A Return to Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear: The Rise and Fall of Tucson’s Wolfville Charity Event, 1926–1933

“We’ve paid off for this,” complained one of the sixteen people arrested on gambling charges during a late-night raid on the Wolfville event on February 19, 1933. He then added an ambiguous warning: “The city’s going to have to pay for it now.” Pima County undersheriff Colby S. “Jake” Farrar conducted the raid, assisted by eight sheriff’s deputies. Justice of the Peace C. V. Budlong had issued a warrant based on a complaint about gambling at Wolfville made by Tucson resident Gerald Moyer. A crowd of five hundred people had been in attendance—gambling, dancing, or rubbernecking—when the raid occurred just after 11 p.m. The set-up was called “the most complete and ambitious seen here in many years.” Seized as evidence were “six blackjack tables, three for dice, six wheels, four for roulette, one chuck-a-luck table, four poker outfits and 16 slot machines.” The arrestees were arraigned before Justice Budlong not long after midnight, spending the night in jail. The next morning, after pleading not guilty, they were released on $100 bail each, and a hearing was set for 9:30 a.m. the following Friday, February 24. The trial would prove to be the final chapter in the saga of Wolfville, putting a rather ignominious end to the yearly Wild West recreation.¹

The beginnings of the Wolfville event were of a much more benign character. In February 1925, the Tucson Polo Association had initiated a mid-winter rodeo, la Fiesta de los Vaqueros, which proved a great success. As a result, a second rodeo was planned for February 19–22, 1926. Tucson Lodge 385 of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks announced, in early December 1925, their intention to offer “winter visitors” and rodeo attendees a nightly attraction to be held prior to and during the rodeo. The Elks intended that any profit from the event’s food, souvenirs, and games of chance would go to their charity fund.²

Elk George C. Pound, inspired by Alfred Henry Lewis’s stories of Wolfville, had conceived an idea to construct a working replica of the fictional frontier village. Inspired by such mining camps and cowtowns of southeastern Arizona as Tombstone, Charleston, and Tucson, Lewis began writing about Wolfville in the early 1890s, after traveling through and working as a journalist in the Southwest for much of the previous decade. Under the name Dan Quin, he first published his short tales in the columns of the Kansas City Times, where he was then working. Between 1897 and 1908, Lewis produced five books detailing the adventures and misadventures of Wolfville’s population of Wild West eccentrics. Among these were: the Old Cattleman, the source for many of the stories; Cherokee Hall, who ran the Turf Exchange, Wolfville’s gambling den; Bill Burns, owner of the Red Light Saloon; Faro Nell, who liked the thrill of gambling; Doc Peets, the local sawbones; Tucson Jenny, a waitress who broke many hearts; Six Gun Reilly, the local lawman; the Ruckers, who operated the OK House, a restaurant; and Old Drunkard Monte, the stage driver.³

Born in Chicago in 1881, George Pound came to Tucson with his wife and children from St. Paul, Minnesota, at the end of 1924, bringing with him a background in theater. After his stage debut in 1896, he spent a number of years touring the “Breadbasket loop” and “the honky tonk theaters, as they were known in those days.” Pound then became an independent producer, staging variety shows, minstrels, and vaudeville acts, as well as owning a number of “light opera attractions.” As part of the effort in World War I, Pound worked with Major Howard O. Pierce, creating shows to entertain the troops at home and in Europe. Since coming to Tucson, he had produced a minstrel show for the Elks in November 1925 and provided the decorations and music for a recent Knights of Columbus Mardi Gras Ball. A “musical comedy producer of national reputation,” Pound would...