Chapter II

1860-1920
ARIZONA’S PIONEERS WERE HARD MEN

The connection between the Arizona pioneers, land

fraud, organized crime, and Arizona government (includ-
ing judges, both federal and state) has been thoroughly
documented by publications such as the Arizona Repub-
lic and the New York Times.

The exposure of “crime,” or the intentional breaking of

law by members of the Arizona’s present day legal es-
tablishment to retaliate for criticism and to protect their
professional and financial interests in maintaining “Open
Border Policy”, is this author’s primary motivation for
writing this book.

Authoritative political writers like Don Bolles (murdered

in 1976 in retaliation for his investigation into mob di-
rected, officially protected land fraud), New York Times
reporter Robert Lindsay, and former Arizona Republic
political editor, David Wagner, have fully developed the
facts related to organized criminal activity protected by
government agents and institutions:

1
 “Under the gaze of a sweltering desert sun, a hy-
brid breed of organized crime—including mafia
styled emigres from elsewhere and a home-grown
species of seemingly respectable business and pro-
fessional men—is blossoming in Arizona, the na-
tion’s fastest growing state.

“Largely through vast, fraudulent land deals, secu-

rities frauds, and other, often-related “white collar
crimes,” criminal groups are turning over many mil-
lions of dollars a year in illicit profits, bringing gang-
land style violence to this fast-urbanizing frontier
state and provoking unresolved charges of official
corruption.1”

“For much of history-writing,” historian Renate Bri-

denthal observed, “the relationship of crime and
corruption to state and society has been resolutely
ignored as little more than marginal or anecdotal
phenomena.” Bridenthal blamed this professional
detachment of the history profession on the scar-
city of sources, stating “illicit practices leave few
trails”.

Criminologists Alan A. Block and William J. Cham-

bliss have showed that in practice, organized crime
is a social system that thrives on the cooperation of
powerful and socially prominent insiders2.

1 N.Y. Times, June 14, 1976

2 The Politics of Murder xvii

2
 Chambliss book, On the Take: From Petty Crooks
to Presidents, explains how an invisible network of
insiders, using secrecy, rewards, and intimidation,
turns the governing power of public institutions to
their own benefit. Organized crime…is a political
phenomenon that takes its character from the eco-
nomic institutions, a coalition of politicians, law en-
forcement people, businessmen, union leaders, and
racketeers.3” Regarding Senator Estes Kefauver’s
1950-1951 senate hearings on crime: Historian
W.H. Moore wrote: “Crime could not have flour-
ished in major American cities without political pro-
tection from “the individual who controlled the local
law-enforcement.4”

In the 1970’s Arizona government officials, including

prosecutors and judges, routinely abused the public
trust to protect ongoing criminal enterprises. They
called it “keeping the lid on5”

In Arizona today, protecting insiders and “keeping the

lid on” is a fundamental, ongoing process with respect
to cronyism, land fraud and Open Border Policy, which
benefits the entire establishment, particularly judges,
lawyers and others employed by the Law Enforce-
ment, Criminal Justice, Prison Industrial Complex.

3 The Politics of Murder xix

4 The Politics of Murder xix
5 In 2013 Tucson City Attorney Mike Rankin “kept the lid on” the
Rio Nuevo scandal and the “insider” theft of 800 million dollars
when he intimidated witnesses, destroyed vital documents and
3
As former Arizona Republic newspaper reporter Dave
Wagner was later to write, the reporters investigating
the Boles murder “seriously overestimated the inde-
pendence of Arizona’s judicature, its political class and
at times it’s press.6”

***

But First:

ARIZONA PIONEERS WERE HARD MEN

In 1863 Arizona became a frontier territory and in 1912

the last of the “lower 48” to become a state. The pio-
neers knew Arizona as “a wide-open land of unlimited
opportunity for the strong, ambitious, self-reliant indi-
vidual to thrust his way to the top7" (in other words, So-
cial Darwinism8 in a “dog-eat-dog” world. Jack London
described it as “the strong eat the weak and the lucky
eat the most”).

