Last night I was presenting “History of Arizona Sheep Industry Since Territorial Days” to Tucson’s Corral of the Westerners and one of the gentleman, James Klein, came in with pictures of sheep taken in the Tucson area in 1917 and early 1918. I love when I am able to get these historical pictures. Southern Arizona wasn’t a big area for sheep. Research has shown that many thousands of sheep were trailed across the southern portion of the state to California in the 1860s and 1870s, maybe the 1850s, but that date has not been documented, just suggested since we know sheep were taken to the miners in California after the gold rush began. One of the pictures was also of a large herd of cattle, but it was very grainy and very hard to see the cattle so I decided not to include.
I would love to know more of the family who took the pictures and if they knew anything else about the sheep. The family was here as one daughter had tuberculosis and was being treated. They were here for a very short period of time as she died in Feb. 1918. The scrap book had other pictures and early postcards of their visiting various places around Tucson. There were some early postcards of San Xavier del Bac and downtown Tucson.
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