Homestead Applications

 

With brothers Juan, Nicolas, Placido and Antonio each filing for homesteads, followed by several of Antonio's offsprings, the Soza family had and made an impact on the development of the San Pedro River valley. Their homesteads partially embraced:

Sections 28, 29, 30, 32 Township 12 and
Sections 4, 5 Township 13 South in Range 19 East.

Homestead applications by Antonio, Placido, Nicolas and Juan have been examined, investigated and chronicled previously.77 Suffice to say that of the four brothers, only Antonio remained in the valley, and expanded his cattle, ranch and farm activities, from 1880 to 1915, to the time of his demise. His widow, Jesus would continue to operate the ranch properties into the early 30's. She would convey her ranch properties to a daughter in 1932.78

Family members continued farm and cattle operations on the San Pedro River, but time and circumstance dictated an exodus from the farm to the city, beginning in the 1920's and 1930's; and finally the last sale recordation in 1967.79

An important phase in the family's homestead activity had come and gone, essentially within the span of three score and ten years. Some adobe ruins and the Soza Cemetery are the only reminders of what was and what might have been.

Schematic drawing of the Soza Ranch compound pre-1930 period, below may be helpful to those readers that may have lived there or visited the same.80

Part of which site