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Oral history interview with Tom Judd

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TITLE	Oral history interview with Tom Judd
INTERVIEWEE	Judd, Tom
SUBJECT	San Francisco River; Nelson Reservoir; Sierra Blanca Lodge
Browse Topic	Agriculture Family and community
DESCRIPTION	Tom Judd talks about Alpine in the 1800s; farming and ranching in Alpine; the winter weather.
INTERVIEWER	Luger, Jay; and Jones, Lenore
TYPE	Sound Text
Material Collection	Oral Histories of Alpine, Arizona
RIGHTS MANAGEMENT	Property of Alpine Public Library. For reproduction permissions, contact us at 928-339-4925.
DATE ORIGINAL	2010-11-04
Time Period	1930s (1930-1939) 1890s (1890-1899) 1900s (1900-1909) 1960s (1960-1969)
ORIGINAL FORMAT	Oral histories recorded on digital media with transcriptions.
DIGITAL IDENTIFIER	index.cpd
Date Digital	2010-2011
DIGITAL FORMAT	MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer 3) DOC (Microsoft Word)
File Size	1036 Bytes
DIGITIZATION SPECIFICATIONS	Oral histories were recorded on an Olympus WS-6005 Digital Voice Recorder.
REPOSITORY	Alpine Public Library. PO Box 528, Alpine, AZ 85920. www.co.apache.AZ.us
Full Text	Tom Judd Alpine, AZ Interview: November 4, 2010 My name is Tom Judd. I was born right here in Alpine on October 28, 1930. My parents were Earnest Judd and Ila Sharp Judd. I have lived in Alpine all my life except for military service in the late ‘60s. My great grandfather, Don Carlos Judd, came by here in the late 1800s, and there was 10 feet of snow, and 20 below zero so he kept going down to the valley. He went into Pima and filed for a homestead claim there. Later there was a Joseph McFate that homesteaded this property here in Alpine [Tom’s present home on Hwy 180] and the two old men got together and traded homesteads. Joseph McFate went to Pima and Don Carlos came to Alpine. My dad was seven years old when they came to live in Alpine. Another interesting incident was that McFates had gotten the water rights on the San Francisco River, and when they traded homesteads they set up 80 acres so Don Carlos Judd could keep the water rights. And we have the water rights today from that deal. He homesteaded this property in 1901. As far as I know, no one else in Alpine has any water rights. We’ve always had the lake. The first people that homesteaded here built the original lake. They used what they called a slip scraper, a little horse drawn metal deal, and they used that to make the original dam. We got to having trouble with the old dam, and mother decided she’d have this new dam built. When we started working on it, everybody in the country tried to close it down. When they found out that we had the water rights on the river they couldn’t do anything about it. One of the things I remember, the State got into it and the County and everybody else. They told us we had to maintain the same amount of water in the new dam that we had in the old one. Now, how do you do that? Making a living My folks made their living in a variety of ways. They were always into something. We ranched, farmed, rented horses, built and operated rental cabins, had several lodges, and ran a restaurant in one. My dad had a bunch of cattle, and in those years he ran them out on the open range. When the Forestry Service came in they set up allotments according to how many cattle a person had. We had two allotments, one at Cow Creek and one at Sierra Blanca Lake. We had two permits and we’d change the cattle from one to the other during the year. We had a permit in the Forest for 100 head plus the bulls and calves we had. Later on my folks bought a piece of property on this side of Nelson Reservoir. We had about 300 acres there, and every winter we would drive our cattle to winter there. That little old shed of a house down there was built about 150 years ago. I used to spend most of the winter down there watching the cattle. Raising grain We used to raise a lot of small grains, which would nourish the ground. Dad would plow the land and plant wheat and oats and barley. Willard Skousen had a thrashing machine and he would start up at the other end of the valley and then they’d just work their way through and thresh everyone’s grain. When they used to cut the grain they’d shuck it up in bundles and then come by with a wagon, and throw them into the wagon. He had a place where he could shoot the grain in and the stalk would come out one way and the grain would come down another way into sacks. If they didn’t finish a property that day they would just leave the horses and the wagons right there, then come back the next morning. They’d go through each part of the valley that way. The women would have some good food cooked for them when they came. Everybody helped each other. We had a big granary down here at the barn, which I think my granddad built. We had areas blocked off where you put oats in one bin, and whatever grain we had in another. We’d keep what we needed for the winter months. The Beckers had a big store in Springerville, and mother and dad would take what was left of the grain into Springville. The money they made would help them start the winter. We always had our own hay. When Dad started using a tractor he’d cut the hay. It grew so tall all you could see was the smoke stack and the driver going through the hay. Why they stopped farming and ranching We stopped farming because it just got so we didn’t have enough moisture, and one thing and another. We ranched all the way through the years until the last ten years. We always had cattle and horses. During the summer I was wrangler not a cowboy. We used to rent horses to the people in the tourist cabins and people who wanted to ride. During the summer months we had the cabins full most of the time. We also worked with the people at the Judson School. We used to let them rent our horses. We had about ten to fifteen horses. We had our own horses for a long time and then in later years I had to start buying them. I got to where I knew horses well enough that old Maxey Lee used to sell me horses, and I’d walk out to the horse trailer and look them over. He’d take back the