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Eddie M. Bundy | Oral History
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EDDIE M. BUNDY
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Eddie M. Bundy was interviewed on July 24, 2017 in St. George, Washington County, Utah by Julianne Renner, a representative of the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument Oral History Project. He related his life experiences. Mark Draper also participated.
JR: Question one, when and where were you born?
EB: I was born December 3, 1953 in Mt. Trumbull, Arizona in a three-room house. I was delivered by my dad [or] my grandmother, Chloe (Geneva (Van Leuven) Bundy]. I am not sure which. I was the seventeenth child of Chester and Genavieve Bundy. We had large families out there. [Children of Chester “Chet” Marion and Genavieve “Jennie” (Bundy) Bundy, Laveive Bundy, Chester LaMar Bundy, Owen Lavoyd Bundy, Arlene Bundy, Wayne J. Bundy, Ila May (Bundy) Hughes Blake, Kay Argwen Bundy, Tine C. Bundy, Nina Vee (Bundy) Hughes, Lynna Rue (Bundy) Schafer, Ramona Bundy, Weeta Bundy, Bonnie B. (Bundy) McAlister, Clo Ella (Bundy) Andrus, Jo Etta (Bundy) Wittwer, Mark E. Bundy and Eddie M. Bundy.]
JR: You are the seventeenth child?
EB: Yes.
JR: How many siblings total did you have?
EB: I am the seventeenth.
JR: You are the youngest?
EB: I am the youngest.
JR: There must be a lot of stories having seventeen [children] out on the Arizona Strip.
EB: There are. I wish I could remember or tell you all of them. You have to remember that in fact, I am the youngest and [the] oldest [living] brother, [Owen], who was born in 1929. He is still alive and you have to remember that with that many [children] over that span of years I only [lived] the last half of that family. My oldest brother is old enough to be my dad. I have done a lot of things with my older brothers because they were coming out [to the ranch to] see the rest of the family, working and doing jobs. [Inaudible]
JR: At what age did you start ranching or working on your family’s ranch?
EB: I started when I was [very] young because that was all we had, [the] ranch. My dad just had cows. My first memories of life are [living] in a sheep wagon down in Parashant Canyon [on the Arizona Strip]. We ran our cows down there in the wintertime. At the time, there was no road in there. My dad had taken the sheep wagon apart piece by piece and let it down on some [very] steep ledges down there. I could show you where he did it. It would amaze you. He let that sheep wagon down there piece by piece and put it back [together]. [This is] when I first remember anything that was our home because he would go down there and take care of the cows.
JR: Would you tell more about your family? Who did you spend the most time with? What did you do for fun? [Tube, swim, rode horses.] What did you do on a daily basis? [Milk cows, bring wood in and gather eggs.]
EB: That is where I first remember living ─ taking care of the cows. As time went on, we grew up and went to school. My whole life has been around those cows. Today I still have a little bunch of cows and go to this very same canyon every winter to take care of them. I hope to do it for awhile yet.
JR: Do you still go to Parashant Canyon where your dad went?
EB: Yes.
MD: You don’t take apart the wagon piece by piece and take it down there anymore? [Laughter]
JR: [Laughter]
EB: No. [Laughter] In fact, it’s amazing. He set that wagon up on some posts there and just over the fifty years it has disintegrated. It just amazes you how things go back to nothing. You can hardly find even a trace of it now.
A lot of our family fun, playing with my siblings, [was] down there in the rocks and chasing around. Up home [at Mt. Trumbull] where we lived, most of my memories are chasing the cows up the mountain with my dad and playing on the horses with my siblings. [Inaudible] We didn’t have [many] horses, so we did a lot of [activities] on foot. However, down in Parashant Canyon, in the 1940s, there were a lot of burros that lived in the canyon. They would come up there on us. My dad caught one of them and brought it home for us to ride. I was pretty young then. So my sister, Bonnie [Bee Bundy], took over that burro. She rode him all the time so we had a lot of fun doing that. When I was young my dad found another one ledged up down there on what we called the island and he brought it home. It was just a little one. We fed him on a bottle and took care of him. So that is what we rode. We would ride these [burros] chasing the cows. That was a challenge because we just rode them bareback. You couldn’t keep a saddle on them. To turn them you would just slap them upside the head whatever direction you wanted to go. If a jack rabbit jumped out, look out! You were going to be on the ground. [Laughter] [Inaudible]
JR: [Laughter]
MD: [Laughter] I bet!
