Sonja Pyne

Leon and the Colonel Sonja Pyne

At a time where most young men went West to places such as California or Montana to reinvent themselves, Joseph Andrew Robertson and Leon Noel Stuart went south to Mexico. Separately the two men left Missouri about 1885, but found common cause in a place where Robertson became "the Colonel" - general manager of the fledgling Monterey and Mexican Gulf Railroad, and Stuart created the first orchards of grafted orange trees in nearby Montemorelos, effectively founding an industry. The Colonel constructed enterprise after enterprise including the famed red brick factory, the Monterrey News, a small foundry, and convinced the Guggenheims to build a smelter in Monterrey. The Colonel also contributed materially to the city by paving streets, arranging for integrated water and sewer systems, and bringing baseball to northern Mexico. Stuart created and managed nearby citrus properties which included large nurseries so that grafted trees could be created locally instead of coming from the United States.