Arivaca Yesterdays Collection

This is where Mary Kasulaitis shares monthly stories about Arivaca Yesterdays. From 1993 to 2022, they were published in the Connection (Arivaca, AZ) and then Southern Arizona Connection. Some are new and some are updated versions of previously published stories. There is no particular order to these stories.

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The Cristero War came to Sasabe December 2023

Americans may not realize that from 1926-29 Mexico had a religious civil war, which in its final days came as far north as the American border: to Agua Prieta, Naco, Nogales and Sasabe. 

The Mexican Revolution had ended in 1920, but one significant conflict was not resolved:  church and state relations.  Prior to the Revolution, in the era of President Porfirio Diaz, the Catholic Church had amassed great power and wealth, and there were few non-Catholics. Revolutionaries thought it controlled the poor people.  But as a part of the Revolution, the Constitution of 1917 had anti-clerical sections in which  regulation of the churches and religious groups were quite severe. Allegedly, there was freedom of religion, but any event held outside of a church building (parade, festival, pilgrimage) was regulated by the government, monasteries were abolished, church property was turned over to the government. The government could regulate the number of priests in any given area and forbade the wearing of religious clothing outdoors. For awhile, nothing was enforced. There were ongoing attempts by the Church to compromise. Then  the atheist, Plutarco Elias Calles, an ally of former President Obregon, was elected President in 1924.  He confronted the Church everywhere he turned.  In 1926 he signed the Calles Law, giving regulatory teeth to the Constitution of 1917.  Worship was now banned. Churches were closed.  Religious refugees began to flee to the United States. Father Ed Carscallan, who used to serve St Ferdinand's, remembered this time with sadness. 

Not only religion, there were other problems in Mexico, especially for foreign corporations and aliens (mostly Americans) who owned land in Mexico, over which the government wanted to exert control, even nationalization.  Labor demonstrations and workers' rights were on the rise. The violence that came with the crackdown on the Catholic Church was complicated by other social issues. In October 1927, a peaceful demonstration was held with thousands of participants. Then violence began, mostly in the central and western part of Mexico.  Calles said, "it's the law or guns."  The rebels chose guns. Priests who said Mass were shot by the government. The devout religious people could not countenance this disrespect, and the rebellion began. The rebels named their revolt La Cristiada, after Christ the King (Cristo Rey) and called themselves Cristeros.

They had no idea the Cristero War would last close to three years but they were motivated by their cause and their faith. The Cristeros used guerrilla warfare more than the regular army, which made it harder for the federal troops to fight back. They targeted railroads since they were always in need of supplies.  A League of women (with their children helping)  began secretly to supply the rebels with food and ammunition and protect and aid the priests in hiding.  As time went on, the Cristeros became more organized and took over some municipalities, in the central part of the country but eventually in many localities from Chiapas to Sonora. It did not go away... and the government had to deal with the consequences of not being able to quell the rebellion for over two years. 

The U.S. government had issues with this neighbor's rebellion, since it was dealing with thousands of Catholic refugees and economic disruptions.  (Many of the devout settled in Los Angeles and never returned to Mexico.) Diplomacy had not worked under the previous ambassador, but when Dwight W. Morrow arrived, he became a more successful negotiator. (DWM was the future father-in-law of aviator Charles Lindburgh)  The main issues were property ownership and freedom of religion, both of which the U.S. deemed important.  Many American citizens and businesses (oil, mining, railroads) owned land in Mexico.  In the meantime, diplomatic solutions were not happening.

President Calles served his four years (1924-28)  and Obregon was re-elected (He had served from 1920-24).  But before he took office he was assassinated by a rebel, Jose de Leon Toral.  Obregon's successor, Emilio Portes Gil, served until 1930. Behind the scenes, Calles was still very powerful. He created the Partido Revolucionario Nacional, which eventually became the PRI, which ruled Mexico from then on.  However, Portes Gil eventually negotiated the end to the Cristero War, along with a number of Mexican Bishops, the Knights of Columbus in the U.S. and other organizations in Mexico.

By 1929, the rebellion, led in the north by the ambitious Gen. Jose Escobar, had reached the border, conveniently located to supplies in the U.S.   Sasabe, AZ is a Port of Entry, and across the line is Sasabe, Sonora or "Mesquite." (with a Spanish pronunciation, please.) No wall in those days, of course.  People came and went freely.  At that time, Sasabe, AZ had about 100 residents and across the line were 200 more.  When the rebels arrived in Mesquite in early March,  locals on both sides of the line began to expect war, some with much anticipation.  On this side, just west of town, was the La Osa dude ranch.  It was owned at that time by Mrs Arthur Hardgrave, from a wealthy Kansas City, KS family. Also with her in residence were her sister, Mrs James Jones and a friend, Mrs P.H. Hamilton.

In the spring of 1929, exporting vegetables into the U.S. was being hampered by rebel forces, which, by March, had also taken Nogales and Juarez.  Fortunately, the 10th Cavalry soldiers were still stationed at Camp Little in Nogales. The news of what was happening began to appear in headlines on the front page of the Arizona Daily Star.

The Federalists came east from Baja, CA and met the 85 Rebels in Sasabe under Capt Jose Juan Montalvo, on April 19, 1929.  20 rebels were killed as well as 5 federal soldiers, and there were many injuries. The rebels were driven across the line into the U.S.  Bullets crossed the line and hit the San Fernando schoolhouse. The Star nonchalantly reported that "Nothing the matter with the way those boys fought on either side."  The ladies from La Osa Ranch, aware that there were no medical facilities across the line, gathered up what they had and joined Dr Hardy from Sasabe, his wife and daughter and Miss Alice O'Barr, the teacher at San Fernando School, and went over to assist the injured.  The teacher even helped bury a rebel, with his red bandana to mark his allegiance. Three doctors from Tucson arrived.  Soon, with help from the Mexican consul,  a collection of food and other needs was gathered up in Tucson and brought to Sasabe.  Initially, they took the injured to the school. Once things were safe, the injured of both sides were brought to La Osa Ranch and nursed back to health. The more seriously injured were taken to the hospital in Tucson.   The uninjured rebel soldiers were taken to the jail in Tucson where they were kept until the U.S. government felt it was safe for them to return. Capt Montalvo escaped towards Nogales. Sheriff Jim McDonald, who brought the rebels to Tucson, said he met one Francisco "Pancho" Villa at Mesquite. (This of course, is not the Pancho Villa of the Mexican Revolution, because he died in 1923.) Villa played an important part In the capture of Mesquite due to his knowledge of the terrain.  He proudly displayed to the sheriff where one of the rebel bullets had passed through his cartridge belt, clipping off a shell. Asked by the sheriff if he was scared. Villa replied. "No, my friend had just been killed and I was much mad."

Responding to the battles, federal troops led by Calles himself were headed north. By the first of May, Nogales had fallen to the federal soldiers, and the war was winding down.  General Escobar fled to Canada.  Ambassador Morrow managed to bring the parties to agreement on June 21, 1929. The agreement allowed worship to resume in Mexico and granted some concessions to the Catholic Church. However, the most important part of the agreement was that the church would recover the right to use its properties, and priests recovered their rights to live on such property, even while losing ownership.

Thanks to Paul Bear of La Osa Guest Ranch for the inspiration for this story and Harry Meyer for his book, La Cristiada, the Mexican People's War for Religious Liberty by Jean Meyer, and the Arizona Daily Star.

End of war :  Legally speaking, the Church was not allowed to own real estate, and its former facilities remained federal property. However, the church effectively took control over the properties. It was a convenient arrangement for both parties, and the church ostensibly ended its support for the rebels.

Previously published in the Southern Arizona Connection, but reprinted because of the current situation with cartel violence in Sasabe, Sonora.

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John F. Kellner, Arivaca homesteader November 2023

This story about the Kellners was given to me by the family. I did not write it.

John Frederick Kellner was born in Texas in 1850. His parents had come from Prussia with many other German immigrants around 1845 to start a German Settlement in Texas. His father died when John was 1 year old and his mother remarried. He grew up in San Antonio where he attended a German-English school headed by a former German Nobleman. As San Antonio was predominantly Spanish, John learned to speak, read and write German, English and Spanish.

  John’s family included 2 brothers, 2 stepbrothers, and 2 stepsisters. John’s school term was 11 months out of the year, but he was always looking for excitement on his off time. One of the things he used to do was rope alligators from the bridge over the river and wrestle them over to the side. He would kill them and sell the meat and the skins. And once, John got to work out with a circus troop that was in town. John was strong and athletic and he was offered a job working as a catcher, with the trapeze performers. He planned to go on the road with them but his mother got wind of his plan and one of his older brothers came with the sheriff and took him off the train as he was trying to leave town with the troop.

  John’s older brothers, William and Ernst, left San Antonio and after the civil war made their way to the Arizona Territory. They settled in the little mining town of Globe.  The 2 brothers started a sawmill and lumberyard together.  Ernst tried his hand at mining and had interests in several mines. Ernst bought half interest in a General Merchandise Store in 1878 and soon he owned the other half. One of Ernst’s mine interests where he was a part owner, The Old Dominion Mine, did very well and with the store doing well Ernst prospered.

  John finished his schooling and got a job as a clerk. He joined an athletic club and learned to box. He even got the opportunity to fight the soon to be world champion John L. Sullivan in an exhibition fight in New Orleans. John went 9 rounds with the champion, and that was bare knuckle fighting, when a round was when there was a knock down. John was offered a job as a sparring partner but turned it down.

  John met and married a pretty girl named Mary Gilleland. And when John’s stepfather died around 1879 John and Mary lived with his mother and stepbrothers and sisters and he supported the family. In 1883 John’s wife Mary died in childbirth and sometime after that John’s brother Ernst wrote to him asking him to come out to Arizona to work for him. And as Ernst was doing so well, he took over supporting their mother and the rest of the family.

  John started work as a bookkeeper at E. F. Kellner’s store in Globe and took the payroll up to his brother’s mines by mule.  Ernst started another store in Phoenix and it wasn’t long before he sent his brother to run the store for him. John did well at the Phoenix store and he even hired a man he had come to know, Ramon Zepeda, to go down to Mexico and buy cheap steers and bring them back to Phoenix. John would then sell the beef at a profit. Ramon Zepeda became a good friend. He had come from Altar, Sonora in an ox cart at the age of 9 with his father, Pedro Zepeda and his mother Dolores Campillo and his 2 sisters, Mercedes, age 5 and Virginia, age 3. The civil unrest in Mexico had driven them north to seek a safer place to live. The Zepeda family sold eggs to the Kellner Store. John met Ramon’s beautiful sister Mercedes and they fell in love and were married in 1890. Their first daughter, Dolores Mercedes Kellner was born in 1892. Sometime after little Lolitas birth John decided to move his little family and homestead a ranch in southern Arizona, down along the border.

  From 1885 to 1892 Southern Arizona had been experiencing a severe drought and the ranches along the altar valley and into the Territory of Arizona who had over stocked and over run their ranges, lost vast numbers of cattle. And the cattle that survived stripped the land of all that was edible. The over grazed range went through several changes during this time. When the rains finally came, there wasn’t enough vegetation to absorb the water and the rain eroded the land, creating the washes and gullies we see today. And there wasn’t enough grass to support the natural wild fires. And without the fires, the brush and mesquite trees invaded and spread across the formerly treeless plains.

  Ranchers that survived through this change learned to look towards long term and not just short term gains. They created dirt water tanks to collect and hold run off water, to help hold them over in dry times. And they sold calves along with mature cattle to cull their herds as needed, so that their ranges could sustain the cattle that ranged on them.

  It was into this atmosphere John and his little family entered. John F. Kellner homesteaded 650 acres just below (west of) the little village of Arivaca, 14 miles north of the Mexican border. The Kellner Ranch was nearby to the Arivaca Ranch where Mercedes’ sister Virginia lived with her husband Ramon Ahumada, foreman of the ranch. Ramon Ahumada was a renowned horseman and cattleman. He had come from the same area as the Zepedas, from Altar, Sonora. He had come to the ranch as a boy with his uncle and had become foreman of the ranch before he had even turned 21. The owner of the Arivaca Ranch, Noah W. Bernard had started his cattle operation in 1877, with his headquarters at the village of Arivaca.  And it wasn’t long before John W. Bogan had joined him as a partner. A Post Office was established in Arivaca in 1878 with Noah W. Bernard as it’s Postmaster. Bernard also ran a store in Arivaca.

  The partnership expanded with more partners, and their brands were counted among the Arivaca Ranch cattle. The new partnership became the Arivaca Land and Cattle Company. Some of the other partners were George Push, John Zellweger, Bob Paul, Allen Bernard, J. Steward Bernard, Virginia Zepeda (Ramon Ahumada’s wife), and John Kellner. Ramon Ahumada also became a partner.

  Mercedes and Virginia were very close and were thrilled to be living near to each other again. Often when Ramon went on buying trips down to Mexico or riding the range during roundups, he would be gone for weeks at a time, and Virginia would stay with her sister at the Kellner’s ranch. Virginia and Ramon never had any children of their own and so they doted on the children of Mercedes and John. 

  On Dec. 23, 1894 the Kellner’s had another little girl, Victoria Wilhelmina Kellner. Mercedes told of a time, while living at the ranch, when raiding Apaches came to the ranch when John was away, and angry that there were no cattle at the house, they stripped the laundry off the line but didn’t molest her or the children.

  Aunt Vick told me that she remembered there was a big tree next to the house and her father had made a swing in it for them. She said she used to swing as high as she could, trying to touch the branches with her feet. She also said her mother used to pan for gold in the little stream up in the hills behind the house, and she would collect the dust and put it in a little drawstring bag. Aunt Vick also remembered that up on the hill behind the house, there were broken pieces of Indian pottery scattered about.

  In a letter written by E. F. Kellner to his brother, “ Dear Bro John,” dated March 5, 1895 Ernst asks about John and his family, saying it has been ever so long since he has seen or heard from him. And can’t he come for a visit, perhaps for the R R Celebration on the 12th. He states, “you would hardly know Phoenix anymore. Business is good and will be better here every year.” And he asks, “What are the prospects to get some cheap Mexican steers- What could they be got for to here and how much per pound.”  And so life at the ranch continued. On Feb. 15, 1896 John and Mercedes had a son, John Justus Kellner. When Mercedes was in labor they sent word to Doctor Ball in Arivaca. He came riding on horseback but he had very bad asthma and could only walk the horse and by the time he arrived little Johnny had arrived. My Aunt Vick (little Victoria) said she remembered when he was born and she and her sister Lola were thrilled to have him to play with. She also said her father liked to talk German with Dr. Ball.

  Perhaps John found running a ranch more monotonous than he had thought it would be or perhaps they needed the money but John got the opportunity and he took a job as a mounted Inspector of Customs working for the Customs House of Nogales. He turned the running of his ranch over to his friend and brother-in-law Ramon Zepeda.

