| " I, Don Pablo Montoya, most humbly present myself
before Your Excellency, and state that, being the owner of a
certain amount of stock such as cattle, sheep and horses,
and requiring pastures and capacity for its increase, having
registered a piece of land without any individual owner, or
belonging to any community, with the necessary supply of
water, pastures and timber, removed from any settlement
which could in any manner by injured; the location of which
is on Red River, from the
Rincon de la Cinta to the
Trinchera, within which limits no individual of the
territory pastures and stock, not reaching that far on
account of its distance; its entire extent in the other two
directions being from the Arroyo de Cuervo to the
Mule
Spring; and Your Excellency possessing all authority to make
grants according to the wants of the people, and which
result to the benefit of the territory and to every citizen,
and in consideration of the superior intelligence of Your
Excellency, which will perceive the benefits which will
result to me, as well as by this means the immense tracts of
land in which our territory abounds will be occupied, and
the savages will be made to know the strength of this
powerful nation. In view of such just and rational motives,
I pray Your Excellency to condescend to accede to my
petition by doing which I will be benefited and receive
grace, swearing, in due form, that I do not act in malice."
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Above is the letter to the territorial authority written in Santa
Fe on November 8, 1824, three years after Mexico had gained its
independence from Spanish dominion. Montoya's petition was granted
only 12 days later, on the 20th day of November 1824. The
Pablo
Montoya Land Grant was created which contained 655,468 acres. A few
years later this Pablo Montoya Land Grant was to be come the
Bell
Ranch.
Wilson Waddingham, a Canadian, showed up in New Mexico ca. 1870
and he ended up in control of the Pablo Montoya Grant. He also
acquired the Baca II Grant and several ranches around the grants. Waddingham also gave the ranch its name after a butte in the shape
of a bell near ranch headquarters. This bell shaped butte has been
an area landmark from the earliest sighting of it by the Spanish.
From the beginning it was referred to it as "la campana", The
Bell. The "Bell" brand was recorded in San Miguel County,
New Mexico Territory on March 15, 1875 by Wilson Waddingham.
From 1890 due to falling cattle prices, persistent drought and unable
to borrow more money, Wilson Waddingham lost control of The
Bell. Ezekiel G. Stoddard an Eastern banker, and
Edward Bradley formed the
Red River Valley Co. and took control of The
Bell. The Red River
Valley Co. controlled The Bell from 1899 until it was sold in 1947.
During this fifty years The Bell enjoyed a period of stability that
it had not known.
In 1947, some new owners, Ed T. Springer of the Charles Springer
Cattle Company, Cimarron, New Mexico and Louis Stoddard divided the
more than 400,000 acres remaining in the Bell Ranch into six
segments and they sold the segments. The last of the giants was
gone. A segment of The Bell Ranch still continued but it was small
compared to the giant it once was. To this day the bell shaped butte
can be seen as a reminder of things the way they were.
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