EB: We chased the burros trying to get a ride.
JR: I heard you mention something called the island. Is that in Parashant Canyon as well?
EB: Yes. It’s a place we call the island. It is surrounded by the Parashant Wash which was a [very] steep gully ─ [and between] the Andrus Wash and the Colorado River. There is another little gully that kind of separates it from my cousins, Orvel [Allen] Bundy’s permit. We called it the island because we could take cows up there and [they] could [not] get off of there. There was a little spring up there that would water just a few cows. My dad would take a few cattle up there and keep them while he was there. It was a real job to get there. Some of those burros would come up from the [Colorado] River and get water in there too. It is probably where he found this one little [burro]. That was under our permit that we had there. I am not sure when this was. It was in my time that the Grand Canyon [National Park] expansion [occurred and] they took that portion away from us because it was close to the [Colorado] River. It was [very] hard for us to get to anyway. My dad did build a cement pocket over there. When I talk about pockets, they are a ravine in the natural rock. In the end of [the ravine] my dad would build a cement dam so when it rained it would collect the water there. [Inaudible]
JR: Wow!
EB: It is a pretty meager way to get water, but at least it was water.
JR: Yes, water is hard to come by. That is very interesting. You said you were born at Mt. Trumbull. How long did you live in the Mt. Trumbull area?
EB: [From 1953 to 1967. After 1967, myself and two siblings went to school in St. George where we rented a house. We drove a Buick back and forth from St. George to the ranch on the weekends for church.] We still [have a house out there]. In 1959 or 1960 my dad built a new home. It is close to our old one where we were all born. Sixteen of the seventeen siblings were born in the old house. It still sits there today. One of us was born in St. George because that winter there were not enough [children] in school for Mojave County [Arizona] to provide a teacher. So my mom had to come to town with the [children] she had then for them to go to school in here. The rest of the time we went [to school at Mt. Trumbull]. I still go out there and back today.
JR: That is cool! How has your family influenced your way of life now?
EB: Greatly. We lived out there. There were no doctors. There were no grocery stores. There was no running water, just what [rain water] we collected off the barn in a tank. We lived a pretty simple life out there. I am glad today that I grew up there because I grew up away from television. We didn’t [have] a TV and we didn’t have the influence of the bad [programs] that the [children] are faced with today. We [were very] close to our brothers and sisters [and] helping each other out. We were religious people. We were of The [Church of Jesus Christ of] Latter-day Saint faith. We had a schoolhouse there that was about a half mile from our house. It was actually a church house. The church built it, but we went to school in the same building. We spent a lot of time and effort in building our faith [by] praying for rain because that was [what we needed to keep living] If you don’t have water you don’t have anything whether it is cows or humans or [anything]. So we depended greatly on rain from heaven to make it through the hot summers and [cold] winters. That faith and belief that if we helped one another we would be blessed was a great influence in my life.
JR: You mentioned that the way you grew up you were close to your siblings. Do you have one or two siblings that you are [very] close to? Do you have any stories about them?
EB: I have a couple of them I think I am pretty close to. One of them is my older brother, Owen [Lavoyd] Bundy. He was old enough to be my dad so as I was growing up he kind of took me under his wing a little bit. I spent a lot of time with him. When I was young and growing up out there he was working out [at] Page, Arizona [at] the Glen Canyon Dam. I remember going out there to visit him when the dam was first being built. There was a rope walkway across the Grand Canyon [National Park] where they were building that dam. I remember walking across that and [it] was swaying. It scared me to death. They would let a motorcycle ride across it. When you were walking and a motorcycle came it would really rock! We would go out to see him there so I kind of got to know who he was.
I loved to fly. [Owen had] an airplane and would come out to the ranch and see us. I became [very] close to him that way. When I was fourteen [years old] we came to St. George and I started taking flying lessons. My dad loved to fly too. So he told me when we came to town, to school, that he would pay for my flying lessons if I would learn to fly. My older brother, Owen [Lavoyd Bundy], had an airplane at the time, he and two other [fellows], and they rented it to me so I could learn how to fly.