otherwise thwarted an under-funded FBI investigation that was

misdirected by Arizona U.S. Attorney (former Pima County Su-
perior Court Judge) John Leonardo.
6 The Politics of Murder xix

7 Slotkin, Richard (1973). Regeneration Through Violence: The

Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860. Middleton:
Wesleyan University Press. p. 5.
8 “Social Darwinism,” Wikipedia

4
For decades Arizona pioneers lobbied for statehood with
a singular purpose: statehood conveyed stability, re-
spectability, and more importantly, bankability, adding
immediate and significant value to their land holdings.

Four factors are necessary for the creation of wealth:

land, labor, capital and entrepreneurship.9

The pioneers land holdings would continue to have rela-

tively little value until it was divided and developed. This
required both labor and capital.

The pioneers already possessed the land and the entre-

preneurship. Arizona had a relatively small population
from which to draw labor, but just across the border lay
Mexico, a land in seemingly endless upheaval, with a
growing discontented population to draw labor from.

Eastern bankers needed assurances before they would

invest their money and the money of their depositors.
They required assurance that their investments would be
protected by government institutions, including courts
which would enforce contracts and sheriffs who would
facilitate the collection of judgements, without which
their money could not be protected.

9 Factors of Production
5
Modern politicians like to claim it was the working man
and the middle class who built America.

Realty Check: “working men” may have provided the

muscle, and the middle class may have provided support
services, but without capital, without investment, there
would have been no money to pay them. Until someone
provides a weekly paycheck, “working men” simply don’t
work; without the infusion of massive amounts of east-
ern capital there would have been no western construc-
tion, no jobs and no middle class to provide support ser-
vices for development. Eastern bankers needed to know
government institutions would protect their money from
the wild men who inhabited what was to become the
State of Arizona.
***

Arizona’s First Land Fraud:

James Reavis, aka “The Baron of Arizona” was the first
to pull off a large scale land fraud in Arizona while Ari-
zona was still a territory, well before statehood brought
the illusion and some semblance of meaningful law and
order to protect the citizenry.

Reavis, who enlisted for the confederate cause in the

Civil War, soon discovered his greatest gift: the ability to

6
accurately reproduce his commanding officer's signa-
ture. Using this new-found skill, Reavis began his crimi-
nal career by forging and selling passes to his fellow sol-
diers.

Post-Civil War Reavis tried a variety of jobs before mov-

ing to Arizona where, following the time-honored west-
ern process of “making a fresh start, reinvention and
transformation,” he found success as a real estate agent.
He soon realized that his forging skills allowed him to
“adjust” legal documents and “correct” imperfect prop-
erty titles.

In 1871 the proverbial stars came into alignment when

Reavis met George Willing Jr., a physician turned pro-
spector-patent medicine salesman, who claimed to own
the rights to a large Spanish land grant, (the “Peralta
Land Grant,” aka the “Barony of Arizona”)10 that he al-
legedly purchased from Miguel Peralta, who Willing just
happened to meet while working a claim in Black Can-
yon, located southeast of Prescott, Arizona Territory.

However, there was one small problem, as Willing ex-

plained:

"When the trade was made, I had no paper on

which to write the deed, so I scoured the camp and
found a sheet of greasy, pencil-marked camp paper
10 James Reavis
7
 upon which I wrote ... and as there were no justices
or notaries present, I had it acknowledged before
witnesses."
The deed of transfer was dated October 20, 1864.

Thus; beginning in 1871 when Reavis began pursuing ti-

tle to 186,000 square miles of Arizona Territory and
dreams of greatness which saw his rise from modest or-
igins, western-style “reinvention,” and transformation
from to become the “Baron of Arizona,” to 1891 when he
was convicted for forgery, presenting false documents to
the Court of Private Land Claims and conspiracy to de-
fraud the United States government and sent to prison,
Reavis produced over 200 forged documents and planted
them in official government files. Reavis used these doc-
uments to support his sales pitch and sell quitclaim
deeds and other conveyances to suckers to collect nearly
5 million dollars of ill-gotten gains, thus establishing land
fraud as an Arizona industry.

