A Texan Looks at Arizona

Heading north for Prescott out of the boiling dawn traffic of Phoenix, I glanced again at the question taped to the dashboard. It was the question of the week for me, the reason for my being away from home amidst these steely-nerved daredevils careening to work: why did 25,111 Texans pick up their digs and move to Arizona? Such was the number, straight from the United States Census Bureau, I read in the newspaper. It fairly boggles a Texan's head to learn that from 1975 to 1980 - the most recent statistical period available - more than 25,000 neighbors decided to settle in another state. It may even bring on chauvinistic shock. I forthwith flew to Phoenix to poke around on this puzzlement.Maybe at the bottom of the mystery-Texas boys like to leave home. It's part of their upbringing. In Texas homes where the family owns a set of the Harvard Classics, boys soon grasp that young dudes are supposed to go forth and seek their fortunes, like knights. In homes without the Harvard Classics, but with a worn Bible, they hear often about the Prodigal Son. The parable soaks into their souls. There also is hushed talk from time to time about Prodigal Uncles. So when Harvard Classics boys compare notes with Prodigal Son boys, the result is a lot of venturing forth among Texas youth. Just a few examples come to mind. Tom Bradley gave up sharecropping around Stonewall County for mayoring in Los Angeles. Harry James went off with Benny Goodman's band and wound up with Betty Grable in Vegas. Bubba Smith went to Baltimore, football immortality, and the ultimate glory of beer commercials. Van Cliburn flew to Moscow to play piano. (Van built himself a place in Tucson later on; maybe there's one of the 25,111 right there.) Lyndon caught a train up East and got steady work. Robert Crippen floorboarded a small party into space and back, including Sally Ride, the first woman to take that trip. What about Texas women-don't they leave home, too? No. Texas women always feel right at home no matter where theyare. Halfway around the world, a Texas lady thinks she's just a mite out of her mama's sight but easily within earshot of kin and friend.

Boys also like leaving home because coming back makes a fine experience. The Prodigal Son complex, see? The least welcome a returning fortune-seeker can expect is high noon dinner of fried chicken, cream gravy freckled with pork cracklin's, field peas, biscuits made from scratch, fresh churned butter, wild berry jam, warm peach cobbler, and a pitcher of cold clabber. I was now tooling through the hills on Interstate 17.

Saguaros. Hundreds on the hillsides, maybe thousands. Sentinels of the hills, that's how they looked in the early light. I heard about a man who got drunk and decided to prove his mettle to a lady friend by breaking the Arizona state law about not harming the saguaro. He found the biggest saguaro on the mountain, pulled out a shotgun, and point-blank blasted that cactus. Whereupon it fell on him, all three tons of spines and horny desert flesh. It killed him. Imagine the last two seconds of the man's life, seeing that huge grotesque shape bristling with thorns coming down on him. Whew! I wished I could pronounce saguaro like the Arizonans, putting a lonesome breeze in the word. Sah'wah-ah-ah-ah'ro....

An Arizona newspaperman, Kearney Egerton, born to a Texas mother, told me soon after I landed in Phoenix, "When you talk about the first United States settlers in Arizona, you're talking mostly about thieves and desperadoes on the lam from Texas." A colleague, Jim Cook, nodded emphatically, and went to get a copy of his book, Arizona 101, to swear upon. It turns out that Texas did project uncouth and undesirable elements into Arizona's pioneer times. They included the John Ringo, (Curly Bill) Brocius, (Shoot 'Em Up) Dick Barnes, and Tom (Black Jack) Ketchum with his gang. Outlaws did indeed arrive in swarms. But they make up only part of the story.

California's boom in the 1800s is where the story starts. Tough West Texas beef worth $5 at home brought $150 in the gold rush camps. And the trail for all that meat led straight through Arizona. Included in the great herds driven along the Gila Trail was one monstrous herd of 15,000 cows that J. Frank Dobie writes about in his classic, The Longhorns.

In those days Arizona greened up with lush, nutritious gramma grass which lured many Texas stockmen to buy land and establish fat herds. The first blooded American stock brought to Arizona accompanied William S. Oury, a messenger for William Travis at the Alamo.

Within a few decades tens of thousands of West Texas longhorns, plus blooded stock, were chewing Arizona gramma.

"Beginnings in the Arizona range cattle industry were largely Texas beginnings," observes historian James A. Wilson. So were the near-endings.