One time we had a mustang horse that he [Owen] caught somewhere. He brought it out to our ranch so he could break it. It ran there for quite awhile at our place. One day he and another brother [Kay] decided they needed to come catch it and break it because we just had it there and nothing was happening with it. It was pretty wild so my brother [Owen] decided he would fly out there. That is how they used to catch [mustangs] in the early days. They would fly an airplane around until [the mustangs were] tired and then they could go rope them. My other brother [Kay]] was supposed to rope him. My other brother [Mack] and I went in the pickup to haul the horse out there after he ran it down. We went out ahead of him and waited and waited. He never did come. We just knew something was wrong. We started back and on the way back to the house we met my sister [Jo Etta] in a [1953 Buick] coming out to get us. My brother, the driver [Kay], knew that Owen must have wrecked his airplane. He just knew that. So he hardly even stopped long enough for her to tell us what went on. He just headed on home. Sure enough, when he took off that day to come out and chase this horse down, he just barely got off the ground [when] the throttle cable on his airplane slipped, so he lost power. It just went to idle instead of giving it the throttle. It made a turn right off the end of the runway and just wrecked right there. That put an end to that [activity]. We had some cousins [Orvel and Sally Bundy who] had a station wagon. They stuck him in it and hauled him to St. George. He was awhile recuperating from that because it broke his back and kind of banged him up pretty bad.
When I was first born I was [very] sickly. This brother [Owen] was kind of there to help me a lot. I was born with cystic fibrosis and they just about lost me. Out of seventeen [children] my mother lost six of them, [but] not all at once. [The six children who died were: Laveive, Arlene, Wayne J., Tine C., Ramona and Weeta Bundy.] They were intermittent throughout all of us. I knew that I had problems. I didn’t know why until I was married and [started] going to see doctors. I found out that it was really cystic fibrosis that I had. [Inaudible]
I had a sister [Cleona] that I am [very] close to also; probably because I was just a baby when she was ten or twelve [years old]. She is only about eight or nine years older than I am. She always took care of me and treated me like her baby. [Laughter]
JR: [Laughter]
EB: I am still [very] close to her. I am close to all of them. They are just [very] special. Do you have more questions?
JR: You mentioned you had cystic fibrosis when you were born. How did that affect your life? Even [for] people who have cystic fibrosis [and] who live in the city near doctors, it is still difficult to deal with. Do you feel it affected you a lot growing up?
EB: Yes. It is probably a good thing I didn’t know what I had and how serious that cystic fibrosis can be. I have determined, this is my own feeling and not from a doctor, that that is probably what five of the six [siblings] died from. My mother told me they just died from about two months to two years old. My mother said they died from pneumonia. It acts like pneumonia. Cystic fibrosis bothers your breathing and your lungs. That is probably one of the greatest testaments I have about my religion ─ the fact that why am I still alive? I am sixty-two years old now. You probably could go and search the country a long [time] before you found another person [who has] lived with that [illness that] long.
When I was in high school I was on the wrestling team [and] it was very difficult for me. I worked [very] hard to be able to wrestle and do what the other [students] did because I got tired [very] fast. When I was sixteen [years old] my tonsils [became] infected and I had to have them out. I went to Salt Lake [City, Salt Lake County, Utah] to have them out. I [was able] to see Dr. [Vegee] in Salt Lake [City] who saw me when I was first born. He finally told my parents to take me home because he knew what cystic fibrosis did. He said, “Take him home. You can do more for him than we can.” So when I went back there at [age] sixteen and saw him, he couldn’t believe it. Not to mention the fact that I was on the wrestling team. I just had to work hard and struggle with that. I did [very] well doing that and riding horses. I am just lucky.
JR: What was the best part of growing up on the Arizona Strip?
