Heading Out to Dos Cabezas Pioneer Cemetery

 

Nestled into the Dos Cabezas Mountains toward the northeast corner of Cochise County lie the remains of some of Arizona Territory's most rugged, independent pioneers - cattlemen; peace officers; Mexican laborers; veterans of the Indian Wars, both World Wars, and other conflicts; German immigrants; Freemasons; and the gutsy women who accompanied them to this harsh land. 

A few historic adobes still dot Dos Cabezas itself. Just a few miles west of Fort Bowie, and fifteen miles from Willcox, the settlement was originally called Ewell's Station, named for Dragoon Captain Richard S. Ewell. It originally attracted fortune-seekers drawn to the gold and silver in the surrounding mountains. Ranchers, lured by the tall grass- and yucca-covered range lands, brought in livestock. A stagecoach station served the Birch Line (called affectionately the "Jackass Line" due to Birch's dependence on mule teams). Dos Cabezas ("two heads") derived its name as far back as the 1840s for the distinctive pair of bald peaks - two heads - that jut prominently from the surrounding peaks. 

The twin peaks of Dos Cabezas, an instantly recognizable landmark.

Once the territory of Cochise's band of Chiricahua Apache, many of those interred in the Dos Cabezas Cemetery had lives shaped or ended by the Apache. William Maxwell Downing, known as "Major Downing" to locals, was the first white settler in the Chiricahua Mountains to the south. Born in Kentucky in 1825, he lived in the Chiricahuas until 1878, operating a lumber mill. Upon his death on March 3, 1898, the Arizona Republic noted that "The old timers and early residents of Cochise county are one by one being called to their home of rest where they will have no fear of the dreaded Apache as they have had." Downing was buried beside the daughter, Delia, who pre-deceased him. His wife, Ellen, later joined them. 

Downing's lumber enterprise saw him supplying Tombstone with product, and in 1880 he shows up in the federal census as having an address on Allen Street with his wife and daughter. It's likely they stayed in town while he worked (and primarily resided at) the lumber camp, as was often the practice at the time. By the time of his death, however, his wife had relocated to Deming, NM, just across the territorial line.  The 1882 BLM / Government Land Ordinance survey shows him homesteading 80 acres in the Chiricahuas near Pinery Creek and conveniently located by the road to Tombstone.

Downing's wife, Ellen, was originally Ellen C. Willard. It wasn't until the occasion of her husband's death that she was reunited with her brother after 41 years. He made the trek from Prescott down to Tombstone (at the time, the Cochise county seat) to help Ellen with probate matters two weeks after Major Downing's passing.

For fellow Arizona history buffs (and if you're reading this far, you must be one!), note that Major Downing is not the same William Downing who gained notoriety for robbing trains and other nefarious behavior, ultimately ending such activity at the hands of an Arizona Ranger. 

Buried elsewhere in the Dos Cabezas Cemetery is pioneer William Vandewalker, a native of Oneida, New York.  A farmer, Vandewalker was the father of two men who operated mining businesses in Dos Cabezas. He and his son, George, settled in Humboldt County, California, before moving to Arizona Territory; the senior Vandewalker operating a farm while George and family raised cattle. George became a prominent cattleman in Willcox, and operated the Bertha mill-site in Dos Cabezas. The other son, William, owned the Los Star Mine. The patriarch had moved to Dos Cabezas in 1882. By 1894, son George was running French Merino cross sheep in the St. Johns area well north of Cochise County, perhaps as their summer pasture. He also bought his "graded stock cattle" in St. Johns before moving them to his Dos Cabezas-area ranch in 1896. 

Several members of Cochise County's prominent ranching family, the Klump clan, are buried in the Dos Cabezas Cemetery. Not only are the Klumps a significant part of the county's history, but they continue to keep it alive through their contributions to the Sulphur Springs Valley Historical Association and Museum. If you rely on Sulphur Springs Valley Electrical Co-Op for your power, as I do, you'll be familiar with Kathy Klump's excellent articles on local history in each issue of the Co-Op's member magazine. 

