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.
The water rises to within a few feet of the surface and, since its discovery, numerous wells have been dug and windmills and ranch houses dot the landscape in all directions; while thousands of cattle feed and fatten on the nutritious gramma grass. Its altitude is about four thousand feet above the sea and the climate is exceptionally fine.
The Sierra Bonita ranch is located on a natural cienega of moist land that has been considerably enlarged by artificial means. In an average year the natural water supply of the ranch is sufficient for all purposes but, to guard against any possible shortage in a dry year, water is brought from the mountains in ditches that have been constructed at great labor and expense and is stored in reservoirs, to be used as needed for watering the cattle and irrigating the fields. The effect of water upon the desert soil is almost magical and even though the rains fail and the earth be parched, on the moist land of the cienega the fields of waving grass and grain are perennially green.
The owner has acquired by location and purchase, title to several thousand acres of land, that is all fenced and much of it highly cultivated. It consists of a strip of land one mile wide and ten miles long, which is doubly valuable because of its productiveness and as the key that controls a fine open range.
The original herd of cattle that pastured on the Sierra Bonita ranch thirty years ago was composed of native scrub stock from Texas and Sonora. This undesirable stock was sold at the first opportunity, and the range re-stocked by an improved grade of Durham cattle. The change was a long stride in the direction of improvement, but, later on, another change was made to Herefords, and during recent years only whitefaces have been bred upon the ranch.
Col. Hooker has a strong personality, holds decided opinions and believes in progress and improvement. He has spent much time and money in experimental work, and his success has demonstrated the wisdom of his course. Just such men are needed in every new country to develop its resources and prove its worth.
He saw that the primitive methods of ranching then in vogue must be improved, and began to prepare for the change which was coming. What he predicted came to pass, and the days of large herds on the open range are numbered.
