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CHIRICAHUA
A Pioneer Log Cabin in Bonita Canyon The History of the Stafford Cabin |
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I. HISTORY OF THE STAFFORD CABIN (continued)
H. STAFFORD CABIN AND HOMESTEAD AS PART OF FARAWAY RANCH, 1918-6866
According to family reminiscences, Lillian Erickson purchased the Stafford homestead in partnership with her younger sister, Hildegard, although the deeds name only Lillian. Lillian herself wrote that "Hildegard and I decided to buy the Stafford place." They had an agreement that if one of them married or moved away the other would take over payments and eventual ownership. According to family letters, they paid for the land with Lillian's teaching wages, a bank loan, profits from early guests, and probably income from their cattle. Even before the purchase the two young women had developed an idea of operating a guest ranch in Bonita Canyon.67
66For more history of Faraway Ranch in general, please refer to Torres and Baumler's A History of the Buildings and Structures of Faraway Ranch, 1984.
67Hildegard also spelled her name Hildegarde.
Lillian and Hildegard's parents left the area for ten years when Neil Erickson was transferred to Cochise Stronghold in 1917 to act as District Ranger of the Dragoon and Whetstone Mountain areas; he was eventually assigned to Walnut Canyon National Monument near Flagstaff. The sisters considered their options at the ranch. Lillian had the highest interest in horses and cattle, and Hildegard had been inviting her young friends for weekend stays at the ranch. In 1917 Hildegard had an idea to invite paying guests. After experimenting with short stays from people in the surrounding area her confidence increased. Soon she began hosting visitors for a week or more, feeding them and offering horseback trips into the Chiricahua Mountains and its "Wonderland of Rocks." Eventually Lillian retired from teaching and joined the operation, which soon developed into a modestly busy guest ranch business.68
68Torres and Baumler, Faraway Ranch, p. 49, 50; Lillian Riggs to Neil Erickson, November 23, 1930, Faraway Ranch Papers.
In her own words Hildegard described the embryonic stage of the guest ranch:
After that there were crowds nearly every weekend so in Dad's defence and much against Lillian's wishes I started the boarder business. When our business was a proven success in the fall of 1917 Lillian gave up teaching and came home to assume managership and we together went in to buy the Stafford place.69
69Hildegard Hutchison, ms., no date, Faraway Ranch Papers. According to Murray, Lillian Erickson taught in Bowie through the 1917-1918 school year. Faraway also remained a working cattle ranch.
The guest ranch operations revolved around the Ericksons' large house, a two-story adobe brick structure that had evolved from a small pioneer cabin on the Ericksons' circa 1888 homestead claim. Lillian and Hildegard named it Faraway Ranch, reportedly an idea of Lillian's, who said it was "so god-awful far away from everything." The name was not new to the area, though; a map drawn by Neil Erickson an March 5, 1915, names a "Faraway Point" nearby. Later accounts state that Neil Erickson did not like having the name applied to his ranch.70
70Torres and Baumler, Faraway Ranch, pp. 22-23, 50; map in Faraway Ranch Papers.
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| Figure 19 — Faraway Ranch in snow, looking northeast; Stafford Cain in distance. (WACC) |
Within a few years Lillian found herself operating Faraway Ranch by herself. As of 1921 her parents were stationed at Flagstaff; Hildegard married in 1920 and moved away. No doubt it was a trying time for Lillian. She later wrote to her father, "With you and mama in Flagstaff, Hildegard married, and myself tied up with notes and the determination to pay out the Stafford place, there seemed nothing else to do but stick or die." Between 1924 and 1927 Ja Hu Stafford's son, Tom, and his wife Nora worked occasionally at Faraway Ranch, she as a cook and baker and he as a gardener and cowboy. The Stafford cabin found use for guests, relatives, friends and employees.71
71Torres and Baumler, Faraway Ranch, p. 53; oral history of Nora Swanner Stafford.
Major development of Faraway Ranch and regular use of the Stafford cabin did not begin until after Lillian Erickson's 1923 marriage to Ed Riggs, a widower with two children and former neighbor whom she had known since childhood. Lillian and Ed returned from their honeymoon and announced plans for "extensive building improvements," not only to the main ranch house but to the surrounding land including the Stafford homestead. The Riggses carried out numerous improvements from 1924 through the 1930s and early 1940s, including work on the Stafford cabin.72
72Torres and Baumler, Faraway Ranch, p. 53.