Theodore Waughtal was a prominent miner and Freemason who moved to the Dos Cabezas area in 1890 and was considered one of the longest-established miners in the county at the time of his death. On July 21, 1908, Waughtal had been inspecting his operations in Cottonwood Canyon when one of our notorious summer monsoon storms kicked in. Waughtal sheltered under a tree when lightning struck, shattering the tree. Waughtal was found "crushed into a bleeding mass" by the bolt of lightning which entered through his head and ran through his entire body. Waughtal's brother, Benjamin, also mined in the area. 

Theodore Waughtal featured prominently in a trail of cattle rustlers after the territory adopted a new law to fight against the rustling epidemic in the region. The first trial resulting from the new legislation occurred in 1903. Billy Speed, an Arizona Ranger who was, at the time, the district livestock inspector, seized 31 calves from a notorious rustling outfit in Dos Cabezas. The calves were motherless and bore the brand  "T-O" used by the Van Winkle brothers. One of the witnesses at the trial was Van Waughtal; another of the  Van Waughtals testified to finding a dead cow branded "X X X", her head caved in by rocks, several days after seeing her with her  unbranded calf in the Cottonwood Canyon area. He later identified the calf as carrying a fresh "T-O" Van Winkle brand. 

Several of Waughtal's relatives share the cemetery as well. 

One of the more poignant features of the Dos Cabezas Cemetery is the presence of rows of semi-marked graves. A simple welded rebar cross marks each otherwise-anonymous site. Fortunately, the community has kindly paid tribute to the souls below ground with a sign to the far rear of the cemetery.  

In contrast, many graves have more elaborate care given them, with protective barriers to keep livestock and wildlife from desecrating the sites, or elegant crosses to mark the memory of the dead.

The Dos Cabezas Pioneer Cemetery is in a lovely location for a desert cemetery, surrounded by gorgeous mountain views.  It's well worth a visit if you enjoy haunting the old haunts as I do. If you do, please leave a comment, and if you're particularly curious about any of the people buried there, let me know and I'll see what I can dig up - not literally. I selected a few of the graves semi-randomly to research, but am often able to do further for those who are interested. 

If you go: Plan on visiting the cemetery in the morning. My afternoon visit made photographing headstones difficult due to the orientation of the graves in the afternoon sun. Wear good shoes or boots with good ankle support; the rodents have done rodent things throughout the cemetery and it is likely you'll have ground crumble beneath your feet. Watch for rattlesnakes! Take plenty of water; although the elevation is about 5100 foot, and it's cooler than the surrounding valleys, the sun will still beat down on you during the summer months. The cemetery is on Rocky Road, an easily-missed turnoff just west of the townsite itself. If you're headed west on Route 186, and you reach the old adobes of Dos Cabezas, you've gone a bit too far. Dos Cabezas is a bit out of the way, so fill your tank and pick up your water / refreshments in Willcox or Bowie before you venture out. 

A few notes on research and references: I used a variety of sources in compiling this blog entry. Books include, but are not limited to: Barnes' Arizona Place Names; The WPA Guide to 1930s Arizona; McChristian's Fort Bowie, Arizona. Newspaper archives include, but are not limited to: The Douglas Daily Dispatch; The Tombstone Epitaph; The Arizona Republic; the St. John's Herald. Online sources include, but are not limited to: The BLM GLO Homestead Records; and Ancestry.com (census records, voter records, etc.)

Recommended reading: (affiliate links! I may receive compensation for purchase of items through this link, and thank you for doing so!)

 Arizona Place Names  This is an essential "backpack" book to throw in your daypack when exploring Arizona. 

Fort Bowie, Arizona Excellent, readable, and well-organized history of nearby Fort Bowie and surrounding key locations.

Historical Atlas of Arizona I cannot survive without this outstanding collection of historical maps of the state. If you're a map nerd as I am, you will quickly tatter the pages of this book. 

Copyright (c) 2024 by Marcy J. Miller * All rights reserved * No part of this content may be reproduced without the express permission of the author * Links to this page, however, may be freely shared and are appreciated * Thank you for sharing, linking, and otherwise helping grow my readership, but most of all, thank you for stopping by!

A Cowboy and Rancher Resting Ground: McNeal Cemetery, Cochise County

 

As the heat has settled in for the season, and I overdid it with my wonky rotator cuff yesterday and didn't have much energy to spare this morning, we opted for a day of visiting desert cemeteries. Just up the road a piece is the McNeal Cemetery, short on shade but long on open vistas across the valley. 

