Articles | Photos | >Excerpts from Log of an Arizona Trail Blazer | Biography of John A. Rockfellow | Rockfellow family | Entire photo gallery

Chapter VI
Cochise Stronghold was visited occasionally and much talked about, but no attempts were made to make homes there. So the beautiful place went back to nature; the grass grew plentifully where the ponies had grazed; the rude habitations of the Indians, composed of poles originally covered with skins or canvas, sank or were blown over; the freedom from underbrush, due to frequent camp cleanup fires in Indian days, and wide open spaces between the great oak and juniper trees gave the place a park-like appearance. Here it was that we took out claim on August 8, 1883.

Chapter VII
About October 1, 1883, I had driven to Dragoon for mail and supplies and was just starting back when the railroad agent called to me rather excitedly. I went back and was told some Indian news was being given over the wire and that it might be important. It proved to be very much so. Apaches from below had killed some men in the south end of the Dragoons and were heading north along the crest of the mountains. That meant that they would probably get into the Stronghold. I drove back pretty lively and found Spencer and Parker in camp. After a brief discussion it was decided to pack our most valuable equipment in the wagon and, taking the horses with us, make a camp for the night, near at hand, down on the mesa.

While the others were packing, I rode one of the team horses up the canyon where the horseherd was ranging and drove them back. We took the bell from "Sallie Whipple," our blooded bell mare, so that there might be as little noise as possible. Parker and I, on freshly saddled horses, drove the bunch behind the wagon which was driven by Spencer. We struck out in a southeasterly direction, driving five or six miles down the slope in the dense darkness and then made a dry camp with no lights.

When morning came, it was decided to take the stock to Sulphur Spring and herd and water them in the valley while we made a reconnaissance of the Stronghold region for Indian signs. In grazing the horses along the slight ridge, westerly from the Sulphur Spring, which marks the margin of what was once the lake but is now several miles from the sandy lake bottom, we noticed a depression perhaps one hundred feet long by twenty-five feet wide, evidently of human origin. In the bottom was a coyote hole down to water. Water so near the surface was a surprise to us. Why not dig a well here and have a watering place, we asked ourselves; and all agreed that it was the thing to do. We have never yet been able to decide by whom and for what this depression was made. There were many pieces of broken ollas which might have been made there, or been used to carry away water. There was clay in the bottom, and it seemed likely that it might have been a place where some people (not Apaches) made their earthen vessels.

Leaving Parker with the horses, Spencer and I drove back to the east entrance of the Stronghold (later the Buckley Orchard basin) and tied the team to a yucca. Cautiously we walked with our rifles in readiness and took a position on the granite ridge forming the east wall of the Stronghold Canyon. Everything seemed normal, and after a time we descended and crossed the canyon wash. Spencer now tapped me on the shoulder and whispered.
"Moccasin John was here," pointing to a big moccasin track in the sand.
A few yards further we found the camp in great disorder. Backtracking to the valley, we took a pick and shovel and concluded that the idea of a well in the valley was a good one. The well was dug. It was only eight feet to water. Lower down, a second stratum of water was tapped. The conditions were so favorable that we concluded to build here and make this headquarters, but at the same time continue to hold the Stronghold.

So we went to Willcox and bought troughs, had a powerful hand pump shipped from Tucson and put in place, and set some Mexicans from Willcox to work making adobes. A large wagon had been secured in Tucson and a four-horse team was brought together. With this Spencer and I hauled lumber from the Ross Sawmill in the Chiricahua Mountains. Parker proved a good adobe builder, and a hunter-carpenter named Rose, who happened along, did the carpentering. At the same time we obtained a mowing machine and rake; and, locating a spot free from yucca, in a short time we cut a good-sized stock of hay. We placed it where we expected to make our permanent corral and surrounded it with posts, stockade fashion, the posts having previously been cut in the Stronghold. We gave the name "Esperanza" to the new ranch, though later it took on the name of "NY," as we had adopted these letters for our ranch brand. It was eight miles in a southwesterly course to the mouth of the Stronghold and four miles southeasterly to the Sulphur Spring Ranch, then recently established and stocked by Wolf and Pursley, young men from Colorado and Texas. The Noonan Ranch lay southwesterly about ten miles.

Source: Log of an Arizona Trail Blazer by John A. Rockfellow. Tucson, AZ: Acme Printing Co., 1933.