  In 1890 Nogales had been made the headquarters for the Arizona District and the Official Port of Entry into Arizona. International commerce rolled on the shiny new rails from Guaymas and passed through Nogales into the United States. All importers were required by law to report to the Customs House at Nogales. Half a dozen commodities crossed the border then; gold, silver, cattle and foodstuff top among them. In addition to collecting custom duties, the Customs Service was charged with the prevention of smuggling. Customs Inspectors complained that some of the early day businesses, which straddled the international line, like John T. Brickwood’s Saloon, made enforcing the customs regulations impossible. Many a criminal went from the Arizona side into the saloon and out the back door into Mexico and vice versa. This prompted the plea to pass the law to remove all the structures from a 60 foot strip along the boundary.

  In 1896 John F. Kellner got the appointment as an Inspector of Customs. The Mounted Inspectors of Customs received $3 dollars a day plus and extra dollar for horses feed. In the 1880’s Chinese workers were in demand as cheap laborers in the mines and with the railroads, and a profitable business of smuggling them from Mexico developed.  And catching the smugglers was one of the Inspectors of Customs main concerns.

  Each section of the border was patrolled by 2 men.  John’s partner was a man by the name of Robinson, I don’t know Robinson’s full name. Robinson and John Kellner patrolled their section of the boundary on horseback, riding along the line from below Gunsite, which is south of Ajo, to Lochiel, which is east of Nogales. John said each section was practically impossible for 2 men to patrol even though the 2 partners would change up the way they patrolled their section. Sometimes one would start out from one side and the other would come from the other end, crossing in the middle. Then the next time one of the partners would ride up and back and then the other would go, riding up and back. John told his son, much later when he asked about his job, that the only way they could catch anyone was by dumb luck or when the doubled back over and area they had just covered. John also said that they called the smugglers Tecolotes. Tecolote is owl in Spanish and they were so called because the smugglers would hoot to each other across distances.

  John had a close call one time, which he recalled. His partner Robinson was not well liked. He was a tough case who had pistol whipped more than one fellow in his dealings. John had just traversed their section, going up and back and when he returned Robinson was to go. But as it turned out Robinson was very ill with the flu and so John changed horses, got a few supplies and headed out again, taking Robinson’s tour.  He was riding along and not a soul in sight when a shot rang out. The bullet went through his coat at the armpit and lodged in a tally book kept in his inside breast pocket. John pulled his rifle and took cover but there were no more shots and the shooter didn’t show himself. John thought that perhaps it was someone waiting for Robinson, and when they saw it wasn’t him they stopped shooting. After that John had a man who worked for him at the ranch, a tough Yaqui Indian , ride with him on his tours.

  John kept that tally book with the bullet hole in it and my dad said he remembered seeing it when he was a boy, but he doesn’t know what happened to it. The type of ammunition that was used may have had a hand in the fact that the bullet stopped in the tally book and didn’t go through it. Black powder ammunition was what was available then but very soon after that smokeless cartridges would become available. The differences between the two is something like this: The improvements in the new propellant, known today as pyrocellulose, created an almost smokeless bullet that was 3 times as powerful as the black powder version. And the increase in muzzle velocity meant a flatter trajectory and less wind drift and bullet drop. This type of ammunition was already being used in some of the armies of Europe but it was not widely available in the United States until after 1900.

   At some point during John F. Kellner’s position as a Customs Inspector there was a payroll stage that was robbed near Casa Grande by the outlaws Bert Alvord and Billy Stiles. And a posse was got up and trailed the outlaws all the way to the border, never catching up to them. During their chase one of the posse members found a pistol in the dirt and when they got to the border the man gave the gun to John. The man said he thought it must belong to one of the robbers and he thought John might like it for a keep-sake…and who knows, maybe someday he would find out who had dropped the gun. The pistol had carved ivory handles with a bulls head carved on one side with rubies for it’s eyes and on the other side it had an eagle with a diamond for it’s eye. John took to wearing the gun and one day he found out who had dropped it. One of the other mounted Customs Inspectors was late coming in and John wanted to know if he had run into some trouble, he heard the man had been seen over on the Mexican side, so he went looking for him. He went to a couple of places, then went into a saloon where he came face to face with Billy Stiles. And Billy said, “That’s my gun your packin’ John, and I’d like it back.” Billy called John by his first name because they had lived in the same town at one time. John said to Billy, “You can have this gun Billy, but I’m not leaving here without a gun, so I’ll trade you this one for the one your wearing.” Billy just stood there for a long moment without saying anything, then he said, “You keep that one John, this one shoots straighter.” He said, referring to the pistol he was wearing. John looked at the pistol Billy was wearing and it was even fancier than the one he had. John said that at the time he wasn’t sure if he was going to get out of that saloon alive or not. Well, John got to keep the pistol and he had it for a long time, but he loaned it to someone years later and never got it back.

   In 1897 they passed a law to remove all the structures along the boundary for a 60 foot span. They also passed a law making it Illegal for Chinese immigrants to enter the Country and Illegal for the mines to hire any Chinese. There had been such an influx of Chinese immigrants that the American workers had begun to violently and politically appose their presence in the mines and in the Country as a whole. But this didn’t seem to put a damper on the smuggling of the Chinese from Mexico.

  The certificate of John F. Kellner’s appointment to “Inspector of Customs in and for the District of Arizona, and authorized to exercise and perform the duties of said office, in accordance with the laws of the United States and the regulations of the Treasury Department, dated Sept. 23, 1896.” is signed by the then Collector of Customs, Sam F. Webb of the Custom House, Nogales Arizona. Sam Webb’s successor Harry K. Chenoweth left his position after less than a year under allegations that he had violated the civil service laws and regulations. And Chenoweth’s successor William M. Hoey was actually arrested in 1899 for accepting bribes to allow illegal Chinese, who had paid a prearranged amount, to pass into the United States. A Treasury Department employee working in Nogales wrote to the Department about his suspicions of criminal activity and Secret Service agents were sent from the Treasury Department to investigate. It was discovered by these undercover agents that Chinese who would pay $50 to $200 received a capital letter A on their certificates and then when they presented their certificates to Customs at the border entry they were allowed to pass through.

  I know that John F. Kellner was always spoken of with the utmost respect and admiration, as a man of the finest character, honest and forthright in his dealings with men or in business. I can only imagine how he must have felt at the corruption within the Customs House and with the Collector of Customs in particular.

But life went on for the Kellner family and they had another addition on Oct, 31 1899, a daughter they named Virginia Hedwig Kellner.

  I don’t know when John Kellner left possition as a Custom House Inspector but I think it was probably around 1900. What I do know is that in 1902 he ran for office and was elected to the position of Justice of the Peace of Arivaca. His certificate of office is dated Nov. 17, 1902. Around this time there was another severe drought in the region, which prompted John to sell off his cattle and move his family into town, where they ran a small boarding house and a store. Aunt Vick told me she remembered how her father loved to talk German with Dr. Ball and a few other men of German decent, that would come in the store.

  My great Aunt Vick told me she remembered living in Arivaca, but she always considered the ranch as “home”. They still went out to the ranch and spent time there. They also spent time at the Arivaca Ranch with Uncle Ramon and Nina.

  She told me that her mother was often called upon by some of the locals as a healer or midwife. Mercedes knew about herbs and healing ailments and had set broken bones and stitched up wounds and even pulled teeth when the occasion arose. One time there was a man who had a badly infected leg and a doctor, who’s name was something like Snable, wanted to remove the man’s leg. But Mercedes convinced him to let her try her methods first. She treated the leg and it got better and the man was saved from a life without his leg. The Doctor even asked Mercedes to give him a sample of what she was using, so he could send it back east to have it analyzed, to see what was in it.

  Aunt Vick also told me of a time when, “one of those women” was very sick and her mother defied the social mores and went up to the woman’s shack, that was up on the hill on the far side of town, to treat her. She said the woman ran a saloon, and that she couldn’t read or write, but she had a system where she had put beads on a string and she used it for counting and she would put beans in a glass to help her keep count. She also would use knots in a rope to keep track of accounts and she knew exactly what was owed her and by whom. Aunt Vick said the woman was not accepted socially, and they weren’t supposed to talk about her or acknowledge her presence in town, but Aunt Vick couldn’t help but be impressed that, even though the woman couldn’t read or write, she got along well enough and ran her place by herself and made her own money.

  Aunt Vick told me that when she was a girl, she used to watch the men come in the store and purchase a chaw of tobacco, then they would cut themselves off a piece and put it in their mouth and chew it with relish, seeming to enjoying themselves thoroughly. So one day she cut herself a big piece, when no one was looking and she went out back behind the house where no one would see her to try her treat. She popped it into her mouth and started chewing. Oh, she was surprised, it tasted horrible and burned her mouth! She coughed and spit it out, but not before she had swallowed some of the juice. She turned green in the face and felt ill for the rest of the day. Her father had seen what she was about and he would chuckle at her green tint and sour face when he would look at her. She never felt envious again when she saw the cowboys and the other men with their chewing tobacco.

  My father told me that about once a year some of the ranches in the area would get together and an expedition of folks to go down to the Baja Gulf for salt and fish. The people would caravan to the gulf in wagons and camp on the beach for a few weeks, fishing and collecting salt. They would boil the seawater and evaporate the water to collect the salt and then they would pack the fish they caught in salt, in barrels they had brought with them. They would enjoy the ocean and eat plenty of fresh fish while they were about their work. And when they had a good supply of salt and fish, then they would caravan back home.

  At sometime while living in Arivaca John F. Kellner leased his ranch. We have an article of agreement, beautifully hand written by John and dated July 1, 1907, where he leased the ranch to Niebes Bildusello for the period of 1 year, with first option to renew the lease the next year. The lease states that Bildusello agrees to keep all fences in good serviceable condition, and fumes and ditches also, and to keep the house and property in good order, to keep the fruit trees irrigated and trimmed etc. And that Bildusello would have all rights to the water, to use as he saw fit. Furthermore that Ramon Ahumada would act as agent and look after the interests of John F. Kellner.

  Sometime around 1911 the Kellner family moved to the slightly larger town of Casa Grande, where they again ran a boarding house and John F Kellner was Constable for a time. John had acquired The Woods’ hotel, previously run by Mrs. M. E. Woods.

  Casa Grande had been founded during the mining boom in Arizona and the railroad stopped there. The mining played out fairly quickly and the farming community grew. The town is situated approximately 20 miles from the Hohokam ruins called Casa Grande, which gave the town it’s name. President Rutherford Hayes declared the Ruin a national monument in 1892, in the hopes of preserving the ruin for future observations. The Papago, now known as Tohono O’Odham, reservation surrounds the Ruins and the Tohono O’Odham Indians were often in Casa Grande to trade, work or shop. Young Johnny met one of the Tohono O’Odham chiefs when the Chief came to water their horse herd at the watering trough underneath the big tank at the railroad tracks.  The Chief took a liking to Johnny and they became friends. Johnny even learned to speak their language well enough to carry on a conversation. He was sometimes invited out to the reservation for a visit and would spend the night with his friend at the Indian camp. One time when he was there the Indians were having a celebration and the Chief told him to stay inside because some of the young men were enjoying some homemade tiswin. Tiswin was a homemade fermented brew that was stronger than beer but not as potent as tequila. The Chief gave Johnny a young filly from his herd, which turned out to be a very fast little mare.

  Uncle Ramon used to like to put together match horse races for sport and the men would bet on them. And Ramon had a grey horse that beat everything he raced against. After Johnny got the little mare from the Chief and Ramon found out how fast she was, he would arrange with Johnny to borrow her when he had visitors from Sonora that he wanted to set up a race with. The men would invariably say no to racing against Ramon’s Grey and then Ramon would say okay, then I’ll race you with that little mare over there. And they would look at the mare and agree to the match. Well, Johnny’s little mare usually won.

  John F. Kellner enjoyed coaching young Johnny’s baseball team for Casa Grande, and the rest of Kellner family were the team’s biggest supporters. The Kellner’s became close friends to the Cruz family of Casa Grande. John must have had much in common with Ramon Cruz, who had come to Casa Grande around 1890 and had run his own General Merchandise Store there for much of that time. In the years they lived in Casa Grande, the family would continue to come back to Arivaca often, for visits to the ranch and to spend time with Ramon and Nina, whom the children would visit for extended stays during their summers, riding and enjoying the ranch life they grew up with.

  “Aunt Vick told me of one time when she was spending her summer at the Arivaca Ranch, and she was out riding with the Vaqueros and Uncle, rounding up and driving a herd of cattle. As I mentioned before, Ramon had a grey horse that he used to race all the time. Grey was a thoroughbred and very fast, and on this day Aunt Vick (Victoria) was riding Grey.  Something happened and the herd stampeded and Uncle Ramon yelled to Victoria, who was in front of Ramon on the Grey, to turn the herd. Aunt Vick said she urged Grey forward with a touch of her spurs and he leaped into high speed. She headed him towards the front and was exhilarated at the speed of their flight. She said he was leaping over brush and rocks and her blouse and hair were ripped by the branches of trees they ran threw, but they reached the front of the herd and she and Grey herded the lead steers towards the side, successfully turning the herd. She was elated and thrilled at her success as the herd turned in a circle and slowed down. She said Uncle laughed at her when he saw her because she was a mess.  Her braids, which were usually wrapped so neatly in a crown about her head, were half ripped down and hair was torn loose with chunks of hair torn completely out. Her face was scratched and her blouse was torn, but she grinned at him with pleasure, full of pride and still high on adrenaline.

  “Vick also told me of a time when she was with Uncle and the Vaqueros during a roundup. It was nighttime and they were all asleep around the fire, when a blood curdling noise rent the air followed by a horse’s screams. A mountain lion had jumped into the ramuda onto her horse’s back. The big cat raked the back of the horse with it’s claws as the horse bucked frantically around the temporary brush enclosure, trying to dislodge the lion. Rifle shots rang out as the Vaqueros shot over the heads of the horses trying to scare the cat off without shooting any of the horses. The shots did their work and the mountain lion leapt off the horse and ran away. The Vaqueros shot at it as it disappeared into the night. Aunt Vick had to ride another horse because her horse’s back was all torn up. But the cuts would eventually heal. She said she would always remember the sound of that lion’s roar and her horse’s screams.

  “Another exciting time my great Aunt Vick recalled at the Arivaca Ranch was about 1915, when she and a couple of her girlfriends were visiting Uncle and Nina and Uncle received word that Poncho Villa’s men were headed their way. Uncle gathered up all the women and piled them into an old stripped out car, which was the only car at the ranch at the time, and Aunt Vick drove the car sitting on an empty gas can. The car had no seats in it and the women sat on the floor of the vehicle.  The carload of women bounced and jounced on the rough dirt roads, while Aunt Vick stripped the gears and drove them north out of danger. Finally they reached their friends house, bruised and battered but safe. While Ramon and his Vaqueros worked at driving the cattle and horses up into the hills where Villa’s army would hopefully never find them.

  Young John Kellner (my grandpa) spent a lot of time with Uncle Ramon and he recalled a time when he wasn’t much older than a boy and he had gone with Uncle down to Mexico.  Uncle Ramon was making a deal to by a large number of cattle and he was taking the gold to pay for the purchase. Back then, they would only deal in silver or gold, they didn’t trust paper money. They were driving in a touring car of some kind and Uncle was driving, one of his men was riding next to him in the front, while my grandfather was sitting in the back.  They were stopped on the road, on the outskirts of a town, by a detachment of Rurale soldiers and the Captain in charge was a fellow who didn’t like Uncle for some reason and had it in for him. They were talking and then the talking turned into disagreeing and my grandpa starting getting scared because he had a pistol tucked in his waistband, a frontier model 38-40, and he could only think that they would shoot them if they found he had a gun. That morning he had thought it was a good idea but now it could get them killed. The scene was tense as Ramon argued with the Captain and it seemed that they would surely lose the gold and maybe their lives… then a Colonel in the Rurale Army came upon them. The Colonel knew and liked Ramon and he was very glad to see him, greeting him like a long lost friend and the mood turned a completely different shade. I’m sure the situation was clear to the Colonel and he certainly did a good turn for Ramon. The Captain stepped back and all the Rurales backed away and everything was suddenly all right again, and they were allowed to go on their way. Grandpa said he had never been so scared in his life.

  Another time young John was out riding the range with Uncle, through the rough Baboquivari country, looking for cattle, when they topped a rocky divide and surprised a group of seven Yaqui Indians, all with rifles, who were in the process of butchering one of the ranch’s steers down behind some brush in an arroyo. Grandpa said, they were a tough looking bunch. I’m sure his heart was beating a mile a minute while he held himself still beside Ramon. Ramon was quiet and cool as he looked them over and after a few minutes he said, “stay here.” And he rode slowly down to parley with the Indians. He told them in Spanish, “your welcome to all the beef you can eat, just put the hides on the fence when you’re done, so we can keep a count.” Then Ramon rode back up to my grandpa and they rode away. My grandpa fully expected to be shot in the back but the Yaquis let them go. Perhaps they respected Ramon’s daring. Anyway, the next day Ramon found the hide hanging on the fence just as he had suggested.

 When young Johnny turned 18, he homesteaded a ranch in the Arivaca area and worked for his Uncle Ramon at the Arivaca Land and Cattle Company. For a time he and Jesus Ahumada were partner’s and ran their cattle with the J/K  brand. This was before World War I.  In 1918 ,young John was 22 and he and another fellow he was friends with got a butchers license together and they would buy beef steers from the Tohono O’Odham Chief John knew back in Casa Grande. They would go and get the steer and butcher it at night, transporting the beef in an old model T pickup truck to a butcher shop they had a contract with in downtown Tucson. John said that leather was in high demand because of the war over in Europe and they made a profit off of the hides alone, before they even sold the beef. He was planning for his future and he was working hard to make what money he could. But his plans were disrupted as he was drafted into the army when the United States entered World War I.

  John was lucky because the army found out he was a top ranch hand and they put him to work breaking mules to harness and to wagon, instead of shipping him off with all the rest of his division. The mules were used to pull the wagons that transported the big guns for the army. He was almost sent over to France several times but fate intervened and kept him stateside. He was moved around and ended up working as a type of mounted military police. And then luckily the war ended before he ever made it to France.

 When John J. Kellner came home from the war, Jesus Ahumada had moved away and so John registered the J/K brand solely in his own name.  Our family still keeps the brand. 

John made plans to homestead another ranch because had signed over his homestead to Ramon Ahumada when he went away, not knowing if he would return, and Ramon had sold it. Ramon was cash poor when John came back and so he offered John a tract of land that was at Campbell and Speedway, in Tucson. But grandpa said no, I don’t want that property, it’s all creosote and greasewood out there. I’ll wait until you have the money. If he had only known, that’s where the University of Arizona is now.”

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Arivaca Cemetery and the Whalen Family October 2023

Every October, the annual cemetery cleanup is held in Arivaca, in preparation for Dia de los Muertos. Every year the Whalen Family turns up in force to take care of their family graves.  This year they prepared for the inevitable:  that time when there is no more accessible room in the cemetery and we have to restrict it to just cremations.  The accessibility is determined almost solely by backhoe access. And not just any backhoe.  It must be big and strong. More and more people are choosing cremation because of affordability and ease of burial. More and more people have decided this is the best way for them, despite past traditions and perhaps personal trepidation.  So this year two things have happened:  the Massey family installed a columbarium for their family’s ashes. It is a square cement vault that can hold multiple urns.  Across the street from it, the Whalen family has installed small cremation plots in between their family’s current graves: 16 all together with more possible. It’s a big family. It took a jackhammer to dig the holes because the cemetery dirt (rock, clay and shale) is so difficult. Each plot is now prepared for future use. When someone passes, the chosen plot, about 2.5 feet deep and now lined with a 10 inch wide piece of pvc pipe filled with sand, will be cleaned out and the urn installed with a small headstone on top.  Members of this family want to be buried in Arivaca and here is why:

Guest writer Stefanie Mares Nolan:  Three Generations Passed

The story began with a woman named Agrepina Leyvas who married Francisco Islas.  They had two daughters, Maria and Carmen, both of which were born in Phoenix, Arizona.  The photograph shows Agrepina and Francisco holding their daughters Carmen and Maria.  Standing behind them are Agrepina's brothers.  The picture was taken in 1891 in Phoenix.  Shortly after the picture was taken, Francisco decided to move his family to Mexico until his girls grew up.  Agrepina passed away in 1930 and is buried in Arivaca cemetery.

Agrepina's youngest daughter Carmen fell in love with Miguel Fimbres (1883 - 1928), and they married.  They ended up moving to Ruby, Arizona where Miguel worked at the mines.  Story has it that he used to take home gold dust by stashing it in his curly hair.  When he arrived home, he would have his wife hold out her apron so that she could collect the dust while he brushed it out. He was able to bring home enough gold to make earrings for his wife and their three daughters, Thomasa, Francisca, and Socorro.  Miguel also had a part to play with the contrabands during the Prohibition.  He used to take his mules to Mexico, where he would smuggle liquor over the border and back to Ruby.  Miguel was also a gambler.  He and his friends from the mine would get together after work and gamble.

Miguel’s story came to an end by unknown circumstances.  When Miguel died, his gambling friend Domingo Rovello drove him in a wagon to the Arivaca cemetery from Ruby.  He is buried next to his brother Lalo Fimbres who drowned at an early age.  After Miguel’s death, Socorro, who was nine-years old at the time, cared for and comforted her mother.  The two older sisters had already married and moved away.

Carmen and her daughter Socorro continued to live in Ruby.  It was here that Socorro met Albert Whalen.  Albert worked in the mine and also part time in the local store.  Every time Socorro came in the store, Albert would stand behind the counter and stare at her.  Socorro was at first offended by his obvious admiration, but later fell in love with him and they married.  They had two children, Lawrence (Larry) and Catherine (Katy), both born in Ruby.

When the mine in Ruby closed, Albert, Socorro, Larry and Katy, as well as Carmen, moved to Arivaca.  Albert ended up working at the Arivaca Mercantile, the saloon, the post office, and also helped cut meat.  They all lived in the smaller house connected to the Prevor Home, across the street from the Mercantile.  Larry remembers when he and his sister would play in the cemetery when they were just little kids.  While living in Arivaca, Albert and Socorro became good friends with Hack and Emma Mae Townsend.  Emma Mae and Albert would talk for hours about the history of Arivaca in which they hoped to record.  However, their interest in the subject distracted them from ever recording their conversations.

After living in Arivaca for a few years, Albert ended up back in the mining business and moved his family to Tucson, Arizona.  He worked in the San Xavier mine, then Tiger, and finally San Manuel where he worked until he retired.  Albert built his home in Tucson and it was here that they would raise their eight children, Larry, Katy, Bertha, Mary, Sylvia, Edna, Shirley, and Bobby.  Carmen lived with Socorro and her family until one day, Carmen was sitting outside smoking a cigarette, when a bolt of lightening hit the table that she was sitting at and electrocuted her.  Three days later, Carmen passed away and is buried along side her mother in the Arivaca cemetery. 

After Albert retired from the San Manuel mine,  he and Socorro moved to Willcox to be near his dad and brothers.  During the late summer of 1985, Socorro fell ill, so Albert quickly tried to get her to Tucson to see a doctor.  While on route, the doctors believe that Socorro had a heart attack and shortly after arriving in Tucson she passed away.  Socorro is buried next to her mother and grandmother in Arivaca.  After her burial, Albert went back to his home in Willcox until years later he got sick and his children convinced him to move back to Tucson.  He spent his last years living with his family until his death in 1993.  Albert is buried next to his wife in Arivaca.

From the time Albert and Socorro first moved to Arivaca, they were active citizens.  Even after leaving the town they took part in the bi-annual cemetery clean-ups as well as the Arivaca Pioneer Cemetery Association.  This participation and respect for Arivaca passed on to their children, who are passing the tradition on to theirs.  To this day, the Whalen family still participates in the clean-ups and the Association.  During any given clean-up, at least six-generations, buried and alive, will be present in the cemetery.

The author is President of the Arivaca Pioneer Cemetery Association and granddaughter of Albert and Socorro Whalen

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“Colonel” William F. Witherell, mine promoter September 2023

It is possible that without William F. Witherell, Arivaca would not have become a town in the 1870s. We attribute the town founding to Pedro Aguirre, along with the building of the school, but there would have been no town without the mines and no mines without mine promoters. Witherell was one of the biggest promoters in Southern Arizona, and yet you may have never heard of him.  That is because, not surprisingly, he was pretty much a failure.

William Frank Witherell was born in about 1841 in New York, into a prominent family.  He enrolled in West Point about the time the Civil War started.  At some point he took leave of absence for his health and stayed home, petitioning the administrators occasionally for an extension, until the war was over, at which point he resigned. He did not graduate, but very soon became known as “Colonel” Witherell. You could do that in those days.

After West Point, Witherell went into business as a commission merchant in New Orleans with W.H.H. Witherell, a close relative and lawyer. How he got into mining is unknown, but speculation seemed to run in his blood.  We first hear of him when he went bankrupt following some mine promotions in Colorado. He was over a hundred thousand dollars in debt--this was in February, 1875. At this time, he and John P. Arey began communicating about some prospective mining properties in Arizona.  Arey was a prospecting geologist who was out in the field, tromping up and down hills, looking for outcroppings of ore and investigating old mines. Arey went all over the mineralized areas of Arizona, and reported on the prospects to Witherell, whom he apparently thought would be interested in finding investors and forming mining companies.  In November of 1875 Arey wrote to Witherell about the Cerro Colorado Lode and how it could be reworked profitably. He suggested buying a stamp mill and encouraged Witherell to come to Arizona. But time went on and Witherell remained in St. Louis, where he had his family situated and was speculating in buffalo hides. In mid-1876 Arey went to San Francisco to promote his mines, where he complained that it was no easy matter for a stranger to make much headway.  Arey commented that in Arizona, “Poverty came near being the death of me…but I persevered…what I have been through would have killed two like you and perhaps more.” Witherell apparently did not take offense. Arey kept working at finding investors and finally formed the Cerro Colorado Mill and Mining Company late in 1876 with Capt Emile Voisard and A. Derre.  Witherell bought a 25 stamp mill and commenced to get it shipped.  The Southern Pacific Railroad was in the process of being built, and had been completed through Indian Wells, west of Yuma, so the partners decided to send the mill through there, instead of by water through the Gulf of California and Guaymas. In the meantime they were continuing to try to attract investors so as to keep the shipment moving. To make a long story short, the mill sat there at Yuma until the company folded. But none of the principals in the company were totally discouraged. They continued the business of prospecting and Witherell the business of trying to part people from their money.  The mines at the Cerro Colorado had such a reputation that people would still be attracted to its potential. Witherell made a trip to Arivaca in late 1877 where he learned that the Arivaca mining district had been established and no mill was available, so he (along with a number of Midwestern associates) formed another company, the Arivaca Milling, Mining and Commercial Company. He realized the potential that this country had for his purposes. Using his newly formed Arizona Gold and Silver Mining Company, Witherell purchased the Heintzelman mine from Charles Poston.  He began writing newspaper articles and in 1878 a pamphlet of his own:  Arizona as a Silver Country. Over the next few months, he and his associates formed a number of other companies to promote “mines” in and around Oro Blanco and Arivaca. Many of these so-called mines were nothing but a small outcropping on the surface or a hole where past prospectors had dug, but Witherell was on a roll.  Each of the mining companies began making a show of hiring some people to work their claims, so that there would be evidence to attract investors.  Witherell hired E.B. Gage to manage the mill, which was to be located about a mile west of Arivaca. Gage was a competent manager, who made land claims and bought water rights. Witherell started talk of a railroad and a telegraph line to Arivaca. The Tucson newspapers loved it.  Almost daily articles sent the news far and wide, as other papers picked up the story. All of this activity, coupled with that of other promoters, began bringing people into Arivaca. The town began to grow to support the miners.  By 1879 there were 300 people here, working in the mines and hoping they would get paid. Frequently they did not. Witherell’s mill was finally constructed in that year, but it was of inferior quality and could not do the work. Other mills had been constructed that competed for the available ore. Gage left for Tombstone and the new mill manager complained that there was no money to pay people to do the work.  Witherell had expanded his interests and moved to Tombstone, where he acquired an interest in the Grand Central mine and others. Folks back East, who were providing the money to Witherell in hopes of realizing a bonanza, didn’t know one mine from another.  The Arivaca mines were nothing compared to those in Tombstone, but they didn’t know that. Witherell also found time to support the development of a bank, but soon things began to fall apart.  Tucson’s mercantile company, Lord and Williams, went under, and perhaps because it had lost so much money supporting Witherell’s endeavors. In 1880, the mill company went under and Witherell formed another company to bail it out.  But there was nothing behind that either. His investors began to realize they had been taken.  Probably all the little companies he had formed turned out to be scams. It is hard to say if he intentionally defrauded people or truly thought he had something.  All of this was not revealed at once, because for several years he continued to maintain interest in assorted claims in the Arivaca area and the offices of a (long-suffering) mill manager, Marshall Brink.  In 1883, the latter wrote in a letter to Witherell: “Glad to hear that Dr. G and the boys have a good prospect of getting considerable money out of this Santa Rita property.  I want to see some of the Arivaca boys get out with something, even if I don’t get out with anything but malaria.” Marshall Brink didn’t get out of Arivaca: he died of malaria that year and is buried in Arivaca, the only Civil War veteran in the Arivaca Cemetery.

References:  Tucson newspapers, Arizona State Library and Archives.

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Homesteading: Then & Now - August 2023

The chance to have a little space of their own seems to attract people.  A sense of ownership, of property, the basic instinct of territoriality, is shared by plants and animals alike. Creosote bushes spread themselves exactly a certain distance apart.  Dogs determine their own places on the couch.  A desert tortoise circles the yard, checking out the boundaries and who might be there already, till at last he's satisfied with the arrangements.  And should we be any different? Our laws may be even less stringent than those of the neighborhood's great horned owl. 

Although the need to wander may be well developed in some individuals, most of us have to have our own space.  Some must get by with a tiny apartment, having shrunk their desires to fit that of the society around them.  Clipped their wings, so to speak.  But some of us need to spread out, need the room to breathe, need to see mountains all around instead of roofs and television antennas. It is a need as great as food and water.

So, is there any difference between the homesteaders of 1890 and those of today?  Other than the fact that nowadays they call it, scathingly, wildcat development. 

"'Listen to reason, Caroline,' Pa pleaded.  'We can get a hundred and sixty acres out west, just by living on it...If Uncle Sam's willing to give us a farm...I say let's take it.  The hunting's good in the west, man can get all the meat he wants.'  Laura wanted so much to go that she could hardly keep from speaking." (By the Shores of Silver Lake)

It was free in those days, a contract between the Federal government and the individual to bring agriculture and productivity to the wilderness. Wildness was not valued; it seemed endless.  And endless was the stream of immigrants. They had to go somewhere.  The concept of going West, the frontier, has been explored as one of the basic principles of American society and what makes us different from the stay-at-home European. For more than two hundred years, and thus ingrained in our ancestors' lives and stories, and passed down to us here in the West, is the idea that we must have space. Lots of it. But even more than space is the idea of self-sufficiency.  The need to know that we can depend on ourselves only for the necessities of life and solve the problems that this kind of independence brings.

When Arivaca and the vicinity was homesteaded in the late 1900s and early 20th Century, there were homesteads on every piece of arable land, because the purpose of homesteading was to produce self-sufficient farmers.  Most of them were 160 acres, the ordinary size, but some few were 320 acres or what was called a Desert homestead. Homesteading began in the 1890s outside the boundaries of the Aribac land grant.  The town of Oro Blanco was completely filed on by the end of the 19th century.  Arivacans had to wait until the land grant was settled in 1902.  At that time a number of men and women had filed with a few more in the late 20s when the government opened up some more land.  In Township 21 South, Range10 East, the area around Arivaca, those individuals were Augustin Wilbur, Miguel Egurrola, Bill Earle, Francisco Moreno, Dr. Joseph Ball, Juan Acuna, Jean Conti, Leonides de Montano, Amelia Campas, N.C. Bernard, Philemon Ward, Arthur Noon, Rita Mora and George Pusch.  In T21S R9E, west of town, those individuals were Mary Wilbur, Bob Paul, Francisco Maldonado, Rafaela Wilbur, Luisa Figueroa, Agustin Duran, Fermin Lopez, P.R. Tully, and later, Maria Lopez.  Southeast of town, along Arivaca creek and its tributaries, the homesteaders were Albinus Bogan, William Marteny, John Moloney, William Tonkin, William Perry, Philip Clarke, Gipsie Clarke, Adolphus Noon, John Lyle, Bee L. Noon and John Bartlett. You may notice that several women had homesteads.  Descendants of some of those folks are still in the area. 

Katherine Noon Grantham lived on her father's homestead on the site where sat the little homestead house in which she was born, fourth in a family of five children.  She remembered a spartan life.  "When you got a homestead you had to live on it (for five years) to prove it up.  The house was not very big:  frame with a tin roof.  In the early days they tacked up cloth ceilings."  Her father dry-farmed, raising barley, corn, beans and pumpkins.  "Pa used to milk 4 or 5 Herefords to get enough milk for all those kids." With no electricity, food had to be dried or canned. They had a food safe as big as a refrigerator, up on legs set in cans of water to keep the bugs off, with screens all around.  Burlap sacks encased it and a pan of water on top dripped enough to keep the sacks wet.  A breeze cooled the food inside. They ate a lot of beans and oatmeal.  They didn't butcher until cold weather and even then most of the meat went into jerky.  It was not an easy life, but one that produced a strong loyalty to the land and the lifestyle, still followed by her descendants.

What we call homesteading today is a little different from the historic term.  For one thing, the land is no longer free, but the intent behind the acquisition, for many people, is still self-sufficiency and perhaps also a philosophy of life that spurns the materialism of today's society.  In the old days you were self-sufficient or you died. Nowadays it is a choice. Helen and Scott Nearing wrote about their move to northern Vermont and how they learned how to depend on their own initiative for food and the other necessities of life, and how hard, if not impossible, it is to replicate the life of pioneers. Maybe we’re just not as tough nowadays.

As in the past, land use nowadays generally includes some kind of agricultural activity, such as a large garden.  Sometimes people own goats or a few head of cattle and horses. Many people who move to a rural area do so for the purpose of becoming more self-sufficient at least in terms of food. Some raise cattle, some hunt for their chosen meat. Organic gardening is common, spurred on by a desire to know where your food comes from. Frequently the land is used as a means of making a living on your own without resorting to a full-time 9-5 job. Idealistically, you could live totally on your own, producing food, clothing, shoes, musical instruments, tools and most everything but money.  Practically speaking there are taxes and other expenses that raise their ugly heads.  Most people need a truck at least.  This requires some kind of cash income. That’s why there are so many retirees: they have some kind of income from the government or their own former occupation.  Even if many of your needs can be provided by trading with others, patronizing the Human Resources store, or as Hawk referred to it, "foraging off the excesses of modern society," there is still a dependence on what it produces.  Even if you can make everything, economically it may not be the best choice or use of your time.  So lots of younger people live in the rural areas and go to work in the urban areas. To live in self-sufficiency, you must be willing to live in discomfort and poverty, as it is defined by urban society.  But the definition of poverty is a dollar amount, unrelated to a satisfaction quotient.  Hawk said, "We aren't missing anything out of our lives.  We aren't contributing to the madness of the use-it-up and throw away mindset."

Why is it that urbanites long to return to the "country" but negate the desires and needs of the folks who choose to live there permanently.  I have any number of glossy magazines whose main purpose is the glorification of the country life, seemingly relegated only to those who can afford to have a second home. However, it is the person close to the land, not the visitor, who really knows it.  As Francine said, "There is a simple pure joy in picking ripe plums within a shady tree in mid-July."

 Rural homestead property is often referred to as "wildcat development," as if it was not as good somehow as urban development, just because it is not as controlled and more importantly, because it does not produce much income for the county.  "Rural areas don't pull their own weight, fiscally," said the late Maeveen Behan, former head of the County's Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. Even so, should money be the bottom line?  Apparently not, as the open space provided by the less dense areas of the county, especially the ranch country of the Arivaca and Altar Valleys, has risen to the top of desired land for conservation purposes. Maybe distance was a plus after all.

What does it mean to be a homesteader in today's world?  From talking to the neighbors, I found that ruralists are a breed apart.  Many people can be happy in the urban setting, providing perhaps one aspect of life and depending on others for all their other needs.  Buying meat in a plastic package, salad in a plastic package, mattresses in plastic packages, even books (I have found) in plastic packages.  No need or desire to know what went into the making of the item before the plastic shroud went on it. Total dependence on division of labor where every need is satisfied by a specialist.  But, "everything is somebody else's problem, and solving it feels like a hassle rather than LIFE," Francine noted.  In a society that elevates comfort to a religion, this lifestyle is frequently uncomfortable, sometimes dangerous to your health.  When she chose to come to Arivaca "on the edge of America," Francine wanted to "prove her competence to herself, to know she could provide the basic necessities of life--food and housing--to herself and her kids, from scratch, from the earth."  In this setting, she said, "I feel more alive, working out my own arrangements with nature, finding my own place in the universe."  

This was originally published in 2000.  I noticed some changes in attitude that have happened since then.

Thanks to Katherine Grantham, Francine Pierce and Hawk Clinton Lopez for their thoughts on homesteading

References: _The Good Life_ by Helen and Scott Nearing; _By the Shores of Siver Lake_ by Laura Ingalls Wilder;  BLM records and maps

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S. Fred Noon, Attorney at Law July 2023

Samuel Frederick Noon (S.F. or Fred) was born in San Jose, California in 1879, but came with his family to Oro Blanco, AZ at the age of one. His parents were Dr. Adolphus and Emma Noon, who had come to the area because of mining interests and the potential for a new start in a growing state. Dr. Noon practiced medicine, raised cattle, and mined in the Oro Blanco-Nogales area until his death in 1931 at the age of 93.

When S. Fred Noon was a child, the town of (new) Oro Blanco was a stage stop with hotel, store, and mill for the surrounding mining district. As a town, it lasted only a few years, but during that time Fred grew up and attended the one-room school. Along with his four older brothers and younger sister, Fred became bilingual in English and Spanish. This upbringing influenced him for life. When he moved with his parents to up-and-coming Nogales in 1898, he was effectively a self-educated man with a strong interest in law.  In those days you “read law” under an established attorney and then passed the bar, which he did in 1904.  Fred’s law career began in the same year that the Santa Cruz County Courthouse was dedicated, and where he worked for many years.  Fred was appointed Clerk of the District Court in Nogales when Santa Cruz County was established and served there five years. He then was elected District Attorney in Nogales where he served three terms, besides two terms as County Supervisor. He was on the Board of Education and also served as the U.S. Vice-Consul in Nogales, Sonora, besides having a private practice of his own.

In 1903, Fred joined Brodie’s First Cavalry Troop of Nogales, a National Guard unit that was activated to assist in quelling violence during a miners’ strike in Morenci.  Apparently they had to buy uniforms but never got paid by the government for their trouble. 

During the years that Fred Noon practiced law in Nogales, he was the attorney for a number of people who had dealings with the Land Office (now BLM). The Mexican land grants in the area had been processed through the Court of Private Land Claims and either disallowed or allowed.  If they were disallowed, the property was essentially up for grabs, and in some areas homesteading was opened up.  But from the time of the Gadsden Purchase until the early 1900s, people had been living on these “land grants” without documents of possession. Many of them were Mexican-Americans and some spoke little English even if they had been born in the United States.  Fred Noon became the attorney for a number of people whose land holdings were in jeopardy. Real estate entrepreneurs saw it as an opportunity for cheap land, while Fred had sympathy for hard-working small ranchers and farmers who had lived on the land, sometimes for 30 years or more. He helped them work through the legal system to obtain clear title to their land and forestall the onslaught of land grabbers. Among those in the Arivaca area were Phil Ward and Rita Sanchez de Mora. Rita had married an alleged Mexican citizen, and although she was born in the U.S. and had farmed in Arivaca valley for years and even held water rights, her tenancy was threatened because of her husband’s legal status. Fred was able to show that his status should have no bearing on her property rights because she had not moved with him to Mexico.  In those days, if a woman citizen married an alien and went to his country with him, she lost her American citizenship, but if she could prove that she had stayed in the U.S. she could retain it; however, there was a question about this for some time. In fact, Fred showed that Mora had probably been born in the U.S. but spent his childhood in Mexico. People didn’t always have the paperwork necessary to protect their rights.  Times were different then, but Rita kept her homestead.

As District Attorney in Nogales, S. Fred Noon was front and center in any case of local interest. One of the more widely publicized cases involved the murder of Tomás Elias by the sons of Charles Proctor. (see the Connection, January 2000)  As District Attorney, he prosecuted the case, which ended up finding the Proctors not guilty by reason of self-defense.

S. Fred Noon practiced law in Nogales until 1925, when he moved his family to San Diego, California.  He opened a law practice in 1926 and practiced law until almost the day he died at the age of 86. During the years in San Diego he drew on his upbringing in Southern Arizona and fluency in Spanish learned growing up in Oro Blanco.  Fred served as counsel to the Mexican Consul. According to an article by Leland Stanford, Fred was considered to be one of the best authorities on Mexican law in the United States.  He was considered a friend of the Mexican-American community and would often give free legal counsel to San Diegans who spoke no English. In this capacity, he plays a bit part in Rain of Gold by Victor Villaseñor, providing legal help to Victor’s bootlegging grandfather, the main character.   “The potpourri of Spanish-Mexican-American traditions had influenced California’s legal milieu” and into that system Fred Noon found a niche that suited his talents as well as his desire to support justice.

In 1931, Fred Noon was retained as an attorney for the group of Mexican-American parents who filed suit against the Lemon Grove school system against the segregation of their children. This was actually the first successful legal challenge to school segregation in the United States.  Although in this time period there was a large influx of Mexicans immigrating legally into the United States, about 95% of these children had been born in the United States.  The parents group had gone to the Mexican consul in San Diego, and he referred them to Fred Noon and A.C. Brinkley for legal help. They successfully won the case in favor of the students.  A documentary film was made of this case, called “The Lemon Grove Incident.”

Fred and his wife Natalie had four children:  three daughters, Edith, Virginia and Sarah, and one son, Bonsall, all born in Nogales.  Bonsall also became an attorney and practiced with his father in their firm, Noon and Noon. Bonsall became a Superior Court Judge in San Diego.

The Noon family is rightfully proud of “Uncle Fred” who not only provided an example of a lifetime supporting justice, but who also provided a window on Oro Blanco in the 1880s. He took pictures of Oro Blanco in the days when few people had cameras, and often wrote letters of reminiscence regarding his childhood days to his namesake nephew, Fred C. Noon of Arivaca, my father.

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Las Guijas Valley June 2023

Stop awhile at milepost 6 on the Arivaca Road and look northwest towards Baboquivari Peak. Below is Las Guijas valley, a quiet place now with just a few cows here and there. Maybe a prospector or two, still. In times past it has been home to Native Americans, including the Hohokam, who left their rock art. It was a natural route for travelers coming up the Sopori Wash heading for the Altar valley. Mines dot Las Guijas Mountains, which trend southeast-northwest and lie between that valley and Arivaca. The hills on the north side of the valley are also well mineralized. Early prospectors dug anywhere that minerals were visible, and it was not too far from here, at Cerro Colorado, that the Heintzelman silver mine was developed in the 1850s. Las Guijas means “pebbly” or “rubble” or conglomerate in Spanish, and refers to the prevalent geology in the area north of Arivaca. (Most of the place names in the Arivaca area, whether Spanish or English, have to do with mines or mining.)

Some of the earliest gold mining or prospecting in the area was done by placer mining along Las Guijas Creek, at least as early as the 1860s. Placer mining refers to the panning for gold that has washed out of nearby mountains, either by hand using a pan, or in later years with more sophisticated equipment. In contrast, the lode mining in the hills surrounding the creek often included silver as well as the gold-bearing veins. In the mid-1870s, reports in the Tucson newspapers of newly located mining claims in Las Guijas Mountains were quite common. It can safely be said that the whole mountain range had been gone over with a fine-toothed comb by 1880. Many of the miners were working shallow ore deposits that were soon mined out. Still, rain uncovers more ore as time goes on.

Toward the east end of Las Guijas mountains is a canyon and mine known as the Pesqueira. Governor Ignacio Pesqueira of Sonora had his soldiers and their families live there for several months when he was hiding out in the United States during the French occupation of Mexico in the mid 1860s. The Governor himself was in Tubac. There were at least 300 people and 1000 head of cattle and horses and this may have had a great environmental impact on the Guijas valley. It was very likely that his soldiers prospected in the area as they waited to return to Mexico. They built houses, corrals and other constructions with rocks. Nearby Durazno Canyon is so named because of peach trees planted by settlers, possibly these soldiers. Much later there was even a school near the Pesqueira.

In the 1870s, prospecting picked up with the suppression of Apache attacks. John McCafferty, after which McCafferty Canyon is named, built up a nice mining operation on the south side of Las Guijas a few miles from Arivaca. The Albatross and the Amado Mine are other repeated operations. A few claims were patented there. But, back to the valley itself...