Reavis, who served two years in the infamous Yuma Ter-

ritorial Prison11, ended his days in a California poor-
house.

The Reavis and Willing exploits have been dramatized

and fictionalized in motion pictures and on television,

11 Made famous by Kirk Douglas and Henry Fonda in “There Was

a Crooked Man.”

8
notably the 1939 film “The Night Riders.” “The Baron of
Arizona” starring Vincent Price was released in 1950 and
a 1968 episode of Death Valley Days "Pieces of a Puzzle,"
starred Robert Taylor.

Arizona’s First “Organized” Crime:

In the backs of their minds educated Arizonans generally

know that former N.Y.C. mob boss Joe Bonanno retired
to Tucson in the forties and that later the Arizona Re-
public exposed the Mob-Arizona connection which they
implied, directly lead to the murder of reporter Don
Bolles. But surprisingly, Wikipedia lists Cochise County’s
very own home-grown “Cowboys” as the first example
of organized crime in Arizona.

Prior to their depiction as “the bad guys” in the movie

Tombstone, the term “cowboy” identified Arizonans12
who rode into Mexico to steal cattle, or who rustled cattle
from Arizona ranchers. If anybody was keeping score in
those days, these “cowboys” probably stole as many

12 Many were simply wild ass, testosterone driven teenagers get-

ting drunk, feeling their oats, looking for adventure and an easy
way to make a fast buck.

9
cattle out of Mexico13 as Bandidos are credited with
stealing from Arizonans.

When it comes to the truth vs. Hollywood created leg-

ends first generation pioneer family descended Roy
Drachman had this to say about Wyatt Earp:

“I don’t remember telling anyone about having

lunch with Wyatt Earp until many years later, when
he began to be looked upon as some kind of hero.
That was not his image around Arizona, where
many people knew and remembered him. I never
heard anything from those folks about any of the
good or great deeds that he is supposed to have
done. He was a tough survivor when some of his
close friends and relatives weren’t so lucky in
avoiding a violent death.14”
Before Hollywood “transformed” Earp and created his
“Western Hero” myth, Earp (as did many of his time)
tried his hand at a variety of occupations, including
teamster, buffalo hunter and pimp. Indeed, you could
say pimping was a “family business15” with his sister-in-
law Bessie Earp running several whorehouses in Wichita.

13 The Mexicans were the first to build fortifications to guard the

border from illegal American entry. The first fence was erected
in Nogales by the Mexican government.
14 Arizona Daily Star, April 25, 2015
15 Wyatt Earp

10
Earp was even arrested for horse thievery but there is
no record of a conviction16.

When you sort through the books, movies, and other es-
tablishment myth creating propaganda, the bottom line
is this: Just like my great-great grandfather Walter Mur-
ray, Wyatt Earp (sometimes wearing a badge and some-
times not) was one hell of a tough hombre who killed
them before they could kill him, and dead men tell no
tales. Otherwise, guys like Ike Clanton or Johnny Ringo
might today occupy the position of “hero” in the public’s
mind.

***

The Arizona pioneers were hard men with numerous ob-

stacles to overcome if they were to “transform” a lawless
territory into a civilized state worthy of eastern invest-
ment. First, they had to address the obvious and reason-
able concerns for the kind of rugged desolation that, on
the one hand was such an obstacle to statehood at the
turn of the twentieth century, would become a part of its
undeniable charm today.

There were questions as to whether Arizona was even

viable as a state, questions about lack of water, popula-
tion density, etc. There were even local concerns that

16 Steve Gatto
11
without individual statehood status the Arizona Territory
might be gobbled up and incorporated into statehood
with the adjoining Territory of New Mexico, which in a
1906 vote by a more than five to one vote, Arizona pio-
neers didn’t want17.

