The ranch.

Stuff

Nice article, Frank. So girls, we don't want to go there? Ok! Keep in
mind, if we do make it, we would have a boat..
My cabin. Place looks the same. Strong smoke odor in the cabin and
barn, and lots of general clean up around the place. The surrounding
mountains are burned badly, with bare spots completely, black sticks
left in place, brown dead trees in other places, and dead but still
green in others. Now the concern is water run off when the monsoons
come and stream pollution and acidity. Wonder where this place will
end up economically as well. But, for now, my flag stil flies. R

AZ Trek

Howdy All:
Had a fun visit to CA last week, got to re-up with George and Frank! Fun Day that was:
To add the info: George, I didn't leave any more books in CA with Frank; you have the only two. Frank has a great book already, "On the Border with Crook", written by what's-his-name, his Adjutant, who was with him extensively. It's a good book for sure.
The other boobs (I meant Books!) that make for entertaining reading:
"I Fought w Geronimo" by Jason Betzinez. Maybe not the most historically accurate but a good read, c/w the times.
"The Apache Indians", by Frank Lockwood. Excellent.
"Apache Land", by Ross Santee. Excellent, a good read.
One more thing of a more delicate nature:
This tour is comprised of only the most ethical of men, men of high moral standards. Therefore, the ogling of our wives' breasts will not be tolerated. Not mentioning any names (Tom), but peeking/ogling at George's wife's breasts was inexcusable on that vacation, as we all discussed around a few beers. It doesn't matter that my wife felt somewhat left out and started to unbotton her shirt (stopped her just in time), and we just have to be larger than that, or at least more discrete...Tom.
Anyway, we'll have some fun next spring!! R

Updates

OK, sending this to two blogs:

Live from Springerville:

 Today will be a very big day for our ranch. The fire is over Noble Mtn. Auger Canyon had fire late last night but fire fighters have prepared it as well as possible. They have also backfired along the co rds in Dry Valley.

 Last night was a good one; temps in low 30's, no winds. Red flag warning for winds today starting about 11 am so the fire will come over Gobbler today and down into our valley. Hopefully we will hold. Got to go,

 We'll see how the day goes. Love to all, UR/Dad

Fwd: Apache War Expedition

Just to get the list on there..

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <FrankBoddn@aol.com>
Date: Jun 1, 2011 3:43 PM
Subject: Apache War Expedition
To: <rsd12205@gmail.com>, <tcmd79@yahoo.com>, <mfulton1@socal.rr.com>

Gentlemen,

    Here is an outline of possible activities made out by our captain, Rich Dickson, for your perusal:

 

Meet up in Tucson.

Explore the Camp Grant area, Camp Grant Massacre.

Globe, Salt River Canyon, Cibecue and Fort apache.

Rich's "Elk Ridge Ranch" and environs.

Alma - Clooney's Grave.

Glenwood, N.M.

Silver City, N.M.

Old Ft. Bowie Apache Pass.

Wilcox:  Bar, Railroad.

Cochise Stronghold.

Dragood Springs Station.

Old Ft. Crittenden.

Tombstone, Ft. Huachucha Museum, Buffalo Soldiers.

 

This is an example of what we can do, time permitting and according to what interests whom.  I hope we are able to meet up down here at my house during Rich's visit to Carlsbad in a couple weeks.

 

Later, 

 

Frank

Apache Wars tour

Frank, looks like an all encompassing site visit, giving enough time.

 Forgot to add old Fort Lowell site here in Tucson. There is an interesting little museum there but the hours are sporadic.

Don't forget, you can use this email address and it all goes into the blog site. It will be recorded there for posterity and future reference..

 Also, you left out "Skeleton Cave" massacre site. This may or may not work depending on the availability of my friend who's been there, plus we will need a boat.. R

The old days..

Remember this Frank?

Question

Couple of things.
I googled this title by accident and we show up on the web. Just the site though, no names. But I find that interesting.
Might have an opportunity to visit Skull Cave, aka Skeleton Cave. That massacre of what turned out to be Yacquis occurred in a shallow cave about 1500' above the Salt River. To get there now we have to rent a boat, then climb about 1000' on a not maintained old old trail. Can go with someone who has been there and would like to go back. He found some metacarpals last time.
Any interest?

Re: Adobe Walls

Another try..

