PIPE SPRING Cultures at a Crossroads: An Administrative History

Utah and the Arizona Strip: Ethnographic and Historical Background

The Heaton Family and Pipe Spring, 1909-1924

As mentioned earlier, A. D. Findlay sold the Pipe Spring property to Jonathan Heaton and his sons on January 2, 1909, with Findlay carrying the mortgage. The Heatons' copartnership was called the Pipe Springs Land & Live Stock Company. The Heatons continued to live in Moccasin while renting out the ranch at different times to a number of different families.

According to Leonard Heaton, O. F. Colvin lived at Pipe Spring from about 1908 to 1914. [311] Beginning in 1915 the Pipe Spring property was rented out for two years to William S. Rust for $10 a month. Given all the family linkages at Pipe Spring, it should not come as a surprise that Rust was Edwin D. Woolley's nephew. [312] Rust had taken up a homestead in Short Creek with his wife and children in 1911, proving the claim in just three-and-one-half years. The Rusts then sold this homestead for $2,200 and moved to Pipe Spring. Rust wanted to buy the Pipe Spring ranch but the Heatons were not inclined to sell. Rust later recalled in his autobiography: "In the big living room of the old Pipe Springs fort the red sofa and chairs looked very elegant and refined. Tourists traveling through there on their way to Cedar City, St. George, and Hurricane would stop for meals or stay overnight. There was no other road to those points." [313]

Rust's daughter, Maida, remembered that during that time, in addition to "the most wonderful spring water," the family had an orchard, garden, field, pastures, cows, a pet goat, chickens, "and a pond of water surrounded by tall trees." [314] She also mentioned the downside of living at Pipe Spring. She once had a face-to-face encounter with a rattlesnake while retrieving her shoes from the under-the-stairway kitchen closet. After leaving Pipe Spring in 1917, the Rusts struggled to make a living in Hurricane and Cedar City. Then "Uncle Dee" (Edwin D. Woolley) told Rust he needed someone to run his hotel in Kanab, so the family moved there in 1919 and took on the job, soon paying off all their debts. At some point after the Rusts left Pipe Spring, John E. White lived there as caretaker for the Heatons.

On March 3, 1920, Charles C. Heaton, vice-president of the Pipe Springs Land & Live Stock Company, filed application to locate Valentine scrip certification for the Pipe Spring ranch. (As mentioned earlier, the Valentine scrip had been filed by Daniel Seegmiller in 1888, later sold to cattleman B. F. Saunders, then passed down to succeeding buyers.) On April 10, 1920, the Commissioner of the General Land Office held for rejection of the filing of the Valentine scrip, subject to appeal:

The filing of Valentine scrip upon unsurveyed land does not segregate the land from the public domain, nor secure to the application a vested right in the land applied for. The application to locate the certificate according to the subdivisions of the survey is therefore held for rejection subject to the right of appeal to the Secretary of the Interior within thirty days from receipt of notice... [315]

Charles C. Heaton appealed the decision. Obtaining the quitclaim deed from the Findlays was one of the actions he took to prove legal ownership of Pipe Spring. Exactly when Jonathan Heaton and his sons paid off the mortgage of the Pipe Spring property is unknown. No quitclaim deed was obtained from A. D. Findlay until one was executed on December 30, 1920, to the Pipe Springs Land & Live Stock Company. On December 18, 1920, the Pipe Springs Land & Live Stock Company executed a quitclaim deed to Charles C. Heaton. (The reason these two deed transactions occurred out of chronological order is unknown, but both were executed in compliance with a letter request by Charles C. Heaton dated November 12, 1920.)

In late March 1921, Charles C. Heaton wrote to his attorney, John H. Page, to inquire about progress on the case. [316] On April 8, 1921, Page replied to Heaton that, with the recent recording of the Findlay deed, the legal firm now had an abstract of a complete chain of title from Daniel Seegmiller to Charles C. Heaton. In other words, they possessed the evidence needed to show the General Land Office that Heaton was legal owner of the Pipe Spring tract. The complete abstracts had been forwarded to the firm's attorney in Washington, D.C., Samuel Herrick. A decision in a test case which Page thought was similar to Heaton's had just been handed down. Herrick believed that the Heaton case might be argued under the earlier decision. [317] The General Land Office, however, had denied the homestead application because the land was not unappropriated; rather, it had been withdrawn from the public domain in 1907 for the Indians. Heaton's lawyers filed an appeal, arguing that application under the Valentine scrip could not have been made until the public survey had reached the area and that they had filed soon thereafter. Assistant Secretary of the Interior Edward C. Finney denied the appeal on June 6, 1921. [318]

Farrow's letter of February 2, 1921, cited earlier, has already documented that Arizona's Governor Campbell had promised to support Heaton in his land claims at Pipe Spring; Senator Carl Hayden had also taken Heaton's side. Add to these facts one more — that one-third rights to water at Pipe Spring had already been sold to area cattlemen — and it is no wonder then that Charles C. Heaton would not give up his fight for the property. A motion for review of the June 6 decision was made. On August 25, 1921, Heaton's lawyer, John H. Page, wrote to Senator Hayden to ask for his assistance with the "Heaton scrip case" (also called the "Valentine scrip case"). Samuel Herrick had already supplied Hayden with a copy of the motion and a brief on the rehearing of the case. Page asserted,

Some of the arguments in the Secretary's recent decision in this Valentine scrip case, and which decision Judge Finney signed, have nothing to substantiate them, and the conclusions reached are absurd. We cannot help thinking that this office has had no experiences with scrip cases. But no matter how it happened, the decision is all wrong, and our present motion for a rehearing should be granted with the result [of] a favorable decision as to the scrip location. Mr. Heaton has advised us that if his property and improvements should be confiscated by final adverse action of the Interior Department, we are authorized to take this case to the courts, to the Supreme Court of the United States, if necessary. [319]

Page asked Hayden to delay the rehearing until the return to Washington, D.C., of Secretary Albert B. Fall so that Hayden could personally review the case with Secretary Fall prior to its rehearing. (Assistant Secretary Edward C. Finney had made the original decision in the scrip case.) By the time Page's letter arrived in Washington, Hayden's secretary wrote to inform him that Hayden had already read the brief and that Hayden had already assured Herrick that he would be glad to "extend him all possible cooperation." [320] On October 17, 1921, Hayden wrote Page that he had spoken with Assistant Secretary ("Judge") Finney, who "was still a little bit peeved" over a letter Page had sent Senator Henry F. Ashurst about the Heaton case. [321] Finney was determined to make the final decision in the rehearing of the Heaton case, but Hayden assured Page he was still "hopeful that the outcome would not be unfavorable." [322] Such was the status of the Valentine scrip case when early discussions took place about the idea of transforming the Pipe Spring ranch into a national monument. The events directly leading up to the creation of Pipe Spring National Monument and the National Park Service's acquisition of the site from Charles C. Heaton are the subject of Part II of this report.