"There was a great of hesitation because they (the

white settlers) didn’t want (Arizona) to associate
with the Hispanic culture and people of New Mex-
ico,” Arizona historian John Southard explained.
“There was fear that this would be a very negative
development for the people of Arizona.18"

After the turn of the twentieth century when Arizona was

inspected by a congressional fact-finding mission, some
of the members didn’t even bother to step off the train,
going on directly to southern California instead. Wher-
ever they looked they only saw emptiness and desola-
tion.

“They saw what they perceived to be nothing of value,"

Southard said.

Until recently, it was not generally known that the rail-

road line on which they traveled had mostly been built
by non-citizen, non-resident Mexican citizens (aka “ille-
gals”) called “Traqueros” who were the preferred labor

17 How Arizona Almost Didn’t Become a State

18 Did You Know It Took Arizona 49 Years to Become a State?

12
force for large scale Arizona projects such as railroad
construction and copper mining. “The railroad’s top brass
found employing Mexicans to their liking, since they of-
ten worked for lower wages and longer hours with, gen-
erally, fewer complaints.19”

In other words, poverty, desperation, and fear of depor-

tation made these Mexicans “docile,” as the N.Y. Times
would later describe them in 1920, and willing to work
twice as hard and twice as long for half as much money.

Being Easterners, the congressmen only saw land, vast

amounts of raw, undeveloped land baking under a hot
sun, a land filled with all sorts of downright nasty crea-
tures like rattlesnakes, “Green Mohaves” (a particularly
venomous species of pit viper) and coral snakes, scorpi-
ons and centipedes, fire ants and tarantula hawks, (who
first inject a powerful hypnotic into its’ victims before
dragging them to an underground lair to act as a living
host and food supply for their larvae), Gila monsters and
coyotes, and Javelinas, (a nasty dispositioned but rather
good tasting20 beast if you knew how to prepare them),
known to be particularly cantankerous in the monsoon

19 Traqueros: Mexican Railroad Workers In The United States

1870-1930 by Dr. Jeffrey Marcos Garcilazo

20 Loving the Unloved

13
months when, as legend had it, they wasted themselves
on fermented prickly pear juice, bit faces off and forni-
cated with anything that moved, and raised hell wher-
ever they went, mountain lions and wild cats, and my
personal favorite, the Sonoran Desert Toad (aka a “lick-
ing” toad).

These congressmen probably figured that statehood was

far too grand a status for this rude, crude land in the
Southwestern desert filled with scoundrels, desperados,
ne're-do-wells, and generally “Bad Men”.

Hell, twenty years earlier the territory still featured rov-

ing groups of Mexican bandits, marauding Apaches rap-
ing, pillaging, looting, scalping and what-not, and le-
gions of hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, whore-rutting
gunslingers, like the Earp Bros. & Doc Holliday, Ike Clan-
ton & the McLaury Bros., Luke Short & Charlie Storms21,
Bat Masterson & Jonnie Ringo, (none viewed as “heroes”
in their day; all still waiting to be “cleaned up” and ro-
manticized by Hollywood mythmakers), hard-ass hom-
bres who rode all day, drank, gambled and whored all
night, and as legend had it, who couldn’t wait to draw

21 Arizona Gunfighters by Lawrence Yadon & Dan Anderson

14
their guns and blow your freaking head clean off if you
even looked at them sideways.

Even worse: on March 28, 1861—a month before the

Civil War broke out—a vote held in Tucson pledged Ari-
zona to be a Confederate slave state.22
***

Nevertheless, the Arizona pioneers, mindful that con-

junction with New Mexico would dilute their power to di-
rect affairs, persisted and petitioned twice more before
congress finally relented in 1910.23 The Arizona Consti-
tutional Convention opened on October 10, 1910. Two
months later they produced a revolutionary document
inspired by Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Movement
which included the people’s right to amend and to repeal
portions of the constitution by direct vote, and the right
to recall public officials, including judges, downright dan-
gerous ideas to party bosses, insiders, and the tradi-
tional powerbrokers of both parties.