In the 1880s, Italian immigrant John Conti (also known as Gion or Jean) homesteaded the Calera Ranch, near the Arivaca Road at milepost 5, where he raised sheep and even had a small store. La Calera Ranch was so named because of lime deposits (cal in Spanish) found in the vicinity. It extended all the way from the top of the ridge at milepost 3, where Caviglia Tank is located, north to the upper end of the Guijas valley. After Conti, the Manuel Zepeda family is said to have owned it, after they left Mexico during the 1910 Revolution. Another Italian immigrant, Bernardo Caviglia, was the next owner, and for a time his son Angelo and family lived there, as did the Encinas family, cousins of the Caviglias. They continued the store, as there were plenty of neighbors. To supply water for his Calera Ranch, Angelo had Caviglia Tank built. Luis Romero, long-time cowboy for the Arivaca Ranch, remembered a number of other families who lived down in Las Guijas, including the Ahumada, Carrillo, Moreno, and the Martinez families. Just west of the Calera Ranch, the Oros family settled sometime around the First World War. Manuel and Carmen Oros raised cattle and Manuel Jr. remembered riding bareback across the hills, unhindered by fences. His older sister married Norberto Montaño and they had a ranch west of the Oros', called the Cumaro, because there are a lot of hackberry trees in the valley. Norberto drove the Sopori school bus, and in the 1930s there were enough students in Las Guijas for him to make a trip through the area. On old maps this ranch was misspelled Montana, but current topo maps have been corrected. Rancho Seco used the Montaño ranch’s picturesque pole-filled corral. Now Pima County owns that property, which includes an old house in bad condition and usually protected by rattlesnakes! Towards the west end of the valley, the Martinez family had a small ranch, and their well is still in use. Descendants still live in Tucson and remember their family stories of the area. When the small ranchers began to sell out in the 1930s and 1940s, most of the families left. Eventually the Chiricahua Cattle Company under Charlie Boice bought up and consolidated the little ranches in the Guijas valley. The CCC sold Rancho Seco to the Rowleys in the 1950s, and recently it has become part of Pima County’s open space acquisitions.

Some extensive placer mining happened during the Depression. During 1932-33 around 100 men were placer mining in Las Guijas Creek in an attempt to eke out a living. Guijas Creek only runs during rainy seasons, and apparently it was running that winter. In August 1933, a large-scale placer operation was started, using water from a well.

The most significant mining operation in Las Guijas was a tungsten mine. Tungsten became important with the advent of electric lights, which used tungsten in the filaments. Fred Noon remembers Arivacans going over to pick up "float" or surface mineral, during World War I. The General Electric Company got into the act and bought the mineral rights to the tungsten deposit. Thereafter mining for tungsten continued under several companies and individuals who leased it from GE. For a time there was a store at Las Guijas mine, with a Chinese owner. The best-known operator of the tungsten mine in the 40s and 50s was the flamboyant Lester Fernstrom, a hard drinking saxophone player who reportedly flew a small plane into the Guijas valley and set it down near the mine. Even into the 50s, perpetual prospector (the late) Bill Coplen remembered when the mine produced 25 tons a day of high grade ore steadily for three months, when he worked it for a California company. Bill had a lovely gold nugget which came from “somewhere” in the Guijas.

The most frequent comment I have heard about the Guijas valley is how beautiful it was, and still is, with its backdrop of Baboquivari Peak. It’s hard to imagine the number of people who once lived here. (Notice how many of the early settlers came from Mexico during its episodes of unrest.) There are lots of stories still to learn about Las Guijas and the people who have spent time there.

References: Arizona Bureau of Mines bulletins, stories told by Fred Noon, Bill Coplen, Ray Caviglia, Manuel Oros and the Martinez family.

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Bear Valley May 2023

Bear Valley—its isolation is an integral part of its character. In the old days and now, it is hard to get to, but well worth the trip. Over on the west side of the Atascosa Mountains west of Nogales lies a unique and beautiful valley adjoining a rugged canyon lined by rock spires. Sycamore Canyon is just one of several so-named in Arizona. Exploiting its beauty in the interest of tourism is not my intent, but today it stands to lose much of its charm to the trash left by migrants moving north through its convenient canyons. That and commercial interests as well: in the early 2000s an electric line was proposed but fortunately failed to materialize.

Bear Valley is an extraordinary place, extending from Apache Pass in the north down to Sycamore Canyon and then southeast to Bear Valley Ranch that faces the craggy ridges of the Pajarito Mountains on the Mexican border. It may best be viewed as you come east from Ruby, up and over the hills. The panorama of the Atascosa Mountains, Hell’s Gate and Bartolo Mountain on the north is breathtaking. Keep looking as you go along the knife-edged ridge that slopes off into Sycamore Canyon, but your driver should be someone who can resist a view. This is an old trail to Oro Blanco from Nogales, through Peña Blanca, and the road is little more than a trail today. Before there was a Nogales, another trail went through Hell’s Gate and Peck Canyon to Calabasas. Some say Father Kino took that trail when he first came north following the Tres Bellotas road. Once upon a time there were black bears in Bear Valley, hence the name.

Permanent water is what attracted people to the area. The first known Anglo settler in the area was John “Yank” Bartlett, who came to Arizona in 1869, along with Henry “Hank” Hewitt. Yank’s son Johnny told Forest Ranger Roscoe G. Willson this story: “Yank had been a scout with Gen George Crook in the Apache warfare but tiring of that uncertain life had decided to start a horse and cattle ranch on which to spend his declining years. He had talked the idea over with his friend Hank Hewitt and Hank was all for it. ‘Go ahead, Yank,’ he said, ‘and when you find a likely spot I’ll join you.’ Yank knew just the spot. He had been prospecting in the Pajaritos with the famous Pete Kitchen a year or two previously and Pete had said then: ‘If I didn’t already have my Potrero ranch built up I’d locate in Bear Valley myself...In Bear Valley, he told Yank, ‘you’ll be about as safe from Indians as any place I know of. There ain’t no place real safe from ‘em, but they don’t often get that far west.’ When the Apaches were forced onto reservations in the early 1870s,Yank located in Bear Valley and sent for Hank to join him.

Yank himself was a small man and a fearless Indian fighter. But Hank was a husky 6-footer with a reputation for great physical strength, hardiness and bravery. Yank needed Hank and together they made a competent team for the pioneering venture. Hank soon arrived and they built a comfortable adobe cabin and corral at what is know to this day as the Hank and Yank Spring, in Bear Valley, about five miles from the Mexican Border. They soon stocked up with cattle and began to breed a few horses.” Yank married a Mexican lady (Gertrudes Marques Ward was actually a widow) and started building a stage stop that he named (new) Oro Blanco, where his wife and children spent most of their time. Miners coming into the region frequently established their families in this town, located 8 miles south of Arivaca.

Johnny’s story continued: “Ranchers and wayfarers from Mexico occasionally passed by the Bear Valley ranch, and Yank noticed that some of them cast a covetous eye on their fine horses. ‘We’ll get raided by Apaches or renegade Mexicans on account of those horses,’ Yank told Hank one day...Sure enough, the raid came...”

Yank had arranged for a horse dealer to come out from Tucson and view a few head of horses that they had for sale. He, Hank, and Virgilio Martinez, a cowboy, gathered the horses into a corral. During the gather, a couple of Mexicans came by and had a few words with Martinez. “That evening as they sat in the house, talking desultorily in the glow of the fireplace, shadowy figures crept up toward the building...They were the two Mexicans...Each was armed with a rifle and pistol...After peering into the firelit interior of the house and seeing only Yank and Virgilio, the leader concluded that Hank was not there, having seen him ride off westward earlier in the day...But they were mistaken. Hank, “el grandote,’ had circled back from the Oro Blanco trail in the dusk, unsaddled behind the house and was then seated in a dark nook beside the fireplace.

Hank had just finished cleaning his six-shooter, reloading it and was holding it in his hand when rifle shots suddenly came from outside. Martinez fell off his bench with a bullet through his brain and Yank sprawled on the floor with blood running down his face. Hank edged more closely into the dark nook and waited...In a moment the leader appeared in the doorway...The two men they had shot from through the window lay on the floor apparently dead. The leader...satisfied that the only occupants of the cabin were dead...leaned his rifle against the table...Hank put a shot through the leader’s brain and before he hit the floor, brought down the other hombre so quickly that neither had time to discharge his gun...

Hank saw at once that Virgilio was dead, but to his surprise, as he went toward him, Yank rolled over, sat up and wiped at the blood running into his eyes...”Why,” Hank said as he finished washing off Yank’s face and head, ‘there ain’t no bullet hole in your head. You was just creased, that’s all.’

Yank looked around and saw the two bandits’ bodies on the floor, and that of Virgilio. The sight stunned him for a moment, and then he said, ‘There ain’t nothin’ like havin’ a shootin’ sonofagun for a partner, Hank, It’s too bad they got Virgilio, but they sure paid for killing him.’”

It was Yank’s son Johnny, who was the hero of another close call for Yank. That time, in 1886, homesteader Phil Shanahan was killed by some of Geronimo’s band in one of their last raids off the reservation. That is a well-known story.

Yank gave up or lost his Bear Valley ranch, possibly in the wake of this sad experience, but he stayed in the area and continued mining in the vicinity of California Gulch. It was there in 1905 that he was killed, on a runaway ore wagon on steep Monarch Hill, on what he had said would be his last trip out. After which the road was closed and re-routed.

In the late 1870s mining and prospecting was beginning to pick up in the Oro Blanco and Pajarito mining districts and people were moving into the area. The trails through Peña Blanca canyon and Peck Canyon were being used to get from Calabasas and the Santa Cruz valley to the mining camps. Alonzo Noon and his wife Annie built a home in Peña Blanca canyon, which came to be called Noonville. A Post Office was established there but for only two years, after which they moved back closer to Oro Blanco. John J. Noon had located the St Patrick mine in the same area and made a little money, after which he moved to Nogales. The Pajarito district did not have as large a mineralized area as the Oro Blanco, which has had extensive but mostly small-scale mining over the years (except for Montana Camp).

Bear Valley Ranch then fell into the hands of John W. Bogan, who was one of the partners in the Arivaca Land and Cattle Company. He homesteaded it and stocked it with cattle and horses in 1887; just about the time he was married. It is said that he and Nonie Bernard were run out of business by mountain lions. “They tried belling the colts, but when the lions decided the bells were harmless, things got worse. The lions hunted the colts by the sound of the bells.” Bogan did not live at remote Bear Valley, but kept cowboys there. In the days of open range, cattle belonging to Alonzo Noon and Billy Marteny also ran in this part of the world. In 1903, Alonzo Noon found that half of his cattle were lost to rustlers from Mexico, a fact of life in this part of the country, but it devastated him. In his diary, Marteny describes numerous visits to round up cattle in the corrals in Bear Valley. Working in this rough country wore him out and he sold to Phil Clarke in 1919, moving to flatter land in the Altar Valley. In 1906 everything had changed when the Tumacacori Forest Reserve was created. Grazing allotments were determined in 1908, fencing pastures and dividing up what had been public domain. Bear Valley Ranch remained in the Arivaca Land and Cattle Company until the 1930s when the Chiricahua Cattle Company, owned by the Boice family, bought it. They held onto it for a few years and then sold to Roy Place. His son, Meade, managed it through the 1950s. Jackie Parker, then married to Meade, remembers it as a glorious place, perfect for raising children. She loved the isolation and natural beauty of the canyons and mountains. In the early 60s, the Claude Hensons bought it from the Place family and owned it until 1968 when they sold it to the Tatums. Bear Valley Ranch has been owned by the Tommy Bell family since the early 1980s. To this day, the ranch does not have electricity (except by generators), so there are no existing poles to damage the view.

It was in the 1940s and 50s that Sycamore Canyon became known to Leslie N. Goodding, a noted Arizona botanist. Rainfall on the hills and ridges, from Mule Ridge to Apache Pass and the west side of the Atascosas is funneled down into Sycamore Canyon wherein it is channeled into a narrow canyon whose character is most unusual. Geologically it is interesting, but botanically it is unparalleled. Some plants are extremely rare, going beyond just endangered. Recognizing this, Goodding began an effort to preserve it. The Forest Service’s multiple use policy had allowed cattle to water at Yank’s Spring, Christmas tree logging by Ruby residents in the watershed above, and prospecting of any possible mineralized outcrop. Goodding had catalogued the rare plants and noted the unusual animals and feared for their loss. Calling it “A Hidden Botanical Garden,” he began a campaign that took him everywhere, even into ladies clubs. One asked him, “Why bother about this canyon since it is so rough that nothing can happen to it?” This was Goodding’s reply, and it still holds true today. “Let it be said in the beginning that preservation is far superior to restoration. Too frequently rare species of plants and animals as well as geological and archaeological remains are sacrificed in the name of progress...There is a place for industry, but there should also be certain spots where we may witness the works of nature unspoiled. For several reasons, Sycamore Canyon is one of these spots.”

The Forest Service finally agreed with him, and established the Goodding Research Natural Area (545 acres) in 1970. A few years later, in 1984, in recognition of the still roadless and wild nature of the area surrounding Sycamore Canyon, the Pajarita Wilderness was established which increased the protected area to 7420 acres and removed it from grazing and mining. Now the canyon is being trampled by ever-increasing numbers of migrants who know nothing of the boundaries of Wilderness areas. For them, it is a convenient route north. Fences around Nogales and Sasabe, and now a Wall, have pushed the travelers into the mountainous area of the Pajaritos and Cobre Ridge, where it is harder for the Border Patrol to find them. In fact, the canyons of the Pajaritos have been used by native Americans for centuries and in the late 19th and early 20th century by Yaquis coming north to get away from the Mexican government (this is another story.) Difficult terrain notwithstanding, the current migrants are using canyons as a way to travel north and be undetected. But their numbers create wide trails, which damage the “protected” plant species in the narrow canyon bottoms. That and increasing use by tourists who follow the same trails.

Damage to the watershed of Sycamore Canyon by roads created by the potential power line builders was a bigger threat. The area around Yank Bartlett’s homestead was fenced off and a bridge built over Sycamore Canyon by the turnoff to the parking area. They say it was because an endangered fish was found there.

In 2021, Trump's very permeable border WALL came close to Sycamore Canyon. A road was bulldozed across it where the boundary is, in the lower reaches. But so far there is no Wall across Sycamore Canyon.

References: Several “Arizona Days and Ways” articles by Roscoe Willson, published in the Arizona Republic. Thanks to Sandy and Jackie Parker, the Hensons and George Bell.

“Why Sycamore Canyon in Santa Cruz County should be preserved as a nature sanctuary or natural area,” by Leslie N. Goodding.

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Masons in the Old West April 2023

Masonry, also called Freemasonry or the Masons, is a fraternal organization that had great effect on social life in the American West. In recent years, since the publication of Dan Brown’s book, Da Vinci Code, it has become unduly associated in the minds of some people with secret or even occult practices. Except for one year as a Rainbow Girl, back in 1960, I personally have had no association with the Masons or any related organization. However, I do know that the “secrets” involved in it had to do with the betterment of self and society. The Masons, Eastern Star, Shriners and other Masonic organizations have been extremely valuable additions to American society. There are over two million Masons in the United States and they provide charitable monies and work to many projects. Even more important, they provide a way for people to improve themselves and the world they live in. "The mission of Freemasonry is to promote a way of life that binds like minded men in a worldwide brotherhood that transcends all religious, ethnic, cultural, social and educational differences; by teaching the great principles of Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth: and, by the outward expression of these, through its fellowship, its compassion and its concern, to find ways in which to serve God, family, country, neighbors and self."

Anyone in the Masons would know that if I was a Rainbow Girl, I probably had a relative in the Masons, and this would be true. My great grandfather joined the Masons in Provo, Utah in 1872, and was active all his life. He joined the Masons for the same reasons others did--because it was the main social and charitable organization (outside of churches) in the mining camps in the West. When they moved from Provo to the Tintic Mining District he organized another lodge there.

The Masonic Order is a fraternal organization that dates back several centuries and had its origins in the construction guilds of Europe. Building tools like those used by medieval stonemasons are evident in its symbols. The Masons are organized into Lodges and once a man is a member he is recognized as a brother anywhere in the world. Membership in the Masons requires a belief in certain ideals, including charity, equality, morality and service to God, although it is not a religious organization. Members take part in elaborate secret ceremonies, which has led outsiders to speculate on their motives and intentions. However, this is part of the attraction of the organization. Masonry as we know it developed in England and Scotland throughout the 17th-19th centuries. The grand Lodge of England was united in 1717, and lodges quickly spread throughout the British Isles. Many of the American founding fathers, like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, were Masons, hence the symbolism on the American seal and dollar. Besides the Masons, there are a number of somewhat affiliated organizations such as the Eastern Star (for women), Rainbow Girls & Job’s Daughters, DeMolay (boys) and others.

The symbols and rites in Masonry are most important because they point the individual toward the spiritual realm where the ideal life is conceived. They may be couched in secrecy, but to the individual member, as part of a like-minded group, they assist in the positive development of the whole person.

According to University of Exeter history professor Roger Burt, who has studied the influence of Masonry on the mining industry, the Masons were not elitist. Members included foreigners and blue collar members, not necessarily rich, although some were. Its emphasis on equality was a factor in the movement of laborers into the middle class. Men could move up in society if they were a part of the Masons. This was a way to network with others in your business, to get a job, or have a social life. Although it started with the construction guilds, Masonry eventually accepted other professions, such as miners, as members. Mining communities in England were cemented together through membership in the masons. Every town had Masons, Odd Fellows or Foresters. Members received a certificate that granted you access to all the benefits wherever you might go. When the Cousin Jacks (miners) from Cornwall immigrated to the United States, they immediately found a lodge to join. Moving to Nogales in 1898, Dr A.H. Noon joined the lodge there, although there was not one in Oro Blanco or Arivaca. To the pioneers, the Masons provided respectability, support, spiritual fulfillment, fellowship, ritual, social stability, insurance, and as a result, strengthened civil society. It bridged economic and social groups. Volunteerism was promoted. Many cemeteries have Masonic sections. Looking around the West, you can usually find the Masonic Hall appearing as the largest building in town, or at least rivaling the largest church in size. In Tucson, the old Masonic Hall is a large building just behind the old Carnegie Public Library building, now used as the Children’s Museum. Perhaps the Masons raised the standard of construction in the towns of the West. One might find it difficult to gauge just how important the Masons were in creating the society we live in.

The intent of this article is to present one of the influences that existed as a civilizing and unifying force in what we may think of as the Wild West. Masonry provided both of these. There were some negative elements, including racial divisions, which caused a separate branch of Masons to be formed for the African American in 1784 and there are still many chapters of Prince Hall Freemasonry. Exclusivity and cronyism could occur. Some churches found Masonry to be a competitive force, although it didn’t have to be, and many members also attended a church. But on the whole, positive influences were paramount.

References: “The Secret History of Freemasonry: its origins and connection to the Knights Templar” by Paul Naudon; Mining History Conference paper by Roger Burt of the University of Exeter in England.

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The Ortiz Land Grant Part One and Two

March 2023

In the latter part of the 18th Century Arivaca was not inhabited but was being used as a way station for travelers. Apaches were raiding both O'Odham and Spanish. People stayed near the presidios at Tucson and Tubac. After being moved north to Tucson in 1776, a presidio was reestablished at Tubac in 1787, about the same time that a new indian policy was being worked out. This was to have long-lasting effect on relations with the Apaches. Viceroy Galvez decided to exploit the Apache desire for horses, guns, liquor and other items of Spanish origin. He would make sure the firearms were defective and the liquor strong. Those who refused to be pacified would meet with strong military opposition. In 1791, Pedro de Nava, commander of the western side of the Provincias Internas, issued new instructions regarding Apaches to the presidio commanders. These had an effect on relations with the Apache, some of whom began moving near the presidios in what was called "establecimientos de paz." There these "tame" Apaches received food, etc. With the lessening of the Apache threat, a few Spanish settlers began to return to the area around Tubac. This included Toribio Otero, who had the first real land grant.

After the turn of the 19th century more settlers decided to formally apply to the Spanish government for land grants. One of these was Agustín Ortiz, who had left Arizpe, Sonora with his wife, María Reyes Peña, and come north. Their older son, Tomás, was born in Arispe and second son, Ignacio, in Tubac. From her first marriage, Maria had three girls who took the Ortiz name. In 1812, while residing in Tucson, Augustín petitioned for a land grant at Arivaca. The petition was posted. No one came forward to contest the grant, so an auction was held. Ortiz made the highest bid and was granted the land. (Information about this land grant was produced as testimony in a land ownership claim submitted by Charles Poston in 1880 to U.S. Surveyor General John Wasson. All the documents in Spanish were translated and entered as part of the testimony.)

Agustín Ortiz began to run cattle and horses on the grant, making improvements such as a house, corral and water catchments, but he passed away only five years later, in 1817. The sons continued his work and in 1820 also applied for a grant of land at La Canoa. However, the Revolution intervened and Mexico became independent from Spain in 1821. Mexico could not afford to continue to pacify the Apache, so they returned to raiding. Despite this, the sons wanted to keep the land. In order to obtain a legal Mexican grant for the Arivaca land, Tomas and Ignacio made application in 1833. Apparently the original papers granting title to their father had been lost or destroyed. They had to provide what documents and testimony that they could.

The following entry appeared in the treasurer's book at Arispe, Sonora: "that on page 85th of the manual book corresponding to the year 1812, the following entry is found: Oct 10 - charged- seven hundred and ninety nine dollars, five reales and nine grains paid to this royal treasury by Don Jose Carrillo, in the name and as an attorney of Don Augustín Ortiz, a citizen of the presidio of Tucson, in the following manner: 747 dollars and 3 rs. as the highest bid for which two square leagues for stock raising were recently sold to him at (public) auction by this government, which land comprises the old and depopulated town or settlement called Arivac, situated in the jurisdiction of Pimeria Alta..."

In addition to this document, the Ortiz brothers had to produce the testimony of witnesses to prove that the family had indeed been ranching in Arivaca between 1812 and 1833. Three witnesses were Lorenzo Carrisosa, Jose Sanchez and Bernardino Madrid, residents of Tubac. They testified that Don Augustín Ortiz had kept the Aribac ranch settled and occupied until his death in 1817 and the sons had done so from that time on. Their testimony was taken by the Tubac alcalde, Atanacio Otero, at the Aribac ranch on June 3, 1833. He saw at that time the landmarks which marked the corners. They were as follows: "the one towards the north standing on the high pointed hill (divisadero) that rises on this side of the Tagito mine and borders on the Sierra de Buenavista; the one towards the South standing on this side of the Longoreña mine on a low hill next to a cañon covered with trees; the one towards the East standing up the valley from the spring, on a mesquite tree that has a cross cut in it and borders on the Sierra de las Calaveras; and the one towards the west standing at the Punta de Agua on a pointed hill (divisadero) opposite the Sierra del Baboquivari." The alcalde noted that, unfortunately, the original expediente containing the measurements had perhaps been lost. A grant for "two sitios of land for stock raising, which comprise the place called Aribac" was issued at Arispe on June 21, 1833, to Tomás and Ignacio Ortiz and their heirs, by Jose Maria Mendoza, Treasurer General of Sonora.

The land grant issued in 1833 to the Ortiz family was to remain in their hands for more than twenty years. The Ortiz brothers had homes in Tucson and Tubac as well as in Sonora and for much of that time served as absentee landlords of the Arivaca ranch. Interesting details regarding life on the Aribac land grant are revealed in testimony given to John Wasson, the Arizona Surveyor General in 1880: Santos Aguirre of Tubac stated that the Ortiz brothers were on the ranch and in possession of it until they were driven off by the Apaches. In 1824, three persons and a child were killed in the house. After this, the Ortiz brothers abandoned the place and went to Tubac. Aguirre did not know when this happened, but Nasario Ortiz (no relation) testified that he thought it was in 1824. He added that they did not return to take possession of the ranch in person but held possession by agents and returned from time to time. Jose Herreras stated that, besides having cattle and horses on the ranch, they or their employees cultivated the land and irrigated it. He claimed that the irrigation ditch was five or six miles long. Jose Maria Elias added that between 1846 and 1847 persons occupied the ranch with the consent and under the direction of the Ortiz brothers although they themselves did not go there.

Charles Poston stated that in 1856 at the ranch there were the remains of a mansion (partly habitable) and outbuildings, the foundations of a large adobe corral and an acequia or irrigation ditch about three miles long. (He noted that by 1880 the buildings were in ruins.) There was some conflict as to the age of the buildings. Poston thought that the buildings were at least 25 years old in 1856 but J. Warner Davis thought they were only ten or fifteen years old. There is some reason to believe that the house was burned in 1853 when Tomas Ortiz, who was on his way from Tubac to Sonora, stayed in the house and went to sleep smoking a cigarette, setting fire to the building. Ortiz apparently escaped injury.

It is clear from the testimony that ranching in Arizona had its downside in the Mexican era because Apaches raiding had escalated. Ownership was contingent upon the ranch being used and abandonment for three consecutive years or more would invalidate their claim, except if there was verifiable trouble with Apaches. Apparently the Ortiz brothers continued to send employees to the ranch as often as they could, considering the dangers involved. An example of the dangerous conditions the settlers faced is documented in the following event which took place in 1851: In a report by Commandant Mariano Zurita of the military colony in Tucson, someone from the Arivaca Ranch reported that Apaches attacked a party of settlers who were traveling from Altar to Tucson. Although he complained of his troops being spread too thin, Zurita mustered enough men, including some Papagos under the command of Captain Luque, to successfully retaliate. They rescued those who had been taken captive but accidentally shot two. The animals and merchandise were recovered and then distributed to the soldiers as a reward!

Ortiz Land Grant Part Two

So what was going on in the 1800s after the Ortiz family obtained the Arivaca Land Grant, and before they sold it to the Americans? The Ortiz family, having lived so long in the Pimeria Alta, was connected by marriage to many of the "elite" families of the Tucson and Tubac presidios. For example, Tomás was married to Josefa Clementa Elias Gonzales, the daughter of Manuel Ignacio Elias Gonzalez, who had been Commandante of the Tubac Presidio. Their son, Jesus Maria Ortiz, was married to Encarnacion, the daughter of Captain Jose Antonio Comadurán, the Commandante of the Tucson presidio. They were also related to many other of the Sonoran families. This would explain their ability to obtain land grants, which were not available to the average person. According to Bradfute: in Mexico, "The acquisition of land was a matter of grace, not of right." Positions of administrative power were similarly dispensed.

A significant event occurred in 1828. The Mexican government expelled all Peninsulars or Spanish born people from Mexico, and that included the any so identified Franciscan padres from the missions. The churches were left with a limited number of priests, and soon they were no longer staffed. However, the mission property had to be watched and in the case of cattle, managed. Two of the Tumacacori Mission wheat fields were leased to Ignacio Ortiz. Tomás Ortiz made himself available, for a salary, to take care of the mission's assets, as best he could, given the Apache threat.

Besides Apaches, there was some trouble in the late 30s and early 1840s with the O'Odham who objected to Mexican gold miners who were moving into their territory and using their water for processing ore. The O'Odham made their objection to the Presidio Captain, but he couldn't do much about it, so they began to attack the Mexicans. This uprising lasted ten years, from 1834-44. Ignacio Ortiz was a miner, who recorded, in Pima County records, a mine in the Baboquivaris.

Politics in Mexico was totally chaotic in the 1830-40s. In an 1845 meeting, Tucson citizens said they had no confidence that the central government would protect them or support their presidio. They signed a document that said, "Our people feel that the nation has lost its sovereignty and independence. To say that we are Mexicans means nothing anymore." Tomas Ortiz was one of the signers.

When Mexico and the United States got into a state of war in 1846, people living in Tucson and Tubac suddenly had to deal with an influx of soldiers. The Mexican War lasted from 1846-48, and when it ended, Tucson and Tubac were still part of Mexico. Suddenly, however, gold was found in California! Many Sonorans went west to prospect, just as Americans were doing. This made it much easier for the Apaches to make successful raids. Ignacio's house in Tubac was reportedly attacked and burned by Apaches in 1848, with nine people killed. At that point all the Tubaquenos moved to Tucson and their presidio was shut down. Settlers such as the Ortiz family had to live in fear of ambush at any moment. (In the period 1868-71, John Spring reported that half of the non-Apache population of the Santa Cruz Valley had been killed by Apaches--and that was after American occupation.) In 1853, the American government bought a piece of land from Mexico, known as the Gadsden Purchase. This was the area south of the Gila River, to include flat land that could be used for a railroad to California.

The first Americans to come into the Gadsden Purchase territory were the military, railroad surveyors and miners. Charles Poston and his cohorts, Herman Ehrenberg and Samuel P. Heintzelman, bought the Arivaca land grant from Ignacio and Tomas Ortiz, who may have thought this was a good deal, after all they had been through. Poston made a payment of $1000 in 1856. In 1857, he and Ignacio went to California where Poston gave the other $1000 to him. On the way home, through O'Odham country west of Tucson, Ignacio was killed by natives. One might speculate that he was recognized as being one of the Mexican miners that they had been fighting for years. Tomás Ortiz died of natural causes in 1876, probably in Tucson.

The new owners incorporated the Sonora Exploring and Mining Company, with headquarters in Cincinnati. Poston promoted an area much larger than the 2 sitios actually granted, claiming some 17,000 acres, which would include the mineralized areas around Arivaca creek. Their mines were located at Cerro Colorado, 8 miles northeast of Arivaca. They hired a number of experienced German miners and recruited a number of young adventurous men to come west and work for them. One of these was Horace Grosvenor, an engraver, who made the first drawing in about 1858 of the new mining camp of Arivaca. Two buildings on the north side of Main Street still remain of that camp.* The Ortiz homestead area became known as Old Aribac, a ways west of the new town with its smelter. The mining and smelting operation had its troubles, due to the Panic of 1857, Apaches, and labor troubles, so it was sold in 1859 to Samuel Colt, the arms manufacturer. Troubles followed him too, and then he died in 1862. Several of the Cincinnati men were killed by Apaches, including Grosvenor, after the protective military presence went east to fight the Civil War. Poston closed the works down and left town. For some reason, he still believed he owned the land grant at Arivaca, despite the fact that the Company was sold.

