The Empire Ranch and the Vail family

By: JOHN HUNNEMAN - Staff Writer | Saturday, January 10, 2004 8:54 PM PST ∞

SONOITA, Ariz. ---- There is no marker along State Highway 83 to direct the curious where to turn. Even once you find the dirt road off the highway ---- 52 miles southeast of Tucson ---- that bumps along through waving fields of lush range grass dotted by Emory oaks, velvet ash and giant cottonwood trees, it's still three miles to the ranch house.

A cold December breeze whips across the rangeland, turning a wooden windmill near the barn. The gate of an old corral withers and moans.

There is work going on at the Empire Ranch, work to save the historic ranch house that once served as headquarters of a cattle empire that spread from Tucson to Temecula.

A nonprofit group working with the Bureau of Land Management, which owns the land, has been raising money to preserve the ranch house, bunk houses and barns as they were 125 years ago.

Wooden supports prop up one wall and new windows have been installed. A sign board on the front porch tells visitors of current plans.

Most third-grade Temecula school students learn that Walter Vail came to Southwest County a century ago and bought thousands of acres of land for a cattle ranch. Centennial events marking that 1904 purchase are being planned in Temecula this year.

But a quarter-century earlier, Vail and his business partners established the huge Empire Ranch in Arizona and decisions made over country kitchen table inside a rustic ranch house ---- 500 miles from Temecula ---- likely played a hand in the development of modern-day Southwest Riverside County.

Who was Walter Vail?

Walter Lennox Vail was born May 15, 1852, in Nova Scotia, Canada, and as a small child moved with his parents to New Jersey, according to a biography written by his great-grandson John J. Wooley.

Following the Civil War, Vail, like many young men of that age, moved west to seek his fortune.

In 1875, he arrived in Virginia City, Nev., and took a job as a timekeeper in the mining industry. Soon after his arrival, the mining business slumped and Vail went to Los Angeles to visit a wealthy uncle, Nathan Vail, who had recently moved from England to California.

Nathan Vail suggested his nephew look into cattle ranching in southern Arizona and also arranged for Walter Vail to interview several partners for the venture.

Herbert R. Hislop, who lived in Los Angeles, was the son of a well-to-do English family. Using some of Hislop's money, along with a loan from Uncle Nathan, Walter Vail and Hislop traveled to Tucson in the summer of 1876 and bought the 160-acre Empire Ranch, along with several hundred head of cattle, for $2,000.

Southeast of Tucson, the ranch in 1876 had a four-room adobe house, a second smaller home, a corral and, most important, a stream running across the property.

Two weeks later, Hislop and Vail bought a nearby 160-acre ranch that included 612 sheep, two horses, a wagon and five sacks of wool for $1,174.

Later that year, another Englishman, John Harvey, joined the partnership, and the three men took up residence at the Empire Ranch, which was dubbed the "English boys' outfit" by those in the area.

Hislop soon became disenchanted with ranch life and, vowing "never to return to this bloody country again," went back to England. Walter Vail bought Hislop's shares of the ranch and the following year, Edward Vail, Walter's older brother, was brought in as a partner.

The Total Wreck

In 1881, Walter Vail returned to New Jersey to marry his sweetheart, Margaret Russell Newhall. The Vails would eventually have seven children.

About that time, a couple of ranch hands discovered silver near the ranch headquarters. The Vail brothers and one of the prospectors staked three mining claims. One of the mines, called the Total Wreck, proved to be rich in the precious metal.

By 1883, the Total Wreck was in full production. The Vails laid out a town near the mine and sold lots. During those peak years, the Total Wreck camp had 300 residents, a bank and post office, three hotels, four saloons and a brewery.

The silver mine generated more than a half-million dollars in profits between 1883 and 1887 before it ran dry, and Walter Vail put that money into expanding the Empire Ranch property and adding on to the ranch house.

By 1905, the Empire Ranch had grown to 1,000 square miles in eastern Pima and Santa Cruz counties.

A prominent man

Walter Vail also made his mark in Arizona politics. He served in the 10th Territorial Legislature and on the Pima County Board of Supervisors. He was also was the first president of a statewide livestock association.

The railroad came to Arizona in the 1880s, opening up cattle markets from Kansas City to Los Angeles. Walter Vail looked west to expand his pasture land. In Los Angeles, he met businessman Carroll W. Gates, who became a partner.

In 1888, Walter Vail leased land for cattle grazing at Warner Springs, east of Temecula, from John G. Downey, a former California governor.

