We left Lester as he began working for the Grand Canyon Sheep Company. He was given a Dodge truck and he was to catch up to three bands (6,000) of sheep that were on the trail going from Valle Ranch located north of Williams to Springerville and the old Colter Ranch. He caught up with the troubled ban south of Winslow as he was informed by the  foreman that 300 sheep were missing.  Lester had the bands keep moving as was required and he headed back down the trail locating the lost sheep at a ranch.

He now was responsible to get the 300 sheep to Winslow which was a three-day drive from where he found them. Shipping them to Holbrook by train was his first move. He then hired extra burros and two herders to take the sheep and catch up with the rest of the flock which was at this time near St. Johns. Lester stayed with the 300 sheep until they were north of Springerville. By April all the sheep were grazing together. But, he was not done with his work as he headed back to the Double O Ranch near Seligman to take care of the 18,000 ewes ready to lamb within the next month.

Life was not easy for him as he  had not seen his family for three months as they were living in Chandler. He moved them to the ranch and the family remained there until the fall of 1936. Changes took place during this time as the assets once owned by the Arizona Central Bank, Flagstaff, were bought out by a bank in Los Angeles. Will Anderson replaced John Simpson as general manager in 1935. The Grand Canyon Sheep Company was consolidated with the VVV Livestock Company and was called the Arizona Livestock Company.

The sheep and cattle were signed to specific areas.  The 25,000 head of sheep were put on the range southwest of Seligman and some company holdings that were to the south of Kingman. The cattle were north of here. With prices high in 1936, the Double O was sold and 26,000 sheep were moved to the forest south of Flagstaff for the summer and the rest went to Valle Ranch north of Williams. When the sheep were moved to the winter range in 1937, Lester was the foreman and was responsible for the sheep which covered a area from Congress to San Luis on the Mexican Border (over near Yuma). Lambing took place in Litchfield as well as at the Valle Ranch. With the exception of 10,000 ewes, all other ewes and spring and feeder lambs were sold. Those sheep were sold in the fall of 1937 and shipped to Santa Barbara from Bellemont, near Flagstaff. The sheep were then loaded on a ship and turned loose on an island off the coast.

Final part will be posted later this week.

Today’s s story starts out about goats but it will soon turn to sheep.  Without the other nuisances, the story would not be complete.  It is a very interesting story of the early part of the sheep industry in the state.

Lester was born July 18, 1894. While the family lived in Star Valley, he bought his first goats, two, with money he had earned. The herd was built up to 25 to 30 head. He worked the goats in the beginning with his dad.   Lester sold the goats to a member of the family and the goats may have ultimately been sold to Harry Hibben, a sheep man who had a sheep outfit north of Williams. This was all prior to 1906.  (This is the first time Hibben’s name has been mentioned with the sheep industry. Obviously more information is needed to determine who he was and anything about his sheep outfit).

His next venture was with cattle which he purchased with the money he made from selling his goats. When he purchased the cattle is uncertain but it wasn’t long before he lost them as cattle prices fell after WWI.   Lester went to work for Lute Hart Sheep Company in 1922 as he was friends with Lute.  Lester remarked that even though cattle prices were down, sheep prices were still good!  He worked until 1925 as Lute’s foreman then went to work for Verkamp who had 4,000 sheep. Verkamp summer permit was south of Clear Creek on Dane Ranch. This area is near Winslow and the Chevelon Butte.  Lester brought the sheep down to the Salt River Valley over the Mud Tank Driveway that fall.

In July 1928, he was offered a job with Colin Campbell Livestock Company. The company had 35,000 sheep between Ash Fork and Seligman and a winter permit on the Verde River on Forest Service land. This job continued until February 1930 when the depression hit hard. The sheep had to be divided between the bank and the owners of Colin Campbell Livestock Company.

He was now looking for a job for the first time in his life.  He worked part time for the Federal Intermediate Credit Bank counting sheep and cattle. A bank owned many of the sheep at this point and had someone running them for them.  In 1930 Lester was appointed state sheep inspector. He was appointed again in 1931 for 6 months. He did a variety of jobs after this including for a loan company counting sheep, counting cattle and sheep at a ranch that belonged to John Jamison who lived near Oracle and had been a neighbor of the family when they lived in the Mogollon Mountain. He worked for part time at each of these jobs until March 1934 when John Simpson, general manager of the Grand Canyon Sheep Company asked him to work for their outfit. At this time, they were considered to have the largest sheep company in the state and the biggest in the United States.