EB: I think the best part of being there is the wide open country. I was born there so I guess that is why I like it. I love to just be out there in the canyons, on the mountains, just [the] wide open country, hear the coyotes, see the sunset and [sun] rise and a big thunderstorm come from a far distance and rain on you. Just being there by yourself. There is something about that to be out there and say, “Wow, I am here and there is nobody else that I can see.” You can really feel life out there and see the stars. We have done a lot of sleeping outside when we were down in the canyons, looking up and seeing the stars at night and dreaming about how many other people there must be somewhere. [Laughter]
JR: Yes, the interpretive team talks about how isolated the area is and how unique that is because there are not many places left like that where you cannot see someone for days.
MD: There is nothing in between you and what is there.
EB: That is right. When I was a little [fellow] we would sleep outside and look up at the stars at night. You wouldn’t see very many airplanes flying around at night then. But if you looked and watched really hard, every once in awhile you would see a light, just about the size of a star, maybe a little smaller, going across the sky. That was when they first started putting satellites up. We used to think it was great seeing one of them. [Laughter]
JR: [Laughter]
MD: [Laughter]
JR: I still think it is cool to see a satellite. What were some of the hardest things you experienced growing up?
EB: One of the hardest things to me was when my parents would come to St. George and leave us [youngsters] there. They would only come to town maybe once a month for groceries. [Inaudible] I have two nephews and a niece that are older than I am. [Inaudible] They would leave us there most of the time. Being the youngest, I hated to see them go to town. They would come and stay overnight, but it just didn’t seem right to me. That was a real struggle when I was younger.
As I [became] older, the hard times were going to the Colorado River down to Whitmore Wash somewhere, in the 1950s. Late in 1950 my dad got in touch with a lady by the name of Georgia White [from Los Angeles, California].
JR: Yes.
EB: She ran [river] rafts down the Colorado River. She would have to carry all of her groceries from Lees Ferry [Arizona] on this boat [for] the people that she took through clear through to Lake Mead [Nevada]. She [had] this idea that if she could get “Chet” Bundy, my dad, to pack her some groceries [to] Whitmore then she wouldn’t have to carry so much all the way through. We started carrying groceries down there to her. We would drive from our house down to the top of the [Colorado] River. It is about twenty-eight miles from our house. Then the trail might have been a quarter to a half mile down to the river. We would put the food [and supplies] in cans and in a rubber bag so they wouldn’t get wet. We would put two bags in an alfog on each side of the horse and one on top. So we had five of these bags. It was a pretty big load especially if they were all canned goods inside. We would put them on there and usually [made] a couple of trips to get them into her. It was in the summertime when she was doing [this]. [The weather] was like St. George or worse.
MD: It was an oven down there.
EB: It was really hot. We would lead the horses down with the groceries on them. It was just so hot. In fact, I had a heat stroke there one time because of my conditions. It was so bad that halfway back up that trail I could not make it. I just could not make it. I think I was about sixteen years old this time. My dad carried me halfway out of there on his back and he was sixty [years old]. He was my age [now]. That was a [very] hard time for me.
The hard times were [that, and], moving our cows and our burros. The burros didn’t cooperate with us very well. How do I explain what my dad was like? He was an awesome man. We thought he was kind of hard on us, but today I realize what he was trying to do. He was trying to make men out of us. He would put us on these burros, me and my older brother [Mark], and would have us chase those cows for five miles. He would get in the truck and leave us. He would go ahead [of] where we were going and wait for us because he would be fixing a fence or something. At the time I thought: why in the world did he do that? I know to this day it was just that those hard times made it so I could move those cows. The best things don’t go right. Probably one of the worst times we had was about a month ago [when] we moved them [the cows] up on Mt. Trumbull.
JR: Really?
EB: The cows wouldn’t go for some reason or another. It was just unreal. Those were the hard times we had and getting stuck in the mud. My dad loved whenever it rained. We would go check the ponds and invariably we would get stuck in the mud somewhere.
