Remembering a Frontier Showman

Abraham Henson Meadows could be described in a hundred ways, every one of them true. He was a Wild West showman, marksman, entrepreneur, a would-be king of a cannibal island, an occasionally crooked gambler and a rapscallion whose greatest fear was that he might pass this realm unnoticed. It seemed that every significant episode of his life-and even of his death, which occurred just prior to a rare snowstorm in Yuma-was orchestrated to make sure that he would be remembered.He adopted the colorful nickname of "Arizona Charlie," wore a big diamond ring and sported a flowing Gen. George Custer haircut that was just this side of ridiculous. But he managed to pull it off.

Despite his garish appearance, Meadows lived the life he portrayed in performances around the world, including appearances with William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody's famous troupe.

He was born in a covered wagon under an oak tree during a snowstorm in Visalia, California, March 10, 1860. By age 10, at the insistence of his Confederate-sympathizing father, John, a preacher and rancher who hated Abraham Lincoln, the boy's name was changed to Charlie.

By 1877, John Meadows wanted more space for his big family, which eventually numbered 12 children. He found it in wild Diamond Valley, near present-day Payson. The men cleared land, planted corn and built two log cabins.

At dawn on July 15, 1882, John learned just how untamed Arizona Territory was when renegade Apaches visited. After waking up to dogs barking in the timber, John and his oldest son, Henry, went to investigate. John stood about 80 yards from the cabins when Apache gunfire dropped him in his tracks.

Henry was hit, too, and so was John Jr., another son. When the Meadows women came outside, John Jr. yelled, "My God, get inside or we'll all be killed!" With the children hiding under the bed, the family held off the Apaches. Finally the intruders rounded up the livestock they wanted and departed.

John Meadows Sr. was the first person buried in what became Payson's Pioneer Cemetery. Henry died of his wounds months later, while the bullet John Jr. carried in his leg for 20 years eventually festered, and required the leg be amputated.

Only two days before the raid, Charlie had signed on to help the U.S. Cavalry chase the renegades. He'd been reluctant to go, but his father had assured him the family would be okay.

"He regretted the decision the rest of his life," said Jean Beach King of Granada Hills, California, who wrote a biography of Meadows published in 1989. "I know it left him with a hatred for Apaches."

After the tragedy, Charlie, then 22, began hiring out at ranches throughout Tonto Basin. He also entered the first rodeos held in the Territory and was hard to miss-6 feet 6 inches tall, handsome, friendly -as he rode into the arena on his white horse, Snowstorm. And he wasn't shy about his talent.

In April 1888, a Prescott newspaper published the following blurb: "Charlie Meadows of Payson, this territory, chal lenges any man in the world to an all-around cow boy contest for $500 or $1,000 a side. He also wagers either of the above amounts with any man on the steer-tying contest, either three or five steers to be tied. Expert cow-punchers make a note of this."

The boast drew the attention of former Indian scout Tom Horn, who took up Meadows' challenge. The two men met in several roping and tying competitions that filled Arizona arenas, for the first time drawing female spectators eager for a glimpse of the flashy cowboy from the Tonto Basin. Even though Charlie was uncanny at attracting women, he wasn't particularly adept at keeping them, including two wives.

King of the Wild West

Although Horn won on occasion, Charlie's panache made him a darling of newspapers, even some in the East, one of which printed a poem about him: To the West! To The West! To the Land of the Free, Where Tall Charlie Meadows is Having a Spree, And the Mexican Bronco is Arching His Back, To the Shooting Iron's Frequent and Petulant Crack When Charlie squared off against Horn in Phoenix in 1889, William Cody sat in the audience. He was so impressed he offered both cowboys top spots in a Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Horn huffed that he was not a drugstore cowboy and declined.

But Charlie jumped at the chance, agreeing to meet Cody at his Wyoming ranch to discuss details. When he arrived, Cody wasn't there. He had forgotten the appointment and gone to Chicago.

Charlie's disappointment was huge, but the incident helped convince him that he wanted to be like Cody. He grew his hair long and began writing letters to circuses and Wild West shows looking for work.

Through much of the 1890s, he traveled the world, meeting famous people and racking up adventures.