Stayed tuned for part II as the story is long.

 

 

Today, as I debated what sheep story I should write about, I decided to change things a little and write about why I want to preserve the stories of the shepherds, i.e., those who are with the sheep 24/7,  and sheep ranchers, i.e., those who own the sheep.  The reason is very simple – they are part of Arizona’s history and the story of the west!  If I don’t remember them, who will?   Their lives may never have been glamorized as the “cowboy” in Hollywood movies; their hard work and perseverance to continue when they became outnumbered by the cowboy and their cattle still make the an important part of the economic and ethic diversity of Arizona.   The Basque came to herd the sheep for the Americans and they are the ones still in the business today.  Their tenacity has preserved this way of life of their forefathers.  For this they should be remembered!

I am still learning new stories as I scour newspapers of the territorial days and into the early years of statehood.  There is so much information that it is overwhelming at times and I need to stop and begin to write the stories.   Not much of the history of sheep ranchers in other states have been preserved so I am glad I have decided to at least preserve Arizona’s history.

Stay tuned for more stories as I find them.

 

Cordes was on the trail that thousands of sheep passed through each year heading either to the northern ponderosa pine forests and the grasses, that in the early part of the 1900s was as tall as the sheep were or it was the place the sheep would pass through as they were trailed south to the winter grazing areas in the Salt River Valley.  Fred J. Cordes remembers helping his dad shearing the sheep when he was in his teens. (Story comes from Volume I of Arizona National Livestock Show Ranch Histories, pg. 30).  Sheep were also dipped here.  I heard the other day from a woman that sheep would rest here before trekking either north or south.  Herders would stock up on supplies from the store run by Fred’s dad.  The store still exists but is more a museum than anything.  It is seldom open these days.  The sheep still pass through the area when they are trailed north, but not southward, as they are hauled in trucks to the winter grazing areas.

Just another little tidbit about sheep in Arizona.

The Wahl family, mother and a least one daughter, as there is no mention that the father also came, arrived in the Springerville area in probably the late 1880s.  The family had to be in the area by 1892 from the events that unfolded.  Mrs. Wahl brought an unknown number of sheep to graze on the lush grasses from New Mexico.  Whether in seriousness or jokingly, she promised one of her herders that if he would work for her tending to the flock of sheep for seven years, she would give her daughter, Bertha, to him in marriage .  Bertha was only seven years old.

When the seven years were up (1899), the herder showed up at the Wahl home to claim Bertha.  Bertha was now a teenager, age 14.  Mrs. Wahl reneged on her promise to give her daughter in marriage to the sheepherder. Unfortunately, the herder did not like that he had worked those seven years and would not get a wife.  One night, he came to the house and seeing Bertha through her bedroom window, shot her to death.  I guess he figured if he couldn’t have her, no one could have her hand in marriage.

Who the herder was or what happened to him still is being researched.  I’ll post an update when I have finalized researching all the period newspapers.

 

R. C. Jones was born in Hannah, Oklahoma in 1915 and the family moved to Gilbert, Arizona in 1923 due to the mother’s health. At the age of 14 (1929), R.C. started in the business of trading livestock, mostly cattle, and just one year later he had the opportunity to purchase sheep. Having no money himself as the time was during the depression, he borrowed from the Salt River Project. Why he was able to borrow from them or why they were willing to loan the money is anyone’s guess as this information was not given.  Anyway, R.C. purchased 100 ewes that were going to lamb. He did pretty well for himself as the wool paid off his debt to the Salt River Project.  The time period for payment of the loan was not given either.  What is unfortunate the document where I found this information did not say anything more about him and the sheep.  There is no evidence that he sold them or kept them.  What became of the lambs?  Did he also profit from selling them? With the time period of the depression, he may have sold them as soon as he could.  Just one of the many little stories of sheep people found scouring past historical documents.

With so little information, you may wonder why I wrote this story.  The main reason is that a great deal of information on the very early years in the sheep industry are obscured little bits of information.  What it does say speaks volumes.  Sheep could make you money!  Someone could at the time of the depression pay for his sheep from the wool.  Dwayne Dobson’s father, a Canadian who came in the early part of the 1900s, also had bought sheep prior to the depression and was able to keep them and continued to raise the woolies for many years before turning the operations over to his sons.

