Portrait of a Cattle Town

WILLCOX PORTRAIT OF A CATTLE TOWN

In pioneer days, a man was wealthy according to the number of cattle he owned. Virtually a pauper was the fellow with only ten head, while the rancher with a hundred thousand was truly a peerless cattle baron. So it is with Willcox. Nestled in the heart of the Sulphur Springs Valley at an altitude of 4,163 feet, Willcox ships more range cattle than any other town in the United States. During an average good year, between 20,000 and 50,000 head, mostly Herefords, move to eastern and western markets. Willcox, Arizona, was, in fact, founded in 1880 by the Southern Pacific Railroad primarily as a pick-up point for a steady stream of beef cattle, spilling like a red tide toward the tables of the nation. Large in accomplishment, Willcox is physically small, boasting only about fifteen hundred inhabitants. Like a rest-ing range steer, it hunkers between the confines of the Graham Mountains on the north, the Winchesters on the west, the Dragoons on the south and the Dos Cabezas on the east. Backbone of this Willcox steer is State Highway 86. Ninety-five miles to the west lies the city of Tucson, while to the east the highway passes through Bowie and San Simon and thence into New Mexico.

Willcox country is country of history and scenic beauty. Cochise, Apache conquerer and renegade, ravaged the land from his nearby stronghold while miners and ranchers fought for a place in the pioneer sun.

Action, in fact, is the real key to Willcox history and growth. When Southern Pacific Railroad men founded the town, twenty years before the turn of the century, they chose to honor it with the name of a man of action.

General Orlando B. Willcox served with distinction at the battle of Bull Run and, in 1873, became commander of the Department of Arizona. Headquartered at Ft. Grant, founded in 1873 about forty miles north of modern Willcox, the general helped cowmen protect themselves from the outraged Indian. Meanwhile, ranchers poured beef into the loading center from every direction.

In those days, the railroad accepted cattle in nothing less than train-load lots. Between 1900 and 1920, the average yearly shipment was usually 100,000 head and this same average persisted between 1923 and 1930 when a gradual decline in numbers in favor of higher quality beef began to make itself felt.

Soon, mining interests were also using Willcox to send smelted ores from Bisbee, Morenci and Globe to eastern consumers. Huge wagons, pulled by mule trains, creaked into town, spewing their loads of shining copper bars at the railroad terminal.

Always restless and high spirited, muleskinners from the mines and cowboys began to liven the town with pistol music and unauthorized necktie parties. Many a cowpoke and many a muleteer increased his income at the expense of sober Willcoxians.

To correct this condition, the still lively Willcox paper, Arizona Range News, began a movement to found a law-and-order society, the Arizona Rangers. In 1901, the Rangers came to Arizona. They lasted until 1911. That same year saw the founding of the Willcox Women's Club. The two events, dissolving of the Rangers and founding of the club, mark the dividing line between the old and new order. Prior to 1911, a women's club would have been laughed into oblivion. The Rangers' clean-up changed that, making it possible for gentler, but certainly not less determined, influences to make themselves effective.

The Willcox grammar school bulges with four hundred and fifty students. The high school guides the destinies of one hundred and fifty of Willcox's young men and women. Half the graduates of Willcox high school go away to college where they distinguish themselves.

The Women's Club cooperates with every other Willcox group in furthering local culture. Club members review the latest books and maintain and operate the town's only library. Twice each year the club sponsors an art exhibit featuring work of local artists as well as a traveling exhibit of Latin American art.

Annually, at Easter, a tremendous sunrise pageant draws a huge crowd to nearby Texas Canyon, a few miles southwest of town. Founded by a pioneer Dragoon schoolteacher, Mrs. Erma Corbin Bouldin, the Easter pageant has been, for twenty-two years, dragging willing citizens from their beds at 4:30 a.m. for a spiritually inspired re-enactment of the Christ story.

If cattle is the material source of Willcox's strength, the church is surely its spiritual buttress. So many of the town's church structures center on Maley Street that the thoroughfare might appropriately be renamed, "Church Street."

In theater, the Willcox high school senior class distinguishes itself by annual productions which range from sober vehicles to forthright farce. As additional outlet for thespian talent, the town relies on amateur productions. At Christmas, all Willcox turns out for the community Christmas tree, an event attended by more people than any other in the life of this cattle town. Flower shows, sponsored by the Willcox Garden Club, square dances, bingo parties, movies, lectures by notables from nearby towns, skating, swimming in the high school pool, formal dances at the Women's Club-all contribute to make social life in Willcox similar in quality, if not in quantity, to life in larger urban centers.

However, in everything they do, citizens of Willcox move against the vital backdrop of range and cattle, a fact they neither forget nor wish to forget.

The very name of their paper, Arizona Range News, as well as its content is a constant reminder of the true destiny of this cowtown, a village that captures in appearance and spirit the real cattle west.