JR: [Laughter]
EB: We would have to shovel ourselves out. Down in Parashant Canyon or [Mule] Canyon, we called it, where we had our cows, there is a place down there called Copper Mountain Mine. A [fellow] by the name of Bill Colvy used to mine that place down there. I don’t have a lot of information about my dad and why he started this little mine [in Mule Canyon]. There is [a] place down there where we had a little mine and he had a [small] Case tractor and a big air compressor. We would go down there and he would jack hammer holes in the rocks. He would put dynamite in there. I remember all of us [youngsters] hiding under a cave while he set the dynamite off. Then we would go over there, take the rocks that he had blasted up. We had a wheelbarrow and we would go through [the rocks]. He was looking for copper. The ground down there has copper in it. He had this little machine he would stick on there so he could tell if it was good copper or bad copper. We would sift through, stick it on there and would haul it out of that canyon in this little International truck we had. We worked hard doing that. It must have paid him a little bit to go along with his running cows because we did that for quite awhile until he got to where, I guess, it didn’t work anymore or didn’t pay to haul it out of there. That is another job I remember was quite an experience.
JR: What was it like to raise a family on the [Arizona] Strip?
EB: I think it must have been quite a chore. Yet, when I stop and think about it, my mother could never have raised that kind of family here in St. George. Out there she could stick us outside to go play and not have to worry about us running out in the street [or] running off with a neighbor somewhere getting into trouble. We just [went] outside and make our own [activities]. We would go out in the trees and take branches to make little huts in the cedar trees and play [house]. My older brother [Mark Bundy] and I were the last two boys and the last two [children] in the family. There were seven girls between them and the next brother [Kay Argwen Bundy].
JR: Wow! [Laughter]
MD: [Laughter]
EB: We were kind of raised around a bunch of girls so we played house a lot. They also taught us how to milk a cow because we always had a milk cow to supplement our groceries. I think they probably wished a lot of times that they could do more for us, but at the same time we didn’t know any different. We were tickled to death. We were happy with life. I don’t remember any wishing: why are we living out here or anything like that. Our favorite thing was once a year we would get to look in the Sears, Roebuck Catalogue and get a pair of shoes. Are you old enough to remember that? She would order us a pair of shoes every year before school started. My sisters were all older at our house. We just had a kitchen, a dining room, a small living room and a bedroom [for] my parents. Then we had a building outside. It was called the wash house where we had some washing machines, gas powered ones. That is where we washed [our clothes].
There were about six of us there at one time, so there wasn’t room for everybody to sleep in the house. [Jo Etta, Clo Ella and Bonnie] slept outside in this open building. It just had screens around it and a roof on it. They would sleep out there when it was cold and the snow would blow in that screen on top of the beds. They remember a lot of cold nights there. We didn’t know any different, so it was okay. They all talk about it today. It is just memories, good memories, most of them. JR: That is cool! When you were playing outside did you ever run into any rattlesnakes or any formidable creatures on the [Arizona] Strip?
EB: Oh yes! I hate rattlesnakes today. We were always running into the damn things and always told to be aware of them. After we built our new home I remember going in there [to] get a pair of socks from a drawer one day. The drawer was maybe a couple of feet off the floor. I pulled that drawer out and a big old bull snake came right out of that drawer. [Laughter] We were living there! I don’t know how this thing could slither in there and get in that drawer. I am sure as [children] when we went outside we would leave the door open. So that is how he got in there. As far as anything else that really scared us, I don’t remember really being scared, [other than] when we would go somewhere, a lot of [youngsters] get this way, when we would go back and forth to different parts of our ranch to take care of the cows after dark, there was always a gate you would have to shut. So when it was dark the person getting out and shutting the gate would hurry and run to the truck. You would think something was going to get you. It is crazy what goes through your mind. [Laughter]
JR: [Laughter] Yes. Did you ever run into any mountain lions out there?
EB: No, I never saw a mountain lion until I was grown. I still to this day have only seen four of them in the wild. When we were younger, we didn’t even see tracks or anything because we had a [United States] Government trapper out there. The first lion I ever saw was one he caught in a trap. I don’t know how he did it. He tied it in the back of his pickup [inaudible] and brought it by to show us. That is the first one I have ever seen. [Inaudible] Once they quit [trapping] there are lions out there all over the place. You see tracks all the time. You don’t see them in the daytime.
JR: Why do you feel that the Arizona Strip land is important?
