The rest of the Apaches remain in Arizona and live on the San Carlos
reservation on the Gila river where they are being inducted into
civilization. Since the disturbing element among them has been removed
there has been no more trouble. They seem to have settled down with a
sincere purpose to learn the white man's way and are quiet and
peaceable. They are laborers, farmers and stockmen and are making
rapid progress in their new life.
CHAPTER VII
A MODEL RANCH
Any one who has been in Arizona and failed to visit the Sierra Bonita
ranch missed seeing a model ranch. Henry C. Hooker, the owner of this
splendid property, was born in New England and is a typical Yankee, who
early emigrated west and has spent most of his life on the frontier.
He went to Arizona at the close of the Civil War and engaged in
contracting for the Government and furnishing supplies to the army. It
was before the days of railroads when all merchandise was hauled
overland in wagons and cattle were driven through on foot. He
outfitted at points in Texas and on the Rio Grande and drove his cattle
and wagons over hundreds of miles of desert road through a country that
was infested by hostile Indians.
Such a wild life was naturally full of adventures and involved much
hardship and danger. The venture, however, prospered and proved a
financial success, notwithstanding some losses in men killed, wagons
pillaged and cattle driven off and lost by bands of marauding Apaches.
In his travels he saw the advantages that Arizona offered as a grazing
country, which decided him to locate a ranch and engage in the range
cattle business.
The ranch derives its name from the Graham or Pinaleno mountains which
the Indians called the Sierra Bonita because of the many beautiful wild
flowers that grow there. It is twenty miles north of Willcox, a
thriving village on the Southern Pacific Railroad, and ten miles south
of Ft. Grant, that nestles in a grove of cotton trees at the foot of
Mt. Graham, the noblest mountain in southern Arizona.
The Sierra Bonita ranch is situated in the famous Sulphur Spring valley
in Cochise County, Arizona, which is, perhaps, the only all grass
valley in the Territory. The valley is about twenty miles wide and
more than one hundred miles long and extends into Mexico. Its waters
drain in opposite directions, part flowing south into the Yaqui river,
and part running north through the Aravaipa Canon into the Gila and
Colorado rivers, all to meet and mingle again in the Gulf of California.
Fine gramma grass covers the entire valley and an underground river
furnishes an inexhaustible supply of good water. In the early days of
overland travel before the country was protected or any of its
resources were known, immigrants, who were bound for California by the
Southern route and ignorant of the near presence of water, nearly
perished from thirst while crossing the valley.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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