Oral History of Pete Ellsworth
January 14, 2008
By Joyce McBride
For the
Show Low Historical Society
Joyce McBride: This is Joyce McBride and I’m interviewing Pete Ellsworth for the Show Low Historical Society Museum, and today’s date is January 14, 2008. Pete, how are you doing today?
Pete Ellsworth: I’m doing very fine, thank you.
JM: Your family first came at the beginning of Show Low, really. Now, your, what was it? Your great great-grandfather came here?
PE: My great grandfather helped settle this area.
JM: Was he was one that pushed the, or lead the . . .
PE: Yeah, handcart company
JM: Hand cart
PE: Was it Edmund?
JM: I think it was Edmund
PE: All right, all right, yes, and then of course his, my grandfather was Abner Ellsworth. They lived here and helped settle this area. My grandfather was Abner, and his brother, they lived as neighbors down here and had all this country right in here.
JM: The handcart was from the East to Salt Lake City, right?
PE: Yes
JM: And then they were called down here?
PE: Called down from Salt Lake to this area.
JM: And that was in the 1880’s?
PE: It would have had to been, yes, because my father was born here in this area in 1895, so.
JM: Wow, and your father’s name was?
PE: Whittie, Whittie was my father’s name, and his father was Abner.
JM: So you’re a cousin of Moylen Owens then.
PE: Yes, Moylen��s mother and my father are brother and sister.
JM: Yes, Abner Ellsworth lived down by where the first road went through. Well, isn’t that his house that is stands there on . . .
PE: Well, the big brick house that’s still standing down there, they built it. And they burnt them brick and made them right not very far down here. And they put that big two-story 13-room brick house up. That was my grandfather’s. And like I say, my great grandmother, she lived in a little two-room log cabin right down here pretty close to where my old barn is that’s been tore down now.
She tells about the Indians that were around then. Right not very far up the draw here they had a fight one time amongst themselves and they killed this one, They called him Chief Petone. And the Indians took him right on up above here and put him up there, it was just a hole down in the ledge, and put him and his saddle and blankets and different things in there. When I was a small boy, my father took me to this place where he was buried down in the rocks. My father had a little bell that came out of that place.
Like I say, I was raised right here and I had quite a lot to do with the Indians. Not really me, but because my father did. Baha was the last chief of the White Mountain Apaches. Since then they have to what they call a Council. But Baha was also the son of Alchesay, and Alchesay was furnishing other Indians to the Military down at Fort Apache as guides for them.
I heard Baha tell my father this story. He told him that the officer in charge down there at Fort Apache told Alchesay, who was over these Indians that were guiding for them. He said, “I need the best man you’ve got to take a message from here to Globe, horseback, through country.” So the next morning at daylight, Alchesay came across the fairgrounds there at Fort Apache and this boy of his, Baha, was riding a big buckskin horse. The officer there told him, he said, “I can’t trust this to a little boy.” He said, “That’s the best I’ve got.���
So the officer sent Baha on with the message. He had to go down and cross White River and Black River and on through to Globe. He told my father that when he got to Globe, they told, the officers there told these men, said, “You give that boy a place to sleep and feed and you take care of his horse.” And he said the next morning they got up and the boy was gone. The next day he showed up at Fort Apache again on this horse.
Baha always went down to, there used to be a flourmill down at Shumway. And then the 24th of July celebration in Snowflake, he always went to it. And he was very good friend of my fathers. So every time he came through he always pulled in right there where the old barn is and we put his horses in the enclosure there and fed them. He built a little fire out there and they camped there overnight, and then if they were going, they’d go on to Snowflake the next day. After the celebration, or for whatever reason he went, when they came back they’d always stopped and camped here again. Maybe I just, you know 10 or 12 years old, we milked here every morning and night, but my father owned some of this property about, well where the vet’s place is. We’d take those cows up there in the daytime. But I was moving the cows, taking them on up to the field, and Baha was sitting near a little ball of fire. I’m not sure the sun was up yet. But his wife, or you can call it “squaw,” whichever. Indians used to never mind. They always called their wives squaws. Nowadays the White man took that away from them, you know. But she was sitting there by that small fire cooking something on a little handmade grill, and Baha, he had a white undershirt on and he had a baby sitting on his lap. And he had a white bowl, small bowl. It wasn’t a cup or anything. It was a bowl full of coffee, and it was steaming. Baha would take a sip of that and then he’d hold it up to that baby and that baby would take a sip of it. It was very; it impressed me that that little baby was drinking coffee. You know, and that hot.