The following year, when the Southern Pacific Railroad raised its shipping rates 25 percent, the Vails defied the railroad and, in a return to the not-so-distant past, drove their cattle overland to California.

Led by Edward Vail, nine ranch hands drove 917 cattle across the desert and the Colorado River to Warner Springs. The trip took 71 days and the Vails made more money from the sale of the cattle than if they'd paid the railroad's higher rates. The success of the drive led the Southern Pacific to lower shipping rates to the previous levels.

Coming to California

In 1890, Vail established a corporate headquarters for his many ventures, which now included not only ranching but real estate, in Los Angeles. He moved his family to Los Angeles in 1896.

Five years later, the company bought shares in Santa Rosa Island off the California Coast and used the island to graze cattle.

In 1904, Walter Vail and Gates pieced together parts of four Mexican land grants ---- Pauba Rancho, Santa Rosa Rancho, Temecula Rancho and Little Temecula Rancho, totalling about 87,500 acres ---- to form the Pauba Ranch. The land consists of much of what is present-day Southwest Riverside County.

Walter Vail would spend little time at the Temecula property.

On Nov. 30, 1906, he stepped off a streetcar in Los Angeles and was hit by a streetcar heading in the opposite direction.The accident pinned him between the cars, causing major internal injuries.

He died three days later at the age of 54.

Gates managed the Empire and Pauba ranches until Walter Vail's estate was settled in 1908.

Because he left no will, half of the estate was passed on to his wife, and the rest divided among his seven children: Nathan, Mary, Walter Jr., William, Mahlon, Edward and Margaret, according to the "History of the Empire Ranch," a masters thesis written by University of Arizona student Gregory Dowell in 1978.

William Banning Vail became general manager of the Empire Ranch. Mahlon Vail took charge of the Pauba Ranch at Temecula.

William Vail lived at the Empire Ranch home until the family sold the property in 1928. Mahlon Vail operated the Pauba Ranch until the family sold the property to the eventual developers of Rancho California for $21 million in December 1964. He died six months later at age 74.

After the Vails

The Vails sold Empire Ranch in 1928 to the Boice family, who introduced purebred Hereford cattle to Arizona and continued to work the ranch for decades.

In 1969, the Boices sold the property to Gulf American Corporation, but continued their ranching operation under lease arrangements until 1975.

GAC planned a large residential development on the ranch land, but when those plans fell apart they sold the property to Anamax Mining company. Arizona rancher John Donaldson leased the property while the mining company decided what to do with the land.

In the late 1980s, developers eyed the land for homes and a possible city.

In response to a public outcry to preserve the land, in 1988, the BLM acquired the Empire Ranch Headquarters and the surrounding 42,000 acres through a series of land swaps. In 2000, the land became part of the newly formed Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, assuring its preservation.

The ranch house today

The Empire Ranch Foundation was established in 1997 as a partnership between the nonprofit group and the BLM.

The Arizona-based organization has a similar mission to that of the local Vail Ranch Restoration Association, which has been instrumental in saving the buildings of the Vails' Temecula operation, located along Highway 79 South.

"The focus of the foundation is to help support the preservation and the restoration of the buildings," said Susan Hughes, a member of the foundation's board of directors and a granddaughter of Walter Vail.

Hughes' mother, Laura "Dusty" Vail Ingram, daughter of William Banning Vail, lived on the ranch with her two brothers until the property was sold in 1928. Ingram, who died in April, provided the foundation with many photographs and stories of her days on the ranch.

The foundation hired a firm to do an analysis of the critical repairs needed "to keep the buildings from falling down," Hughes said.

"Our first project was keeping the buildings free from varmints," Hughes said."That involved repairing all the windows and doors in the ranch house."

Other work is currently under way.

"We want to preserve all that we can that represents the buildings as they appeared in the 1870s," she said, "while at the same time preserving those buildings that were built by others after that time."

The foundation has applied for and received several grants to restore the buildings. Art shows and an annual Western roundup have also contributed to the effort.

"We had about 1,500 people here at our last roundup," Hughes said.

Chuck wagons cooked up food, and roping and saddle-making demonstrations were all part of the roundup held at the ranch Sept. 20, Hughes said.

Ultimately, the foundation would like to develop educational programs at the ranch house and surrounding land that would be available to area school children.

"We'd like the Empire Ranch to become part of the community again," she said.

Just as it was a century ago.

For information, visit www.empireranchfoundation.org.

Contact staff writer John Hunneman at (909) 676-4315, Ext. 2603, or hunneman@californian.com.

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