The Range News champions every movement for the growth and betterment of Willcox. It has supported such successful enterprises as the American Legion Auxiliary's campaign to number houses and businesses as well as to place street signs; the bringing of natural gas to Willcox homes and businesses; the laying of new paving in vital parts of the town; the drilling of a new water well for city use; expansion of telephone service and blood donations to the Red Cross. The paper assiduously and hopefully watches progress of various wild-cat oil wells drilling in the area; plugs for better conditions at Ft. Grant industrial school for recalcitrant boys; boosts the ever expanding cotton industry and the rapidly rising new farming enterprises; calls for con-tinuing improvements in rural electrification; beats the drums for a community hospital and cooperates in publicizing such events as the quarterly meeting of the Arizona Cattlegrowers Association, which has, on occasion, chosen Willcox for its gathering place.

Like cattlemen everywhere, Willcox beef growers worry when rain is scarce but, in their own words, “We have no real problems otherwise.” Located strategically between eastern markets and California and Salt River Valley markets, Willcox cowmen specialize in heavier cattle breeds and concentrate on obtaining a fuller calf crop each spring. Supplemental feed, principally cottonseed meal from the nearby Willcox gin, and locally grown grains help fatten stock at any time and bolster herds during periods of lean range.

Today, the Willcox ranching area shows a definite trend toward livestock farming. That is, ranchers raise crops such as barley, alfalfa and maize, feeding these to their cattle in preparation for shipping them to commercial feed lots.

Another source of grains for preliminary feeding is the new farming industry which is rapidly spreading over Willcox acres made fertile by irrigation from deep wells. The advent of heavy machinery and pumping equipment is bringing an increasing number of farmers from Oklahoma, Kansas, and the Texas Panhandle to acreage northwest of Willcox. It is these men who grow wheat, cotton, alfalfa, barley, oats, maize and even truck crops.

In 1948, Willcox farming received a powerful stimulus in the construction, north of town, of a $67,000 cotton gin. Almost 10,000 acres are annually planted to cotton in the Willcox area.

Farming, of course, is helped or hindered by weather, and Willcox has all kinds of it, some good, some bad. On the average, the town has an excellent climate, one that easterners embrace with articulate thanks when they come from the rigors of winter in states east of the Mississippi.

As a thirty-year average, Willcox can expect its first killing frost on October 29. However, this has varied from October 2 to December 9. In January, snow blankets the ground, on occasion for a total of five inches. In 1949, the mercury hit a winter low of nine above zero. On a fiftyyear average, Willcox receives only about eleven inches of rain annually. Depending on whether you are a rancher, a farmer, or tourist, the rainfall is either adequate or slight.

In January, temperatures may range from a maximum of 71 degrees to a minimum of 10. February, the maximum may reach 78 with a low of 22. March may be slightly colder with a top of 76. Because of its altitude, Willcox does not experience summer temperatures of 110 plus as does central Arizona. Nevertheless, July and August do send the mercury boiling upward close to the 100 mark. Nights are usually cool, temperatures down to 52 ensuring sleeping comfort.

Rain or shine, Willcox moves swiftly toward fulfillment of a natural destiny. Though cattle is a king with a jaunty crown, other industries continue of importance.

Oil fever struck Willcox nearly forty years ago when borings from a deep water well near Bowie showed signs of black liquid. By 1919, no well had spouted oil but evidence persisted. The Southern Pacific was pumping excess oil from its water wells, and J. M. Brannon, a rancher, was skimming oil from tops of his watering troughs. Excited Tucson capitalists declared: "Willcox will have an oil boom some day. We may not live to see it, but it is coming." But oil has so far denied its vast bounties to the range empire.

However, in the ever expanding economy of the Willcox cattle kingdom, other factors continue to play a major role. Headquartered at Willcox, the Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Co-op, part of the federal Rural Electrification Administration, is the largest co-op in Arizona.

Although Willcox has no commercial broadcasting station, it does have a prominent radio tower. This thin line of steel probes skyward over the Electric Co-op building, enabling the Co-op transmitter to direct the work of at least eighty percent of field personnel as they wander the length and breadth of their Sulphur Springs Valley beat.

Even though the Co-op may, from time to time, operate at a loss, Willcox folk look on it as evidence of community advancement. It is, at least, a concrete victory in the constant struggle between old and new elements, between those who would like to cling to the ways of the past and those who would like to see Willcox keep pace with other towns of its size.

In this fight, Willcox has never flinched. For instance, when the chips were down in the struggle to secure StateHighway 86 as a paved road through the town, Willcox refused anything less than complete victory. Ten years ago, the paved highway went through-backbone of the squatting Willcox steer.

With similar determination, Willcox has provided a community swimming pool and urban paving. Its progressive elements are now shouting for more adequate school build-ings and, above all, for a community hospital.

