b'RANCHING TRADITION IS DEEPWITH THE PERKINS OF PERKINSVILLEBy Linda LudingtonP ERKINSVILLE, ARIZONA, 1963. The Hollywood movie cameras zoom in for closer shots. The frontier sheriff is about to confront the hardened outlaw who has just come into town on the train. The final episode of "How the West Was Won" is being filmed. The movie is fiction; the movie set is, however, real. What could be more authentic to the spirit of the West, its land, its history, its people-than Perkinsville and the Perkins family!Long before there was a Perkinsville, the juniper- neighbors, set out for Arizona. Ranch wagonsand Ash Fork. A chuckwagon was an essential part of and-pinon Verde River country was home towere filled with household goods. Women andevery crew. Each cowboy had his own string of horses Native Americans. Numerous artifacts discoveredsmall children rode in a buggy or on a buckboard.to ride. Working together and depending upon each in canyons and caves along the riverbanks attest toA chuck wagon was supplied with the necessaryother during the roundups allowed all the ranchers Yavapai people, as well as earlier tribes, who lived onprovisions. The men and older boys rode ranchand cowboys to become well acquainted. Tom Perkins this hospitable land.horses and mules across arid west Texas. Thislaments that the ranching community no longer odyssey would include loading the stock onto aenjoyed the same degree of neighborliness after the In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln sent an officialSanta Fe train to cross a particularly desolate stretchTaylor Grazing Act brought barbed-wire fences to the party with a military escort to establish the capitalof country. When the stock was unloaded at Sanrange in the early 1930s. of the new Arizona Territory. Their first camp was atMarcial, New Mexico, the trail drive was continued. Del Rio Springs north of the present site of the townOn the open range, a cowboy was required to be of Chino Valley. A few months later the party movedThe oldest son Rob later wrote about the challengesskilled with a rope. When several hundred cattle to the forested area of present-day Prescott, wherethese pioneers faced through the Datil Plains tohad been gathered, cowboys held them in an outer logs were readily available to build a fort, houses,Springerville, and eventually to Holbrook. Severecircle while others roped stock to be branded and and businesses. While at the original site, armylightning storms caused stampedes. The wranglerdoctored. Rob Perkins wrote that his father Marion doctor James Baker traded his horse and saddle tooften spent days searching for horses that hadexpected his sons to be efficient ropers. "After a squatter for his land claims along the Verde River.wandered during the night. Sparse water holes werethe work had been going on for twenty or thirty Baker and his partner James Campbell were soonsometimes so filled with alkali that some of theminutes, if I had been doing the calf roping, my running one of the largest cattle/horse operationsparched cattle were poisoned; a mule was almost lostfather would observe his watch and if I had not in Arizona. They called it the Verde Ranch. Thein quicksand. Feed was short.made an average of a calf a minute, he would say, severe drought years of the 1890s, however, brought\'Young fellow, you are getting pretty slow. You had financial setbacks that forced the partners to sell.When this resolute family reached Holbrook,better speed up a little.\'" Marion learned that the Verde Ranch deal had fallen Marion Alexander Perkins, the patriarch of thethrough. The cowboys were forced to turn backIn the earliest days, the Perkins ranch sold Arizona Perkins family was born in 1848 on a farmto the Luna Valley near the Arizona-New Mexicoslaughtered beef to feed the miners in Jerome. The near Coffeyville, Mississippi. His older brothersline where there was enough grass to winter thecopper-mine population was soaring in the early joined the Confederate Army, leaving the youngsterherd. By late summer the following year, when the1900s. Later, to ship cattle to market, the Perkins to work the farm. The South was in ruins when inspring calves were old enough to trail, and the ranchcowboys drove the herd to loading pens at Ash Fork 1864, sixteen-year-old Marion married Annie Yorkpurchase had been completed, the Perkins family setor Del Rio Springs. Tom Perkins recalls that the loud and they headed west. During the following yearsout on the final leg of their journey. Six weeks later,steam locomotives could easily stampede the wary Marion and Annie moved ever westward across thethe Baker headquarters finally came into view. It wascattle. Tom\'s brother Benny was a noted cowboy Texas frontier. For a number of years, they ranchedNovember l, 1900.poet and musician as well as a skilled cattleman. in the Davis Mountains about 150 miles southeastHe composed a song based on his experience of of El Paso. As that country was filled with peopleThe country was wide-open range. There were nodriving a herd through the frigid Verde River with and fences, Marion decided to move again. He hadfences except around ranch buildings and gardendisastrous results. He called the song "Deep Water, heard about a ranch in central Arizona Territory. Itplots. Ranchers turned their cattle out together. WhenIce and Snow." featured a year-round stream running through ana roundup was to be held, notices were posted in the open range of native gramma grass. He struck a dealPrescott and Williams newspapers. Most ranches sentWhen the Santa Fe Railway built the Clarkdale to buy the Verde Ranch.several cowboys to help gather. The entire roundupto Drake standard-gauge spur right through took weeks. Nick Perkins remembered gatheringthe Perkins Ranch in 1912, the little depot On July 5, 1899, Marion, his wife Annie, theircattle from Granite Mountain in the west to theconstructed near the ranch headquarters was three sons (Rob, Ben, and Nick), their three smallDugas Ranch in the east (beyond present Cordesnamed "Perkinsville." From that time cattle could be daughters (Annie, Valeria, and Fannie), and severalJunction), south to Mayer, and north to Williamsshipped right from the ranch. ArizonaRealCountry.com July 2023 17'