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In the summer
of 1877, prospector Ed Schieffelin was working the hills east of the San
Pedro River in the southeast portion of the Arizona Territory, when he
came across a vein of very rich silver ore in a high plateau called Goose
Flats. When Schieffelin filed his mining claim he named it "The Tombstone",
after a warning given him by a passing soldier. While telling the soldier
about his rock collecting experiences, the soldier told him that the only
rock he was likely to collect among the waterless hills and warring Apaches
of the area would be his own tombstone.
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The town
of Tombstone was founded in 1879, taking its name from the mining
claim, and soon became a boomtown. By 1882, Tombstone had become
the seat of the new Cochise county.
Since
Tombstone was in the desert, a company built a pipeline to supply
the town with water. No sooner was this pipeline built than Tombstone's
silver mines struck water.The
main pump failed, causing many mines to be flooded with deep groundwater,
and Tombstone declined rapidly.
On July
8th of 1882, Johnny Ringo—notorious outlaw and "fastest
gun in the west"—left Tombstone for Galeyville. The town
of Galeyville had been run by Curly Bill Brocius—who died in
March 1882— and was a safe haven of sorts for outlaws and other
unsavory folk.
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Cochise County 1895 |
Witnessess
claim they saw Johnny Ringo in Galeyville on July 9th. He left on July
11th and his body was found leaning against a tree in Turkey Creek on
July 14th. Whether he was murdered or committed suicide is still a debate.
What does that
have to do with our 30 acres? A popular watering stop in our valley is
a place called Soldier's Hole. The springs there were surrounded by large
trees, and would be a more than welcome rest stop on a hot July day. To
get from Soldier's Hole to Galeyville, the easiest—and most direct—route
would have been to follow Rucker Creek, which at that time flowed through
what would become our 30 acres.
Bisbee was
founded in 1880 as a copper, gold, and silver mining town, and named in
honor of Judge DeWitt Bisbee, one of the financial backers of the adjacent
Copper Queen Mine. Mining in the Mule Mountains proved quite successful:
in the early 20th century the population of Bisbee soared. Incorporated
in 1902, by 1910 its population swelled to 9,019 and it sported a constellation
of suburbs, including Warren, Lowell, and San Jose, some of which had
been founded on their own (ultimately less successful) mines.
Now...everyone
relates to Bisbee as a mining town. Few people know that Bisbee was also
a BIG cattle town!
All these people
had to eat, right? Well, our valley was lush with tall grasses, springs
and a high underground water table—just right for cattle ranching.
And the cattle ranchers came.
What would
later become our 30 acres became grazing ground for several cattle companies:
The Hall and Buckles Ranch, Erie Cattle Company, Tombstone Land and Cattle
Company, Turquoise Cattle Company and the El Dorado Ranch, to name a few.
Ike Clanton (of OK Corral fame) ran his cattle around here. (Ike was actually
a reputable rancher until he discovered that stealing horses was a more
lucrative business.)
Theodore White
and John Vickers were not only cattlemen, they were speculators with a
vision of creating a cattle empire. To make their dream a reality, they
needed a large number of cattle and a lot of land. In the spring of 1885,
White, Vickers, and several small ranchers combined land, cattle and water
rights and formed the Chiricahua Cattle Company. The CCC brand was registered
and a cattle empire of 1,685,880 acres of public domain with about 15,000
head of cattle and 300 horses was created. The CCC, run by daring men,
prospered and by 1889 the herd had increased to 19,520 head of cattle
and 375 horses. The CCC dominated the valley from Elfrida to Willcox and
soon extended its range into Graham County and other areas of southeastern
Arizona.
As they say,
all good thing must come to an end. A couple of years of drought and extreme
overgrazing took care of all the wonderful grasses that grew here. An
earthquake in 1887 changed the course of creeks, dried up many of the
springs and dropped the underground water table. Homesteaders were claiming
their 160 acres and putting up fences, cutting off access to the open
range. The bottom fell out of the cattle market. By 1891-1892, the grasses
were completely destroyed. A lot of the cattle died and many of the surviving
cattle were hearded east to Kansas.
Now we get
to the good part....
When I bought
the property, I noticed on a satellite map that an old train bed ran through
it from about the middle of the south property line to the north east
corner. Interesting. An old school building sat on the corner (now a private
residence) and down the road just about even with my south property line,
is an old adobe building that someone told me was a post office. Across
the driveway is an old abandoned arena. I later found out that the property
belongs to the local school and that the arena and property are the old
rodeo grounds. This is all that is left of the town of Webb.
So...where
was the town of Webb located? There are several trash pits on the
back 30 acres...some close to the old train bed. We've
found old ink bottles, a porcelain molar and various other "trinkets"
that were discarded for whatever reason. Some of the areas look as though
they've had glass bombs dropped...and the glass has been laying there
for a long time. I just figured we were the town dump.