Young, energetic, personable Dr. William F. Havemeyer is Willcox's only active medical man. Cowtown citizens propose to back him in his work and to develop a real, cooperative community hospital so that more seriously afflicted residents will not have to go to Tucson, Bisbee, or Phoenix for treatment.

Pride in civic accomplishment is a virus that keeps Willcoxians in a constant ferment of activity. They already have a volunteer fire department, whose chief runs a gas station when fire fighting is slack. At the rear of the fire station squats a new jail, a replacement for a tiny, windowless blockhouse that had served to house both city and county miscreants.

For a town of 1,500, Willcox boasts as much if not more organizational life per head than many a large city. An active Rotary Club keeps its members informed, via guest speakers, on such subjects as income tax and jurisprudence. The Willcox Rifle Club holds frequent competitions while the Willcox Recreation Association guides the destinies of a city softball league.

In lodge work, the Woodmen of the World and the Masons are busy while veterans belong to the Veterans of Foreign Wars or the American Legion. In their joint club house, the two groups sponsor movies and public bingo parties.

On the distaff side, Willcox women find pleasure and service in Future Homemakers of America, an organization of girls who will eventually occupy positions in accord with the title of their group. Married women participate in activities of the Cochise County Council of Homemakers, devoted to improvement of family life in their community. The Women's Club and Junior Women's Club, the 4H clubs, the Future Farmers of America, and the Willcox Council of Small Mine Operators-all help provide outlets for Willcox folk whose constructive energies seek valid appeasement.

Willcox isolation, which makes necessary an occasional reversion to pioneer action, is not nearly as profound as it once was. Nowadays, in addition to many freight and cattle trains that move through the cowtown, there are four daily passenger schedules via Southern Pacific.

Two bus lines, the Greyhound and the Spoon Brothers Stage Line, connect Willcox with other Arizona communities and the states beyond. Although the town has no commercial air service, it does have a community airport, a landing place for private flyers shuttling back and forth accross southern Arizona.

Any who wish to spend the night or a few days in the cow capital can do so at one of three hotels. Or tourists can bed down in one of the many motels and tourist courts, some of them picturesquely named in harmony with the town's cattle history.

And speaking of history, when Twentieth CenturyFox decided to film Elliott Arnold's historical best-seller, "Blood Brother," the story of Cochise, Apache chief, they chose Jimmy Stewart to play a leading role and they eyed Cochise Stronghold, near Willcox, as the film site.

As always, Willcox took its honor in stride. It made less fuss about the movie company, in fact, than it did when its high school music students attained top honors in virtuallyly every event of the 1950 music festival held in Thatcher.

Among all its citizens, no one has attained quite the national prominence or quite the place of affection in Willcox hearts as has Rex Allen, a one-time cowpoke who started life with a pair of crossed eyes and no noticeable talents. Today, Rex Allen is a nationally known singer of cowboy ballads, a composer of folk and cowboy music, and a movie star.

It is easy to name Rex Allen as Willcox's most outstanding human phenomenon. It is not so easy to determine the most impressive natural wonder within the confines of the vast valley that is Willcox neighborhood. Nearby Texas Canyon with its tortured granite boulders and Cochise Stronghold, drenched in history and endowed with an inherent majesty of mighty mountain and towering tree, must surely be considered sites worthy of a visit by the most hasty tourist.

Willcox, too, is the gateway and short-cut to the famous Wonderland of Rocks area in Chiricahua National Monument. The Wonderland contains miles and miles of precariously balanced weathered boulders that seem to have been flung down like great blobs of plaster from the hand of a giant builder. But fantastic and eerie as it is, the rock wonderland scarcely matches the mystery of Willcox Dry Lake, a vast alkali sink readily visible five miles southeast of town.

Wonderland of Rocks area in Chiricahua National Monument. The Wonderland contains miles and miles of precariously balanced weathered boulders that seem to have been flung down like great blobs of plaster from the hand of a giant builder. But fantastic and eerie as it is, the rock wonderland scarcely matches the mystery of Willcox Dry Lake, a vast alkali sink readily visible five miles southeast of town.

Sometimes the mirage "water" seems to mirror the reflections of trees. At other times, it appears to stir and ripple as though tossed by the wind. Alkali dust, raised by the feet of cattle or horses, looks like splashing water. Frequently, a mirage blocks out the lower part of a mountain, leaving the peaks, strange in form, apparently floating in the air. Now and again, the wizardry of the Dry Lake projects a herd of milling cattle, though no cattle are there. Even the mirages cooperate to perpetuate the cattle character that is life, economy and history to Willcox. Whether Willcox is playing host to the Pioneer Cowboy Association or squiring the Western Livestock Journal's annual Beef Tour, it is always hip-high in the activity which launched the town and maintains it.

Willcox was built and became the largest shipping center for range beef in the United States because of the imagination and efforts of tireless ranchers. Willcox, verily, is the seat of a cattle empire ruled by kings both wise and progressive.