{"nrhp_refnum":"85001562","name":"Valenzuela Ranch Headquarters","other_names":["Valenzuela Stage Shop"],"category":"district","location":{"address":"Valenzuela Creek","address_restricted":false,"city":"Catarina","county":"Dimmit County","state":"TX","lat":28.231408561000023,"lon":-99.67789659199997,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1985-07-18","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Exploration/Settlement","Architecture","Agriculture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A ranching complex near Catarina in southern Dimmit County, Texas, centered on a one-story, five-room stone house built about 1875, with a stone well, sheepdip, ruined pen and mesquite corral.","why_significant":"The complex dates to the early development of the southwest Texas livestock industry and is one of the few buildings left from the first settlement of Dimmit County. It is tied to owners Thomas Kearney and James Carr and to later owner Edward Kotula, the \"Wool King of Texas.\" The house also shows the vernacular stone building traditions used in the region through the nineteenth century.","narrative":"Valenzuela Ranch Headquarters is a nineteenth-century ranching complex in southern Dimmit County, Texas. Its main building is a one-story, five-room house of ochre sandstone cut from the adjacent arroyo and bonded with lime mortar. It has paired fireplaces, buttresses and gun ports, and a thatched roof. Nearby are a rock-cut well, a stone-lined sheepdip, a collapsed stone pen and a mesquite-branch corral, now a rare surviving type. The house was probably begun in the mid-1870s by Thomas Kearney and James Carr, who built a large sheep operation, and it was standing by 1877. Travelers and freight stopped there after 1880. Edward Kotula, a San Antonio wool merchant, ran the ranch from 1894 to 1907. The complex matters as a surviving example of frontier stone building and early livestock ranching. Restoration begun in 1979 kept the original stonework and openings, and the ranch is still worked today.","period_of_significance":"1800-1899 and 1900- (specific date ca. 1875)","architect_builder":"Thomas Kearney and James A. Carr (?)","architectural_style":"Vernacular stone architecture of the lower Rio Grande region, rooted in early nineteenth-century Hispanic building traditions","criteria":[],"status_note":"Occupied and in agricultural use as a working ranch; the house was restored beginning in 1979 and in the early 1980s, while the well, sheepdip and corrals remain largely untouched.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:54:20.907136-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/11/9718/40971811/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_TX/85001562.pdf"},"photo":null,"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/40971811","wikipedia":null,"wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q110000416"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/texas/dimmit-county/valenzuela-ranch-headquarters-85001562/"}