When
we were consulting with Mr. Dart about our pottery sherds, he sent me
a detailed 1920's survey map of the area. The property owner at the time
was Robert Tyler. Sitting on the north side of the property, just about
where our house sits today, was the old Webb store and post office! According
to the Mills' report, there was also a lumber yard here. This might explain
the quantities of various sizes of rusty nails and screws that I see all
around the north end of the property.
 In
doing more research, we discovered that Robert Tyler was the original
homesteader. Born on August 31, 1864 in Washington County, Texas, he travelled
with his family to St. Louis, Omaha, Kanab Utah, and then to Woodruff,
Arizona. When he was 16, Robert took a crew job with the Sante Fe railroad.
Later
on, Robert drove freight wagons from Holbrook to Fort Apache. He sympathized
with the Apache's plight and helped them out as much as he could.
His
first marriage ended tragically when his wife died giving birth to their
fifth child. The child did not survive, either. A year later, on February
15, 1894, he married 16 year-old Charlotte Webb who he had met in Nutrioso,
Arizona. Robert went into the sawmill and lumber business with Charlotte's
father, James D. Webb.
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A
few years later, they moved to the Gila Valley and Robert took a
job at a sawmill in the Graham mountains. He was approached and
asked to be the bishop of his church in Eden, Arizona. He felt that
he couldn't accept at that time, but jokingly said, "I'd rather
be constable of the town first and clean up some of the rowdiness
going on here."
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Charlotte
Webb Tyler |
Robert
left on a business trip. While he was gone, the folks of Eden held an
election . When Robert returned, he discovered that he was the town constable!
The church again asked him to be bishop. This time, he accepted. If that
weren't enough, the county authorities had him sworn in as a deputy sheriff.
So he served as bishop, constable and deputy sheriff—all at the same
time!
He
wasn't paid for the church position, but he was paid two dollars for each
arrest and 10 cents a mile for his horse when he had to go out of town
to make an arrest.
Four
years later, Robert Tyler travelled across Cochise county by horseback.
He saw a beautiful valley with rich land. He decided to homestead a 160
acre tract and take his family there to start a new life. He went to Tombstone
and filed his claim, returning to his property to erect a flag and lightining
rod. He then returned to the Gila Valley to get his family. He sold his
property and bought supplies: 1,500 pounds of flour, 1,000 pounds of beans,
many slabs of salt pork and bacon, and a great quantity of corn meal.
They took lots of seeds for starting their first crops, plows and implements
needed for tilling the soil.
They
put all their household belongings on three wagons. With Charlotte driving
the horse and buggy and two of the boys riding herd on their cattle and
horses, they set out for the week long trip to Cochise county. They arrived
on their property on April 25, 1908.
Times
were not easy for the Tylers. Cattlemen in the area didn't care for the
homesteaders. On more than one occasion, Robert found his fences cut and
cattle missing. It wasn't until he testified against another homesteader
that he gained respect from the cattlemen. Most of his cattle were then
returned.
The
Tylers weren't poor—they just didn't have any money. They had been
living in tents and needed to build a house. Two of Robert's sons went
to work for a man named Higgins who owned a brick yard not too far away.
The work was hard and the pay was...in bricks. Every weekend, the boys
would haul home their weekly pay. When they had enough bricks to build
the house, they quit their job and helped Robert with the construction.
In just 13 months after arriving on the property, they moved into their
new home. Four months later, little Glen was born.
They
planted fruit trees and gardens, but son Charles decided to plant enough
to be able to start a fruit and vegetable route and deliver house to house
in Courtland and Gleeson. He was quite successful.
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Brace
and Clark, then 10 and 11 years of age, made two trips a week with
a team of burros to Rucker Canyon for firewood and wood for fence
posts. For protection, they carried a 22 rifle. At Christmas, they
cut plenty of trees so that everyone around could have a beautiful
Christmas tree for the holidays.
Robert
Tyler realized the need for the children to have an education and
that a community was needed there. He wrote to his friends, encouraging
them to come homestead. And come they did.
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Tyler
established a general store and stocked it with supplies brought up from
Douglas. The railroad—El Paso and Southwestern—was being built from Douglas to Dragoon and Tyler
talked them into making a slight swing in order to include Webb. The depot
was named Caliente. On November 19, 1909, the Webb post office opened
in the general store. Soon after that, the Webb school was built and became
a hub of activity, drawing in folks from Douglas, Willcox, Tombstone and
surrounding ranches for dances, dinners and school shows. The rodeo arena
was built in 1910 and used up until the 1980's.