one’s I didn’t want. He got the biggest kick out of me. He knew that I knew horses well enough, but for tourists you had to have a certain kind of horse. I used to tell them the horse was smarter than they were. The trip to Springerville Mom and dad used to come up from Springerville when they first came out with a Model A Ford and they had to follow the wagon roads. And they’d come to that little house right next to Nelson Reservoir and they’d get that far in one day. So much mud and bad weather they’d have to stop over night there. There were people living there so they’d go in with their bed rolls, sleep there the night and come on home the next morning. What Alpine was like We had 300 people in the winter time and thousands in the summer time. Regulars were people that had been born here or had a place here, but in summer time people just flocked in here. We had people come from all parts of the country. There was some times we had people from California or all the way from Arkansas. At that time we had some of the best fishing in the whole country. Fish and Game here had several hatcheries and started stocking fish that they grew during the winter time. There was some of the best fish you could get into. Winter Weather We’ve always had lots of water. I’ve seen the snow rise at least ten inches a day. That’s what made this part of the country was the snow. One time this whole bottom field here was full of water and in October it was just a solid piece of ice all the way across. We used to have some cold rough weather. We had to feed the cattle all winter long. There was one of the years, I was living in the log house next door and it kept snowing and snowing and it started to leak. I came to Mother’s house here and I dug me a path from the log house to hers and then I dug up to the highway and all you could see was the top of the houses. That 1967 or ‘68. What we did for entertainment We used to horseback ride. At the church we worked with the Mutual and the Primary. We did all kinds of things that way. There was part of the time they didn’t have their Mutual in the summer time, so with all these cabins full of people, I’d go around and gather up all the kids and take them up to the church house and play volleyball or basket ball to provide some kind of entertainment. We always had a chicken fry or hooked up a wagon and made hayrides with it and ran it through town. Nelson Reservoir Nelson Reservoir was built as an irrigation ditch for Springerville and Eagar, probably built in the early 1900s. It has been there long as I can remember. A few years ago they wanted to maintain and keep fish in it. We had property down at this end of it and the Forestry Service made us a trade. It was supposed to be straight across (equal acreage) but the Forestry Service doesn’t work that way. They went in there and raised the dam ten feet that required them to keep at least ten feet of water in the lake all the time. I don’t remember how it worked, but they had so much acreage that dad traded to them and dad only got a third as much in trade in Alpine. My dad got traded out of a lot of property. We used to lease land around this part of the country and when the Forest Service changed things, legally they had to let my dad have a choice to make real property or let it go to forest. They didn’t do that. They cut him out. There was one Forest Ranger that quit on account of it. They cut those lease properties out of the deal and traded them to somebody else. Some of the history of Sierra Blanca Dad had a guest named Jack (Corcoran) that wanted to have a mountain lodge so Dad took him up to the lodge at Sierra Blanca. He liked the thing so much that he bought it straight out. He was adopted by the people who owned the land where the Empire State Building is. He had an untold amount of money. No telling how much he had. Later on in life the old man turned around and married the woman that had adopted him. The land where the Empire State building sits is still in their family units. He built that wing on the hospital (White Mountain in Springerville). He went in and built the new gymnasium for the high school. He told them on that deal with the hospital, if they would do what he wanted them to, he could put any kind of equipment they needed into that hospital. He started to make this agreement, and he told them if you let me pick the doctors you can have all that equipment. The hospital wouldn’t do it. We worked our cattle next to Sierra Blanca all the time. That was a part of our cattle allotment. In fact we used that lake there for our cattle water. The place itself was original and had a dam but the Forest Service went in and they put the dam line below. They didn’t do that until after Jack had sold all that. They wouldn’t mess with him at all. Leonard Rogers worked up there all the time. He was the one that built the lodge there. Jack and his boy sold it to them. Later on there was some people out of Phoenix that bought it and the Forestry Service tried to prove that the lake was a part of the forest. And then another guy got into it, he was a car salesman from Tucson. They didn’t break him but he had a heck of a time trying to keep it together. The Judson School property There was an Absolom who came out of Tucson and bought that property and he had the lodge built. He was married to the niece and heir of the old man that started Levi Straus. She was a wonderful woman and we liked working with them.
Sort Order	01050

TITLE	Transcript of oral history interview with Tom Judd
INTERVIEWEE	Judd, Tom
TYPE	Text
Material Collection	Oral Histories of Alpine, Arizona
RIGHTS MANAGEMENT	Property of Alpine Public Library. For reproduction permissions, contact us at 928-339-4925.
ORIGINAL FORMAT	Oral histories recorded on digital media with transcriptions.
DIGITAL IDENTIFIER	Tom Judd.doc
Date Digital	2010-2011
DIGITAL FORMAT	DOC (Microsoft Word)
File Size	59392 Bytes
DIGITIZATION SPECIFICATIONS	Oral histories were recorded on an Olympus WS-6005 Digital Voice Recorder.
REPOSITORY	Alpine Public Library. PO Box 528, Alpine, AZ 85920. www.co.apache.AZ.us

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