San Bernardino Ranch, AZ

John Slaughter Ranch The Sheriff of Tombstone, Cochise County after Wyatt Earp

17 miles East of Douglas Arizona along dirt road paralleling boarder with Mexico

In 1884, John Horton Slaughter, a cowboy and lawman originally from Texas, purchased 65,000 acres (26,000 ha) from Perez’s heirs for approximately $80,000. Two-thirds of his property lay in Mexico, with the remaining third in the Arizona Territory. There are ruins on the property now owned by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service where a Mormon employee of Slaughter’s built a home (called the Mormon House) straddling the U.S.–Mexico border so he could keep a wife in the United States and a wife in Mexico. The home was two rooms, one on each side of the border, with a breezeway connecting them.

Slaughter was elected sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona in 1886, and served two terms through 1890. He became well known for restoring lawfulness in towns like Tombstone, Arizona after the infamous 1881 Gunfight at the OK Corral. The Tombstone jail was once known as the “Hotel de Slaughter”. He helped tame the Arizona Territory, and was known to return from searching for outlaws with only their horses and equipment. Slaughter and his second wife, Viola Slaughter (born Cora Viola Howell), as well as her parents, Amazon and Mary Ann Howell, and Slaughter’s children from his first marriage, Addie and Willie, lived at the ranch for many years. The 7.6 Mw Sonora earthquake, centered in Bavispe, Sonora, destroyed the Howell residence on the property in 1887. The Howells managed the property until Slaughter finished his second term as sheriff. Slaughter had as many as 500 people living and working on the ranch, including many foster children. The most noteworthy of these was an Apache toddler, Apache May Slaughter, who was adopted by Slaughter after she was abandoned by her parents while Slaughter was tracking her band, who were responsible for killing white men in Arizona. Slaughter and the girl adored each other. She called Slaughter “Don Juan”. She died from burns as her dress caught fire at age 6. She is buried in the cemetery on what is now the wildlife refuge.

Children were a large part of the ranch activities, and Slaughter loved children. There were enough children that the Slaughters built a schoolhouse, Slaughter School District No. 28. The children played in the natural artesian wells on the property and had picnics. Viola would bring the children ice cream from the icehouse. The kids loved swimming in the house pond, which was dammed by Slaughter for irrigation purposes. Slaughter loved technology. His was the first private home in southeastern Arizona to have a telephone. He owned six cars, yet never learned to drive.

From 1911 to 1920, the Slaughter Ranch Outpost for Camp Harry J. Jones in Douglas, Arizona was established on the ranch, on top of Mesa de la Avanzada overlooking the ranch house. Following the May 4, 1919 murder of Jesse Fisher by Manuel Garcia and Jose Perez, John and Viola moved to Douglas. John Slaughter died peacefully in his sleep on February 16, 1922. Viola sold the property around 1936 to a friend, Marion Williams.

In 1968 Paul and Helen Ramsower purchased the property. On August 7, 1964, the San Bernardino Ranch National Historic Landmark was entered on the National Register of Historic Places. The Ramsowers turned the ranch over to The Nature Conservancy in 1980. The buildings were purchased in 1983 by the Johnson Historical Museum of the Southwest and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service purchased most of the remaining property. Of the original acreage, 131 acres (53 ha) belong to the museum and the rest belongs to the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge and ranch are home to the Yaqui Topminnow and Yaqui Chub, two endangered species of fish known to exist only in the valley.

Information from the John Slaughter Museum:

“Texas John” Slaughter, legendary lawman of the “wild west,” started his western adventure as one of the hundreds of hopeful cattlemen who drove their herds west to the then virgin ranges of the Arizona Territory (A.T.) in the 1870’s. Although his moniker was “Texas John,” Slaughter was actually born in Louisiana in 1841, but was brought to the then Republic of Texas as an infant. Ben, his father, was a rancher who started his livelihood by rounding up wild longhorns.Growing up in the wilds of the Texas frontier, John had several brushes with the notoriously formidable Comanche (the name “Comanche” comes from the Ute name for them, kimatsi, which means “enemy”). Even then, John was known as a fair, but tough, man. When John fought in the Civil War with the Confederate Army, most of the action he saw was against Indians.During the most violent times of the Indian Wars, Slaughter was with the Texas Rangers. Afterwards, he moved to New Mexico in the early 1870’s and began ranching. It was then that speculation grew as to the methods he was using to acquire his cattle. In other words, he might have been putting his brand on somebody else’s cows.Regardless of his possible less than upstanding cattle procurement methods, Slaughter was known as having a no-nonsense attitude toward troublemakers. It mattered little whether the agitators be Apache, Mexican or White…Texas John was determined to see that justice be done.It was because of that determination that Slaughter was elected Sheriff of Cochise County during the violent and stormy years following the Cochise County War, which pitted the Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers against the “cowboys.” He turned that no-nonsense attitude toward the cattle rustlers and issued an edict: “Get out or get shot.”Most took his advice and left the county.In the fall of 1876, Slaughter and “Bittercreek” Barney Gallagher were playing poker at the Commerce Inn in San Antonio. John caught Gallagher cheating and called him out. Afterward, Gallagher and a man named Boyd followed Texas John to John Chisum’s Ranch, where Slaughter’s herd was grazing.Slaughter warned Gallagher and Boyd to leave, but a few days later the pair returned. Speculation was that the outlaws intended to steal some of Slaughter’s cattle. They got into a confrontation and Gallagher fired his shotgun at Texas John but missed. Slaughter, armed with his Winchester, didn’t miss. Supposedly, Gallagher’s last words were, “I needed killin’ twenty years ago anyway.”

Texas John was charged with murder in the shooting. He claimed self-defense, speculating that Gallagher had been plotting to kill him over the incident while they’d been gambling. John was arrested but released soon afterward.After his first wife, the frail beauty Eliza Adelaide, died of smallpox, Slaughter met and a spunky young girl while driving cattle to Arizona. Although he was much older, John was highly attracted to the nineteen-year-old Cora Viola Howell. The Howells were also driving cattle and John moved his herd closer and closer to theirs, until the two finally merged.When Viola’s family fimally agreed, she and John were married in the small town of Tularosa, New Mexico. The Slaughters and Howells, now joined by marriage, then drove their combined herds on to Arizona, settling in the San Pedro River valley south of Tombstone in the settlement of Charleston.It was there that John built Viola what would be considered a mansion in that day, having two rooms, where most homes had only one room. The outer walls were constructed of juniper planks and it had an adobe floor, a huge improvement over the more common dirt floor. John and Viola opened and ran a profitable butcher shop in Charleston, before deciding to move farther south. They acquired the San Bernardino Ranch in 1884. The ranch had been settled in the early 1800’s by Ignacio Perez, who acquired the land as a Mexican land grant. Apaches drove the Perez family off and the ranch remained an Apache settlement until Texas John purchased the land from the Perez family.Up until that time, the area had been settled by the Apache after they ran off the Perez family. Always the peacekeeper whenever possible, John allowed the Apache to slaughter his steer for food.However, in the famous photograph of Geronimo surrendering, John can be seen sitting for the picture, as he served as an army scout for General George Crook during the Geronimo Campaign. Many years later, the Apache war chief said if he could do one thing, it would be to “go back to Arizona and kill John Slaughter.”In 1886, John was elected sheriff of Cochise County. It was a turbulent time, between the Indian Wars, conflicts with the Mexican Bandidos, the influx of miners trying to strike it rich, and gamblers, outlaws and cattle rustlers running honest folks off. Armed with a shotgun, Slaughter spent the next four years ridding the county of the dangerous desperadoes. After his two terms as Sheriff ended, he continued to act as a deputy sheriff until his death in 1922.Never known to back down, Slaughter continued to battle outlaws along the Mexican border. In 1898, he shot and killed a known thief Peg Leg Finney, who made the mistake of showing up at Slaughter’s ranch and then pulling a pistol on the former Sheriff. In 1899, a gambler and troublemaker named Little Bob Stevens, apparently decided to improve his bad luck when held up a roulette game in Tombstone, before fleeing south. His luck ran out when he met up with Slaughter, who killed him. At 60 years of age in 1901, Slaughter joined a posse after an outlaw who’d murdered a young woman, along with her son and daughter for $300, outraging a community. When Slaughter caught up to the man, it was said he resisted arrest…a plausible explanation for the countless bullet holes found upon the murderer’s person.The notorious Pancho Villa nicknamed John Slaughter “The Wicked Little Gringo” after John became enraged over Villa’s army stealing cattle and vegetables from the San Bernardino Ranch. Slaughter saddled up his horse, boldly rode alone into Villa’s camp and demanded restitution. It is said when Slaughter returned home, his saddlebag was heavy with Villa’s gold. John was in his 70’s at the time.While the Wild West of the 1800s was no doubt a difficult and dangerous time and place to try to eke out an existence, men such as Texas John Slaughter paved the way. While this western pioneer’s methods may seem questionable by today’s standards, John’s life can be summed up in this quote by an unknown observer in Tombstone:”His name was Slaughter, all right, but he wasn’t in any way the sort of man we used to call a ‘killer’. He didn’t like to shoot people. He did it simply because it was the day’s work, was his duty and was for a good purpose.”