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Apache Raid Aids in Establishing New Ranch Headquarters 1883
Ghost Town Trail News, April 2005
by Joan Hammer

In the summer of 1883 three men met in Tucson and decided to join together and form a ranch. A.J. Spencer, older and in poor health but an experienced horse and cattleman, Walter Servoss and John A. Rockfellow, both young and able but lacking experience, began to make plans. Spencer suggested the ranch be located in Cochise Stronghold in the Dragoon Mountains since that area was virtually unoccupied and was open for settlement. At first Servoss and Rockfellow were reluctant to consider the idea. The Sulphur Springs Valley was a notorious hang out for outlaws, cattle rustlers and the Stronghold itself, even though officially it had been out of Indian control for five or six years, was still used by renegade Apache. After considerable discussion all three men became excited about the idea and set out to inspect the area.

Walter Servoss, 1886

On August 8, 1883 they arrived at the mouth of the Stronghold Canyon where they made camp and explored the area. They were pleased with the stronghold and the area below. The summer rains had been good and the area was covered with knee high green grass and in some places even hip high. They looked no further. The camp was improved, a picket corral was built and Spencer returned to Tucson for his herd of well-bred horses.

In early October, Rockfellow was in Dragoon for mail and supplies and the railroad agent informed him that Apaches had killed some men at the southern end of the Dragoons and were heading north along the base of the mountains. Fearing they would go [to] the Stronghold, he drove rapidly back to camp where they packed their valuable possessions in the wagon and then rode into the canyon to gather the horses. After dark they headed as quietly as possible out of the Stronghold and set up camp in the valley below. The next morning they took the herd to Sulphur Springs for water. While grazing the horses on a low ridge west of Sulphur Springs they noticed an unusual depression with a water hole in the bottom. Water so near the surface was a surprise. They dug a well and found water eight feet below the surface. The conditions here were so favorable that they decided to make this the Esperanza Ranch headquarters. An adobe house and corrals were built and other improvements were made. Later the Esperanza became known as the NY after their brand; the headquarters was located a short distance east of the present day intersection of Highway 191 and Dragoon Road.

All three men involved in the NY were adventurers raised in the east and they came west to seek their fortune. John A. Rockfellow was born in Mt. Morris, New York and was educated at the University of Rochester. He came to Arizona in the late 1870’s and began prospecting hoping to earn enough money to establish a ranch. Throughout his adult life he was always a cattleman but had several other careers that included: Surveyor, civil engineer, teacher of a four grade school in Servoss and professor at the Territorial University of Arizona in Tucson. He was county surveyor and responsible for the 1904 map of Cochise County. He died in 1947.

Walter Servoss, from Rochester, New York, came to Arizona as a young man to seek his fortune. In the late 1870’s he joined Rockfellow prospecting in Southern Arizona. Servoss left the NY Ranch in 1889 for a two-year mining contact [sic] in Columbia, South America. Seven years later he returned and in 1905 became postmaster in Cochise. The town of Servoss was named after him. Servoss died in 1908.

J. Spencer, a Kentuckian, joined an immigrant train heading for California in the early 1850s. The train of covered wagons used the southern route through New Mexico in Mexican Territory and stopped at Tucson for several days. In 1858 he returned to Arizona as a Butterfield Overland Stage driver. During the Civil War when the stage stopped running, he mined and raised cattle and horses in Arizona and California. He died shortly after the NY Ranch was established. End.

©2005 Joan Hammer. Reproduced courtesy of the author.