EB: It is [very] important to me because it is my home for one thing. I was born and raised there. We still have our place there. There is something about the Arizona Strip that is different. I might be biased because it is my home, but still, I think it is different than anywhere you go. I run into people all the time [who] just love to go out there. They come home and do whatever and they go back. Down in Parashant Canyon I run into people all the time who go down there year after year because they just enjoy it. I think one of the reasons is because it is just different. There are no highways. There are no cities. There is nothing like that where it gets more populated. I can’t explain it. It is a different place. It is unique because it is cut off by the Grand Canyon [National Park]. Nobody on the other side can come this way. We cannot go any further than where we are.
JR: How would you describe the legacy that the families have left? [What do] you want to pass on to your children and your grandchildren?
EB: I am [very] high on that. I have two boys [Watson and Waylon]] and one daughter [Kayla]. I hope that they continue our family legacy and I think they will. I have threatened them, more than once, that the place is not for sale. It is a place to go with your family, get out of town, remember who you are and who created this earth for us to enjoy. You come. You see it. You leave it and you leave it like you saw it when you [came] there. I think [we] need to keep that as long as we possibly can.
There have been a lot of issues about roads out there and wanting to lock this all up for future generations. That is fine, but there needs to be a way that people can go see it. It is hard to say how this is a place people need to see, but if it were more accessible you would have so many people there that I think you would lose the culture that is there. And yet, I enjoy seeing people going there [to] see it, feel what is there and leave it like it was. Unfortunately in this day and age, everyone doesn’t see it that way especially [we who] grew up there and [are] still living there.
JR: I think it is definitely important to deal with how to protect the area, but how to also help people appreciate how important it is. It is a fine line, a balance.
EB: It is like we go down there in the canyon and see where the Indians have been down there all over. They have left signs and [artifacts]. It is [very] neat to look at. You hear about here in Utah and places where people vandalize that kind of [history]. You hardly want to let them go see it. That is [what] grabs your attention too when you are down there and you see some Indian writings on the wall. You think back how long ago they were there and what in the world kind of conditions did they live in while they were there. I have a tendency to believe that they were happy doing whatever they were doing. You just make happiness out of wherever you [are], whatever you are doing.
JR: Do you feel like your connection to the land is more emotional or spiritual than just a place that you have lived?
EB: Oh yes. My brother [Mark], a cousin [Newmann] and I were the last three to graduate from the eighth grade there in the schoolhouse. [After] we graduated we had to come to St. George to school. We have been here back and forth all of our life, but it is still home. I have a nice home here and my family was raised here.
[END OF RECORDING ONE.]
EB: [Inaudible] I lived with my grandmother [Chloe Bundy] for a little while so that we could go to school. We would always go back to the ranch for the weekend. [When] I [came] here I got [involved with] the ground school at Dixie College, took the [classes] there [and] was able to get my pilot’s license. I started flying by myself [and] soloed when I was fifteen years old. You cannot get a driver’s license until you are sixteen [years old], but I could fly that airplane by myself when I was fifteen.
JR: Wow! [Laughter]
EB: My instructor, Jerry Fackrell, would come to my house, pick me up, take me to the airport, take me around and check me out so I could solo by myself. I could never figure that out — how in the world I couldn’t drive a car when I could fly this airplane. [Laughter]
MD: [Laughter] I bet that frustrated you.
EB: I finally got that down. I am really good at hands on [activities]. Bookwork I am not very good at. I had a [very] hard time passing the test on [that]. I finally passed it before I went on my mission for The Church [of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]. When I came back I was working at Grand Gulch Mine. One of my cousins [Renae Aldridge] had married a gentleman [Sean Legere] and he had a Cessna 170 airplane. He was going to sell it so we talked to dad and we finally bought that plane. We had some problems with the motor after a few years, but then I bought a new motor to put on it. My main interest in flying was [that] it is a long way from here to Parashant Canyon to check water and see if your cows are alright. Then I just loved to fly over the land. That is another connection that I have that is unique and feel privileged to have done over a lot of people. I could scoot across the [Arizona] Strip and see a lot. I am sure I have probably done a lot of looking around [at areas] illegally because of the air laws there are today. I could never do today what I did back then.