Over the next few years, the land grant and its mines went through several different hands. Eventually the Apache threat was diminished and in 1876 miners and promoters began returning to the area in large numbers. They saw what appeared to be open land and began staking land claims and building a real town. Having not paid attention to Arivaca in several years, Poston returned in 1877 to reclaim the property he had so neglected. He filed a claim with the government, but then-residents objected, saying the land was open. John Wasson, the State Surveyor General, attempted to determine if the land grant was valid according to U.S. law and took testimony in 1880. His surveyor, George Roskruge, could not find the corners, but made a map and said "I put it where I thought it ought to be." Wasson granted title to grazing rights only, which angered Poston, who didn't actually have a good claim on the land any more. Many people left Arivaca since they apparently could not legally own the land. Some stayed on as squatters. Others got into the act: Albert Steinfeld, B.M. Jacobs and Pedro Aguirre incorporated the Arivaca (Arivac) Land and Cattle Company in 1882 and filed a claim. Poston gave up and sold his "rights" to them. By then, others in the Ortiz family were hiring lawyers and making claims. In 1886, however, the Arivaca was put up for sale for delinquent taxes. But the legal process went on: since this was only one of many land grants in Arizona and New Mexico that needed to have their validity proven, the federal government decided to set up the Court of Private Land Claims to litigate each land grant, one by one. By this time, it was 1891.

Henry O. Flipper, the first Black graduate of West Point, a retired soldier and practicing engineer in Nogales, was hired by the federal government to investigate the land grant claims of Southern Arizona, so as to present evidence to the Court. He could speak and read Spanish and knew the area. He went to the archives in Sonora and looked for all the paperwork that would have been filed. In the case of Arivaca, he didn't find anything from the Spanish era, but he did find a notation from the Mexican period, in the Toma de razon in 1833, when the brothers Ignacio and Tomas Ortiz had refiled on their father's grant. However, the description of the corners was so vague as to not be identifiable, so in 1893 the land grant was disallowed. It was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld that decision in 1902. The other land grant originating with the Ortiz family was La Canoa, which was confirmed and approved. The legality of the Arivaca land grant had been in question for almost thirty years. Once it was disallowed, the question of land ownership was at issue. After a few years, most of the land was opened to homesteading, and in the case of the town of Arivaca itself, a federal townsite patent was applied for and approved in 1916. People could then buy and own lots under the jurisdiction of Pima County.

References for Part One

Arizona (Territorial) Surveyor General, Journal of Private Land Grants

Officer, James E. Hispanic Arizona, 1536 - 1856

Wagoner, Jay J., Early Arizona.

Commandant Zurita's report courtesy of Father Kieran McCarty

References for Part Two

The Court of Private Land Claims, by Richard Wells Bradfute, University of New Mexico Press, 1975; Hispanic Arizona, 1536-1856 by James E. Officer; Friars, Soldiers and Reformers by John L. Kessell; A Frontier documentary: Sonora and Tucson, 1821-1848 by Kieran McCarty; Report of U.S. Surveyor General, John Wasson, re "La Aribac" land grant, Jan. 21, 1881; Transcript of the Court of Private Land Claims, Arivaca grant; and transcript of the U.S. Supreme Court, Arivaca grant.

*See the Arivaca Walking Tour map, on sale sometimes at the Artists' Coop and Farmers' Market.

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Old Arivaca Hotel February 2023

The Arivaca Hotel is getting a new roof! It is being renovated as one of the most important historic buildings on Main Street. Constructed in 1878, it was originally a Hotel and Stage Stop built by Oscar Machols and Adolph Lee to serve miners during the short 1870s Arivaca mining boom. Oscar was a Prussian immigrant, trained as a baker, who may have been acquainted with George Pusch, also a German. The latter became a real estate dealer in Southern Arizona and part owner of the Arivaca Land and Cattle Company. Oscar moved away by the late 1870s.

The smaller building (but equally tall) on the east side was originally a stable with a corral on the east side of it. This corral appears on the 1858 drawing of Arivaca town during the era of the Sonora Exploring and Mining Company. The Hotel was placed there at the entrance to town when the town buildings lining the south side of Main Street were being built in the 1870s. It is possible that the adobe blocks were retrieved from the smelter that the Company had built on Arivaca Creek. They may have been used in other buildings as well. There are no remains of the smelter, but near the creek the levels still exist on which the smelter was built.

By 1880 the hotel keeper was Camille Roullier, a French connection, who reportedly provided a good supper to guests. He had the hotel until 1882, when Arivaca’s mining boom was winding down, but by 1884 E.B. Hogan had become the hotel host. He was the nephew of John Bogan, the partner of Noah Bernard, who went on to own the Arivaca Land and Cattle Company, which eventually owned the Hotel and Mercantile.

I don’t have much information about the hotel in the late 1880s, but here is a story about a murder that happened at the Hotel in 1893: Frank Oury, the victim, was an exceptional, good looking young man whose parents, William S. Oury and Inez Garcia Oury were Tucson pioneers. Frank was born in Tucson in 1864. He grew up there and later graduated from Berkeley. His parents had passed away some years before and he had returned to stay in Tucson. In 1893 he was just beginning the profession of mining engineer, and was in Arivaca meeting with General R.H. Manning who had mining interests here. On September 19, the two men were in the Hotel, along with Pedro Miranda (the owner or manager) and Ignacio Ortiz. According to the Citizen: Three masked men entered the place and demanded money. Frank chose to grapple with the knife-wielding bandit nearest to him and seemed to be getting the better of the struggle when one of the others ran over to Frank, placed a gun against his ribs, and pulled the trigger. Frank continued to fight, following the bandit out the door, whereupon he was shot again, and this time the wound was mortal. A number of other shots were fired, but no one else was hurt. The bandits made their escape. One of the outlaws apparently had ties to someone in Arivaca. The search for them extended into Mexico. Eventually, four men were implicated in the murder. Tucson mourned the passing of its golden boy with an extensive funeral and daily articles in the newspapers, lamenting the loss of such a fine young man. Arivaca became known as the place where Frank Oury was killed.

Young John Bartlett ran it as a hotel in the early 1900s. His father was John “Yank” Bartlett, the founder of the town of Oro Blanco, 8 miles south of Arivaca. He had died in 1905 in an accident. Johnny sold the property to A.H. Noon, left there and moved to Arivaca. Johnny apparently managed the hotel for some time. He married Eloisa, the daughter of Teresa Celaya, and soon they moved to Tucson.

The Arivaca Land Grant, once owned by the brothers, Ignacio and Tomas Ortiz, had gone through many years of trouble after it was sold by them to the Sonora Exploring and Mining Company. All Mexican land grants had to go through a process of proving the validity of their boundaries and their ownership in order to be acceptable to the American property ownership regulations. The Arivaca land grant went through the Court of Private Land Claims, all the way to the Supreme Court. Its boundaries could not be verified so it was disallowed in 1902. Only after that could people file for homesteads in Arivaca Valley. There was a land rush in the valley by developers and current land holders.

Around 1904 the Hotel was acquired by Noah Bernard and George Pusch, another partner in the Arivaca Ranch. They used it as a rental, miners being always in need of habitation and a good meal. Bernard had been running a store in the current Gathering Space since the 1870s. George Pusch also acquired by homestead a quarter of a quarter section of land on which the hotel stood in 1911. He did this in the ways of real estate wheeler dealers by serving as assignee to someone else, and then ending up with the parcel. This parcel was thus removed from what had been determined in 1908 by a probate judge in Tucson to be the townsite of Arivaca (a full quarter section). In that parcel was the Hotel and the future Mercantile, thus they were removed from the Townsite, which was created in 1916 when the Arivaca Land and Cattle Company filed for a federal townsite on the remaining three quarters. The ALCC made Arivaca essentially a company town. The hotel continued to be used as a rental or hotel from then on. They built the Mercantile on its current location in 1912 and moved the Post Office to it as well. Frequently the person they hired to take care of the Store would also be in charge of the Hotel rental and even the Schoolhouse. For example, Phil Clarke was managing the Store when Gipsy Harper came to teach. He was apparently in charge of the School building as well as the Store and hotel. When the Mexican Revolution started in 1910, various cavalry troops were stationed in Arivaca for short periods of time. The officers would rent the Hotel. The troops would stay in tents. In 1917 the 10th Cavalry rented it for their Officers Quarters until the end of the Revolution in 1920. (For that reason it was probably not used by the cast and crew of the 1918 film “The Trail to Yesterday.” Mrs Jack McVey of Las Jarillas Ranch had met them on the train and encouraged them to come film in Arivaca and offered them the services of the local cowboys and horses.) After the military left, the building was used for years as a hotel and rental for teachers, sun seekers, and miners. A travel article by Bernice Cosulich in the Arizona Daily Star in 1929 says Arivaca had perhaps 60 people, a small hotel, a chapel in ruins, but you can get gas at the Mercantile!

The Arivaca Land and Cattle Company went bankrupt in the 1920s and passed through other hands. In 1931 the Ranch was sold to the Chiricahua Cattle Company, owned by the Boice family who had ranches all over southern Arizona. Charlie Boice was in charge of the Arivaca Ranch which still included the Mercantile and the Hotel. Next to the Hotel was a building (now La Gitana) that he used as a hay barn. In the late 1940s the Boices sold off several of their ranches, including the Tres Bellotas, the Jarillas, the Rancho Seco, and the K-X. Charlie Boice sold his portion to his brother Henry and son Fred and left town. In 1947, Melvin and Minerva Hoefle acquired the Hotel and used it as gambling parlor, dance hall and bar. In 1950 both parcels were sold to Sally and Fred McGinn, who used it as their home and held Church of Christ services in the front room. They also operated the Store and Post Office across the street. In 1954 the McGinns sold to Marge and Fred Schwanderlik and Anthony Prevor. Tony Prevor said the Store still had many of the old unsold items in it dating back to wagon days. He set out to fix up the Store and the house (by then no longer known as a Hotel). Unfortunately, in 1956, a fire burned the Store and everything in it, including the P.O. and mail. Early in the morning the townsfolk gathered to watch it burn, all the while helping Margie and Tony plan to recoup their losses. Their house had those big front rooms which were ideal for a Store. Tony went to Tucson and came back with a load of food to sell. Without missing a beat, Gene Casey and Fred Noon drove up to the abandoned town of Ruby, removed the Post Office boxes with the approval of Hugo Miller, the owner, brought them down to Arivaca and installed them in one of the front rooms. The old hotel became the Mercantile until Tony could rebuild the Store, a task that took him a couple of years. After that the hotel/Mercantile reverted back to being their Home for 50 years. Margie passed away in 1997 but Tony continued to live there until about 2008. After he passed away in 2011, the building was acquired by Arivaca Helping Hearts, a non-profit created by Connie and Bill Sparks to provide emergency funds to Arivacans in need. They named it Casino Rural, using it as a fundraising venue for Helping Hearts. The sign came down when Connie passed away. It is being managed by the current Board of AHH and is mostly being used for meeting space with two rooms for an Air B&B. Currently (Feb. 2023) there is a roof renovation project that is funded by a Community Development Block Grant through Pima County. Keeping up these historic buildings in Arivaca is an ongoing process requiring much effort, but it keeps Main Street looking pretty much like it did in 1916. Only better.

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Old Glory Mine January 2023

Down in The Lower Country, in a canyon that feeds into California Gulch, lies a mining camp that once upon a time had a population of at least 50, a store, mill, saloon, cemetery, reservoir, Post Office and even a school. Now the topographic map bears the words "Ruins." Old Glory camp was one of many small operations in the area below Ruby, but for a short while it was one of the more significant of the mines in the Oro Blanco district. The remains of the mill are about all that is left now, because it was built of stone. Even those walls are now falling.

Known by other names since the 1870s, the mining claims that made up Old Glory were filed on in April, 1894 by George Mullins for the Old Glory Gold Mining and Milling Co., incorporated in Los Angeles. The owners of this company were Jefferson Chandler, Shirley C. Ward, J. Paul Chandler, George Mullins and John S. Ward. Most likely the area had been previously mined, at least since the 1880s, because the previous names of the mining claims were noted as the Esperanza, the Diana, and La Francisca. Soon after, a water appropriation was claimed and recorded. A dam needed to be built in the canyon, which would hold enough water to process the ore.

The mine was on the south side of the canyon and the town grew up on the north side. The saloon and dwellings were a ways away from the mine, probably because of the noise of the stamp mill. For years a fig tree remained to remind us that someone once lived there.

The Post Office was established Jan 15, 1895 with William E. Ward as the first Postmaster. For some unknown reason the original name of the P.O. was Oldglory but it was changed to Old Glory in 1909. It was there on and off until Sept 30, 1911.

By the middle of 1895 the Old Glory project was large enough to be used as a reference point. For example, people spoke of the road between Nogales and Old Glory. An early Army map labeled that quadrangle, Old Glory.

The Oasis newspaper, having newly arrived in Nogales, made a trip to the Oro Blanco district in March 1895, to inspect the recent increase in mining activity, and reported: "The Old Glory is essentially a low grade ore proposition--the great bodies of ore being of such a grade that require reduction in great quantities for the most economical and profitable operation. The contemplated new ownership will connect all the workings in such a way that the ore can be handled expeditiously and cheaply, and put up a large mill to handle several hundred tons of ore daily The present reduction machinery at the Old Glory consists of two Griffin mills and six Triumph concentrators. Between the mills and the concentrators the pulp passes over plates which catch all the free gold and the concentrators reduce the pulp to a very small proportion of concentrates, yet saving all the mineral. The capacity of the plant is about fifty tons of ore daily; the the rock is so hard that the Griffin mill is hardly suitable for handling it. The steel shoes and dies are very expensive and wear out too rapidly; a new set is being required every two weeks which adds greatly to the cost of reduction. The expected change will do away with all this and make the Old Glory what it should be--one of the great bullion producers of Arizona.

The property is at present in charge of Mr. George Hilzinger, receiver. It is reported that the owners have enlisted additional capital that the debts of the company will be discharged, ample means devoted to development work and a new forty stamp mill put in to reduce the ore. With all this done the Old Glory will be all its name implied."

This hopeful prediction was not to be. By June, 1895 George Cheyney was appointed receiver and had taken charge of the property. (Cheyney was manager of Ruby and later was prominent in Tucson). In August the paper noted that Old Glory was starting up again, with Al Bernard as manager. From our perspective it's hard to know exactly what was going on, but it doesn't sound good. An 1897 publication noted that by that time "there was a twenty stamp mill which had not been operated for the last few months, owing to the inadequate supply of water. The dam is being raised and when the reservoir is filled with the summer rains, operations will be resumed. At that point Major E. Fechet was the Superintendent."

According to a Bureau of Mines publication: "this property was equipped with a mill that operated, whenever water was available, until 1898. In 1902, a 30-stamp mill and a water-impounding dam were built, but operations ceased in 1903. Approximately 2500 tons of ore that averaged $3.00 per ton was milled during 1902-03."