This is a resting place for ranchers and cowboys and prospectors and farmers and early homesteaders, and the grave markers give testimony to the sort of rugged and capable people who are lying below. People such as veteran Captain Augustus Whiting, born in Springfield, Illinois on April 14, 1837, served in the 2nd Illinois Cavalry in the Civil War, and ended up choosing this hot, dusty, windy corner of the country as home for the last years of his life. Capt. Whiting died on November 7, 1915, leaving his widow, Mary, and several children behind.

Ida Katerina Hongo was a homesteader. Local papers carried notices about the mandatory work she was doing on her homestead here in the desert, the "proving up" process necessary to ultimately receive title to the land from the federal government. Born Ida Jaakals in Finland in 1871, she wound up in Arizona Territory with her husband, Frank, whom she divorced in 1912. McNeal apparently attracted a number of Finns to this place so unlike their homeland. Hongo (whose surname appears on various records as "Honga" and "Hanko") farmed on Central Avenue in McNeal. If you haven't been to McNeal, "Central Avenue" conjures up images of a much larger settlement than today's McNeal bears out.

Ade Waisal and Mary Nyholm were among the several Finns who settled nearby. It's always intriguing to me what a truly cosmopolitan place this county was in the 1800s and early 1900s, and to visualize the local general stores being a medley of accents and complexions from such far locales. Mary Nyholm married in Michigan in 1891 before moving south to the Arizona Territory.

Closer to home were the settlers from across the southern border, just a stone's throw away from McNeal, or those who already lived in the region before the 1854 Gadsden Purchase added this part of the state to the union. The frame and gravestone below mark the grave of the child of such residents; although obscured by shadow, the marker merely reads, "Mexican Baby 1918."

Originally from Philadelphia, Anne McCue Murphy married Frank Murphy in 1929. The following year, their daughter was born at Calumet Hospital in Douglas. The Murphys called their place "Murphy Gardens" and at parties at their home in McNeal, they decorated with tulips from their gardens. Their lovely shared headstone is capped with an iron plate depicting rose blossoms and a bit of trellis. It's easy to imagine this family happy among their flowers in this arid place. The second photo shows them in 1934.

Leo Cook and family were clearly ranchers and prospectors still here in a more recent time. Born in Carlsbad, New Mexico, Leo served in the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry in Korea (hence the tribute medal etched onto his marker), returning to Arizona to marry Jane Rae Marshall in 1954. They remained married for 57 years until Jane predeceased Leo in 2011 and left five children and a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren behind.

Fellow veteran and McNeal resident William Edwin Chafin was born in Indiana on March 25, 1888. William, described as 5'10" with dark hair and blue eyes on his draft card, served as a private with the 105 Ammo Train in World War I. After settling in Cochise County after the war, he worked as a pump man and lived on Hoggard Street, later moving to Van Dyke. When William died in 1965, he left his widow, Bertha, behind. 

Kentucky-born Robert P. Perrin served as a private on the Confederate side during the Civil War. After the war he settled on a farm in Whitewater near McNeal. He lived in Cochise County for the final 14 years of his life, passing in 1923.

One of the things I always appreciate in rural cemeteries is the presence of homemade markers, creatively commemorating the dead, and the small trinkets left behind that give a glimpse not only into the interests or abilities of the deceased but of those who buried them. From small quartz pieces carefully inlaid in adobe mud to simple wooden crosses to crosses of coiled barbed wire that seem to reach upwards in an attempted embrace, it's poignant to me to see these individualized memorials that are disallowed in contemporary urban cemeteries. Often the cemeteries mandate markers must be of flat, uniform marble or granite flush with the surface of the lawn so that lawn mowers can be easily driven across them. Here, there is no lawn, nor often any grass at all; no one mows the scruffy weeds or the persistent yucca. There's dirt, and rock, and unique memento mori lovingly placed by grieving family and friends.

Copyright (c) 2024 by Marcy J. Miller * All rights reserved * No part of this content may be reproduced without the express permission of the author * Links to this page, however, may be freely shared and are appreciated * Thanks for stopping by!