A Home Never Known

added southern Arizona to the United States. When Union soldiers pulled out of the Arizona Territory to fight the Civil War, Apaches boldly increased their attacks. Mae Davison, David and Aury's last remaining grandchild, said Apaches stole some Dowdle cattle on a trip in the 1860s. The cowboys chased after them, and David took an arrow in the shoulder. Mae remembered, as a little girl, how she and all her siblings would beg their grandfather to let them see the "Indian arrow scar."

The Dowdles prospered in California and made friends with their neighbors, the Proctors, who raised horses. But in February 1878, David and Aury's youngest child, 9-year-old Mindora, died. This tragedy, and a devastating drought, prompted the Dowdles and the Proctors to move to Arizona. They paid the Quechan Indians a bay filly to help them cross the Colorado River above Yuma. David remembered the Santa Cruz Valley from that early cattle drive, so they pushed east and south. Between Tucson and Nogales, both families found land and built homes on the western slope of the Santa Ritas.

I never knew these early Arizona settlers. David and Aury died long before I was born, but I feel a special connection. The photograph I have of Aury shows an old woman in a rocking chair, gray hair parted in the middle and pulled back severely in a bun. She appears strong; coming from "sturdy stock," some might say. Another old photo shows David, a tall man with a white beard and two fingers missing from his right hand. His missing fingers are another story lost over time.

Three of my Dowdle cousins, Andy, a justice research analyst for Pima County Superior Court; Steven, a minister and psychologist; and Bill, who's a land manager with the state land department, had Unearthed the ranch's location. Bill had found an old Pima County map that indicated a Dowdle Ranch and asked 81-year-old George Proctor from Patagonia about it. George recalled "the old Dowdle place," and Bill and Steven located the site. I jumped at the chance to see the ranch with several of my relatives. George came, too, "to make sure we didn't tell any lies about the Proctors," he said. I longed to see where Aury had lived and to walk where she had walked.

At the old ranch, now on state land, some of the house's adobe walls stand, the rest having melted back into the grasslands. There were at least four rooms in what was considered a good-size house for its time. A broken cup handle stuck out from the dirt, and I wondered if this piece of thick white glass came from Aury's dishes. We wandered around the homestead, speculating: Where was the well? Was this clearing the garden and that sunken depression the root cellar?

A large mesquite tree overhangs the front wall, and more trees crowd the house. Bill said mesquites probably grew only in the washes when the Dowdles homesteaded these mostly open grasslands, just the kind of country to lure cattlemen. Birds loved the mesquite thickets of nearby Madera Canyon, though. The Dowdles made Madera's small creek and dense trees their favorite picnic spot.

The name Madera comes from the Spanish for "lumber." In 1857, an enterprising settler from Maine established Arizona's first sawmill there and sold lumber for $150 per thousand feet. An 1878 story in the Tucson Citizen tells of the sawmill being burned by an Apache raiding party. Although the sawmill was near the ranch, that raid remains another family detail lost over time. Was David away, leaving Aury to tense at every sound? Did she keep the children inside or try to act as if nothing were wrong? My cousins and I inherited bits of so much drama, but rarely the whole tale.

In the 1880s, instead of bird-watchers, the Santa Ritas attracted miners, so I took the day before visiting the ranch to explore nearbyHelvetia, founded on the Old Frijole copper mine. About 300 people once lived in the community, but only the cemetery and smelter slag heap remain. Following the Greaterville Road (Forest Service Road 62), we continued into the mountains. Established in 1879 as a placer gold site, Greaterville once boasted 500 residents. The town is gone, but we enjoyed the scenic drive through a canyon and the oak thickets.Helvetia and Greaterville lured the Dowdle boys away from ranching for a time. David and Aury's sons, John, Henry and William, were in their 20s and reveled in the excitement of the mining boom. They even shipped silver ore from a nearby claim. For entertainment, they rode horses to the brawling towns of Charleston and nearby Tombstone to play poker.

The mining boom opened the Territory, and when the Southern Pacific Railroad reached Tucson in 1880, the train was greeted with the roar of cannons and wild celebrating. The Dowdles probably attended this great event. At least, their good friend Pete Kitchen did. A prominent neighboring rancher who owned and operated the El Potrero Ranch north of Nogales, Pete had a rip-roaring time and rode home with a memorable hangover, according to Dowdle family stories.

At the ranch, we easily visualized this unbridled Old West. Andy brought along a family heirloom, a revolver worn smooth in places and carefully wrapped in a soft cloth. We don't know if it ever shot anyone, but we wondered what tales it could tell. We knew that William, the youngest son, had once wanted money the easy way. He tried stagecoach robbery, but was captured and served time in prison.

Despite trappings of civilization, southern Arizona kept its reputation for outlaw shenanigans. In 1882, President Chester A. Arthur threatened the Territorial Legislature with martial law if Arizona didn't straighten up.

