Douglas, Arizona (Five blogs for the price of one!) (GA40)

Mary is no longer available for RV traveling, but we remain good friends.
Because we have 4,000+ postings, I’ve invited her to continue posting entries on this blog.

I’m currently in my 22nd year of full-time RVing and my lifestyle is changing, For more info click Here

---

The motorhome is parked at Thousand Trails Soledad Canyon RV Resort at Acton, California. I’m expecting to depart here March 27th.

 

 

Since my RVing life is changing (see above), I’m starting to re-visit previously visited places. So rather than constantly re-blogging past entries, I’ve decided to do something different.

 

 

In 2012-2013, Mary and I did a 682 day, 12,679 miles in the motorhome and 8,000 miles in the Bronco, circumnavigation of the United States, which I called The Great Adventure. I called it so because other than my oldest granddaughter’s high school graduation in June in Connecticut, I didn’t know where we would be going or when we would be there!

 

 

So, unless I do something really different and unusual warranting a new blog entry, I’ll be posting entries from that trip.

 

 

 

This entry was posted March 5, 2012…

 

 

 

 

 

Our motorhome home is still parked at Belle Starr’s Silverado Ranch…13 miles west of Douglas, Arizona.

 

 

Yesterday was a busy  day for us. So today you get five Blog entries for the price of one!

 

 

Blog #1 – John Slaughter Ranch

 

 

Have you ever wondered what it was like to be a cattle baron in Arizona in the late 1800’s? We did…so we went to find out.

 

 

To  read all about the Slaughter Ranch, click this link…
http://www.slaughterranch.com

 

 

First we drove the 13 miles to Douglas, Arizona. Then we continued on this dirt road for another 16 miles. Since we were so close to the Mexico Border…we saw a  Border Patrol vehicle about every one mile along the way…

 

 

 

 

 

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a Google Earth image of the ranch house area where we visited.The Mexican Border is only 600 feet away…

 

 

 

 

 

Here are five other photos. Whenever you can see a brown-poled fence…that’s the Mexico Border…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To see the other 43 photos that I took, click this link…
https://picasaweb.google.com/110455945462646142273/JohnSlaughterRanch

 

 

We spent a very enjoyable 2.5 hours wandering the grounds.

 

 

Then we once again drove the 16 dusty miles back to Douglas, Arizona for…

 

 

 

Blog #2 – The Gadsden Hotel

 

 

To read about the Gadsden Hotel, click this link…
http://thegadsdenhotel.com/history/

 

 

Here are some photos that I took…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To see the other 22 photos that I took, click this link…
https://picasaweb.google.com/110455945462646142273/TheGadsdenHotelDouglasArizona

 

 

We spent an enjoyable hour wandering the hotel and eating lunch in their fancy dining room.

 

 

Then a few blocks away to

 

 

 

Blog #3 – It’s The Only Place In The World That You Will See this!

 

 

At least according to the visitors brochure for Douglas, Arizona. Church Square is the only block in the World that has a church on each corner! Here’s a Google Earth view…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

E is for Episcopalian……

 

 

 

 

 

B is for Baptist…

 

 

 

 

 

M is for Methodist…

 

 

 

 

 

P is for Presbyterian…

 

 

It’s always fun to see a one in the world thing!

 

 

Then a few blocks to…

 

 

 

Blog #4 – The Big Disappointment…

 

 

In 2004, at the end on my 16,000+ mile RV trip through Mexico and Central America…we re-entered the United States at Douglas, Arizona. We went to the local Safeway to shop for groceries and quite by accident parked under the Safeway sign which we took as a blessing that we had managed such a long journey without any major mishaps and returned safely to the United States. We asked a passing woman to take our photo…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since we plan to depart Douglas tomorrow morning…I thought it would be fun to park our current motorhome under the Safeway sign and take a similar photo. But surprise…the sign and Safeway are gone! Something that was not there in 2004, across the street,  A WalMart SuperCemter, has apparently run them out of business. So much for nostalgia!.

 

 

Here’s an interesting aside. The way the crow flies…presumably in a straight line…it’s a little more than 2,500 miles to Portebello, Panama…the furthest southern point reached during our journey. By road the most direct route…add about another 1,000 miles. Here’s a Google Earth image to give you some perspective…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then just five blocks away to…

 

 

 

Blog #5 – Agua Prienta, Sonora, Mexico...

 

 

Mary wanted to add to her list of border crossings into Mexico. So we walked across the border and down a few blocks of the main drag and we were back in the United States in 25 minutes. Not much going on a Sunday afternoon in this rather lackluster border town. Here are some photos that I took…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another full and fun day in the RVing lifestyle!

 

 

 

TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE! MARY WROTE A MANY GREAT BLOGS…SO WHENEVER SHE PUBLISHED A BLOG POSTING THE SAME DAY THAT I DID…YOU WILL BE ABLE TO READ HER BLOG BY CLICKING THE BELOW LINK! DO IT NOW…!!!

https://otrwjam.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/john-slaughter/

 

 

 

I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE PHOTOS.

 Yesterday was cloudy with a shower and 62 degrees. Forecast for today is cloudy with a shower and 59 degrees.

Enjoying nice weather is another joy in the life of a full-time RVer!

The red dot on the below map shows my approximate location in the State of California. You may double left-click the map to make it larger…

Enjoying 65-75 degree temperatures with low humidity most of the year is a primary joy in the RVing lifestyle!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”…Albert Einstein

My current travel rig is a 2006 Fleetwood 26′ Class A Motorhome and a towed 1986 Ford Bronco II, Eddie Bauer Model. This photo was taken in the desert at Slab City near Niland, California…

On October 27, 2012, I created a two-minute video titled America The Beautiful. The music America The Beautiful is by Christopher W. French. The photos, which I randomly selected, are from the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia (not shown in that order)…are mine. Yup, That’s me standing in front of the Post Office in Luckenbach, Texas…Y’all!

Click this link to start the video. Make sure you have your speakers turned on and go to full screen asap.
http://youtu.be/FfZUzEB4rM8

If you would like to see my YouTube videos, click this link… http://www.youtube.com/user/JimJ1579/videos

There are more than 700 photo albums in my Picasa Web Albums File. To gain access, you simply have to click this link… https://get.google.com/albumarchive/110455945462646142273?source=pwa

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

For more information about my books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

All original works copyrighted – Jim Jaillet -2017

JOHN SLAUGHTER

One of the toughest men the West ever saw was John Slaughter,  a diminutive man who learned young that life was full of cheats, murderers and danger.  A Civil War veteran, trail driver, cattle baron, legislator, lawman and gunslinger, Slaughter was soft-spoken, with hard penetrating eyes and no desire to pick a fight. He simply wanted to raise his cattle and his family.

The Slaughter Ranch is now a museum and sits on the Mexican border. It feels as though you are walking through history to visit this remote site where Geronimo surrendered the last time in Skeleton Canyon about 10 miles distance, where the Mormon Trail and Butterfield stages passed by, and where John Slaughter met Pancho Villa, if met is the proper word. Villa came to his remote ranch with his men. While Slaughter was sitting on his porch watching him, he began to harvest his crops and slaughter some of his cattle. He watched the melee for a day and then mounted his horse to go talk to the bandit. He asked  him for payment.  Villa gave him a bag of gold coins.

Wild West Magazine, the December 1993 issue did an excellent article on Slaughter which is posted in the ranch house where they lived. His father was a Texas Ranger and cattleman. John followed in his footsteps. In Texas, he married and had two children by his first wife who once held off a band of attacking Comanches with a servant and two shotguns. She died shortly after they arrived in Arizona. He married a sixteen year old girl by the name of Viola, and together they built the ranch and lived the wonderful life of  cattle barons in the wilds of Arizona territory.

The ranch is now a tame place with these tiny baby lambs only two days old.

And some handsome long horns,  well fed,  in an enclosed pasture. John Slaughter was one of the first Texans to introduce short horns with long-horned cattle.

I enjoyed the ranch, and the kind of life that was lived here. It was well worth the 16 mile dusty, gravel road to see it, but my mind kept drifting back to John Slaughter and what it took to make Western Arizona a safe and civilized place to live.

To that end, Slaughter became Sheriff of Cochise County and it is said he did more to clean up Arizona than any other man. His method was polite. He would first warn a man to leave town and never come back. Those that didn’t ended up dead in the dust. It is said he killed a lot of men and he did. But, as they say, they needed killin’. That was the way of the West.

He really wanted to live in peace, but he always carried a shotgun and revolvers to do so. He was a wary man, always watched his back. He loved his family and he and Viola adopted an Apache daughter they named Mae. She died young. He and Viola took in many young people, helped them out, gave guidance and support to friends and neighbors.

The ranch is composed of several buildings, all thick adobe that fended off those hot summers. They employed 150 people on the ranch and kept a commissary for the families and neighbors to buy needed goods without having to trail all the way into town. They carried flour, sugar, tobacco, tack, chaps, etc.,  an all around assortment of goods

An artesian well still feeds this small lake beside the ranch house. When John Slaughter bought the 65,000 acres that made up his ranch, the grass was stirrup high. Many springs, and a creek served the ranch until a terrible earthquake in Mexico shifted the plates  in 1937 and the springs and the creek dried up.

We enjoyed photographing this place. It is now a preserve and a bird haven. The rare blue mockingbird was spotted on the ranch and drew 30,000 people to see it.

The Slaughter Ranch was partly in Mexico because nobody really knew where the border was located. It is now very obvious and Jim and I hiked to see the type of fence they use in the wild areas like this that still allow wolves, cougars, leopards, deer, etc. to wander back and forth in their own natural way.

On the 16 mile journey back to the town of Douglas, we met a Border Patrol car every mile, just as we had on the way in. Some have trailers with ATV’s on the back to get out into the desert like a four wheel drive.

This agent is dragging tires to erase any footprints. That way, they can see where any new illegals are trying to cross. John Slaughter also founded the town of Douglas. There is still a bit of wild in the West.

A good website about John Slaughter can be found at this link:
http://www.jcs-group.com/oldwest/saints/slaughter.html