Rancho Toluca

The Toluca Ranch complex is one of the few intact ensembles of ranch buildings in the Rio Grande valley that survives today. It provides a fascinating glimpse into the lifestyle of the valley ranchers at the turn of the century. Formed from part of the large Llano Grande land grant of 1790, Toluca Ranch was founded in 1880 and is still in the possession of the founding family. The impressive scale of the ranch house and the adjacent church make the ranch a prominent feature of the flat landscape along the Rio Grande.

The group of four structures that comprise the Toluca Ranch complex is significant both as an architectural ensemble and as an intact record of the lifestyle of early ranchers in this region. The scale and design of the ranch house and the Church of St. Joseph the Worker reflect the ranch owner's desire to make a grand statement about his property. The functions of the ranch were consolidated around the church and house, with the store and schoolhouse completing the complex. Fortunately, the more permanent nature of brick-masonry construction has allowed these four buildings to survive with minimal deterioration.
In the late 19th century, the southern part of Hidalgo County consisted of a series of ranches headquartered along the Old Military Highway laid out during the Mexican-American War, and which ran along the north branch of the Rio Grande River from Rio Grande City to Brownsville. Each ranch was a self-contained community, with a narrow strip of cropland on the rich alluvial soil irrigated from the river, and dry pasturelands stretching north toward the Wild Horse Desert.

Toluca Ranch was founded in 1880 by Florencio Saenz (1836-1927) on part of the Llano Grande (Big Plain) Grant deeded by the Spanish Crown to Juan Jose Hinojosa Balli, captain and chief justice of Reynosa, in 1790. Saenz was a direct descendant of the Balli family. His wife was Sostenes Cano (1853-1944) from Rancho Campacuas three miles northwest of present Mercedes. Saenz purchased the original 5,898 acres at Toluca Ranch from his distant cousins, the heirs of Maria Josefa Cavazos. Later he increased the ranch to 10,000 acres and purchased other properties in Brownsville, Mercedes, and Hidalgo. He sold the northern portion of his holdings, approximately 4,000 acres, to the American Rio Grande Land and Irrigation Company for the development of a vast canal-irrigation and cropland project in 1903. He also granted right-of-way over his property to the St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico Railroad in 1904. In 1882, Saenz was elected Hidalgo County Commissioner for Precinct One and was re-elected at least five times.

Saenz was a progressive farmer. Four hundred acres of his croplands were irrigated to grow beans, corn, melons, and sugar cane for ranch consumption. On pasturelands further north of the river, he raised horses, sheep, goats, and cattle. His cattle brand was dos media lunas or two half moons. Sostenes Saenz registered her cattle brand as a variation of the Cano family brand. Toluca Ranch also had a brick kiln built in 1898. It supplied brick not only for the ranch but also for the Saenz house and store in Mercedes and many of the first businesses in that area.

The earliest headquarters buildings of Toluca Ranch were of hardwood, which was unusual as the materials had to be shipped up the Rio Grande. Workers' homes were made of adobe or jacal thatched with tule reeds. Saenz, who had been a merchant at Campacuas Ranch, transported his original frame store, 11 miles by oxcart to Toluca about 1895, and began his mercantile business there.

As Florencio and Sostenes Saenz had no children, they adopted their three-month-old niece Manuela, daughter of Gumercinda Cano and Pedro Champion in 1882. Manuela was educated at Incarnate Word Academy in Brownsville.

In 1906 Amador Fernandez (1888-1955), a Spaniard who stowed away at age 11 on a ship going to Port Bagdad, Mexico, came to Toluca. He had been working in Brownsville for the merchant Manuel Barrera at La Barrata store. Amador Fernandez and Manuela Saenz were married in 1908. Fernandez managed the store for Florencio Saenz and operated the ferry for international customers. Some trade was by barter, with customers turning cattle into the corral in exchange for flour and other goods. At Fernandez's suggestion, Don Florencio built a schoolhouse at Toluca to teach the children on his ranch and neighboring ranches. All eight of the Fernandez children attended school there before going to private schools in Brownsville. Toluca School was under the supervision of the Hidalgo County School Superintendent, who made visits there until at least 1911.

From 1913 to 1916 bandit raids from across the Rio Grande caused much unrest along the border. After the ranch headquarters was raided three times, Fernandez moved his family off the ranch and turned it over to the U.S. Cavalry at Fort Brown. They occupied the ranch for over a year and fought several skirmishes there. The trouble became so intense that the War Department stationed 110,957 officers and men along the border. This show of force in addition to several other factors effectively stopped the bandit raids.

In 1896 the first U.S. Post Office at Toluca Ranch, named Progreso, was opened in a jacal near the store. Mail was sent upriver by stagecoach or steamship and disbursed from the Progreso Post Office on horseback to many ranches in the area. The post office closed in 1899, reopened in 1901, and closed again in 1915 when the Fernandez family moved to Mercedes.
Toluca Ranch now encompasses approximately 670 acres and is owned by the eight children of Amador and Manuela Fernandez. The farming enterprise is run by Jimmy Fernandez and his son James N. Fernandez. The ranch has been nominated for the Texas Department of Agriculture's Family Land Heritage Program, which honors farm and ranch families who have owned and operated the same properties for over one hundred years.