22 Confederate Arizona
23 No doubt saddlebags filled with cold hard cash were offered here
in exchange for votes, along with some land options to a favored
few. Everyone knew that once Arizona became legitimate land
values might double.

15
Behind the scenes, Arizona’s hard men must have
gnashed their teeth in frustration: what in the hell is go-
ing on with all this “progressive24” shit? Recall public of-
ficials and judges?25 Are you out of your fucking mind?
How the hell are we going to manage things or “keep the
lid on” when the people can amend the constitution by
direct vote, get rid of judges, and pull off other shit?

We’ll have to see about that….

On February 9, 1911, Arizonans overwhelmingly voted

for the new constitution, even though President Taft ve-
toed it until the people removed the judicial recall provi-
sion.

In what might have first appeared as an of obedience,

the people removed the offending provision. Taft signed
and on February 14, 1912, Arizona became the 48th
state.

Then, barely nine months later, in the fall elections of

1912, at the first chance to vote since statehood, the
people of Arizona collectively demonstrated their inde-

24 The descendants of the 1912 Arizona “progressives” consider

them-selves to be “conservatives” today.
25 This writer contends that in Arizona judges are the establish-
ment’s primary mechanism that protect their interests.

16
pendent, stubborn, and downright ornery nature26, by
lifting their collective middle finger to the establishment.
They exercised their right to amend, re-inserted the ju-
dicial recall provision, and granted women the right to
vote, a full eight years before national suffrage.

The pioneers who had pushed so hard for statehood

weren’t motivated by noble sentiments of patriotism,
acting for “the greater good,” or in “putting another star
on the flag” even though these were the phrases they
used to motivate the masses to volunteer for service27 in
the Spanish-American War. They did so to enhance their
fortunes and to consolidate their power. They did so to
make money. Statehood meant adopting the formal
power structures of government, and by so doing, Ari-
zona became bankable. Now, by various schemes (re-
ferred to as “projects”) they could attract vast sums of
money for the economic development of the one thing
they all had in abundance: land.

It was altogether natural that these hard men would look

at Arizona’s new government with a proprietary interest.

26 In 2020 Arizonans were the most resistant to wearing masks to

reduce the spread of CoVid19. NY Daily News
27 These Arizonans, being excellent horsemen, served with Roo-
sevelt in the famous “Roughriders,” and made the charge up
San Juan Hill.
17
After all, Arizona statehood didn’t just “arrive” all by it-
self, nor was it the result of a popular movement. The
common man hadn’t done it, and Washington insiders
didn’t want it (at least not until their palms were
greased); it was the pioneer’s multi-decade long effort
and their suitcases full of their money which paid off
Washington and achieved statehood. And from their per-
spective the purpose of statehood and government was
not to implement the lofty sounding rhetoric they’d used
to inspire the people to sign on and sign up, as set forth
in the preamble to the Arizona Constitution. The Arizona
pioneers didn’t really believe the purpose of government
was to protect “the individual rights of the people”, even
though that’s what the constitution said; that verbiage
was so much bullshit they’d used to inspire the dumb-
ass masses. You couldn’t eat rights. You couldn’t feed
your family or get ahead on ideals. Without employment,
without money you couldn’t fill your belly. You needed
investment and a stable economy to do that. You needed
the apparatus of a stable government, with power en-
forced through the application of law—law enforcement
to bust chops and keep the peace, and judges to enforce
contracts and collect judgments.

Lofty sounding rhetoric would not enrich the common

man or make him happy, but a positive climate for

18
business and endless opportunities for the common man
to fill his belly and to make his fortune would. A thriving
“business friendly” environment protected by govern-
ment structures would convey “bankability” to their land
and economic opportunity for the masses to “get their
share”. And the resultant general prosperity would ben-
efit all.

