Back At The Ranch

The original ranch house was built around 1873.  It was a flat roofed four room house, made of hand cast adobe blocks.  Here you can see the additions made to the house for the ladies who eventually lived here.

This picture of the Victorian front porch shows lots of children, but I haven't come across much information on them.  It will be fun to see if I can identify them.

Here's the porch today, the tree having grown to huge proportions.  All around the outside, as if planted in the garden, are rosemary bushes.

Up until his wife arrived, Walter Vail had only added a kitchen, a pantry, cooks quarters to accommodate the cowboys and a business office for himself.  As soon as she arrived, he built an eight room addition with twelve foot high ceilings.  Woohoo!!

I suppose the high ceilings kept it cooler in the summer.  At our ranch house we also had twelve foot high ceilings.  Upon a remodel in later years, we found the entire house to be built with square nails.

The huge red shingled adobe building was so fabulous, contrary to normal tradition, Margaret chose to live at the ranch instead of in Tucson.

Not in any particular order, here are some of the rooms I photographed.  This map shows the configuration ... sorry it's so hard to read.

In 1878 Walter Vail added on a bedroom (#22) for John Harvey and his bride.  

The bathroom came along in 1900, making a lovely ensuite with running water.  It even has a walk in closet.  

At the same time, a large room was added (#23) to be used as a dining room, along with this living room.

Walter added this beautiful bay window as a wedding present to wife Margaret in 1881.  From the outside, you can obviously tell it was an add-on, but someone was an amazing carpenter/adobe builder.  You can't tell from the inside at all.

This beautiful fireplace is on the opposite wall, with a bookcase now blocking the original door to the bedroom.  

The Vail family meals were prepared in this kitchen.  They fared a little better than the cowboy crew.  Oyster shells were found in trash piles near the house.  The gas stove was added in the 1950's by the next owners.

If you have a kitchen and are cooking for lots of cowboys, you need a pantry and a place for the cook to live.  This room was next door to the kitchen.

Some of the ceilings once covered with canvas, are now exposed.  You can see the construction ... beams covered with wood slats, covered with hay, then adobe.  

With a ranch operation as big as Vail, Hislop and Harvey had, they required a bookkeeper.  There was no traveling to town ... you hired someone to live at your ranch.  This is where he lived and did his work.  

Later on when children appeared ... I've no idea who at this point ... two small bedrooms and a bathroom were built to accommodate them.  This is the "pink" room.  I love it when electricity came along .... they just ran the wires up the wall.  

With matching pink bathtub, this ensuite bath area was also used as a guest room.  

Like at our ranch back in the 50's, the kids were relegated to the outside porch to sleep.  We didn't have a porch, we just slept on ancient army cots in the back yard.  This soon became known as the Arizona room when they screened it in.

All this while, trying to build up the cattle herd without the expense of shipping costs, Walter heard John Chisum from St. David Arizona, had a big herd near Bensen.  If he could work a deal, he could cut out transportation costs.  He bought 793 head at $14 each.  That's over $11,000 .... in 1877.  He also got rid of all the sheep he bought from his trouble-causing neighbor.

After the sheep farmer incident and before Walter bought them all, Hislop had had enough and retreated back to England.  Walter spoke to his brother Edward (Ned), who immediately moved to the ranch.  He had no experience at all with cattle, but dove right in, even with Apaches stalking the ranch at every turn.

I'll finish up this story tomorrow ... I have to put my hummingbird feeder back outside.  It comes in every night now to keep the bats from creating havoc!!