What also should be mentioned is that many of the Anglos sold out to the Basque who had originally come to be the shepherd and because of their work ethic, tenacity, and shear will power, was able to survive the economic downturns or at least had that deserve to rebuild a flock of sheep.  Sheep was in their blood.  It must be remembered that three Basque families still continue the large sheep outfits in the state.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Arizona National Livestock Show Ranch Histories mainly has stories of the men and women who had cattle in Arizona but once in awhile there are stories about some of them having sheep and sometimes both sheep and cattle. (there are 36 volumes in this and I am slowly making my way through them.  More sheep stories will be written as the sheep ranchers stories are told in these volumes).

Once such person who had first sheep than cattle and then seemed to have both was John Fuller who bought H. S. Bly sheep outfit with Mr. Pollock in 1911.  Bly’s sheep and now Fuller-Pollock were located south of Winslow.  They wintered around Jack’s Canyon and had a camp west of Sunset Mountain which today is off of Hwy 87 which takes you to Winslow.  They didn’t keep the sheep long but sold and the permit for grazing sheep was turned to one to run cattle.  In 1913, Fuller bought the sheep outfit of Harry Melburn which had his sheep in the area of Canyon Diablo and also bought Dick Hart’s sheep which were on the range south of East Clear Creek.  The sheep were wintered on the range north of the forest boundary and East Sunset Mountain and East Clear Creek.  This is all near Hwy 87.    Fuller also owned Moqui Ranch.  In 1916 a terrible snowstorm meant the loss of many sheep and cattle.  He sold the ranch, sheep and some of the cattle to Mr. Pollock.

Chevelon Creek runs through the old sheep headquarters of the Ohaco Sheep Company, Ltd. which I have previously written about.  Clear Creek is clearly marked.  Lower Tillman was the area that Fermin Echeverria ran sheep.  Canyon Diablo on this map shows it to be north of I-40 but there was also one south of the interstate and may have been a continuation of the canyon.  I am not sure.  North of the area marked Cottonwood Wash and bordering the Navajo Nation, Aja had their ranch.  This area is all the Mogollon Plateau and as the darker area appears on the map, this would be the area below the Mogollon Rim.  Sunset Mountain would be most likely above where Clear Creek is marked.  I will update as I track down a better map, but this will give those readers not familiar with Arizona a general idea of where the sheep were run.  I might add at this point that the Mogollon Rim was also the border of where sheep were allowed, north of it, and where cattle were allowed, anywhere.  For more on sheep-cattle conflicts there are many internet sources to learn about this somewhat misnamed feud.

 

 

 

In the late 1910s and early 1920s any person who was not a citizen of the United States could not hold forest leases for their sheep.  These forest leases were important for the grazing of the animals in the summer in the northern and eastern portion of the state. One of the ways Basque sheepmen were able to get started in the sheep business or stay in the sheep business was to form partnerships and corporations with other Basque men who were citizens.  Four men would eventually join forces sharing equally in the expenses and profits of the Ohaco Sheep Company, Inc.  The four men were Michel Ohaco, Fermin Echeverria, Jose Antonio (Tony) Manterola and Mario Jorajuria.

The four men began the company based on trust and a handshake.  Michel Ohaco  became a citizen in 1921.  He ran the company under his name obtaining all forest service permits and land.  But, all four of the men put in equal amounts to get the company going.  They ran their sheep under the name of the Ohaco Sheep Company between 1923-1933.  Then it was made a corporation when Arizona law required that 80% of the shares had to be owned by U.S. citizens.  This was accomplished through Michel’s wife, Louisa, holding shares for Tony.  Fermin’s wife, Benancia, held shares for her husband and Mario.  Michel was the president, Louisa the vice president and Benancia was the secretary of the corporation.  The Ohaco’s held 301 shares together and Benancia held 299.  This corporation functioned between 1933 and 1941.  Property was bought, leased forest land obtained, equipment bought, herders hired.  The integrity and honesty of those men and their wives worked well for everyone.  Fermin got his citizenship in 1938 and Tony in 1939.

In 1941, Michel sold out and obtained the Chevelon Butte Ranch, sheep, equipment and other things.  The Ohaco Sheep Company, Inc. then was owned by Fermin, Tony and Mario.  In 1945, Tony Manterola, who had always wanted to own his own sheep company, bought Dr. Raymond’s Flagstaff Sheep Company.  He also got equivalent proceeds for the corporation.  That left two owners, Fermin and Mario.  Mario sold out in 1951 and the corporation was run with Fermin and his sons.

