Cow Country

The romancers mourn the passing of the Old West. They tell us it is gone. They grieve a lot about the "tide of empire" and what has happened to the "last frontier."

Well, maybe they are partly right. Maybe the rip-roaring, wild-riding, hell-for-leather days of the big cat-tle drives have passed. Maybe the last hoof beats of the thundering herds have died away. Maybe in some graz-ing areas there are today only five head of cattle where there used to be fifty. Maybe the old cattle barons of the 80's and the 90's, with great retinues of punchers, ride the open range no more.

But, even so, let it be recorded here that the baronies are still with us. And, for that matter, so are the cattle -or the greater part of them and, if you look closely, clad in a little different garb, minus six-guns, but still booted and spurred and sometimes be-chapped, you'll probably find the barons, too. And, perchance, you'll likewise find that a considerable portion of the Old West remains, and you'll learn that the "tide of empire" in moving onward toward the setting sun hasn't carried with it quite all of the "last frontier."

There have been encroachments, yes. Cities and roads and autos and fences have exacted their toll, but when you get away from the towns and the highways, back into the far country, the hills and the valleys that will always be range land, you'll find the Old West and its manner of life and its people very much like they were fifty or sixty or seventy years ago. Somewhat modernized, to be sure, but the same grandeur, the same fine old ranch houses, the same friendly and lovable inhabitants, and the same plain and quiet and comfortable living are there. Aside from the fences, it's not so much different from what it used to be.

If you don't believe it, when you have the gasoline take a turn up into the Upper Sulphur Springs Valley and the head of Aravaipa Canyon, thirty or forty miles north and a little west of Willcox. Maybe you can stay at the 76 Ranch if you like. Along with a great many other things and a tremendous lot of fine Hereford cattle, they have very comfortable guest accommodations there.

And, again refuting the chant of the story-tellers, it wasn't bought by an Eastern capitalist, but by a dyed-in-the-wool, honest-to-goodness cow-country cattleman who hails from a celebrated family of cattle barons and an 800,000 acre barony in the birthplace of the cattle industry, the staked plains country of the Lone Star State, W. T. Waggoner, Jr., by name.

The Eureka, reeking of history and rich in Herefords, lies at the head of Aravaipa Canyon and adjoins the 76 Ranch on the north and west. Established as a stage station on a government homestead lying along the trail from Fort Thomas to Fort Grant by George Stevens in the early 70's, the Eureka, far from dwindling in area, has absorbed two other large ranches, the NN of the Nortons and the MK of the Kennedys, and a number of smaller outfits since that time. The old stage station, still the Eureka's main ranch house, was built in stockade fashion, around a central courtyard, as defense against the Apaches who coveted its cool, clear little spring of water which rises nearby, a spring over possession of which the Indians had fought savagely among themselves for centuries before the white man came. The Eureka was established not long after the original Fort Grant, located near the mouth of Aravaipa Creek, was abandoned and the military establishment was moved to its new location, now the Arizona State Industrial School for boys, which adjoins the 76 Ranch cn the east, In those days, the little village of Bonita, nestling near the fort, was a roaring military town. It was there that Billie the Kid, during the short period of his Arizona so-journ, is supposed to have murdered his partner, been arrested and incarcerated at Fort Grant, from which duress he escaped in leg irons that he filed from his ankles in Aravaipa Canyon, on the Eureka Ranch, and got away.

The rusted leg irons were found by a cowpuncher many years after that affair.

The Eureka, owned in recent years by the Boice Brothers of the Chiricahua Cattle Company and later by R. C. Jeffcott of Patagonia, was sold to Mr. Waggoner through Sterling Hebbard of Phoenix for almost a half million dollars. It consists of nearly 90,000 acres, and its lush filaree pastures support one of the finest herds of Herefords in the state. Mr. and Mrs. Waggoner plan to make it their home.

Adjoining the 76 and the Eureka on the south, lie the far-flung range lands of the Rancho Sierra Bonita, probably the first of the great Eastern Arizona cattle ranches, established by Colonel Henry C. Hooker in 1872. In the same year Colonel Hooker sold more than 15,000 head of cattle driven in from Texas and Mexico to the Federal government for use of the various Arizona military posts and as beef issue to the Indians, whom the army was trying desperately to hold on the reservations by peaceful means.

Colonel Hooker established the Sierra Bonita as head-quarters for this trade, but being a man of vision he saw the possibilities of cattle raising in Arizona and began improving the quality of the driven-in-cattle held on his range by importing the finest of Hereford bulls, which he later supplied to neighboring ranchers in a program to promote the common interest, and to him may be credited much of the success in converting Arizona's early Longhorns into the fine quality of Hereford stock which ranges the grass lands today.

The Sierra Bonita is now operated by Harry E. Hooker, grandson of the founder of the ranch, who also farms some 1,000 acres of irrigated land planted to hay and grain, and annually fattens many hundreds of head of fine Hereford steers from his own range. He and his states, constitute only a fractional part of Arizona's vast cattle domain. Yet, the Eureka alone has gathered as high as 12,000 head in a single roundup, and the Hookers at one time ran twenty to thirty thousand head. But in those days yearling steers, now worth about $78.00, sold for eight dollars per head, and a fully grown steer, which today would bring $121.00, went on the market for $21.00. W. T. Webb once sold 1,200 head at two cents per pound.There are not so many cattle on those same ranges today. But at prevailing prices there doesn't need to be. Some of the old timers will tell you it's the fences. The range has been cut up into pastures and never gets a rest, they say. In the old days when there were no fences, 76 and Sierra Bonita cattle were gathered in annual round-ups as far south as Douglas, nearly a hundred miles away. When the grass was scarce in the north. the cattle drifted south and permitted the stricken range to revive.

It's a good argument, and maybe it's true; but to the visitor the Upper Sulphur Springs Valley range looks strong enough. Anyway, it is supporting a good many thousand head of mighty high priced cattle, and it is reasonable to believe that the ranchers net better profits on fewer head and still preserve their water and range. It is worthy of note that there are as many cattle on the Arizona tax rolls today as there were in the socalled hey-day of the ranches fifty years ago and they are worth a good deal more.

Maybe it's because the modern cattle baron is more tax conscious and declares his holdings to the assessor more nearly correct. Or maybe it's just because there actually are more and better cows.

Be that as it may, cattle raising is still one of the state's three principal industries the cattle baron is still among the foremost of our leading citizens, and his barony is still almost a feudal domain.