Cattle attract rustlers. Rustlers attract violence. Violence attracts lawmen. And Arizona Territory made a perfect proving ground for that sequence. Texas John Slaughter, a Pecos River rancher about five feet five inches tall and weighing 130 pounds wet, brought his family and herds to Arizona and became a legendary lawman, rarely returning from a manhunt with a prisoner alive. Sheriff John Henry Thompson of Gila County, a native of Bell County, Texas, was hailed as "the patriarch of Arizona's territorial lawmen."

But outlaws fleeing the Texas Rangers became so numerous in Arizona that upstanding citizens had to take extreme steps. So they formed the Arizona Rangers, patterned after the Texas Rangers. Never more than twenty-six men strong, the Arizona Rangers dealt swift justice to the bandit gangs.

Burton C. (Cap) Mossman, first captain of the Rangers, ran the show with the swagger and dash of a John Wayne cavalry troop. He also held a tight rein on money. Never, he 'lowed, could a telegram sent by any of his men run longer than ten words. In one instance, it created a classic in brevity.

A new ranger on stakeout at Tucson's Legal Tender Saloon used only one shot to lay low the bandit he'd been waiting for. The Ranger's telegram, shot back to Mossman at headquarters in Bisbee, read: "One man holdup Legal Tender two am inquest four pm." Just ten words.

Their third and final captain, Harry Wheeler, was said to be the equal of John Wesley Hardin in handling a gun. John Wesley, the West's fastest gunslinger, was a prototype killer of over thirty challengers. Handsome and courtly, John Wesley grew up in Polk County, Texas, about thirty-five miles from where I live, the son of a circuit-riding preacher. Even today in Polk County, he is regarded in many quarters as being more sinnedagainst than sinner.

In addition to rustlers, Texas cattle imported disease and severe overgrazing. The rich Arizona grasslands were stripped. In years of drought, bare hills and valleys seemed to portray God's maximum wrath. "Oh, Lord, I'm about to round you up for a good plain talk," Dan Ming, a Cochise County rancher, opened a public prayer during the drought of 1885-86. He was surrounded by suffering ex-Texan ranchers, heads uncovered, as he groped for right words. "Now, Lord, I ain't like these fellows who come bothering you every day. This is the first time I ever tackled you for anything, and if you will only grant this I promise never to bother you again. We want rain, Good Lord, and we want it bad. We ask you to send us some. But if you can't, or don't want to send us any, then for Christ's sake don't make it rain up around Hooker's or Leitch's ranges, but treat us all alike. Amen." That powerful entreaty is passed along by Will C. Barnes in Cowpunching Forty Years Ago, published in 1931 by the Arizona Cattle Growers Association. And the rains came, even to Hooker's and Leitch's spreads.

William Owen (Buckey) O'Neill, who became my favorite Arizona hero, called for an end to the "Texas Hegira." He was an early-day environmentalist as well as a writer, fighter, sheriff, and original Roughrider. The calamities brought by Texas cattle along with the wealth of a great new industry spurred Arizonans to form the Arizona Livestock Sanitary Commission, the Arizona Rangers, and the Arizona Cattle Growers Association. Much good emerged from much bad.

By now I'd turned onto Arizona State Route 69, which was the cleanest road I'd seen in years. Not a piece of litter anywhere. I live on a rise overlooking U.S. Route 69 as it curls through East Texas, and it's spattered with paper and cans from Port Arthur to Lone Oak. Chalk up a big point for Arizona.

I rolled off State Route 69 into Prescott, knowing instantly it was my kind of town. The expansive courthouse square, streaked and dappled with morning sun, Solon Borglum's marvel of a statue of O'Neill shining high at the entrance to the old building, invited me. Whiskey Row invited me. And I was soon to be invited into a fragrant tiny bakery, into fascinating Sharlot Hall Museum with a party of laughing Apache girls, into a deep ponderosa pine forest on the outskirts, even into the police station....

Lillian Theobald, a delightful historian in Phoenix, told me the previous day I'd like Prescott.

"They're stable folks up there," she asserted. "The same in Tucson, if you get down that way. But Phoenix," she shook her head, "it's getting bigger and bigger, and the people wash in and wash out...." She moved her arms side to side in a washing motion. She perceived that I was not a city man, though once I was; I now find a finer art and engineering in a sassafras leaf than in a skyscraper. And she was right about Prescott.

I lunched in the pinewoods fringing the town, feasting on a piece of cheese and hot sourdough rye bought at that little bakery. The bakery lady tossed in a couple of scrumptious brownies, purely out of kindliness.

When you talk about the first U.S. settlers in Arizona, you're talking mostly about thieves and desperadoes on the lam from Texas.

