*CEMETERY VIEW

El Ojito is an old Mexican farm village, located southeast of Castolon. "El Ojito" is Spanish for "the little eye", and the word "eye" is sometimes used to mean a spring in the desert. So, "El Ojito" in this context means "the little spring".

There is an old, faint dirt road starting at Castolon called River Road West which goes that way, but it is gated and locked, so it cannot be driven upon. It takes a hike of 1.1 miles from Castolon going south-east to get there, along the edge of the Rio Grande River flood plain, which is densely covered with shrubs and thorny mesquite trees.

In 1910 Agapito Carrasco settled six Mexican families here. The former village is located in a small canyon which opens at the edge of the flood plain, at the head of which is marked on the map is a spring. However, I could find no water source when I hiked up there. The residents planted
crops of wheat, oats, corn, beans, squash, tomatoes and melons in the flood plain, irrigating them with water diverted from the Rio Grande River. The crops were sold to the men and their mules who labored in nearby mines. In the early 1920's Agapito sold the El Ojito land and moved to Alpine.

There are the ruins of five homes here, four of stone and one of adobe bricks, and six graves. The graves are piles of stones, a few of which have remnants of wooden crosses.

*Photograph & data courtesy of:
John Rich

Contributed on 3/29/20 by ashaw444
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Record #: 290681

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