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The Gallagher HEADquARTERS OF THE OLD GALLAGHER RANCH By Cynthia Leal Massey
One of the most storied properties in the area is the Gallagher Ranch. Nine miles northwest of Helotes off Bandera Highway, Gallagher Headquarters, as it is known today, was established by Irish immigrant Peter Gallagher (1812-1878), who was commissioned by Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna to find a suitable spot for a military supply depot within 25 miles of San Antonio. Gallagher found the perfect spot in the valley of the San Geronimo River, a fertile valley with deep canyons and rugged hills. Since Comanche, Apache and Kickapoo Indians roamed the countryside, Gallagher’s first job was to build a fortress home.
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The original section of the ranch house, which still stands, was built in the 1830s by Gallagher and some 250 Mexican laborers. Comprised of four main rooms, one of which was a chapel, the fortress-like building is a story and a half high with an immense loft room above the four groundlevel chambers. Constructed of limestone blocks quarried at the ranch, the massive walls are 2 feet thick. Rifle slits on both the ground floor and in the loft room commanded a 360-degree field of fire. The building had a single door of handhewn timber with a window protected by iron bars and oak shutters. Gallagher’s next task was to build an
aqueduct using limestone blocks quarried from the surrounding hills. The aqueduct was more than a mile long from the river’s edge to fields that had been cleared for cultivation. The stones are bound together with primitive mortar, and it still winds along the left bank of a lake created more than a hundred years after the aqueduct was built. With the defeat of Santa Anna in April 1836 at the Battle of San Jacinto, Gallagher, an Irish citizen who’d never taken Mexican citizenship, pledged his allegiance to the Lone Star State and became a citizen of the Texas Republic. Gallagher was the first to register a brand in Bexar County, the
Helotes: Gateway to the Texas Hill Country – Summer 2018