Arizona’s hard men also knew it would take hard physical

labor, and lots of it, if they were to turn their raw land
into bankable real estate. Modern estimates make the
cost of labor to be a full 40% of all construction costs, a
figure which doesn’t account for the considerable cost of
labor for “below the ground” infrastructure, such as sew-
ers, drainage, etc. which, in Arizona, is largely per-
formed by Illegal Mexican labor.

In Arizona, the use of illegal labor (you could work illegal

Mexicans twice as hard for twice as long and pay them
half as much) was, and always had been, widespread.
Fear of exposure and deportation made illegals submis-
sive.

Conflicts between legal and illegal workers lie at the for-

mation of Arizona government. In fact, a labor dispute
between a German-born legal immigrant and his em-
ployer was already before the Arizona Territorial Courts

19
and would be one of the first Arizona inspired, U.S. Su-
preme Court decisions28 made after Arizona statehood.

***

“Big Mike” and Joe Goldwater were Hard Men

The Warden brothers, Judge Walter Murray, California’s

first Hispanic Governor Romualdo Pacheco, The Goldwa-
ter brothers, Big Nose Kate, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday
& the Earps all shared the western saloon culture.

The story of “Big Mike29” and Joe Goldwater, founders of

the American branch of the Goldwasser family, epitomize
the true meaning of “making a fresh start”, western style
transformation, reinvention, freedom, and the American
Dream: You can come from anywhere—with nothing but
hope and empty pockets—but if you work hard, you can
build a successful enterprise within a single generation;
thereafter; by the miracle of capitalism, you and your
progeny could earn your livings in perpetuity, off the
blood, sweat, tears and toil of others.

28 Truax v. Raich, 239 US 33 (1915)

29 In his early years “Big Mike” was the family maverick. In 1837
He abandoned Poland to “beat the draft.”

20
In November 1852, just about the same time the War-
den brothers were setting up their stage line in Sacra-
mento and six months before Walter Murray signed on
with the Rangers to ride down famed Mexican desperado
Juaquin Murrieta, Big Mike” Goldwater30 and his brother
Joseph arrived in San Francisco determined to escape
the poverty they came from and to make their fortunes.

They quickly relocated to the town of Sonora, California

where the Juaquin Murrieta saga began, and like many
others, soon decided the real money was to be made in
the mining support industries.

Hard working dudes like to get loaded and get laid, don’t
they?

They set up a saloon on the bottom floor of a newly con-

structed building, just down the street from my great,
great grandfather’s newspaper. Conveniently located
above the saloon on the upper floor was the town’s most
popular bordello.31

30 Barry’s grandfather Michael Goldwasser changed the name for

his branch of the family to “Goldwater” before immigrating to
America.
31 Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution, Lee Edwards,
1995

21
 ***

Western Saloon Culture:

In America’s wild, wild west, saloons and bordellos were

popular places for people to hang out drink, gamble, and
gossip, shake hands and sign contracts, etc. Newspaper
publishers like my great, great grandfather Walter Mur-
ray, didn’t have offices where they met sources and law-
yers generally didn’t have offices where they greeted cli-
ents, so much of what today happens behind closed
doors happened right out in the open, in saloons and
bordellos, where other newsworthy events, like gun-
fights and stabbings, were also likely to occur. During in
his first year as publisher of the Sonora Herald32 there
were 12 murders in Sonora, gunfights mostly, over gam-
bling disputes and mining claims, so Walter Murray must
have known the Goldwaters.

Several years later, following the natural resource devel-

opment model33, when goldmining eventually played out
in Sonora, the owners and operators of the saloons, bor-
dellos stores and newspapers, etc., began to look for

32 Sonora Herald
33 First, natural resources are located; then support enterprises
are constructed to exploit them.

22
better opportunities elsewhere. Walter Murray went to
San Luis Obispo and resumed the study of law while the
Goldwater brothers went to Los Angeles where they
opened another saloon in the lobby of a prominent hotel.

