Agua Caliente RanchIn 1873, Peter B. Bain filed the first formal claim to the land surrounding Agua Caliente Spring. Bain and a partner, Marion T. Beckwith, began a dairy cattle operation by bringing cows north from Sonora. Bain built a house, several outbuildings and corrals at the spring. In 1875 he sold Agua Caliente Rancho to James P. Fuller, a produce salesman from Hermosillo, Mexico for $300.
James Fuller planted an orchard, constructed ditches and ponds to harvest water for livestock and irrigation and established a significant cattle ranch, bringing nearly 1,200 head from Mexico to the ranch. The one-room adobe ranch house, probably built by Bain, was the core of the main ranch house that later owners would expand upon.
During the 1870's, the Agua Caliente Ranch continued to provide water to the army and became a stopping point for the many cattle drives in the eastern Tucson basin.
By 1878 a new venture began at the ranch, capitalizing on the hot springs. An assay analysis of the spring water described it as "possessing tonic qualities of a high order?" Fuller's Hot Springs or Agua Caliente Resort was soon open for business.
Fuller's Hot Springs ResortBy the 1880's Agua Caliente had become a destination hot springs resort and had helped to give Tucson its reputation as a healthful location.
The Tucson directory of 1881 describes Agua Caliente as "a useful place of resort for sick people, or those who seek temporary recreation away from the heat and business of the city?Mr. Fuller has provided cottages and ample hotel accommodations for the public. An orchard of 3,000 trees belongs partly to this ranch."
The hot spring, a clear, pleasant water, said to resemble English Harrogate, ran out from below a bathhouse consisting of a patched canvas tent. From there it became a pretty brook, a pond for the cattle, and a source for irrigating the orchard."
By 1882, "the buildings consisted of a number of unpainted adobe houses, each of a single, large, comfortable room, roofed with strips of cactus. There was a 'summer dining room' made of ocotillo sticks, the intervals open; and a 'winter dining room' made with tight walls and a fireplace, in which a wood fire burned mornings and evenings."
Due to poor health, James Fuller conveyed the ranch to his sister Eliza Jane Fuller Watson who continued the fuller Hot Springs Resort.
The resort legacy came to an end in 1897 when Philip H. Chambers purchased the ranch. He published this statement, "Notice to Visitors to Agua Caliente: Don't come to Agua Caliente. If you do, it will cost you 25 cents to get inside the gate."
From then until the early 1950's, various owners operated Agua Caliente as a working cattle ranch. The most notable was Willard white, who owned the sprawling A7 Ranch (now the Bellota Ranch) located northeast of Agua Caliente Hill. He used the smaller Agua Caliente Ranch as headquarters for all his ranching interests.
In the mid 1950's the ranch was sold with plans to subdivide and develop the property. None of these development plans was realized, and in 1984 Pima County purchased the 100-acre property, with generous assistance from Roy P. Drachman.
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