In Australia, one of the troupe's horses was injured in a fake attack on a stagecoach and had to be dragged from the arena by the saddle horn as the crowd roared its approval, believing it part of the act.

"It would have been a different story," Charlie wrote later, "had the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty

... he was in the South Sandwich Islands and exercising his horse on the deck of the traveling ship when the horse jumped, landing Charlie in the Ocean.

to Animals known he was really dead.

According to King, Charlie's biographer and grand-niece, he was in the South Sandwich Islands and exercising his horse on the deck of the traveling ship when the horse jumped, landing Charlie in the ocean. His fellow cowboys drew their show ropes and lassoed him and his horse back to safety.

At Buffalo Bill's invitation, Charlie traveled to England in 1892 to perform with Cody's show for several weeks. At a reception welcoming Charlie to Europe, Cody suggested the name "Arizona Charlie" and it stuck.

But Charlie wanted to form his own show and did, hiring longhaired Maricopa Indians to play "savages" and acquiring a real Tombstone stagecoach to re-enact holdups. "Arizona Charlie's Historical Wild West" opened to a gallery of 2,500 in Phoenix on March 25, 1893.

When the show left on tour, The Arizona Republican commented that his cowboys were among the finest ever assembled, "... able to lasso anything from a Missouri mosquito to an elephant from the wilds of the Congo."

Charlie's temperament guaranteed the troupe wouldn't stay together long. Amid bickering by the cast a few months later, he stormed away.

Whether acting in an arena, or simply living his life, Charlie never strayed far from great drama. When Arizona's Territorial Legislature offered a $5,000 reward for capturing an outlaw named Apache Kid, Charlie put together a posse of cowboys to go after him.

The Kid stayed missing, but Charlie never figured he'd lost if the publicity was good. And he was a master at getting it.

A double-horseback wedding, with Charlie's sister, Maggie, as one of the brides, took place in the Tonto Basin in 1890. At its conclusion, Charlie handed a lariat to each of the grooms and said they could keep as wedding gifts every head of his wild cattle they could find and brand before sundown.

"The chase was begun at once," reported the Arizona Journal-Miner. "The young women, who are expert riders, carrying the branding irons and assisting in tying down the cattle." Charlie lost 36 head of stock that day.

In 1897, he joined the Klondike gold stampede, a great migration through harsh Alaskan terrain. En route he met Jack London, a 21-year-old aspiring writer, who listened as Charlie spun stories of his association with Rudyard Kipling, another writer Charlie had met years before in India. London chronicled Charlie's gold rush experience in his great book, The Call of the Wild.

Charlie also knew Zane Grey, who lived near Payson, and earned a passage of description in the writer's 1928 book, Stairs of Sand.

In Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Charlie built the Palace Grand Theater, using lumber from two paddle-wheel steamboats he'd purchased. The venue opened in July 1899 and was known as the most opulent such establishment north of San Francisco. It is now a part of the Dawson Historic Complex National Historic Site of Canada.

The Palace lasted only as long as Dawson's gold. When that dried up, Charlie, who thought nothing impossible, considered floating his huge building down the Yukon River and across the sound to Nome, where the latest gold strike was unfolding. But he concluded the building probably would break up during passage, and he sold it in 1901.

By then Charlie was working on his strangest endeavor-a plot to invade Tiburon Island in Mexico's Sea of Cortes, and establish his own empire there. What drove him, apart from egomania, was the idea of recovering Montezuma's treasure, an estimated 19 million gold pesos, which he believed was buried on the island. Charlie also wanted to vanquish the inhabitants of the island, the Seri Indians, alleged to be cannibals.

According to King, stories from Tiburon claimed that white men had disappeared on the island and were presumed killed and eaten by Seris. But that trifle only made Charlie more eager. "I am a man who is not afraid of the devil with his horns sharpened," he declared.

Publicity described Charlie's "war preparations," including construction of a small battleship. Throngs of men-among them the sheriffs of Cochise and Gila counties in Arizona-came forward to join the so-called King of Tiburon.

Charlie asked his friend, President Theodore Roosevelt, to come along. The invitation was an engraved plate with a real Apache scalp attached.