Anyway, always my father every year he raised apples and squash and potatoes, and he would take a load of that stuff to the Reservation. And although Baha’s place was out several miles this side of Whiteriver, but we always stopped there. Baha’s wife always bought something.
What impressed me in them days was, you never sold an Indian anything with scales. They were afraid of them. You would take a bucket of apples and tell them, “This is 50 cents or a dollar,” potatoes, the same. “That squash there is 50 cents,” some 75, but you never weighed nothing to them.
We always went on down to the, there were three of them stores in Whiteriver. Nothing was never put out where you walked up like you do today and fill your basket. There was a counter and those squaws would come in there and gently have a blanket and sit down. And they would stand up there to the counter and motion to the fellow behind the counter. They didn’t speak much English. They grunted a lot. They’d go “Ooo, can of coffee.” He would set it on the counter and she would pay for it. Her pocketbook was always up under her blouse, and she’d pay. Then she would take that and put it on her blanket. Pretty quick she’d go again and she’d say, “Ooo,” and this time it might be some sugar or it might be some flour in a small. . ., but anyway that’s how they done their business of shopping.
JM: Was this a trading post?
PE: Yes, they was three of those trading posts in Whiteriver. And like I said, my father would stop at these different camps and he always hollered, “Musados! Breakon! Numbasic!” That’s squash, apples and potatoes. Some of these squaws would come out from behind and they were very shy, but they would go over and, like I say, you sold them by the bucketful or by the squash. And they bought it. But it was very interesting to me, being the age I was.
JM: How old were you?
PE: I was, well, over the years, I probably from the time I was 8 years old until I was 12, you know. Go every year with my father.
JM: When were you born?
PE: 12/4/28
JM: Fourth of December of 1928, okay, so this was like in the ‘30s, during the Depression.
PE: Yes, yes Ma’am and you know, like I say, it was always in the fall, when my father raised a garden and they raised potatoes and squash and had the big orchard with apples and that. But every fall he took a load of stuff down and by doing that, a lot of times he would make enough money to buy his winter flour and sugar, maybe like that. He generally always went to Holbrook to buy your winter supplies.
We always had cattle and he sold his steers and that. Back in them days it was far different than it is today. He told me that one time he shipped 2 year-old steers by railroad to California for $15.00 a head. Back in them days you never had any of these big cattle trucks. All of the cattle left here on the railroad.
JM: So, that was the Apache Railroad?
PE: Yes, we would load them at three or four places. Right out here they had corrals with scales.
JM: That’s like Bell’s Siding, was one of them?
PE: Yes, and on up here to Sponsler and Bell and that, down at Snowflake. But they would send us in how many ever cars we needed and we would load them. And them cattle would be in those cars loaded until the train came by that night and picked them up and took them to Holbrook. And then they got on the Santa Fe and headed to California.
JM: So how many head of cattle could you have in those days? Did you have?
PE: Oh, we only had a small. This permit out here. They was three of us. Well, my father and my Uncle Abner and Joe Stocks and Howard Whipple, we all had a few head. But it was about a 300-head permit, so we had about a hundred head. And I eventually bought my Uncle Abner’s cattle permit and then, later on, I bought all of my father’s permit from my brother Lamell. But anyway, I ended up with the permit and then when we sold it, by that time there was only Chet Adams and Joe Stocks and myself that owned the permits. So we sold them. Elroe Ellsworth wanted to buy the permit. They wanted to sell, so I sold with them.
JM: What year about was that?
PE: It would be at least 20 years ago that we sold.
JM: Who’s still running cattle here? Larry Whipple’s got some, doesn’t he? Does Chet still?
PE: Yeah, see, Larry Whipple’s dad was in on this permit. And after he passed away, Larry sold his permit. But he split it between Joe Stocks and Chet Adams and me. We each took a third of his permit.
JM: So is anyone else, is anyone running cattle at at anymore up here?
PE: Elroe still runs cattle out there. Larry, I think, has a permit or even some leased land down by Woodruff or in that area. I think he still runs a few cattle.
JM: I just don’t know how that works with the permits. I know you probably still have cattle, but have it on your own land. Right? The permit was to use Forest Service land, right? Used to be everybody had their own cows around. Moylen told me about that community pasture that used to be on the other side?