To understand even a little bit about Arizona requires marveling at its land. Texas has nothing to compare with the Grand Canyon. Palo Duro Canyon in our Panhandle is striking in its own right, but Grand Canyon is unique in the Earth. Years ago, my wife, Kitty, and I parked our vacation car and walked to the lookout point at the South Rim. For moments we were silent. Then she said, "I don't believe it," and turned to leave. I convinced her to stay, though I'm not sure she believes it yet. Reg Manning in his book What is Arizona Really Like? points out that the state stretches out in three layers: the desert, the forest, and the high plains Indian Country with its unrivaled rock formations. That stark variety of land forms supports great riches of flora and fauna. I was amazed to learn that Arizona contains more forest than either Maine or Wisconsin, two states famed for their woods. The ponderosas at Prescott reminded me of home, the Big Thicket of Southeast Texas. Nine major ecological systems dovetail in the Thicket, the only place in North America, perhaps in the entire world, where that phenomenon of nature's vast diversity occurs. Like Grand Canyon, the Big Thicket is unique in the Earth...but through pine needles against the clear blue sky, the sun stirred me to activity. It was time to lift a toast to Prescott on Whiskey Row and head back to a dinner date in Phoenix.

Not so fast, the old Palace bar messaged me. This room glowed with age and comfort, all burnished with years of talking and thinking and slaking thousands of thirsts. Only one other place I know imparts a similar feel, the Menger Hotel Bar in San Antonio, immediately across a narrow street from the south wall of the Alamo. There, Teddy Roosevelt recruited many of the Roughriders. An elegant creation of cherry and mahogany, the massive bar and its mirror were replicated from the House of Lords Bar in London and shipped to the Menger in 1859. No doubt it emitted a persuasive aura for some toothy Rooseveltian recruiting for the Roughriders. Strong coincidence, now, that the original Roughrider, Buckey O'Neill, was immortalized in bronze right across the street from where I sat. Quite suddenly, many similarities and coincidences bonding Arizona and Texas began rushing into focus. I suggest to any Texan wanting to get a feel for Arizona, that he or she sip a sarsaparilla on Whiskey Row in Prescott; and that any Arizonan seeking the spirit of Texas go to the old Menger Hotel and set a spell in the bar or on the patio. It was here, in 1857, that William Menger started building his "fine stone hotel to host Indians, presidents, poets, generals, and the public of the world," to coincide with the opening of America's first transcontinental mail and passenger route on July 1, 1857, right through Arizona. The enterprise was known as the Jackass Mail "from no place to nothing to nowhere." Its official name was The San Antonio and San Diego Mail Line, but at Yuma, the mail and passengers switched to pack mules for the 180-mile trudge to San Diego; hence, the more memorable monicker. "We had a very good coach," reported one passenger, "plenty of mules, and seven men well armed with Colts and Sharps rifles," not to mention two quarts of whiskey taken along by the guards. On September 16, 1857, two months after the start of service, the famous Butterfield Overland Mail took over the run from El Paso to San Diego. Passengers jostled together unbathed and slept knee-locked for the average 27-day run, paying $200 for a one-way fare. A year earlier, Arizonans and Texans had collaborated on a wild scheme to use camels to explore trails and resupply troops. An Army major went to Turkey and found $12,000 worth of "desirable beasts." He returned with thirty-three camels, three Arabs, and two Turks, arriving at Indianola, Texas. At Victoria, the animals were clipped and a pair of camel-pile sox was spun and knit for President Franklin Pierce. Humping west, the strange beasts were used successfully for several years by the Army on the deserts of Arizona and Texas. The St. Louis mule industry, however, complained loudly to Congress about this foreign competition. The War Between the States diverted attention eastward, and the Camel Caper receded into the lore of the Southwest.

A T E X A N L O O K S A T Arizona

I glanced at my watch and realized that such reflections had kept me overlong in Prescott. I would come back to this town someday with more time; I'd come back and crisscross the whole of Arizona.

Hurrying a couple blocks to my parked car, I felt in a coat pocket for keys to unlock the door. No keys. Then I pressed my face against the closed window and peered at the steering post. There were the keys. Mumbling in fury at myself, I looked about. Just across the street loomed the police station. Fairly leaping to the entrance, I knew the police could have my car open in a flash. A lady came to the dispatcher's window.

"I'm a dumb fool from Texas, just passing through," I introduced myself. "I locked myself out of my car. I know you folks can help me."

