Monday, August 22, 2011

Arizona's ranching legacy to be celebrated in centennial exhibit

Jesse Hooker Davis is the seventh generation of his family to work the Sierra Bonita Ranch in the upper Sulphur Springs Valley of southeastern Arizona. His great-great-great-grandfather Henry Clay Hooker scratched out a living on the high-desert ranch northwest of Willcox starting in 1872 when marauding Chiricahua Apaches and their leader Cochise were ending their clashes with European settlers. Colonel Hooker, as he was known, had a good rapport with Cochise and the Apaches never raided his adobe ranch house, Davis said recently from the Sierra Bonita Ranch. Cochise died in 1874. Hooker passed in 1907, five years before Arizona statehood. His family has kept the crooked H brand going for 139 years and the original ranch house is still home to his descendants. "It's not my ranch. It's my family's ranch and it's my turn to take care of it," said Davis, a 38-year-old rancher. Davis is a rare breed of Arizonan with the deepest of roots: the Sierra Bonita is one of the state's oldest ranches. But there are hundreds of other ranchers holding onto the reins of a rural lifestyle in an increasingly urbanized state where three of every four residents live in Maricopa or Pima counties. That ranching legacy will be celebrated in a centennial exhibit by Phoenix photographer Scott Baxter called "100 Years 100 Ranchers." It will be shown starting in October at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport Terminal 4. Next year, the show moves to the Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg and Tucson Museum of Art...more

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