Taylor-Shumway Heritage Foundation Honors Area’s Ranchers And Farmers

Norris and Fawnette Baldwin put together a PowerPoint presentation that included many cowboy/ranching photographs. The decorations were memorabilia of area ranchers and farmers.

The following information was taken from Ranching and Taylor.

Taylor was founded in 1878 by James Pearce. He and his son James William returned to St. George, Utah, in the winter of 1878-79 and brought back a small band of sheep. Fort Apache was the primary market for sheep ranchers in the area.

“In early 1879 Alec and Joe McCleve arrived in Bagley, soon to become Walker, and then finally Taylor in late 1880. Joe wrote a letter to their friend Elija Murray Thomas…that first spring and told him that ‘the grass was up to cows’ bellies,’ and by December of 1879 Elijah had arrived with his family and his brother Joe Thomas driving 25 head of Durham cattle,” states the history.

In 1881 the railroad arrived in Holbrook, which made it so their cattle and wool could be shipped. That helped the sheep men immediately, but it was several years before local ranchers had enough cattle to ship.

Life was not easy in those days. The Santa Fe Railroad had been given alternating sections of land on each side of the railroad for 20 to 30 miles.

Aztec Land and Cattle Company, known as the Hashknife outfit, had purchased approximately 500,000 acres between Silver Creek and west of Winslow, complicating things for local ranchers. In 1885 the Hashknife brought more than 45,000 head of cattle from Texas. “With thousands of sheep and thousands of cattle grazing the ‘grass up to cows’ bellies’–and that grass is going to suffer,” notes Palmer’s history.

There were droughts in 1895 and 1900, and Aztec and others lost thousands of head of cattle. The cattle needed water, and soon they were grazing by creeks, washes, natural water holes and springs, which dried up the water.

“…(R)anching was a very hard life. It was not romantic. Weather was often an enemy,” writes Palmer. There were droughts in the 1930s and the 1960s, and the longest modern drought began in 1995 and continues today. In 1967 many cattle died from the heavy snowstorms. Markets are up and down.

In 1917-18, a bad freezing winter killed many cattle belonging to the Levi Shumway family and several other families. The Ira Wakefield family and others were forced out of business in 1924 when the local bank failed, “and the bank that bought the assets took all of the cattle and even homes of people who had mortgages.”

Palmer gave brief histories of ranchers in the area, including as Elijah and Lige Thomas, Z.B. Decker, the Lewis men, several Hancock men, Frank Baird, the Holt family and W.C. Baldwin.

Cowboys in the area when Palmer was growing up included Art Hancock, Bill Bourden, Vern Hatch, and several families that included the Palmers, Hunts, Reidheads, Hatchs, Solomons and Shumways.

Foundation President Lynn Hancock acknowledged many of the ranching families, including Wes and John Hatch, who ran the Hatch Dairy for many years. It was started by their dad, Jay, and Uncle Richard.

Palmer’s writing also gives the history of one prominent ranch called the Taylor Ranch, which is not owned by a family. On the east side of Show Low Creek as you drive south on Highway 77, you will see part of the ranch. Its land also lies west of that bridge and west of Pinedale Road.

This is called the Church Ranch, and was part of the Snowflake Stake welfare beef production operation that dates back to the 1940s.

“In the 1950s Roy Palmer, a member of the Snowflake Stake Presidency, was given the assignment to enlarge the stake’s cattle welfare operations for the Snowflake Stake, and he supervised the purchase of the Bigler ranches east of Overgaard and Aripine, and the Don Thomas and Albert Wahl Ranch west of Clay Springs,” Palmer writes.

Roy was part-time manager of the operation, and several of the Flakes and Ellsworth brothers assisted him. At that time, the Snowflake Stake included Flagstaff, Winslow, Joseph City, Holbrook, Snowflake, Taylor, Heber, Clay Springs, Pinedale and Lakeside.

Since that time other properties have been purchased and leased by the LDS church.

In 1963 when Jesse N. Smith’s stake presidency was released, Reed Hatch was called to serve as fulltime manager of the ranch. He called on many local people to help. One was Glen Ellsworth, who is still helping at the Church Ranch.

In the 1970s the Snowflake Stake did some pig production as a welfare project, starting a unit north of Snowflake. In 1980 when Taylor became a stake, the pig farm and cattle operation were separated.

Following Hatch, Gordon Thornhill became ranch manager, and when his health began to decline, Jay Whipple took over. Whipple told Palmer that the only locally operated, volunteer welfare cattle operation left in the LDS church is Taylor Ranch. Palmer noted that the LDS Church Welfare Department has huge church cattle operations in Wyoming, Utah and Florida, but the Taylor Ranch, which is part of the Welfare Department Unit, is a unique volunteer operation.

As Whipple’s health deteriorated, Gary Kirkman was called to be the manager.

“Real ranching is not as romantic as we imagine it, but it gets into our blood. Many of the ranching folks of modern times have to have another source of income to be able to survive. Ranching has always been precarious and hard, and it takes people who love the outdoors, love livestock and maybe as much as anything, love the cowboy and cowgirl ‘way of life’ to dedicate themselves to these enterprises,” Palmer writes.

A special tribute at the dinner was paid to Jay and Lynn Whipple, who have both been very involved in the Church Ranch.

Copies of Ranching and Taylor are available at the Taylor Museum, which now features a display on local cowboys. The museum is located at the corner of Center and Main streets, and is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday.