Following the Trail of the Great Sheep Drive in Arizona

THE SEASONAL MOVEMENT OF SHEEP ALONG THE HEBER-RENO TRAIL IN ARIZONA IS A COLORFUL WESTERN EVENT.

MARCH in Salt River Valley is well along on the road to spring. Farmers here are as busy then as an Iowa farmer in the middle of May. Spring activity grips the agricultural fraternity and the cleanup after winter business is getting along. One winter industry that is welcomed by the farmers in the Valley of the Sun is the pasturing of thousands of sheep, for this is where your hothouse lamb is produced.

This industry is a remunerative one to the farmer. However, to the residents of many valley communities there is a damnable quality that is more exasperating even than the lack of prosperity could ever be. An inventory of cause could well be traced to their own households. Nevertheless the housewife, who welcomed her son's resourcefulness in the fall when he and his pals commandeered the sheepman's burros for playfellows and hay burning lawn-mowers, now when she finds these longeared, shaggy marauders in the middle of her flower beds and rose gardens laments the day they were born.

Veteran of the burro herd that wintered at Chandler was Viejo. Many a year had passed since he had been roped from the wild bunch near Concho, and pressed into service with Carlos Castillo's sheep on the uplands of northern Arizona. However, being a resentful servant had given him a variety of country to see as one campero after another traded him off for better or for worse. Could he have known the names of his owners the list would have been long before he finally settled at the job as pack jack with the Navajo Sheep Company.

He knew the signs well: shearing was done; soon the lambs would be gone; the herders' tents showed signs of a camptender's arrival; the caporal was getting his horses shod and mules rounded up; the sheep themselves were working toward the north sides of the pastures and looking restively north; the boss was putting in more time with the outfit, and on the road getting help for the trail lined up. Fin-

PICTORIAL STUDIES OF THE SHEEP DRIVE BY MAX KEGLEY

Really the new campero with the caporal round-ed up the burros and cut out four or five for each herd. Pack saddles finally appeared and the camp became more active with outfitting, accompanied by the usual resentfulness of the burros after three or four months of being left to their own devices. Then the day came, the first light saw the sheep and the herder on their way, and the campero making up his packs and saddling his burros, and after a few fatalities among the loads and with many “carrambas” the burro brigade, with Viejo in the lead, was off on the long trek to the forest-clad mountains of northern Arizona. True the winter sheep industry is rapidly transforming from a fence controlled organization to a hurrying migratory lot in search of feed and water on the road to summer range. Since the move has started, the object is to get to the open desert and make time. The first couple of days puts the drive out of the Carm country and on the way toward Usery Pass. This stretch also is the most expensive, as the sheepman must make his own arrangement for passage and water from private owners. Arizona's sheepmen have learned that yarns about trespassing sheep have been multiplied to an extent that the uninformed often take exception to legitimate business, hence they take every precaution to overcome any and all possible causes of friction.

Once the established trail is reached, the herds spread out and graze on their way, quickening the tempo where it is a long stretch between waters. Usery Pass, through which the Bush Highway passes, was named after King Usery, who had a ranch nearby in 1878. This small range of hills is the western extremity of the Superstition Mountains where it ends at Salt River and the desert floor.

Beginning at Usery Pass, the Heber-Reno Sheep Trail enters the Tonto National Forest and takes a north and easterly direction from Ranger Bushnell counts the sheep as they leave the sheep bridge across Salt River. This suspension bridge was built by the Forest Service and financed by the sheepmen using the trail.

Here to the Mogollon Rim and summer sheep range. The trail is about 110 miles long. Be this as it may, we will go with Viejo and learn something about sheep trails in Arizona.

PAGE NINETEEN

It is here where the sheep are counted by the Forest Ranger as they cross the bridge. A small fee that is about the equivalent of the regular grazing fees for sheep is charged for the month or so the sheep will graze along on the driveway, and a permit for each band is issued. This procedure prevents any fraudu lent use by those not entitled to it.

From Salt River and Blue Point the sheep outfit moves to the west of Stewart Mountain and out across the mesa paralleling the Bush Highway. Sycamore Creek is the next water. Here the sheep trail joins a very old trail, one historic in Arizona's Indian days. Where thisputting the herds of sheep and burro trains over its rougher portions.

The trail crosses the Bush Highway south of Round Valley and goes through Crabtree Pass and into Ram Valley. This Valley on the high slopes of the Mazatzal Range lies just west of Reno Pass. A pasture for burros and saddle stock, and a water development are located here for use of the sheep outfits. These improvements, representing quite an investment, were constructed by the Forest Service Down Bulldog Canyon to Salt River, water is not plentiful, but this spring feed is plentiful and lush. Winter rainfall converts the gen erally barren desert into a flower garden where feed for livestock is as abundant as an alfalfa field in full bloom. Salt River, with plentiful water for the sheep, burros and camp, and plenty of mesquite and ironwood for camp use, is always welcome.

The crossing of Salt River had been hard and usually cost plenty in losses. However, now a suspension bridge spans the river on which the sheep and burros with camp outfits cross. The Blue Point Sheep Bridge was built by the Forest Service and financed by the sheepmen who use the trail. This cooperative investment has paid good dividends to the sheep industry.

A creek flows into the Verde is found old Fort McDowell. This fort was established in 1865 and was occupied as a base of operation all through the Indian campaigns and abandoned in 1890 by the military, having served its purpose. The site is now used by the Indian Service as headquarters for the McDowell Indian Reservation.

Evidence of the old military road up Syca more Creek still exists and if the saguaro cacti, mesquite, palo verde and ironwood trees could talk, undoubtedly the vocabulary learned from the early skinners who put their wagon trains over this road would hardly do for the printed annals of Arizona history. The ruggedness of this route is such that the sightseer of genteel rearing should let distance absorb the shock of the herder's and campero's vocabulary when and financed by the sheepmen using the trail.

The water was piped a couple of miles from a spring on Cypress Butte to a masonry storage tank, of sufficient capacity to water out several thousand sheep a day. Such improvements are necessary to accommodate the 55,000 sheep that go over the trail in the spring and fall in bands of about 2000 each.

Reno Pass, with an elevation of 4724 feet above sea-level, was crossed by the military road built in 1865 and according to Army records was the most difficult in the then Ter ritory of Arizona. In 1877 this road was re built by Maricopa County. The unsuitability of this pass as a road site has led to the location of the Bush Highway to the north of Mt. Ord.

The passage of the sheep over the Mazatzal Range at Reno Pass is difficult, and is the first