The
Webb Mother's Club was founded on October 18, 1912 with six mothers and
Miss Miner, who was the Webb school teacher. The Webb Mother's Club raised
funds for school books and supplies, lanterns (no electricity back then),
and a piano, to name a few items. Members attended meetings by walking
miles across fields, riding horseback or by buggy. Miss Helen Church,
a Home Economist from the University of Arizona Extension Program, would
attend meetings from time to time, arriving by stagecoach. 
The
Tyler twins, Lowell and Loura were born on November 22, 1912. Mrs. Tyler
became very ill after their birth with blood poisioning and had to be
placed in the hospital in Courtland for almost a year. While 11 year-old
Norma helped take care of her mother at the hospital, her 12 year-old
daughter, Charlotte ("Lottie") was put in charge of taking care
of the family: the twin babies, two-and-a-half-year-old Glen, six year-old
Berma and the rest of the family of boys and men who were working in the
fields. What a saint that young lady must have been! By my count, there
must have been 11 children all together in the Tyler clan!
 In
1917, Robert Marion Tyler Jr. registered for the draft. He was sent to
Camp Funston on October 2, 1917 and then on to France in July 1918. His
brother, Robert Leo Tyler was now living in Maimi, Arizona. Robert Jr.
never came home from France. On October 29, 1918, and some 4,000 miles
apart, both Robert Jr. and Leo died from influenza on the same day.
(Robert
Jr. was from Tyler's first marriage. Robert Leo went by Leo. Strange though...both
had the same first name, died on the same day of the same ailment.)
It
goes without saying that the death of two sons on the same day was a low
blow for the Tylers. The Tylers left Webb not too long after Robert and
Leo died. Census records from 1920 show them living in Solomon, Arizona.
From their death records, it appears that most of them went to California.
From the research that I've done so far—and it is far from complete—Charlotte
passed away in Montebello, California on June 26, 1950 and is buried in
Rose Hills cemetery in Whittier, California. Robert Tyler passed away
in Glendale, Arizona on May 30, 1960 and is also buried in Rose Hills.
We
have not been able to find any sign of a foundation—or the ruins—for
a brick house on our property—yet. The store and post office were
torn down and the post office moved to its current location some time
after 1920 and remained open until August 5, 1938 when the postmaster
died. Until then, the folks from Elfrida had to come to Webb for their
mail. Now the folks from Webb had to go to Elfrida! The trains quit running
and the track was removed in 1938. As best I can tell, our 30 acres apparently
remained vacant from 1920 until about 1997 or so when our manufactured
home was moved here by the folks that I bought the property from in 2006.
Although they are sun rotting, some of the original wooden fence posts
still stand with strands of barbed wire attached to them. The Caliente
Depot sat just on the other side of what is now our west property line.
It was used by our Elfrida Volunteer Fire Department as a practice burn
in the 1980's, and burned to the ground. The remnants of a machine shop
and bunk house remain, but time and weather will soon take care of those
two buildings. The big green water tank still stands, but the windmill
is long gone.
We
were joking one night about finding Jimmy Hoffa buried on the property.
Well...guess what? We've found what could very well be a grave down by
the old train bed! It's about four feet wide and about six feet long and
surrounded by large rocks that are found in Bisbee! We don't have native
rock of that type here. Yikes. We do know that it isn't
an Indian burial...they didn't mark their graves and when the Salado's
were here, they cremated most of their dead.
Is
it really a grave? Could one of the Tylers be buried there? Maybe an unfortunate
loser (or winner) of a poker game from the late 1800's? We'd like to find
out. If it is indeed a human grave, we'd like to put a fence and marker
on it so that it won't be disturbed in the future. We don't want to desecrate
it either, so for now it's going to be one of life's myserties. But...someone
took the time to bring over rock from Bisbee to put around it, so it's
marked for a reason....
Along
those lines, urban legend has is that one of the previous owners of the
ranch just to the south of us used to hire Mexicans to work the ranch.
He "paid" them once a year, then had them killed before they
were off the property! About 26 or so graves were discovered at the south
end of his property!
We
will continue with the research of our property. It's been too hot to
"play" outside, but we will be bugging the folks at the County
Recorder's office and the Archives to see what else we can dig up. I'm
on the hunt for old photgraphs to post with this, as well as doing a complete
title search on the property. I'll keep you posted!
Resources:
We'll
All Wear Silk Hats:
Lynn R. Bailey
Cochise County Past and Present: Ervin Bond
Mormon Geneology
Search
Pioneers In Profile: Cochise County Historical Journal Spring/Summer
1999
Webb Mother's Club: Cochise County Historical Journal Spring/Summer
1999
Willcox Range News
Cochise County Recorder's Office
Cochise County Archives
Dee Bivens—Keep up the Tyler family research!
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