Alady from Phoenix read my bio on my web site, www.dustyrichards.com, while searching for information about what Phoenix was like prior to the big boom. She emailed me for information on the Milky Way Hereford Ranch that at one time headquartered on Camelback Road and 24th street. Now the ranch land is under a condo city, close to the gates of the famous Biltmore Resorts built by the Wrigley family of chewing gum fame.
When I was there last year I could not find even a landmark of the old ranch. At one time in the 1940s and 1950s, Milky Way breeding for the horned Hereford cattle was the highest priced in the world. Ethyl Mars of the Mars candy company had a large ranch in Tennessee where he raised these show cattle. Allen Fenney was his herdsman and he married one of the Mars daughters. When they got a divorce, Mr. Mars set Feeney up in the Hereford cattle business – rumor had it he gave the operation to his ex-son-in-law, but I don’t know that as a fact. I do know they sold several bulls for a $100,000 apiece. That’s like a million dollars today.
The lady was researching what it was like back then and is finding old pictures and things about the ranch. I always wondered if Allen Feeney had been vacationing at the Biltmore resort and found the ranch on Camelback road just outside the gates to the Biltmore – back then the land was well out in the country
I’ll be 72 this November 11, so that was when I was 14 and 15 when I worked on the ranch. There were actually three ranches. One there on Camelback Road where they had an office and a bunkhouse, barns and pens. On the back of the place was an old house that must have been the original farm house where the older cowboy, Henry Davis, and I lived the summer I was on the ranch. A 160-acre ranch at the northeast side of Scotsdale was the second place. Cows were kept out there, too. The third ranch at Springerville later became John Wayne’s, when the ranch was dispersed after Mr. Feeney died at the young age of 48, from polio. His children had taken the vaccination. It had just come on the market, but he thought only children needed to be vaccinated so he passed it up. With his passing, his wife disbursed the famous cattle and land.
That puts it way back in the early 1950s. Phoenix was just beginning to take off. There were still lots of citrus orchards all around that area. Giant grapefruit, huge navel oranges, Valencia oranges and lots of lettuce, carrots and other vegetables grew in the valley. Cotton was a big crop. There were feedyards, large dairies and alfalfa fields everywhere. The Japanese who were held in camps there, stayed after World War II and grew flowers for the florist trade. Along Baseline Avenue in south Phoenix were acres and acres of beautiful flowers. That’s gone now, too.
The boom brought on acres and acres of houses, overnight. The area around the main ranch went from ranch style home subdivisions to condos in a few decades.
Automatic transmissions were just coming in and some of the first air conditioned cars came on the market. James Dean made “Rebel Without a Cause” out of that time. “Blackboard Jungle” reminded me of my sophomore year downtown at Phoenix Union High School. Girls wore poodle skirts and saddle oxfords. Elvis was on Ed Sullivan’s show. Ford made an overhead valve engine and Chevrolet built a V-8. Every boy at 18 had to register for the draft. We carried our deer rifles in the gun rack of the pickup when we went to school, so we could cut out after class and go deer hunting. We traded pocket knives on campus. I never heard of an incident happening at school about them.
Bet a lot of your grandparents can recall those days and wonder where we have gone wrong. Hope it rained at your place this week.
Western novelist Dusty Richards and his wife Pat live on Beaver Lake in northwest Arkansas. For more information about his books you can email Dusty by visiting www.ozarksfn.com and clicking on 'Contact Us' or call 1-866-532-1960.
