Arizona Roundup, 1951

ARIZONA Roundups 1951

Roundups will continue to be the high points of ranch life each spring and fall as long as cattle dot the desert and mountain ranges of Arizona. And as long as there are cattle to be tended there will be the cowboy and his horse.

The storied days of the vast open range are history. The endless spreads of decades past, some as big as whole Eastern states, have been cut and fenced into smaller, more efficiently managed areas, whether they are individual ranches or merely subdivisions of extensive parent companies. Care and planning have developed these smaller areas to a point where they will support larger herds than ever before. One cow to forty acres is not unheard ofand this without the danger of over-grazing.

Because cattle are more apt to thrive when they need travel no more than three to five miles to drink, a great deal of thought and money have gone into the development of water supplies. No longer are uncertain creeks and natural ponds relied upon. Wells have been sunk, each with its windmill or gasoline powered pump. On some ranches like the Diamond-A at Seligman in northwestern Arizona, where extensive well drilling was found to be impractical, regular pipe line crews equipped with mechanical ditch diggers and welding outfits were imported from Texas to lay miles of pipe and provide water holes at strategic locations.

On desert ranges the water holes themselves are changing, too. Sandy earth-bottomed tanks allowing excessive seepage are beginning to be lined with skins of concrete, thus conserving countless gallons of precious water, no mean saving in arid country. And wherever possible, dams are thrown across washes to provide artificial ponds, which will catch and retain the runoffs of summer and winter rains. Such a pond, connected with an up-grade basin designed to trap the sand and silt carried by flash floods, was constructed on the David Hibbs ranch in Sasabe down near the Mexican border, and is an investment in labor, money and brains which is paying off. Besides furnishing a watering place for cattle for months on end, it has become a stop-over for migrating ducks, and what desert-bound cattleman doesn't relish a duck dinner after a diet of beef?

Corrals and holding pastures are more numerous about today's ranches, and during every roundup they emphasize their worth. Cattle being held for shipment to market or for transfer to distant grazing grounds cannot wander beyond their gates. Also the old necessity for night herding to prevent a "gather" from drifting off into the brush becomes no more than an unpleasant memory when your beef "critters" are securely behind wire.

A second and important purpose is served by the corrals and holding pastures. No longer must a cowboy search out an ailing cow day after day for inspection and doctoring. Sick calves or steers infested with screw worms, pink eye or other ailments may be driven into one of these pastures and given the frequent treatments required to nurse them back to health. Thus much time and effort are saved, to say nothing of valuable stock which formerly would have become buzzard bait.

More and more of the Arizona ranches are discovering the increased profits to be earned by concentrating upon the production of calf crops. Although occasional spreads, such as Howell Manning's in the Santa Cruz valley south of Tucson, have taken advantage of favorable locations to develop the green pasturage necessary for the carrying of cattle over extended periods, this is not true in the majority of cases. For them the raising of calves to ages of six to ten months is proving more practical. Less feed is required, and the mild climate gives this area a distinct advantage over the northern states, where the rate of loss among calves and mother cows is considerably higher because of the more rigorous climates.

An old Arizona cowpoke, returning to the scenes of his youth, might do a bit of head-scratching at the sight of a present day roundup. He'd find the cowboys he remembered and the cows and the horse remuda-eight mounts to a man. If he rode circle with the crew in the gray light of dawn, he'd feel pretty much at home, although because of cross fencing and limited pastures the circle would be smaller. Nor would there be the necessity of cutting out stray cattle from neighboring ranches as in the days when ranges were wide open and the herds of a half dozen owners might be mingled together.

CENTER SPREAD "CLEAR CREEK CROSSING" BY RAY MANLEY. Lucky is the cattle outfit with running water available. Wingfield Ranch, cattle of which are shown, is located in Verde Valley near Oak Creek Canyon.

OPPOSITE PAGE "ON THE UPPER VERDE" BY RAY MANLEY. Ranch: the Verde Cattle Company at Paulden. 1/50th second at f.11, Ektachrome. A full stop more light was required to compensate for the back lighting.

To the old-timer those changes would be minor and understandable. Not until he reached the holding ground would they become disturbing. First off he would miss the pungent reek of wood fires, fueled with chunks of mesquite or mountain oak. There would be no branding fire at all if he were visiting a roundup on the Bouquillas spread at Fairbank in Cochise county. Instead he would hear the muffled roar of a gasoline burner that can heat branding irons in jig time, come rain or come shine.

On the Diamond-A spreads, and Bouquillas too, where roundup crews usually number a dozen or more hands, the old tried and true methods of roping, flanking and throwing still prevail, but on many other ranches portable squeeze chutes and branding tables are favored. Advocates of these claim that their use makes the de-horning, branding, castrating and inoculating of cattle in a combined operation easier for both animal and man, although many cattlemen will violently disagree, arguing that it takes as many hands to guide a cow into a chute and pin her in t'he squeeze as it does to handle her in the open. Of course on ranches like the Wilshaw spread at Patagonia in Santa Cruz county, where chutes and tables can be affixed to permanent corrals of welded pipe, such innovations as these approach the ideal.

Automobiles both in city and country have become so common that no one gives them a second thought, and no modern ranch, whether large or small, would be complete without its motor trucks. With them it is possible to transport men and equipment to some far point at which a pump needs attention or a fence must be repaired. Some of them are even provided with power take-offs, permitting the use of such novel contrivances as mechanical post hole diggers, and anyone who has sunk those holes by hand can imagine what an improvement that is. Nor must one forget the huge cattle trucks and trailers so often used to transport stock to market or to distant pastures. The same cattle if driven long miles, unless slowly through continuous grass, would lose weight, and in these days of high prices every pound is important.

The old-timer would be further amazed at the comparative comfort of the cowboys' lives during a roundup. The historic chuck wagon has rolled forward with the times, exchanging its iron-tired wheels for rubber. In some instances it has ceased to be a wagon at all and has been transformed into a steel bodied trailer hauled after a truck or even become part and parcel of the truck itself. Its equipment has changed with the times, too. No longer does the cook on the Bouquillas spread hang pots and arrange Dutch ovens about the customary open fire. He has a cook stove, which rolls along behind the chuck wagon, a heavy duty truck, on its own rubber tires and carries a loaded wood box in a cradle alongside. When he wishes he can prepare his rib-stuffing meals in the shelter of a huge cook tent, roomy enough to accommodate all his gear and the chuck wagon, too. Within its canvas walls are benches OPPOSITE PAGE "ON THE DIAMOND A" BY RAY MANLEY. This big ranch is located near Seligman. Photographers who cover cattle drives must work hard to keep up with busy activities making up roundup. for the entire roundup crew, and here they can spread out their bedrolls or play a few hands of poker under the white glare of gasoline lanterns. However, most cowpokes prefer to sleep in their own individual tepees, pitched at intervals outside the big tent. "Pretty soft," would comment the oldtimer. "Pretty soft. Now when I was punchin' cattle . . ."

But the cowboys of today are not soft; they are every bit as hard and resourceful as their fathers were before them. They can bust a bronc, ride fence or throw a steer just as well as the top hands of old. They are steadier though, not always drawn from job to job by a nagging desire to see what is on the far side of the next hill. The percentage of men with wives and children is higher.

Since skilled riders are becoming more and more difficult to obtain and hold, ranch owners are paying better wages than ever before in addition to offering a variety of other inducements calculated to make a man think twice before moving to another spread or accepting a city job. A cowboy's wages have always been velvet; even when he was receiving only a dollar a day, food and lodging were furnished as a matter of course.

The average pay at Bouquillas has risen to around a hundred a month, but that is merely the beginning. Aside from beef and groceries a man with a family is provided with a house and its furnishings right down to the pots and pans in the kitchen if he has none of his own. Also he is provided with a milch cow of either Jersey or Guernsey stock as well as chicken feed if he wishes to keep chickens. Should he have a horse of his own-and what cowboy has not-he may keep him on the ranch, using him for work or Modern ranches maintain good cooks and usually serve fine food. Hired hands are not finicky or fancy. They want plain food and enough of it. That is what they get!

not as he prefers. But contrary to the custom of bygone days, he is not permitted to run a bunch of his own beef cattle along with the owner's herds.

Once a month the cowboy's wife must supply the ranch commissary with a list of the groceries she will need to feed her family during the ensuing thirty days, a task for which no city housekeeper would envy her. Let her overlook an item, and there can be no running to the neighborhood store, not for the ranch woman. Her family lives upon what she orders and goes without whatever she forgets, a situation which has caused some queer and lopsided meals in the homes of new brides.

The grocery lists include more than the so-called staples; jellies, jams and preserved fruits are stocked by the commissary. If there is a small baby in the family, tinned milk is especially provided for his formula. Add all this to the cowboy's monthly pay check, and even a dub at arithmetic can see that his take is the equivalent of three to four hundred dollars a month.

In former times a cowhand's chances of advancement were practically nil. In some instances he was able to win his way to a foreman's job after almost a lifetime in the saddle, but that was about as far as he could go under his own efforts. Unless he managed to start a small spread of his own-too often a heartbreaking struggle against adverse weather and prices-old age usually found him puttering about as a third-rate cook or roustabout man.

His outlook on the Bouquillas is better. With ambition and hard work he can rise in the company and is even welcomed as a stockholder with shares of his own.

Although today's cowboys are no strangers to bone-tiring trails, choking dust, sweat, wind and weather-to say nothing of the "ornery critters" that must be handledtheir lives are far brighter than those of their fathers.

Ranch life is a lonely life, but ranch people do not seem to mind the isolation. Modern roads and transportation have brought the rancher closer to town. Home on the range is as comfortable as home in a city. The Mustang Ranch appears here.