"You should have seen the face on the bug-eyed reporter from the Los Angeles Times when I told him I had personally lifted the 'receipt for a good Apache' in Pleasant Valley in 1884," Charlie boasted.

Needless to say, Roosevelt declined to accept and warned Charlie against proceeding. The expedition fizzled after Mexico's president refused to let Sonora's governor sell Tiburon to Charlie.

For the last 30 years of his life, Charlie lived in Yuma, hunting, fishing, mining for gold and running a ranch. Because he was born in a snowstorm, he also believed he'd die in one, and he figured living in the desert would delay that eventuality.

In Yuma, as everywhere, he worked at standing out. He sometimes rode his horse through the swing-ing doors of the Ruby Saloon and herded stock with his 1929 Model A Ford. He also published a muck-raking newspaper, The Valley Hornet, which, as he once cracked, forced him to stay out of dark alleys on publication day.

In 1892, knowing that his wife, Marion Mae, waspregnant, Meadows traveled to England to perform with Cody's troupe. Marion Mae threatened to leave him if he went, and he did just that. She never informed him of her whereabouts, or that a healthy baby girl, Marion, had been born. The daughter grew up believing Charlie was dead, a lie her mother told, and finally tracked him down after read-ing a newspaper article about his brother, John Jr.

Charlie's contact with his daughter angered his sec-ond wife, Ida Mae, whom he'd married prior to depart-ing for Dawson. That tension, plus Charlie's growing cussedness in later years, caused Ida Mae to leave him. But Charlie came to know his daughter and renewedfriendly relations with her mother. In fact, Marion Mae, who had married twice more and had two additional children after she and Charlie had split, was planning to move to Yuma and live with Charlie again when she got word of his death. On December 9, 1932, refusing to see a doctor, the Charlie's contact with his daughter angered his sec-ond wife, Ida Mae, whom he'd married prior to depart-ing for Dawson. That tension, plus Charlie's growing cussedness in later years, caused Ida Mae to leave him. But Charlie came to know his daughter and renewed friendly relations with her mother. In fact, Marion Mae, who had married twice more and had two additional children after she and Charlie had split, was planning to move to Yuma and live with Charlie again when she got word of his death. On December 9, 1932, refusing to see a doctor, the A 72-year-old took a pocketknife to his painful varicose veins and bled to death from his cockeyed attempt at self-surgery. He is remembered today primarily for the two Arizona Charlie's Hotel and Casinos in Las Vegas, named for him. One of them has a facade like the old Palace Grand of Dawson City.

But the King of the Cowboys, as he was known, demands recognition from Arizonans, too. As one Yuma old-timer told Charlie's grandniece, “I... still remember how attractive he was when he rode. He sat so erect and looked like royalty.” In a way, Charlie was royalty, cowboy royalty, one of the Territory's first celebrities.

The night of his burial, it snowed in Yuma, one of the few times in recorded history, bearing out his long-time prediction and providing a fitting end for a man who himself was a force of nature. Al ADDITIONAL READING: “Arizona Charlie's” contemporaries come to life in the pages of They Left Their Mark and Days of Destiny, part of the 11-volume Wild West Collection published by Arizona HighwaysBooks. To order ($7.95 each plus shipping and han-dling), call toll-free (800) 543-5432 or go online to arizonahighways.com.

DREAM LAND OF GOLD AND SILVER Turkey Creek Road winds through Bradshaw Mountains where old-time miners boomed and busted

SIGNPOSTS LEND a hand on the rough four-wheel-drive road down to Turkey Creek and the area's goldand silvermining past. The road takes off from the west corner of the ramshackle bar in the tiny community of Cleator.

Few travelers are aware of Turkey Creek Road, known to locals as Thunderbolt Mine Road and Forest Service Road 101. Most are heading to Crown King, a mining town turned tourist attraction on top of the Bradshaw Mountains.

Four-wheelers leaving "downtown" Cleator find that Turkey Creek Road does a snakelike weave between occupied cabins and mining ruins, with confusing side roads tempting them to stray. Visitors should stick to the most traveled section of road or they may end up in