Amados and the land are one

Freeways and shopping centers sprawl where the cattle once ran, all the way from Nogales to Cortaro. And on those cattle rode the brand "MA," for Manuel Amado, patriarch of a family whose roots run deep in Southern Arizona. The name lives on through the settlement of Amado, off Interstate 19 south of Green Valley. And it lives on in Amado's many descendants, including his great-grandson Henry Amado, who still ranches in Southern Arizona. From Spain and Mexico the family moved north, settling about 1850 into Southern Arizona, then part of Mexico. In 1852, Manuel Amado began ranching south of Tucson between the Canoa and Otero Spanish land grants. With no fences, his cattle roamed from the border to north of Tucson. For a time the family also ranched near Mission San Xavier del Bac, where they ran a dairy. But after what is now the Tohono O'odham Reservation at San Xavier was established in 1874, the Amados were eventually forced out. In the August 1955 issue of Arizona Cattlelog, Manuel's son, Antonio Amado, recounted how, as a 6-year-old in 1880, he was on an errand in Tucson when he saw dense, billowing smoke to the south. Government agents had set fire to the family's ranch. And so they retreated to what would become Amado, on their ranch called El Alamo Bonito, beautiful cottonwood...Arizona Daily Star