However, in 1905, G.W. Tower was managing the mine. The mine was worked sporadically until the 1930s when a family by the name of Foote spent some time there.

On and off was the phrase that best describes Old Glory. A low grade operation, the mine did not pay for itself or the elaborate facilities which were built. The Mill buildings were of stone and large enough to accommodate the mill. The walls were two feet thick, plastered and scored with lines to resemble blocks (like the Gathering Space building before it was plastered by Laurence Smets). There was a massive door on the east side through which you could drive an ore wagon. The south wall was built into the hill. Wood was brought in on burros to power the steam engine which powered the crusher. A tram brought ore from the top of the hill down to the mill. Water was provided by two dams in the canyon. The main dam stood for half a century, but it eventually washed out. Buoyed by the self importance, Old Glory looked better than it was. If it weren't for the substantial construction of the mill building, Old Glory would not remain long in our memory.

I remember Old Glory best from a spring-time trip after a winter of good rains. The ruined rock dam, which my grandfather had helped build, held pools of water. Moss and yellow flowers bordered the creek, shaded by willows and cottonwoods. Purple clusters of verbena marched up the hillside. It was especially hard to imagine the stamping of the ore crushers on a day when all I heard was bird song and the splashing of my children in the creek.

For more information about Old Glory, see also www.ringbrothershistory.com/oro_blanco.htm

© Mary Noon Kasulaitis

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The German Vanguard in Southern Arizona December 2022

Sometimes it is good to take a different perspective on history, so as to see things in a new light. It may not be well known that one of the largest ethnic groups (17%) in the United States claims German ancestry. That includes myself. One of my great grandfathers came from Hesse to Wisconsin in about 1852, to get away from warfare in Germany. So it is not surprising that persons with German origins were in the vanguard of exploration and development in the Pimería Alta or what we now call Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora. This is the land of the O’Odham, formerly called Pima Indians.

Spanish Era

In the name of God, Gold and Glory, the Spanish had claimed a part of North America that they called New Spain. A Papal Bull issued in 1493 by Pope Alexander VI had given the Spanish Crown the right to direct missionaries to locations that it wished to colonize. The Jesuit Order was directly responsible to the Pope, and their missionaries were chosen to come to the Pimería. Missionaries were used (to try to) pacify the natives, convert them and corral them in settlements. In our part of the world, in the early 1690s, the first missionary to enter the area was the Jesuit Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, who was not Spanish but an Italian from the Tyrolean Alps, educated in Austria and Germany. Ultimately a conflict between political allegiances in Europe would bring about the expulsion of the Jesuits from New Spain in 1767, but for years they were the vanguard.

There were few Jesuits in this area from Kino’s death in 1711 until 1731, when a contingent of European Jesuits arrived. Jesuits were expected to be intelligent, hardy, educated and devoted to God and their order. Many of these priests were Germans. Others were Swiss, Moravian, Austrian or others of Germanic origin, besides a few Italians and Spanish. What is extraordinary about these men are their writings-- the record of what they found here in the Pimería Alta. Several book length essays remain from this period, besides maps, many letters and shorter essays that describe the people, geology, and natural history of this area. The first-person, primary history of our area is from their perspective.

Felipe Segesser, who was Swiss, was one of the first and longer lasting missionaries in this area, arriving in 1731. He wrote The relation of Philipp Segesser: the Pimas and other Indians. (1737) The Moravian, Ignacio Xavier Keller, was another in the early group.

Jacob Sedelmayr, a Bavarian, who also arrived in the Pimería in 1731, did some of the earliest exploration in that period, composed maps and wrote a number of “relations” or essays directed to his superiors that describe the area. He provided the most extensive and valuable information for this early period before the Pima Revolt of 1751. He also wrote a Pima lexicon or dictionary which was destroyed in the Pima Revolt.

In 1751 the Pimas revolted against Spanish rule and Jesuit expectations. The Indians may have welcomed Father Kino and the Black Robes in the beginning, but when they experienced the actual effects of European rule, things changed. A few Europeans were killed, including Father Enrique Ruhen who died in the attack at Sonoyta (Lukeville). The Governor of Sonora blamed the revolt on the Jesuits. A large part of the problem is that the Indians were expected to work hard for the Europeans and if they did not, they might be beaten, probably by overseers who were of different tribes than their own. This did not sit well with the natives.

The resident Jesuits were removed to points south, and another wave of Jesuits arrived in the early 1750s. These included more Germans: Antonia Maria Benz, Bavaria, Franz Bauer (Pauer), Moravia, Joseph Och, Wurtzberg, Gottfried Middendorf, Westphalia, and Ignaz Pfefferkorn, Mannheim

Joseph Och, of Wurtzberg, had traveled to the New World with Pfefferkorn and Michael Gerstner of Wurtzberg. Och described their trip from Germany: first to Spain, where they were trained in the Spanish language and what to expect as missionaries, then to Mexico and overland to the Pimería. His fascinating published report is called: Missionary in Sonora, the travel reports of Joseph Och, S.J. 1755-1767.

Ignaz Pfefferkorn, who was from Mannheim, arrived with the group in 1751. He eventually wrote: Sonora: A description of the Province is the result of a keen observer and active mind. He was a violinist and this greatly impressed the Pimas. (One might note that German polka music greatly influenced Mexican music in the 1800s in Texas where there were German immigrants)

Juan or Johann Nentvig arrived in 1751 and was stationed in Saric, a few miles below the border south of Arivaca. He was able to survive the Pima Revolt at Tubutama with Fr. Sedelmayr. In the 1760s, he wrote a long essay, which became known as the Rudo Ensayo, because it was not finished to his liking, but it is considered a very accurate account of the Sonoran world. It is in the form of a flight over the province of Sonora. He also produced a wonderful map of the area.

The German Jesuits brought with them a devotion to Saint Gertrude or Santa Gertrudis, aka St Gertrude the Great, a German nun whose name was once attached to the mission at Arivaca but also became connected to a breed of red cattle in Texas.

So the German Jesuits were the first missionaries in this area. They were the first to map and describe the Pimería and to make sustained contact with the Indians. The most detailed information that historians have about this period is theirs, from their perspective. This is because their work was preserved in various archives and because some historians with a German background, such as Theodore Treutlein, saw fit to translate their work. Many of these works were published by the University of Arizona Press.

American Era

Jumping ahead to the American era: After the Gadsden Purchase in 1853, in which Southern Arizona was purchased from Mexico, Americans arriving in the area found a fort or presidio at Tucson, with a small population, and ruins of the presidio at Tubac that had been abandoned because of the Apaches. The first developers in what is now Southern Arizona were miners or mining companies.

The Sonora Exploring and Mining Company, headed up by Charles Poston and Col. Samuel P. Heintzelman, was located at Arivaca with headquarters at Tubac. Their mine was in or near the Cerro Colorado Mountains about 8 miles northeast of Arivaca. They brought in a number of Germans to perform the technical details of mining engineering and mapping. These included Herman Ehrenberg, Charles Schuchard, Frederick Brunckow and Guido Küstel. At this time the main university in the world to offer studies in mining engineering was the Royal Saxon School of Mining at Freiberg, Germany. Americans interested in a technical education also attended this school.

Herman Ehrenberg, a German engineer, who was born near Leipzig, came to Arizona with Poston in 1854 to explore for minerals. He collected specimens and made a map of the silver regions, which included the Arivaca and Tubac areas. He was an adventuresome person, having come to Texas in the 1830s, survived the Battle of Goliad, and returned to Germany where he wrote a book about his experiences, which attracted many Germans to emigrate to Texas. He was fluent in several languages. He studied mining engineering, then returned to the United States where he met up with Poston and provided the expertise for his exploratory trip. He made a lovely map of the silver regions of Arizona and reports for their company. There is a town called Ehrenberg, on the Colorado River that is named for him.

Col Heintzelman himself was a German-American from Pennsylvania. He read and spoke German, and coincidentally, Heintzelman is the guardian spirit in German mining lore who presided over mines. He was serving as the Commandant of the military post at Yuma where he met Poston and Ehrenberg and eventually joined them in forming the Sonora Exploring and Mining Company. He left Arizona to fight in the Civil War, and eventually became a General.

Frederick Brunckow was a Prussian mining engineer who became the administrator of the mine at the Cerro Colorado, and found the vein of silver that became what he named the Heintzelman Mine. Charles Schuchard was an artist and engineer who came west with a railroad survey team. He joined the Sonoran Exploring and Mining Company and illustrated their Reports. He made the first known illustration of Arivaca valley. Guido Küstel was an Austrian metallurgist, trained in Germany, who was hired to perfect the techniques of smelting of ore at the Heintzelman Mine. Afterwards he wrote a book on the subject of silver and gold extraction processes. Küstel brought his sister and her daughter to stay with him in Arivaca.

One event important in Arivaca history is the murder in 1861 by Mexican bandits at the Cerro Colorado of Charles Poston’s brother John Poston and two German employees, George Fischer and Peter Wedker. Their bodies were taken to Arivaca for burial, so the latter two are probably there still, even though John is not. (Contrary to popular legend he was never buried at the Cerro Colorado) An eyewitness, Raphael Pumpelly wrote about this event in his book, an excerpt of which is “Pumpelly’s Arizona,” published by the Palo Verde Press in Tucson in 1965. To learn mining engineering, Pumpelly, who was from Rhode Island and was not a German, had attended the Royal Saxon School in Freiburg, Germany.

These are just a few of the Germans who came to Arizona in the early years. Many of their works are available at the Pima County Public Library or by interlibrary loan.

© Mary Noon Kasulaitis

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Arivaca: A No Kind of Town. November 2022

It’s traditional. Arivacans just say no. This time it's no to gentrification: no to Kentucky-style horse pastures and rising property taxes. No to the potholes on the recent repaving job on Arivaca Road. Recently it was no to the Border Patrol checkpoint, we don't want to be checked! A few years ago it was the County that wanted to give Arivaca a sign, similar to the ones in Sahuarita. We want to make our own sign, we said. No, thank you. No has been heard a lot in Arivaca, over the years, that’s why I have to update this article every once in a while. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of Yeses. But this is an article about the Nos. Despite the book, Yes is Better Than No, by the late Arivacan Byrd Baylor, No goes back a long way, even to the days of the Spanish. No, said the O'Odham in what is called the Pima Revolt, we don't want any Europeans here. No, the Spanish military said after this revolt in 1752; put the Presidio in Tubac, not Arivaca. Some years later in 1776, Hugo O’Conor said, let’s put the presidio in Tucson, not Arivaca, where it is unhealthy! No, said the Apaches, off and on for a couple hundred years. No said the Sobaipuri O’Odham and the settlers to the Apaches. After the Gadsden Purchase the boundary crew said, No! We can't put markers in that rough terrain south of Arivaca. (17 miles of the border was not marked until the 1890s).When the Americans first came to Arivaca there was a silver boom, then a big No was heard: No soldiers to protect the settlers. So No more silver mining until the Civil War was over.

Perhaps the time of greatest promotion of the town of Arivaca was in the late 1870s, when we had a little mining boom. Everything good that could be said about our village was said, in the mining reports, in the newspapers, in letters from prospectors to their ‘friends’ back East. But soon after that it was No to Arivaca and Yes to Tombstone. Charles Poston, who had been the first big promoter, was resigned to saying, “Everyone in Arivaca is a thief.” No to the Aribac Land Grant, said the Supreme Court in 1902. In conjunction with mining operations, No tends to be heard quite often. No more high grade ore, no more veins of gold. Most miners left here when the government said No to the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893 and the price of silver dropped to zip. Nowadays, with all the goverment regulation, it’s virtually No small mining at all.

The ranchers of the 1880s thought the rains would last forever and the grass would always be tall. But no, the Droughts of 1893, 1895, 1903, 1920 (and 2013-14) set them back. No to great cattle herds. No to unlimited range, said the Forest Service when it first came in here in 1906. The Taylor Grazing Act was a big No in 1934 when the BLM said No to open range. Eva Wilbur Cruce said it’s a cruel country: I guess that’s a No. Some people said it was the Wilburs who were cruel, not this country.

Arivacans tend to say No first, and then think about it. For example, when electricity was first proposed in Arivaca back in the mid 1950s there was a contingent, believe it or not, who said No. Some said No to the Clinic. Some said No to a Volunteer Fire Department (and later No to a Fire District) and some said No to the Community Center. No to the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, somebody said back in the 1920s, and took off the roof. A few years back there was a big No to having a historic district in Arivaca, but we’re thinking about it again. Most people were in favor of having the Library but some said No to the name. There have been Nos to Human Resources, Caravaca and Nos to the Aribac Historical Society. No more anything that will make it look attractive and make newcomers want to move here. No to Arivaca Lakes Estates. No to golf courses. No to sidewalks, no to pretty signs, no to most anything that’s desirable. Leave the ruins, allow the adobes to melt, keep the trash. Well, maybe not the trash.

Sometimes the Nos get personal: at various times it has been No to hippies, ranchers, forest rangers, and miners, No to dogs and cows, No to the migrants and No to the checkpoint, just another No in a long line of them.

No to a paved road from here to Amado, said a lot of people in 1975. Some despaired, “there goes the town.” Because by then we had begun to realize how valuable open space and breathing room is. And especially WATER. No had begun to make sense, at least in terms of development. Tucsonans know it too. Pima County says No to willy nilly growth by buying ranch lands and open space. Even folks who have just moved here look around and say, after me, No more people!

No to a Wildlife Refuge, with its nationwide publicity and land grab. No to the Border Patrol and Customs Service, with their eyes in the sky. No to BP towers. No to the economic policies that bring migrants from Mexico. No to drug runners and the migrants themselves. No to the Air Force's low-flying planes. No to free speech (unless it’s mine). No to government in general.

Tourists come here and some decide they want to stay. Let them remember that we also hear Nos besides saying them. No to a school, said Sahuarita District. No to straightening the bad curves on the Arivaca-Amado Road and no to a two-car bridge at milepost 10, said the County Transportation Department. For years it was No to bank protection on Sopori Wash at milepost 13.2 but finally there’s been a Yes to that. No to paving the streets in the 40s. No fencing of State land. Even the Weather Service has a big pie-shaped gap in the radar, and Arivaca is right in the middle of it—meaning No to accurate weather information. No to a Sheriff substation, even though there was one out here in the 1800s. For the most part, Arivacans take this as it comes. The attitude generally is: we can do without unnecessary services of any kind, thank you very much, we can do it ourselves. (Thank you, Alan and Maggie.) Isn’t that what we came here for, to be self sufficient, quiet and alone? If we can’t do it ourselves, or ourselves as a community, but we really have to have it, maybe then we’ll ask for help.

One caveat. Arivaca has not said No to Community Development Block Grants, which is federal HUD money that comes through Pima County but the application of which originates at the grassroots level to answer local needs. We love CDBG. The Community Development Office has done so much for all the non-profits in this town. Arivaca said yes and thank you to Linda Mayro and the County’s Cultural Resources and Historic Preservation Division for the preservation of the Schoolhouse and putting it on the National Register of Historic Places. Good things do happen even with the Nos.

© Mary Noon Kasulaitis