On Apr 23, 2011 7:55 AM, "Richard Dickson" <rsd12205@gmail.com> wrote:
> OK. One more thing.
> Driving down the Juornado del Muerto, down the Rio Grande valley from
> ABQ, in the pre dawn hours. One of the plainsmen there using a Sharps
> was a Shepherd, such as my cousins family. They've been here for
> generations, and it's entirely possible he has that DNA. But that's
> not what's occupying my mind.
> That onslaught by that stone-age culture trying to hold on, led by a
> half breed, a product of a previous murder and abduction, and then
> child rape, occurred only 137 winters ago. 72 seasons before I was
> born. I would say 90% of the area is totally unchanged in that remote
> place. Neither, I suspect, has basic human nature. I think I need to
> get home, get the black tie dinner party and Easter with the grand
> kids behind me, saddle up, and go for a long lonesome ride!

On the Way Home;

OK, I know this is working since I got the note on my email automatically. Hopefully I put yours in accurately this time.
After a great several days with my cousins (we used to find lots of arrow heads/flints on the farms as well in the bends of the creeks there; id'd as the Osage winter grounds). But I digress.
Made a beeline south from Wichita to Medicine Lodge:
I think the locals don't know what they have there, and several did not know anything about the council that was held in 1867 and the importance thereof. The actual site is not marked at all, the confluence of the Elm Creek and the Medicine River, but it is a little confusing. There is a dominant hill overlooking the plains (must have been a beautiful place before the houses and poor little ramshackle town). They do, Every Five Years, hold a pageant on that hill in a natural little amphitheater of a re-enactment of the history of the area, but now it's a sad little primitive golf course. There is a marker going into the park that says the familiar "near here", and that's it. There is a little idealized memorial on the old high school grounds overlooking the Elm Creek side, and for all I know that was the site. In reality, I suspect the officers/gov't reps put up their tents, etc, on the high ground and the 7000 or so Indians camped down on the plains around the creeks. I could visualize it, with a little concentration. But, they could definitely do better. The sad part is, and it is fairly consistent, the little farm towns along the rural highways are dying. Stores boarded up, only the very occaisional little Mom and Pop cafe, etc. Remember you guys, as you go to Maui and Mammoth and live our lives, it is advertised that one Kansas Farmer feeds 128 people. It's primarily big business now, filled with insecticides and chemical fertilizers. No wonder Cancer and obesity is so rampant, with the Type II D.M. But I digress....eat your Fruits, Vegetables, take Vitamin D at 4000 u a day, and Tumeric for Prostate Cancer avoidance. Ignore at your peril, esp with the state of our health care system. ooops : there I go again.
From Medicine Lodge KS I sought out Camp Supply. Again, I was disappointed. The current town, Fort Supply, is really downtrodden, as is Buffalo OK where I stopped for a hamburger in the Mom/Pop cafe. It was about 1/2 filled with cowboys, ranch family here and there, a building that would have been condemned anywhere else. Horse trailers out front with saddled Quarter horses, etc. I felt at home! Ice tea served in quart jars, nothing fancy there. Fort Supply is the next town, further south into the Panhandle, and was, as I'm sure you know, established by Custer at the direction of Gen'l Miles during/immed after the Washita campaign. The site itself, where the Camp Was, is occupied by a prison, and this is where it gets interesting.
I had to see it. Keep in mind I am a senior citizen these days, traveling alone, and I like a certain bit of personal protection that is getting more and more important along the highways by the way as gas prices become out of reach of most people. I also was returning from turkey hunting and most people use a 12 guage with 3" magnum shells. There are signs all over about how one is subject to search, and the felony and steep fines in the thousands of $$ if one brings firearms, drugs, or alcohol onto the prison property and through the gates. Well, one out of three isn't bad, I thought, so I went in anyway. There are inmates walking around everywhere, but I did find the site, got to take some pics, and marveled at what it must have been like. The original wood stockade and buildings built during the 1860's and into the '70's are gone. The old Dodge City/Camp Supply road is marked within the prison, then is obliviated. The current mock-up of the stockade that is put up for tourist visitation is about 1/4-1/2 mile from the actual site. I just thought of the colorful characters from our western history that have been there.
After the utility of the camp was done, squatters from the Ok Land Rush dismantled the fort and buildings for other stuff, and very few things remained. It then became a psychiatric hospital and that has some history in it too. The original cemetery, for example, was moved to Ft Leavenworh (the soldiers, for ex.), so the current old cemetery is filled with old psych patients. The most current burial is the Doc and his wife, in their 80's, who were buried there in the early '80s since they had lived there and provided medical care for that population. There are a smattering of very old grave sites but not many and the markers are pretty much unintelligble. Again, though, one really has to seek out this site, and even then it's tough because of the prison. There were a lot of tough looking hombres walking around staring at the Jeep Grand Cherokee, let me tell you.
After that, another little wild goose chase, finding the site of the Lyman Wagon Battlefield. That fight lasted about 4 days, and if the Comanche had been able to overwhelm that force of 98 soldiers in that valley, they would have had tons of supplies/ammo/rifles. But, once again, a scout escaped, made it about 100 miles back up to Camp Supply, notifed the camp of the besiegement, and they were rescued. And so goes history. In getting home, where I have a black tie dinner tonight and I'm still 6 hours away just south of ABQ, it was a detour first 10 miles one way to the Texas marker, then that marker unbeknownst to me directed the visitor another 2.4 miles south and 1.7 miles east bouncing along dirt/rocky roads, among honest to God prairie dog towns, sage and scrub plants, to the descent again into the Canadian R valley where the battle took place over about 380 acres. Again, while they have done lots of good archaelogical work, it's hard to get to, not well marked at all at the site, and it's on private land where cattle roam and there are LOTS of oil well derricks. There are more being added. Of interest, however, is that along the way are the recent graves of a family that have ranched that area for generations. Reminded me of the family grave sites of that family in Legends of the Fall movie, if you saw it. I can just picture a little group of ranchers out there on the windswept promontory that overlooks the Canadian valley, burying their loved ones. A lonely, kind of sad, but beautiful place. Again, when you look down into the valley, the grass is greening and the trees are all leafed out along the banks.
Well, got to get back on the road. As time allows, I'll get the pics of the trip on Snapfish, so don't ignore the notification if you want to see some dead turkeys and (mostly) the Red River Wars topography. I don't expect I'll get back there, but I would like to visit Palo Duro Canyon some day.
All the best, R