What is the importance of this story is the trust each man held with the other partners.  Based on a handshake they all prospered and when the times were bad they shared the burden together.

By no means is this the whole story as the men worked together in the decade of the 1910 under various sheep company names.

Michel Ohaco

 

Fermin Echeverria (picture taken on his 50th wedding anniversary)Jose Antonio (Tony) Manterola with his wife Marianne.  When I am able to obtain a picture of Mario I will add it.

 

 

 

I was in Winslow over the weekend for a sheep presentation for the Old Trails Museum.  What is always a plus with these presentations is the people I meet and the stories that they can contribute to the history of the sheep industry in the state.  So far, I have information on four boarding houses, three in Flagstaff and this one in Winslow.  I put a question mark as I do not know for certain that this one was a Basque Boarding House.  I know the ones in Flagstaff were.  I know there has to be more and I just love the thrill of the hunt for them.  As I learn more about when it was a boarding house and other details, I will update this blog.  This is the boarding house in Winslow.

PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING FROM THE START EACH TIME AS I ADD NEW INFORMATION AND MAKE CORRECTIONS TO THE STORY.  IT IS NOT ALWAYS POSSIBLE TO GET ALL THE INFORMATION FROM ONE PERSON AND THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE WHO ARE EDUCATING ME ABOUT THE HAPPENINGS AT THIS BOARDING HOUSE!

I have recently learned that this was a Basque boarding house in Winslow.  It was run by Tony and Carmen Chacon.  Carmen’s father was Rafael Sarabia who ran sheep in the area.  It is my understanding that Rafael passed in 1932 but the Sarabia Sheep Company was still operating during the period of 1937-1940 based on dues that were paid to the Arizona Wool Growers Association.  Who ran the outfit for him is still in question but it may have been Tony Lopez.  This information comes from the Wool Growers Association files.  Unfortunately, the document which states Lopez ran the sheep also said Sarabia died in either 1938 or 1939.  Still some missing information that needs to be found as I talk to the families of Sarabia and Ylarraz as they both were related.  Sarabia’s granddaughter, Amparo, married Gregorio Ylarraz.

Future research with one of the two daughters of Tony and Carmen Chacon and another of the Ylarraz’s I have learned more about this boarding house.  Before I continue about the boarding house, introductions to some of those who have given me information and are related to Rafael Sarabia.  Rafael had four daughters: Carmen, Amparo, Elizabeth and Doris.  Carmen was the oldest and I do know that Amparo was next.  Carmen married Tony Chacon and they would run the boarding house.  Amparo married Gregorio Ylarraz and had four children: Mel, Doug, Jan Marie and Theresa (spelling may not be correct).  Hopefully this will help with the following story as I continue it over the next several days.

Carmen and her three sisters were sent to a convent school in Tucson when their mother died at a very young 39!  Carmen was the oldest of the four girls and thus when her father needed her help in running the boarding house she left school in Tucson and came back to Winslow to help her father.  Carmen was about 15 years old.  At the end of the school year, the other three sisters moved home also.  An interesting side note is that the convent school was run by nuns who were Basque.  At this time I have not been able to get any information on the convent or the nuns.  Another mystery to pursue.

In speaking with Irene Aja about the boarding house, she remembered it so well that she could draw a floor layout of the house!  She spent time here in the early 1940’s and has a wonderful memory.  She remembered the four connected buildings in the back of the house.  One she remembered where many of the men bunked together and one of the buildings was used to store items that the herders had no place for when they were out with the sheep. Irene remembers as a teenager going to the boarding house from her dad’s ranch, The Tillman, for a week during the summer as her dad trusted Carmen and the other herders to watch out for her.  As a young lady, this small town offered more than the ranch ever could.

More to come……..

 

 

 

 

 

So what do you do with sheep dung?  If you are a Navajo you sell it to the Hopi pottery makers who use it to fire their pots in.  Now that is a good use of a material and gets rid of it also.  So it that good environmental practices?  I hope to speak to the woman and ask her how long the Navajo have been selling their dung.  I just keep hearing more and more little stories connected to sheep.  The sheep keep weeds down under solar panels and wind mills, and in vineyards (the sheep will eat the grapes if the grapes hang too close to the sheep), and it has been known for years their use to reduce undergrowth in our forest reducing the potential of forest fires.  Let’s hear it for the sheep.