A few days later I rigged up a wagon, took along three Mexicans with axes, and cut a load of Christmas trees—I think there were some three hundred in the load. Then I drove the wagon to Tucson and after delivering Wheeler his especial tree and receiving the stipulated five dollars for it, commenced peddling the rest on the streets.
And, say! Those Christmas trees sold like wildfire. Everybody wanted one. I sold them for as low as six-bits and as high as five dollars, and before I left pretty nearly everybody in Tucson owned one of my trees.
When I counted up I found that my trip had netted me, over and above expenses, just one thousand dollars.
This, you will have to admit, was some profit for a load of Christmas trees. Sad to relate, however, a year later when I tried to repeat the performance, I found about forty other fellows ahead of me loaded to the guards with Christmas trees of all kinds and sizes. For a time Christmas trees were cheaper than mesquite brush as the overstocked crowd endeavored to unload on an oversupplied town. I escaped with my outfit and my life but no profits—that time.
On December 15, 1900, I moved to Patagonia, which had just been born on the wave of the copper boom. I rented a house, which I ran successfully for one year, and then started the building of the first wing of the Patagonia Hotel, which I still own and run; together with a dance-hall, skating rink and restaurant. Since that first wing was built the hotel has changed considerably in appearance, for whenever I got far enough ahead to justify it, I built additions. I think I may say that now the hotel is one of the best structures of its kind in the county. I am considering the advisability of more additions, including a large skating rink and dance-hall, but the copper situation does not justify me in the outlay at present.
I am entirely satisfied with my location, however. Patagonia is not a large place, but it is full of congenial friends and will one day, when the copper industry again finds its feet, be a large town. It is in the very heart of the richest mining zone in the world, if the assayers are to be believed. Some of the mining properties, now nearly all temporarily closed down, are world-famous—I quote for example the Three R., the World's Fair, the Flux, the Santa Cruz, the Hardshell, the Harshaw, the Hermosa, the Montezuma, the Mansfield and the Mowry.
This last, nine miles from Patagonia, was a producer long before the Civil War. Lead and silver mined at the Mowry were transported to Galveston to be made into bullets for the war—imagine being hit with a silver bullet! In 1857 Sylvester Mowry, owner of the Mowry mine and one of the earliest pioneers of Arizona, was chosen delegate to Congress by petition of the people, but was not admitted to his seat. Mowry was subsequently banished from Arizona by Commander Carleton and his mine confiscated for reasons which were never quite clear.
My purpose in writing these memoirs is two-fold: First, I desired that my children should have a record which could be referred to by them after I am gone; and, secondly, that the State of Arizona, my adopted home, should be the richer for the possession of the facts I have at my disposal.