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Cattle 131 7 CATTLE When Colin Cameron arrived in Arizona in 1882, he was dressed in an eastern suit and carried a walking stick. He had not grown up in the saddle or cut his teeth fighting Apaches. On the contrary, he was Pennsylvania born and bred, the well-educated son of a railroad magnate and the well-connected nephew of Simon Cameron, secretary of war under Lincoln. Cameron had no experience in the range cattle industry. After a brief stint in college, he had managed several large dairy farms in Pennsylvania stocked with Guernsey and Jersey cows. But even though the Texan and Mexican cowboys may have snickered behind his back, Cameron represented the future of the Arizona livestock industry. He was a businessman, not a pioneer, and he spent a year scouring southern Arizona for the right ranch to buy. When he found it—the old San Rafael de la Zanja land grant in the lush San Rafael Valley—he formed the San Rafael Cattle Company and imported sixty young Hereford bulls to improve his stock. Cameron realized that the growing demand for high-quality beef would drive the longhorn off the range. He also knew that the small rancher was doomed despite “his courage and his gun.” For the next two decades Cameron used lawsuits and intimidation to impose his vision on the Arizona grasslands. Surveyor General John Wasson had confirmed the San Rafael de la Zanja grant in 1880, but the new title covered only the original four sitios (four square leagues, or about seventeen thousand acres). Cameron argued that the San Rafael encompassed “four leagues square” as well as the “overplus” lands grazed by the original grantees. And since the lands Cameron claimed amounted to more than 152,000 acres, San Rafael was an estate worth fighting for. But establishing uncontested control of the land was harder than filling it up with blooded stock. Cameron tracked down many of the original shareholders (parcioneros) and bought them out for eighty dollars apiece. Then the houses of several “squatters” from Missouri mysteriously burned down just 132 arizona south of the international border. The governor of Sonora issued a warrant and a reward for Cameron’s arrest. He was indicted for arson but never tried. When a group of men led by George McCarthy ran off one of Cameron’s cowboys and fenced the pasture around a San Rafael cienega, Cameron armed his men with Winchesters and secured a warrant for McCarthy’s arrest. McCarthy got the message and fled. Nevertheless, the legal battles dragged on and on. Cameron boasted that he controlled most of Pima County’s key offices, but Arizona politics was a volatile brew. In 1887, Judge W. H. Barnes of Tucson ruled that Cameron had illegally fenced public land. Most people in the territory , who considered Cameron a “landgrabber,” applauded the decision. But even though Cameron lost that round—and even though San Rafael’s ultimate confirmation in 1900 recognized only the original four square leagues—he ran more than seventeen thousand head of cattle on five times that amount of range for nearly two decades. He also survived the drought and depression years of the 1890s that brought so many other Arizona ranchers to their knees. When Cameron entered the cattle business, the boom was just beginning. By the time he sold the San Rafael to Colonel William C. Greene for $1.5 million in 1903, the boom had gone bust, and much of southern Arizona was grazed to bare ground. Cameron prospered because he had deeper pockets and foresaw the future better than his neighbors. He replaced longhorns with Herefords. He reduced his stock to conserve his range at a time when most ranchers were running as many animals as they could. From his headquarters at Lochiel, where he lived like a country gentleman with his fox terriers and his thoroughbreds, Cameron pioneered the modern cattle business and watched the phantoms of the open range flicker and die. Hispanic Ranching in Arizona Ranching has always been an important part of Arizona mythology, but the first stock raisers in the region were Hopi Indians, not Spanish conquistadores or Texas cowboys. Beginning in 1629, Franciscans from New Mexico established missions at the Hopi pueblos of Awat’ovi, Soóngopavi, and Orayvi. There they introduced Old World plants like wheat and peach trees and Old World animals like goats and sheep. But even though the Hopis participated in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, killing four...

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