Some time between 1925 and 1927 Riggs detached and moved the third addition to the cabin to a location to the southwest across the small valley, using log rollers. A school occupied that building in 1927-1929, and in later years it was named Mizar and used as a rental cottage. Probably during this time Stafford's second addition to the log cabin, the shed porch on the west side, was removed and rebuilt as an open porch facing west; a small section on the north end of the porch was enclosed, possibly for a bathroom. Ed Riggs and some hired help built a fieldstone chimney with a brick lined fireplace on the south end of the original (south) room, which required removal of a window. Riggs installed running water and a toilet in the cabin some time after April, 1939.73
73Ibid., p. 68; interview with Donald Riggs; Murray, personal communication.
Ja Hu Stafford's granddaughter, Helen Amalong (Kenney), a daughter of Ruby Stafford Amalong, worked for the Riggses as a waitress during the late 1920s and early 1930s. She recalled a blacksmith shop still standing to the east of the cabin, as well as a corral. Stafford's circa 1898 lean-to addition on the west side of the cabin had been opened as a porch, and no other porch existed on the east side. The stone-curbed well still existed in the kitchen, but was later floored over. At the time she worked there the garage addition had yet to be built. Principally male guests and survey crews stayed in the cabin during those years.74
74Interview with Helen Kenney.
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| Figure 20 — Map of part of Stafford homestead drawn by Ed Riggs, no date. Shows springs, orchard, etc. (WACC) |
At an unknown date the cabin's interior was paneled with plasterboard, probably after April, 1939, although the work could have happened as early as 1927, when Ed Riggs purchased a large amount of construction materials including celotex, windows, roofing, beaverboard, plumbing, and cement. That year a nearby newspaper noted that "cabins have been constructed near the house, containing five bedrooms [with] carbide lamps in the main house and lamps in the cottages." The Riggses named these cabins Alcor and Space, along with Mizar, the removed section of the Stafford cabin.75
75Billheads in Faraway Ranch Papers, Series 24, Box 40; Douglas Daily Dispatch, July 3, 1927.
With such improvements the Stafford cabin became a regular and important part of the guest ranch, where by 1942 a number of guest facilities had been built or improved. Guests at the cabin could purchase meals at the main house or cook for themselves. In one 1963-1965 brochure Faraway Ranch manager Frank W. Sullivan advertised "a limited number of modern furnished cottages are available for light housekeeping," and added, "we are compelled to exclude persons with communicable diseases."76
76Rates and descriptions in Faraway Ranch Papers, Series 11, Box 37, and Series 36, Box 59. Sullivan was manager from March 1963 to March 1965.
An early rate card, issued about 1928, listed "one log cabin, partly furnished, $1.00 per day; $20 per month. Accommodates four." The cabin, by this time, was available for short-term or long-term rental. A billhead from 1928 noted that eight workmen stayed in the cabin for ten days and paid $80.00 plus tax. Rate cards from the 1940s revealed changing prices and policies:
[circa 1940:] accommodates 4 people, complete at $15. per week, without linen and bedding, $45. per month. Meals: Breakfast .50, Lunch .50, Dinner .75, special occasions & Sunday $1.00.
[circa 1955:] bedroom w/ double bed, sitting room w/fireplace, kitchen and shower. RATE: monthly (only) 1 or 2 persons $100. Horses (for guests) $1.50 1st hour, $1.00 per hour after, $6 maximum, must have guide. Meals (at main ranch house): breakfast $1.00, lunch $1.00, dinner $1.75 weekday, $2.25 Sundays & holidays.
[another brochure same as above except:] daily 1 or 2 persons $8, weekly $48.; box lunch $.75.
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| Figure 21 — Road survey crew at Stafford Cabin, 1932. Note fireplace has been added, west porch not enclosed, each porch not yet built. (CHIR 6187) |
The meals, usually prepared under Lillian's supervision, were served in the main house's closed in porch which contained the famous Garfield fireplace, built from inscribed stones that had been made into a monument by the Cavalry troops in 1886 on what was to become the Erickson homestead. Indications are that the meals were good but the portions watched closely by the thrifty Lillian Erickson Riggs. When Mrs. Riggs sold 80 acres of the Stafford Homestead to Silver Spur Ranch, Inc. in 1945 she reportedly agreed that meals would not be served at Faraway Ranch for ten years. A newspaper announced in 1952 that no meals would be served at Faraway Ranch.77
77Murray, personal communication; Arizona Daily Star, August 17, 1952; Faraway Ranch Papers, Series 38, Box 63.