I worked down there at Grand Gulch Mine for a little while for this [man]. Down in Parashant Canyon there is a place called Dan Sill Canyon. There is an old road up there and a stream right at the edge of a sheer rock wall. That is where we got water for our cows. Roland Esplin used to have that. He let us use some water there for our cows. The mining company went in there and built an 18,000 gallon corrugated tank to store water from that spring so they could drill up on the side of the mountain there. My cousin, Danny Bundy, and I would go down there. We thought we were going to be big trappers and trap a fox or two or coyote down in there. It was away from everything. I went down there and cut off the bushes so when I landed [on] this road I wouldn’t hit the wings. We actually went down there, flew in there and landed there. The first time we landed there, I think, one of my cousins, Jason Bundy and his friend, Heber Jessop hired out from Stratton Brothers over there in Hurricane [Washington County, Utah] to take a cement mixer down there and put a bottom in this tank. We flew around there a time or two and I could see what was going on. [Inaudible] I came around, [to land] there and went right up close to this tank. When I got up there we saw these two [fellows] hands come up over the top of that tank. [Laughter]
JR: [Laughter]
EB: They could not believe that we landed. They just knew when the motor shut off that we had wrecked. They were just trying to see what happened. They were surprised to see us there. There is a little air strip right there at the Copper Mountain Mine and I used to land there. For about thirty years I would fly down, land there, get on a motorcycle and check on the cows. I shouldn’t tell this, but it is history now. [Laughter]
JR: [Laughter]
MD: Exactly! [Laughter]
EB: One day a [United States] Park Service airplane came flying overhead and came around there looking at my airplane [very] closely. I was on a motorcycle about two or three miles away checking on some cows. I watched him and watched him and I thought: oh man, I am in trouble. Sure enough by the time I got [back] to St. George I had a message on my phone. They had traced [the] number [on my airplane] back to who it was [the owner], got a hold of me and told me I shouldn’t be landing there anymore. It was all downhill from there. [Laughter]
JR: I think [this] is [very] interesting. I don’t think you hear much about ranchers and their airplanes.
EB: I was pretty fortunate to be able to do that. I loved it. I probably enjoyed that more than I did riding on the back of a saddle horse. [Inaudible] Flying out over there you can see deer, jack rabbits, coyotes [and] antelope. When the day came that I had to quit flying that was a pretty tough day for me not to be able to do that anymore.
MD: When was that?
EB: It has probably been a good ten or twelve years since I was able to do that. I always wondered how lucky I could be to start flying so young. I am sure glad I did and [had] the time that I did. One of my cousins [Danny Bundy] said, “If you want a real good airplane ride you just need to go fly with [Eddie].” I didn’t like flying way high. I liked to get downright close to the ground and see what was going on. I tried that one time on the Colorado River. Boy that was quite an experience! I was crazy doing it because right after that is when one of the BLM [Bureau of Land Management] managers here in St. George was Bill Lamb. You probably don’t know that name. [He] was manager of the BLM here and they rented a helicopter down [on] the Colorado River below Whitmore [Wash]. I can’t remember if they were looking at the burro situation or just the river in general. Anyway, they were [very] close to the river. There is a cable down there that goes across the river where they measured water flow. That helicopter pilot hit that cable. They didn’t know it was there. He hit that cable and wrecked right in the [Colorado] River. They were close to the side and there were three of them in there, Bill Lamb, the pilot and another [fellow]. Bill Lamb was able to get out of there. He got out and was sitting on the helicopter and the other [fellows] were coming out. He had to actually go back inside the helicopter and get them out. Later on one of the [fellows] died. I think he got too much water in his lungs. I am glad that I wasn’t that unfortunate to have that happen. I thought that wasn’t very smart doing that and not knowing what was down there. It was an incredible sight to see the bottom of the [Colorado] River when the water was clear. You could see the bottom of the river and just float along there [and see] rocks and everything in the bottom.
