Just a few mentions of the sheep industry from the 1897 Holbrook Argus today.
The Holbrook Argus reported that “Navajo county offers excellent facilities for various kinds of manufactories, such as wool scouring plants, woolen mill, tannery and a beet sugar factory. The raw material can be produced in abundance at their doors; water- power for such plants is easily obtained with fuel in easy reach.” I know that a woolen mill was at Tuba City but that is Coconino County. Later in the paper, there is mention of “a wool scouring plant has been built at Concho, which has been operated with profit.” It would be interesting to know how many years it was in operation, those years and what happened to the plant in Concho? More research to do!
This edition of the paper has many unreadable portions and thus it is hard to write about all the sheep happenings. It mentions that in the Show Low area Henry (Huning) had a magnificent ranch and he managed an extensive sheep and cattle interest. I put Huning as Henry’s last name as it is only possible to read Hun. Bert Haskett’s “History of the Sheep Industry in Arizona” listed Henry Huning from Navajo County. Huning is listed several other places in newspapers so I am fairly certain that I have the correct last name. Heber was listed as a thrifty community with sheep men. Linden and Pinedale were reported as having excellent grazing in the surrounding timbered region where sheep flourished.
Two more towns were mentioned. Linden and Pinedale lie in a westerly direction from Show Low. In both of these places crops are raised without irrigation. Excellent grazing is afforded in the surrounding timbered region: stock and sheep flourish.
One of the four general merchandise companies in Holbrook was A. & B. Schuster. They were on the 1903 list of the Arizona Wool Growers’ running sheep in the St. Johns vicinity.
That concludes our look at 1897 for today. Next will be stories on James Scott, J.X. Woods, and Ben Schuster. But there will be more stories too.
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