At unknown dates the Stafford cabin received further remodeling. Probably about 1940 the Riggses built a board-and-batten garage, measuring twelve by eighteen feet, at the northwest corner of the cabin on the site of the third addition which had been moved away. The west porch was enclosed some time before 1947 and remodeled into a kitchenette. An open porch was built on the east side running the length of the cabin. A concrete slab formed the floor of the porch and acted as a foundation for the five two-by-six support posts. No dates are known for these additions, although Rose Bree of Willcox, once an in-law of the Staffords, recalled no open porch on the cabin when she visited with her husband in 1946. Helen Kenney recalled that the porch was a much later addition. A clue appeared in a rate sheet dated 1946, that stated: "2 room house, with fire-place, combined kitchen and dinette; bath and porches, garage, $20.00 per wk; $60.00 per month." This indicated that the garage and kitchenette were in place; the "porches" could include the long porch accessed from the two doors on the east side.78
78Torres and Baumler, Faraway Ranch, pp. 68-69; interview with Rose Bree by the author, May 22, 1990.
An inventory of furnishings in the log cabin that detailed the amenities in the cabin as of June, 1947 showed that the cabin's furnishings had been improved during the last year. The living room, or original room of the pioneer log cabin, contained a rug, four chairs including two rockers, a covered table and bookrack, a lamp and curtains, in addition to a single bed. The bedroom, or second room of the pioneer cabin, contained a double bed (later described as a metal four-poster) and a single bed, two rugs, two chairs, a dresser and mirror, and window and door coverings. The dinette, or the lean-to on the west side of the cabin, contained a table, chair and bench, stove and refrigerator, as well as numerous utensils, pots, dishes, and towels. A washstand and bench stood in the hallway and the bathroom featured a shower. Lillian Riggs kept this inventory to keep track of any breakage or theft, and warned the guests that "any damage or breakage of above items is to be paid for, or items replaced."79
79Inventories dated March 12, 1946 and June 23, 1947 in Faraway Ranch Papers.
Guests came and went at the cabin. Business at Faraway Ranch fluctuated; if the rental records in the Faraway Ranch Papers are indeed complete, the cabin was vacant much of the time, although Faraway Ranch received some national publicity and advertised in many periodicals and newspapers. Historian Richard Y. Murray has explained that, "sometimes folks like G. Fred and Lorraine Santini of New York rented [the cabin] on a long-term basis during part of the 1960s so it would be guaranteed available when they would visit on vacations."80
80Murray, personal communication.
At times the owners' relatives occupied the cabin. Ben Erickson, Lillian's brother, lived in the cabin on two different occasions: in 1946 with his first wife Belle (who died in 1955), and in 1959-60 with his new wife, Ethel. Murray Riggs, Ed Riggs' son by a previous marriage, lived there for two months in 1950; his wife Anne later commented wryly on the miserable condition of the cabin during their stay, saying that "you didn't have to take a shower because the rain came through the roof every time it rained . . . ."81
81Faraway Ranch Papers; notes on cabin, and transcript of oral history with Anne Riggs, Stafford Papers; communication with Richard Y. Murray.
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| Figure 22 — Well at northwest corner of cabin, no date. (CHIR) |
Ed Riggs died in 1950, and by that time Lillian Riggs had become blind from glaucoma. Managers took care of many of the day-to-day duties yet Mrs. Riggs kept firm control. The cabin continued to be occasionally rented out into the early 1970s. Darla Masterson, an artist who rented the cabin for ten months in 1961, enthusiastically recalled her experiences there:
I started walking around and I found a log cabin and I fell in love with it . . . the visual sight and then the rocks and the monument and that log cabin way off from all the rest . . . so I asked her [Myrtle Westbrook, Faraway manager] if I could rent the cabin, and they said, sure you can rent the cabin, well, you know, it is kind of run down and what is the best price you'll give me? Seems like they rented it to me for $40 a month and I was to fix it up . . . . And I did, I painted it and cleaned it up . . . .
I'd get up and have my coffee, there was the most wonderful table and chair by the window in the kitchen that you could sit at . . . . I could contemplate the tree that used to be outside the window . . . that's what I liked about it, I could just be completely caught up in whatever I wanted to be caught up in.82
82Interview with Darla Masterson, September 21, 1987, transcript of oral history at Chiricahua National Monument.
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| Figure 23 — Stafford Cabin, circa 1950s. (WACC) |
Lillian Riggs subdivided the old Stafford property twice during her ownership. In September, 1945, she sold 80-acres of the property to a group of investors who created the Silver Spur Ranch at the east end of the old Stafford homestead; this property was eventually sold to Ray and Ruth Kent. In 1950 she divided the remaining Stafford land into two parcels, one of which she sold on May 5, 1955, to C. Theodore and Pauline Kraft; this parcel was then sold to William F. and Mary Frances Stark in 1964. The remaining 53.96 acres Mrs. Riggs retained as part of Faraway Ranch; this parcel contained the Stafford Cabin.83
83Cochise County Assessor's Office, files 304-37-01, 02, 03; Murray, personal communication based on files from the Cochise County Recorders Office and Chiricahua NM.
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Last Updated: 25-Aug-2008