PE: That’s right there where the airport is now. And all, everybody had a milk cow or stuff. They turned it out there in the day and then they’d go get it at night, you know and that.
But Bill Bourdon that was just east of Show Low here, was the big cattle owner in them days. His country run from up here east of Lakeside at Sponsler Mountain clear to the Colorado River over by this side of Joe City. He had six townships of range in there.
I went to work for him right after we were married and I worked two years on the Bourdon Ranch out there at Silver Creek. The first year I spent by myself in a cow camp down this side of Woodruff, me alone and 3 head of horses. (Laughs)
JM: You got to learn how to talk horse, didn’t you?
PE: Yeah
JM: Well, I hear you have a way with animals.
PE: Oh, I don’t know about that. I enjoy animals and like I say, I went to work out. My father was a good cattleman. Larry’s father, Howard Whipple, a good cattleman. And of course they all had boys, but they were smaller than me.
I was the biggest boy of the people that had cattle, so I was the one they got to tease all the time, you know. They would throw a rope from one horse to the other and try to get my horse to jump and kick and that. I kept telling them, I said, “One of these days it’s turn around.” So after I got to be a teenager and they were getting older, then I’d get my rope down and they’d say, “Oh don’t do that!” Well, they was awful good to me. I had a lot of fun.
Like I say, I went to work at Silver Creek for Bill Bourdon and Art Hancock was the new foreman there. He was as good a cowman at they was in this country. I learned a lot from him. So consequently, how I learned about cattle, and I enjoyed it so.
JM: Well, yes! Hancock! So Hancock worked for Bourdon?
PE: Yes, Bourdon had another foreman that had just quit and so Art was running a ranch over south of Flagstaff. Bill Bourdon got Art to come and take this ranch. So we were taking our cattle on out to Bell’s Siding to ship them and Bill Bourdon came by in a pickup. He asked them guys, said, “Is Pete in the crowd?” They said, “He’s up there with the cattle.” He said, “Tell him I want to talk to him.”
So I rode back to his pickup. He said, “Pete, I want to hire you.”
And I said, “Well I’ve got to ship these cattle for my father next couple of days.” He said, “Just as soon as you can, you roll your bed and come to Silver Creek.”
And so I did. Art Hancock had been there four days when I got there, so but the cattle. It was in the fall and they was all being moved down toward the country down toward the Colorado River. He had two cow camps down there that a man stayed in all winter long. And Art Hancock stayed in the one that what they call “Point of the Mountain,” and I stayed at the other one, down at Hay Hollow.
I spent the winter by myself down at Hay Hollow. Then summer came. There at Silver Creek, Bourdon had some cabins right there. I told him I wanted to bring my wife out, and we lived in one of those cabins there at Silver Creek.
JM: What did you do out there by yourself.
PE: Well, this might seem funny, but they had probably 75 or 80 bulls. And the bulls was all took away from the cows in the wintertime and not put back until spring, or until middle of summer so the cows, at this elevation, would have them calves about March. Well, down in this hay hollow on the east pasture was the bull pasture. They had all these bulls in there. Up in one of the big cedar trees they had a big wagon box put up there. When they would come with a little truck and that, they’d bring this cottonseed sacks. They’d put up into this box. My job was to go over and get the bulls all together, go get them sacks out of there and feed the bulls in these big, long troughs. These bulls all had horns, big Hereford bulls. This whole herd was straight Herefords. But when you started scattering that cottonseed down one of them toughs there’d be a bull right there behind you. And another would hook him and he might come over the top of you. But it always, I hated to feed them bulls, and that’s what I had to do. Anyway, that was one of my chores.
There they was miles of fences and you always took fence pliers and staples and wire and, as you rode fences, if there was any fences down you repaired fences. There was different chores like that.
Then about November they weaned the calves, and they always weaned the calves at the hay hollow. So it was my job to feed the calves there at the hay hollow. Just different chores like that.
JM: Was that place because there was less snow there?
PE: Yes, yes there was a lot less snow down there. But we weaned some calves sometimes when it was right down almost to zero. You’d almost freeze to death.