I have also been down there when I have seen military jets fly up through there. When we were [very young] they would come screaming in there and up that canyon. It was quite an [event]. One time we were down there taking groceries to “Georgie” White. When she came there she had a [fellow] on the boat that had fallen and hurt himself [very] bad. [Inaudible] So he walked out that night and drove over to Tuweap and got a hold of John Riffey. John Riffey was a park ranger there. He had a radio so he could call [into] town and get a hold of somebody. He did that [at] night and by the next morning a helicopter came in there to get this [fellow]. They met on the sand bar. I remember going down the trail that morning with groceries and here came this helicopter. These people were just waking up and he came in there and landed on that sand bar. Sleeping bags went everywhere in that river! It was a sight. [Laughter]
JR: [Laughter]
MD: [Laughter]
EB: Some of [the sleeping bags were] in the eddy there. They came back and got ahold of [some of] them, but some of them went on down the [Colorado] River. [Laughter] One time we were going down there [and] we had a pack horse. We couldn’t ride him. We were trying to break him. He would buck all the time. My dad and my brothers decided we were going to get that [habit] out of him. So we packed him up and headed him down there. When he got close underneath the honeycomb there, his alfog hit the side of it. It buggered him and he [tried] to buck, fell off the trail and went down in the ravine there. A big rock slid down on his neck and he couldn’t get up. He just flopped his head until he about put his eye out. We had to [finish carrying the bags on our backs] that day. Dangerous things happen all the time.
JR: Certainly. [Would] you tell about your relationship with the [United States] Government, BLM and [the National] Park Service over the years?
EB: When they came or our relationship today? Restate your question.
JR: [Would] you tell us more about your relationship with the [United States] Government, the BLM and [the National] Park Service back then or now?
E B: I have always tried to maintain a good relationship with them, I was taught at a very young age. [There are] stories about John Riffey, the park ranger over at Tuweap. There are books about him and the kind of [fellow] he was. I was fortunate to be a little [boy] when he, my dad and my Uncle [Vivian August] “Pat” [Bundy] were kind of the three main men out there on that mountain. They all helped put out fires, watched [over] things and helped each other out. So I [was able] to understand what the park ranger [does]. He was a good [fellow]. We always helped each other. When I was sixteen years old my father transferred our grazing permit out there to me and my older brother [Mark]. We came in to the office up here on Tabernacle [Street] and got acquainted with them. My dad would take us in there. We met the [fellows]. He helped us to understand the grazing situation and how to do it all. Over the years we have had great people here [in St. George with] the BLM.
All of the time we haven’t agreed with what they have done. They have tried to cut my permit down there before. I came in and said, “Why are you cutting it? Because of feed?” I said, “I don’t agree with you.” One manager went with me down in the canyon and I showed him. He took a good look at it and when we came back he didn’t cut it anymore. So I always feel like if you sit down at the table, talk it over and work out things there is absolutely no reason why there needs to be a great burden on the rancher or a big cry from the BLM saying we are not doing something right. Just sit down and work it out. Today I still feel like we have a good relationship with them.
I have run cattle in other states and have had other BLM districts to work with and by far my experience with the BLM in St. George has mostly been a good experience because they have been willing to work with us. [Inaudible] I feel fortunate to be in this area because these [fellows] have been just awesome.
JR: I think that is all the questions I have unless you have any stories you want to tell.
EB: I don’t know if I have any other [stories]. I wrote a few notes down here. I have probably told you everything. I could go on telling stories.
JR: [Laughter] That is why we are here. We appreciate getting to learn about your life and perspective.
EB: Water has been a big issue out there on the [Arizona] Strip all of our lives. I don’t know how he ever did it, but my dad spent quite a bit of money one time trying to drill a well on Mt. Trumbull to get water. He never got any. I have drilled twice down on our ranch at Mt. Trumbull and never got water either time. We have spent a lot trying to find water there because that is the most crucial thing out there. I watched one well driller [Daryl Switchenberg] wreck his airplane there. We had a little strip right there in front of our house because my brother flew [in and out]. My dad built one there so I landed mine all the time too. There have been about four [airplanes] wrecked right there because it is short [runway]. It is not very long. That well driller was one of them. My brother [Owen] was another one. Another [fellow] came out there and he took off. There is a fence right at the end of the runway. You get off the ground and there is probably just about that much before the nose hits the post. He hit that fence and went right over on their backs.
JR: Oh man!
MD: [Inaudible]
EB: I will let you go.
[END OF RECORDING TWO.]
Description
Eddie M. Bundy was interviewed on July 24, 2017, in St. George, Washington County, Utah by Julianne Renner, a representative of the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument Oral History Project. He related his life experiences. Mark Draper also participated.
Credit
NPS
Date Created
07/24/2017
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