By Dick Bowerman
Several of my friends and I regularly ride horseback from the L-Bell Ranch at the end of Ferguson Valley Road up a very scenic trail that climbs to a lonely abandoned cabin in a mountain hollow.
We had heard that a family by the name of Brooks and three other families had homesteaded four separate adjoining sections of land there in the early 1930s. We often asked, "Who were these people and how did they live in this very remote location with no running water, no electricity, and no decent road?" Fred and Edna Patton knew who lived out this way and these are their recollections of the families.
Mr. and Mrs. Brooks built the cabin shortly after they moved to Skull Valley in about 1934. It is a two-room, clapboard structure with the main room being approximately 10 by 15 feet with a cement floor. Water was pumped from a spring below the house with a hand pump at the sink. The theory is that this was the first household with running water in Skull Valley. The adjoining room, which was probably a bedroom, had a dirt floor.
The three other homesteaders included the Cook family; a Mr. Gibson, a bachelor; and John Morse, also a bachelor. Before coming to Skull Valley, Morse had been hurt by a horse real badly in Colorado. The horse fell over on top of him in a ditch and they lay there all day and night. He was a husky man, but crippled on one side as a result of the accident. Cook wasn't over forty, but made one think of Abraham Lincoln, with long lines in his face. Although he was from Tennessee and was considered uneducated, he was a big talker and interested in politics. It was not uncommon for him to take one side of an argument, win it, and then take the other side.
Cook had a boy who would, on occasion, wander away from the homestead. One time, the boy got away, and the whole country was astir trying to find him, which they eventually did. The Cook woman was big and loud and had big, dark eyes. Gibson once said she could put a spool of wire on her shoulder and go straight up that mountain like "a mare mule." The Cook family could be seen driving a one-seated car with all the kids in the back headed for the Skull Valley General Store.
Mr. Brooks suffered from poor health, probably tuberculosis; and he died on the steps of the cabin during a snowstorm in 1937. Fred Patton remembers that several men were sent to retrieve the body. Mr. Brooks' death put a huge burden on his wife who had severely rounded shoulders -- perhaps from osteoporosis or polio -- and stood not much taller than four feet. She and three daughters had to provide for themselves as best they could. They ranched this 640 acres with 40 head of cattle, a milk cow, chickens, and a garden. The mother made butter and sold eggs and butter in town. They built a springhouse to store their butter, eggs, meat, and other perishable supplies. "It was really cool inside," said Fred. "Rattlesnakes liked it especially," he remembers. The framework of the springhouse is still visible today.
Some time after the death of Mr. Brooks, a man believed to be a relative, perhaps Mrs. Brooks' brother, came to live with the family.
The girls went to school in Skull Valley. Originally they rode burros to the Skull Valley School, a two-hour trip each way. Later, they only needed to ride them as far as Ferguson Valley, where they put the burros in a pen and someone would pick the girls up and drive them to school. It was important that the girls attend school, even if it meant riding a burro four hours a day.
Sometimes one of the girls would ride over to the Tot Young place at the end of Ferguson Valley Road, and the trip would take most of the day. Mae Young, Tot's wife, was fairly old but young at heart. She played a fiddle and sometimes would teach all the kids to square dance at the community hall. She would fiddle, then stop, and then use the bow to direct the dancing. Mae taught one of the Brooks sisters to play the fiddle, and then the sister often played it at the community hall. All the girls looked forward and enjoyed the dancing at the hall. It was a great escape from their day-to-day routine at the cabin.
Another good time was when one of the girls got a real pretty little palomino mare which she enjoyed riding all over the area. One time, about 1940 when she was 14, she rode it to the home of Fred Patton's uncle John Resley. This is a home that was located on what is now the Bud Webb Ranch. She stayed all night with the family after going to the dance in Kirkland with them. On the way back, the Plymouth pick-up they were in caught on fire. They pulled over, and Fred and the Resleys put sand from the side of the road on the engine. Fred, who was 24 at the time, remembers that, "they just dusted off the spark plugs, started up the engine again, and went home."
Some time after the Brooks father died, the mother acquired a 1936 Ford pick-up truck and she would drive to Skull Valley once a month to get supplies and sell butter and eggs.
Clarence Jackson bought the land from the Brooks family in 1942, and John Resley, bought it from Jackson shortly after that. Jackson owned the Toe Hold Ranch with the Y-4 brand; and he help start the Hays' Annual Calf Sale, which is still being held yearly at Peeples Valley. Bud Webb eventually bought the Brooks section of land in the1950s.
The old cabin is still there in this remote mountain hollow and the main room is intact. Fred Patton converted the bedroom into a cattle feeder when he was foreman of the Bud Webb Ranch, but today the pipe that furnished water to the cabin is rusty and falling apart. One can still read the writing on the concrete steps: "R Bert," "Brooks," and "1936."
(Dick Bowerman, who wrote this article with the editing assistance of Carolyn Harris, is a board member of the Skull Valley Historical Society. The Society has many fine programs throughout the year. Contact 442-3658 for more information.)
The Brooks cabin, out Ferguson Valley way, may have had some similarities to this unidentified house. The Brooks stories, and those of all rural families found in rural Yavapai County in the 1930s and 1940s illustrate a colorful and diverse combination of survival and simple entertainment.