They had a pretty big remuda. Summertime when they had four or five cowboys, each cowboy had about five head of horses that you grained all the time, because you rode every day. When I went to Hay Hollow, they sent three of the most ignorant horses they had with me. Because nobody else would ride them so that was my herd for the winter. I had one paint horse that when you’d go to get on him, he’d just run backwards and fall over with you. Sometimes he’d hit you with a front foot. He was just plumb ignorant. But because I was young and the only one that would ride him, they give him to me. So that’s how I (laughs.)
JM: So it was your job to break the horses, too. Right? You grew up here and went to Show Low at Snowflake, and is that where you met Betty?
PE: The little schoolhouse here was a four-room, you know. So no transportation and this was an old dirt road. Lot of times in the wintertime, the snow was up to your knees. But my folks started me into first grade when I was five years old. I think they wanted to get rid of me, is what.
JM: Were you the oldest child?
PE: No! I was next to the youngest. I had a brother older than me and two sisters and then me. But I have a certificate that I was never late nor absent when I was in the first grade. I walked from here to that school and back at night, sometimes in snow, but.
JM: Your brother and sisters walked with you though, huh?
PE: My sister next to me walked with me, but my two, older brother and older sister, why they were in high school and sometimes the bus would come part way and pick them up. Then after I graduated from the 8th grade, and I believe there was about maybe 8 of us in the 8th grade. But anyway, I rode bus for 4 years to Snowflake. And that’s where I first met Betty Jo.
Betty Ellsworth: I was born here.
JM: You were from Show Low too?
BE: But I was raised in Snowflake.
JM: What was your maiden name?
BE: Warner
JM: Warner?
PE: She had two racquets for tennis. I didn’t have any.
JM: I see
PE: So I’d say, ���Betty Jo, lets ditch 4th period study hall and go play tennis. You get your racquets, so I’ll have one.” (Laughs)
JM: That would be your date, huh?
PE: I’d use hers. But anyhow, that’s how we got closer together, playing tennis.
JM: So, what year did you get married?
PE: 46
JM: 1946 huh
PE: Right out of high school
JM: Oh! Right out of high school. You didn’t go into the War because you were still in school.
PE: Right, yeah.
JM: Did your father or older brother?
PE: My older brother did. He was in the Second World War.
JM: What was his name?
PE: Monroe
JM: Monroe
PE: Yes, had quite a stretch of it. The Germans were still into North Africa when he, he went in with the invasion into North Africa. From there after, they went into Sicily, the islands at the foot of uh . . .
JM: Italy?
PE: Then from there, he went up to the Ansel Beach Head in one of the big deals there. Then he went in on the second invasion into Southern France, when Patton and them went into Southern France he was in on that invasion. He was clear over into Austria when the War was over, so he got to see quite a bit of it.
I had an uncle, my mother’s brother. He was in France and Belgium, and in the Belgium Bulge he got killed there in that. My mother’s brother.
JM: What was his name?
PE: Lavon Moody
JM: Moody?
PE: Yes, my mother was, she come out of Thatcher area and her father had a couple of stores and a pool hall and that. But my father had only went to the 4th grade. And so after he got to be pretty well up in his teens and that, they had a deal at Eastern Arizona called a Preparation deal, or uh. Anyway, he went horseback from here down across Whiteriver and that. And he rode into Thatcher and went to Eastern Arizona. That’s where he met my mother. He went on a Mormon mission into Arkansas and into that country and when he come back, why him and my mother traveled to Salt Lake City to be married.
JM: They took the Honeymoon Trail? Or by that time, they probably didn’t have to do the Honeymoon Trail anymore, just public transportation then. You were telling me how you met playing tennis. A cowboy playing tennis. This is interesting! That must have been love.
PE: Well, I probably shouldn’t say this, but I really loved athletics in school, you know. My senior year I was Captain of my football team and Captain of the basketball team. But it was a little school and there was no such thing like today where this is 5, this is 4, this 3 and that. You were a school in the State. And by playing in the North Tournament we win 3rd up there so we went on to the State. This was when I was a sophomore. And the schools in the State then, the big ones, was Mesa, Phoenix Union, Casa Grande, Coolidge, Tucson. That’s all the schools that was in the Valley, you know. But anyway, them’s the teams we had to play and it would be just like a bunch of 3rd graders playing the Varsity now, you know. But, like I say, we won 3rd in the North Tournament and went to the State Tournament, which was pretty good for a little school like we had. I enjoyed it. But she’d beat me playing tennis, so. But, I was getting out of study hall, see.
JM: Yes, that’s the important part. (Laughs)