The Santa Cruz Valley had been a rancher's paradise through the early 1880s. When Aury moved there, the grama and muhly grass grew tall enough to cut as hay for the Army forts. Tucson, mining towns, the forts and Indian reservations offered abundant markets for cattle. Threeyear-old steers brought $35 a head, rains were plentiful and grass seemed unlimited.

But then came the summers with too little rain, the cattle market was glutted and prices fell. Overgrazing damaged the grasslands, and the foothills, stripped of trees for the mines, were cut with erosion gullies. Whether they saw what was coming or it was a lucky move, the Dowdles sold their Santa Cruz ranch in 1883, before the worst of the droughts, and bought another ranch farther north and east, near Safford.

Today, the University of Arizona manages the Santa Rita Experimental Range on the land where the Dowdles' cattle grazed, and scientists from all over the world come for range-management experiments and to study wildlife and plants.

Cattle and horses still roam the Santa Cruz grasslands, but in regulated numbers. Grass again brushes your stirrups when you ride a horse through it.

In 1898, 74-year-old David died, the first to go. Aury had watched the West change from mountain men on horseback to businessmen with airplanes and automobiles. The Apache wars, Mexican-American War, the Civil War and World War I happened during the course of her life. Arizona, that empty land she drove a Wagon through in the 1850s, became a state in 1912, five years before she died at 88.

Except for the ranch house ruins, all signs of the Dowdles are gone, but a road in Madera Canyon carries the name Proctor. The ranch house where the Dowdles' friend Pete Kitchen once held off marauding Apaches now operates as Molina's Pete Kitchen Outpost Restaurant, serving fresh fish from the Gulf of Mexico.

Times have changed since my great-great-grandparents came to the Santa Cruz Valley, but I could see much the same scene as Aury had when she looked out her front door. The grama grass swayed in the morning breeze, thin white clouds scattered across a brilliant blue sky and the ocotillos bloomed red. Three horses ambled toward me, stopping every step or two to graze, and Hereford steers trailed single file to a watering spot.

The grass brought my family here, gold brought the miners, but today, scenery lures visitors to the Santa Rita foothills. Madera Canyon draws many bird-watchers, and picnic tables, hiking trails and bed and breakfasts welcome them. David and Aury could never have imagined people would come to study their grazing lands, admire their mountain view and watch the birds of Madera Canyon. AH

humas Unusual Perspective

Happy Jack, Arizona, is named for a Wyoming stagecoach robber. He was known as "Happy" until he got caught. After that he was known as "Not So Happy" Jack.

WEAR AND TEAR

While attending summer camp in the White Mountains years ago, we went on a scenic trail ride. Our wrangler looked tough as barbed wire and was obviously a real cowboy. We soon noticed most of his right index finger was missing. Had it been bitten off by a mountain lion, or shot off in a gunfight? Nobody dared ask.

Finally, someone mustered the courage to inquire about the missing finger. "Well, son," the wrangler drawled, "I just plum wore it off pointin' at all the scenery up here."

RELATIVE WORTH

When I was a geology intern at the Kingman Bureau of Land Management Field Office, we always had prospectors (and wannabes) come in to ask questions about claim staking, prospecting and, of course, gold. Always gold.

One day, a guy who looked exactly Like Joe Pesci (with a beard and a yachtsman's cap) came in with a flourish and handed me an ore specimen he claimed was gold.

MAMIE: "He probably tells the truth. He never was much of a thinker."

"So... how much is it worth?" he asked, jumpy with excitement.

I checked it as best I could. "Well," I said, "it's more brassy yellow than dark rich yellow..."

"Yeah, yeah, but it's gold. Worth $400 an ounce, right?"

I did a streak test, and the streak was black and not gold. I told him so, too.

"Yeah, but it's gold, right? It's worth something, right?"

"Well, I'm no assayer. But I think it's pyrite."

"Fool's gold?"

I nodded sympathetically. He hesitated just a second. "Well, ... how much is pyrite worth?"

GOURMET FARE

On an all-day trail ride in the Superstition Mountains, my guide, Jesse, and I had stopped for lunch on a plateau that had a wonderful panoramic view of the area. We picketed the horses off to the side.

Half-way through lunch, a family of hikers arrived. One of the children immediately came over to pet the horses. She asked Jesse, "What are their names?"

He replied with a Western drawl, "Oh, we don't name anything we might have to eat."

Temporary Workers

From time to time on this page, we'll feature a collection of jokes on a single topic. This month, we salute temporary workers with this series of jokes submitted by Eric R. Eaton of Tucson.

You might be a temp if:

TO SUBMIT HUMOR

Send your jokes and humorous Arizona anecdotes to Humor, Arizona Highways, 2039 W. Lewis Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85009 or e-mail us at [email protected]. We'll pay $50 for each item used. Please include your name, address and telephone number with each submission.

Reader's Corner

Saguaros stand in the desert with their arms raised for 100 years or more like really long deodorant commercials.

Send us your saguaro jokes, and we'll pay you $50 for each one we use.