Mini Walk About/Red River Wars

Hello Gentlemen, Good Morning.
A sample of the utility of these little blogs.
On my home from my mini-walk-about of some Red River Wars sites, combined with turkey hunting on my cousins and my family farms in mid-eastern Kansas. Those early mornings and the cacophony of sounds as dawn breaks is amazing; turkeys are everywhere, we got six. anyway..
En Route, sought and chased down the Adobe Walls site, along with a neat little museum in Borger, TX, after stopping in Amarillo for directions. They don't really have good maps to these sites at all and, in fact, the lady in Borger gave me some literature that had serious errors in it. Wild goose chase that needed some correction. But I did find Adobe Walls and it is in a very picturesque valley of the Canadian, easy to see why the spot/valley was chosen not only by the Bent brothers for their trading post (the first Adobe Walls), and the merchants willing to risk death for the buffalo trade deep in Indian Terr ruled by the Comanche/Kiowa/Southern Cheyenne. The site where Billy Dixon drew a bead on Ishtay is not marked, and there are about 3 possible bluffs/hills on the north side of the Canadian. You are bouncing along among the rocks and jagged topography on the plains one minute, then you are down in a fairly level green grassy river bottom about 1/2 mile wide with heavily forested Cottonwoods along the river. It's beautiful. It's all within private land but the gravel road is public and the owners (similar to the Dull Knife site in Wyo) have owned the Turkey Creek Ranch ever since. They have donated the 5 acre site to Texas. For me, worth the trip. After that side trip I just booked it to Emporia KS. The Rath wagon trail to Dodge City was a well used trail, but it's gone now and not marked. They must have been brave men to do that, even in the fairly large company that they had. Personally, I think the buffalo hunters were just rough, uneducated men being manipulated by the merchants (Rath, etc) who talked them into going down with them (using them for protection) to get the robes easier and first. In fact, as you know, they had a spy within the Indian ranks and the merchants were informed there was going to be a raid intent on wiping them out, and even knew the night and the tme. One of them left a couple of days early to just get out, one of them (Rath I think) stayed on to protect their investments of stores, and they did not tell anyone else but kept them there to protect their stores/materiel. That included the elderly man and his wife who they employed as a cook, and, of course, Billy Dixon.
While in Borger, btw, I met a man from Kansas who portrays Billy Dixon in re-enactments and he really resembles him from the pictures that are available. Had a very interesting chat.
More in the next blog, coming right up.
R

Blog

OK;

 Frank, bear with me.

 Tom, George, hopefully this note will come to you now. I messed up your emails before.

 This note will not only go to your email address directly, but also will publish directly on the blog.

 Check it out, get back with me.  R

Blog site

Gentlemen: This serves as the opening salvo for our blog site, for
the proposed several days of fun, comaradarie, reunion, rendevous, and
the visitation of various historical sites of Arizona Territory.
Please be so kind to let me know if you get this.
Visit www.ApachesinArizona.blogspot.com to check it out. Rich