and the most modern of our times. Between Tucson and Nogales there are 24,000 acres of fertile land, beautiful homes and people that have retained the friendliness and hospitality of the early Spanish settlers.

The gold hunters of long ago saw glittering visions of the Seven Cities of Cibola and their legendary hoards. The men of the cross envisioned a multitude of savages to be Christianized for the greater glory of God.

Between them, they explored and settled the route that is now U.S. Highway 89 along the shallow Santa Cruz from Nogales to Tucson.

Frey Marcos de Niza crossed into Arizona at Lochiel, 30 miles east of Nogales, 415 years ago, He was chaplain of a Spanish expedition that returned to Mexico without colonizing and without finding gold.

A year later, in 1540, came Coronado and a small army in quest of the Seven Cities and their gold.

In 1687, Padre Eusebio Kino arrived on the Arizona scene with instructions to convert the Indians, establish ranches, build missions, and develop permanent settlements in the Pimeria Alta (southern Arizona and northern Sonora).

Father Kino founded 21 missions and taught the Indians weaving, building, and agriculture. He visited the village of Bac near Tucson in 1692. Eight years later, he laid the foundations of a mission two miles north of the present Mission of San Xavier del Bac.

The present structure, completed in 1797, is a model of missions architecture in the United States. It is served by Franciscan priests and sisters who carry on Father Kino's ministry to the educational and spiritual needs of Indians.

Father Kino's example wrought a permanent change in the culture and habits of the Indians of the area.

However, the Apaches encountered by tough old Pete Kitchen when he established a ranch on Potero Creek in 1855 obviously had not come under Padre Kino's gentle influence.

Kitchen's son was killed near the ranch. Most of his neighbors were stampeded by Indian raids. But Kitchen posted a lookout atop his house and sent his farmhands into the fields carrying rifles across their plow handles. Despite the Apache menace, Kitchen turned out 13,000 pounds of hams and bacon and 5,000 pounds of lard in a single year for valley residents and the army.

Travelers between Tucson and Magdalena, Sonora, made Kitchen's stronghold a regular overnight stop. Col. and Mrs. Gil Proctor own the ranch today, and Proctor has turned Pete's original, one-room adobe into a museum dedicated to the memory of a dauntless pioneer rancher.

Another of the Santa Cruz Valley's historic ranches is the Baboquivari Cattle Co.'s Agua Linda Ranch, owned by Carlos Ronstadt. It was founded in 1787 by Toribio de Otero, who was sent to Tubac by the Spanish government at Arispe, Sonora, to establish a school.

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THE PENNINGTONS

About the year 1832 two of the common people, Elias Green Pennington of South Carolina and
Julia Ann Hood of North Carolina, young and of good courage, joined fortunes for better or worse
and turned their faces westward with the tide of emigration that followed in Boone's footsteps across
the Appalachian ranges, through the dense forests of Kentucky and Tennessee to the Mississippi.

The young people made their first home near Nashville, where they engaged in pioneer farming
for about five years. But the West again tempted them; they loaded their household goods and farming
tools upon wagons drawn by slow moving oxen, and, with their three young children, Jim, Ellen and
Larcena, started for Texas, whose independence had recently been achieved, and whose vast extent and
unknown resources attracted the adventurous spirits of that day.

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