"Well, I' been," the lady twanged with a big smile. "You really from Take-sus? I'm from Take-sus, too! Born in Bryan. You know where Bryan is? That's my home town...."

I knew Bryan well, and I loved the Aggies. We chatted a while about how she came to be in Prescott, and did she plan to ever go back? "Oooo, not in a 'coon's age!" Then she told me the Prescott police didn't open locked car doors, but maybe City Hall down the street could help me. There, I got to use a phone to call a locksmith, who arrived promptly and pulled out a new set of six steel bars used to unlock different kinds of car doors. We agreed I'd be on the road in a flash. Twenty-five minutes later, as he worked with the sixth gleaming rod, his brow furrowed deeply now, I felt moved to comfort the situation.

"I sure feel ridiculous, doing something like this," I said. He looked up from his work and growled, "Not half as ridiculous as I do." Finally giving up on the new bars, he brought out a hammered-flat clothes hanger, and instantly sprung the lock.

Pushing the needle to 56 on State Route 69, heading east now, the question still taped to the-dash kept flapping, calling to mind the ex-Texans I'd met and talked to the past couple days.

Bebe Lovitt. (What a name for a Texas girl-I'm gonna steal it for a novel.) Native of El Paso, moved to Sun City in 1971 after getting a doctoral degree, now says she wouldn't want to live anywhere else. Claims the Texas Club is the most popular among Sun City residents. Auctioneer W. R. Brown, also of Sun City, born and raised in Borger, likes the fact that in Arizona he can get to the mountains, even snowcaps, in a couple hours; "in Texas, you might have to drive 600 miles to do that," he smiles. G. A. (Pop) Mabry, one of the great civic leaders of Houston before he retired from Humble Oil (now Exxon Company, USA), today enjoys six children and twenty-six grandchildren in Arizona and reveals, "This Texan has always had a warm regard-indeed a kinship-for Arizona." C. L. Sonnichsen, distinguished historian and folklorist of the West, over forty years a Texas academician, now editor of the Journal of Arizona History and thriving in Tucson. A Wichita Falls boy, James P. Simmons, named one of five "Outstanding Young Texans" in 1953, now chairman of the board of the United Bank of Arizona and a former president of the ultra-exclusive "Phoenix 40." Tom and Nancy Tracy, from the Texas hill country, now of Scottsdale, who thundered at me in a letter: "There are no ex-Texans!"

Texans and Arizonans place high value on each other's heritage and horizons. If you're going to leave one state, they seem to say, why not light a shuck for the other? Upon such a simple question of historic affinity may rest the answer to the question of the 25,111. During the same statistical period, a bunch of Arizonans moved to Texas, so there's another bend in the creek, another story. Pop Mabry hit on the right word: kinship. A kinship of concerns and convivialities.

The first wanderer to hook up Texas and Arizona may have been Cabeza de Vaca, back in 1536. No one knows for sure. But Texans for certain had taken a big foothold in Arizona by the mid-1800s. In fact, the first governor of Arizona, George W. P. Hunt, was a Texan, and the First Lady, Duette Ellison, the daughter of pioneer Texas ranchers.

"No country that I have yet visited presents so many striking anomalies as Arizona," a journalist named J. Ross Browne wrote in Harper's Magazine of that era. "With millions of acres of the finest arable lands, there was not a single farm under cultivation...with the richest gold and silver mines, paper-money is common currency...with extensive pastures, there is little or no stock...hay is cut with a hoe, and wood with a spade...there are towns without inhabitants, and deserts extensively populated...mines without miners and forts without soldiers are common...politicians without policy, traders without trade, storekeepers without stores, teamsters without teams, and all without means, form the mass of the white population."

What could be more tempting to a bunch of contrary-minded, fun-lovin', Prodigal Sons of Texas gone to the far country to seek their fortunes?

And today the lands are farmed, the mines are dug, the ranges are stocked, the towns are populated, the political posts filled, and the society furthered...then, and now, by a very great number of Texans.

Author's note: My only quarrel with Arizona's State Route 69 was a sign. Three times I read signs saying, WATCH OUT FOR ROCKS. What do they mean, Watch Out for Rocks; everywhere I looked except up lay millions of rocks. Was one of those suckers apt to bounce up and bash me? Which one was I supposed to look out for?

Howard Peacock, a native of southeast Texas, lives there today near the Big Thicket. His articles and photography on business, travel, the environment, and folklore appear in many national and regional magazines. His book, The Big Thicket of TexasAmerica's Ecological Wonder, has just been released by Little, Brown and Company (Boston).