The Goldwaters soon heard about new gold strikes in

what would become the Arizona territory, along the
banks of the Colorado River. Capitalizing on their expe-
rience in Sonora, they bought a team and wagon, filled
it with necessaries and specialty goods, and “Big Mike”
headed east, crossing the Colorado at Arizona City (now
Yuma), arriving in Gila City, in the fall of 1860, just prior
to the onset of the Civil War.

On July 29, 1861 “Big Mike” ignored local confederate

sentiment and became an American citizen. He under-
took contracts to haul supplies to military posts in the
interior of Arizona, which was proclaimed a Territory by
President Lincoln on February 24, 1863. He extended
northward and added a civilian freighting and grain haul-
ing business, eventually moving his base of operations
to Prescott which was designated as the capital of the
Territory of Arizona in 1864.

23
The town itself was named in honor of historian William
H. Prescott during a public meeting on May 30, 186434.

The Prescott family, whose members have been fiction-

alized in the movie How the West Was Won, (with Karl
Malden playing Zebulon Prescott and Debbie Reynolds
playing dancehall singer Lilith), was a real, live, Arizona
pioneer family, though in reality not as fictionalized in
the movie. When Big Mike moved north, Prescott was
still very much the “wild, wild west.” A list of Prescot’s
more notable “outlaw” residents include John Kinney
(leader of The Kinney Gang) and “Big Nose Kate35,” a
real-life “sporting woman”, immigrant and pioneer fic-
tionalized by Hollywood in the movie Tombstone36.

“Big Mike’s” business soon extended as far south as Tuc-

son. In June 1872 his small party was ambushed just
outside Prescott:

“One fine June day in 1872, Mike, Joe, and a Dr.

Jones were returning from a business meeting in
Fort Whipple, near Prescott, when a band of about
thirty Mohave-Apaches ambushed them. During a
wild four-mile chase, two Indian bullets hit Joe in
the back and shoulder. Escape was looking dim for
34 Prescott, Arizona
35 Real Life “Big Nose Kate.”
36 Hollywood’s Version of “Big Nose Kate”

24
 the fleeing trio when three ranchers appeared
around a bend and began firing at the Indians, who
abruptly disappeared into the surrounding hills.37”

Big Mike’s Reform Ticket

In 1879 the Goldwaters opened Goldwaters of Prescott,

“The Best Always” was their motto38. Soon thereafter,
“Big Mike” (no longer a “maverick” and determined to go
mainstream) supported a reform ticket to protect the
professional interests of the local prostitutes (having
plenty of money to spend they were probably his best
customers) to regulate their profession and who bristled
at competition from “B girls” or amateurs out to hustle
up a few bucks on Saturday night.

Wyatt Earp: Transformed from “Bum” to Lawman

Wyatt Earp was born in Monmouth Illinois on March 19,

1847, two years before Lew and Horatio Warden started
their journey west.

History reveals Wyatt was not always the “lantern jawed

steely eyed” lawman movies like Tombstone portray him
to be. In his early life he was also known as a “bum,” a

37 Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution, Lee Edwards,

1995
38 “Big Mike”

25
pimp, a street brawler, and an accused horse thief, as
set forth in numerous accounts of his life39.

By 1880 the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday and Big Nose

Kate had come to Prescott during this pivotal time in the
political history of the Goldwaters. Holliday had again
taken up with self-described “line girl” “Big Nose Kate”
with whom he had first crossed paths in Ft. Griffin Texas,
along with Wyatt Earp, then doing a side job40 for the
Santa Fe Railroad41 trying to run down notorious train
robber named Dave Rudabaugh.

Both Holliday and Kate prospered in Ft. Griffin, but in

late May they had to flee a lynch mob; Doc, confronted
by a trail boss and card cheat named Ed Baily looking at
the “deadwood,42” was forced to use his knife43 to “open
up” Baily who was trying to draw down on him, from
sternum to beltline, Holliday “eviscerated (Baily), with

39 Peoria Bummer, American Cowboy Chronicles.

40 Earp was then Deputy Marshall of Dodge City.
41 In the early twentieth century my maternal grandmother, Hazel
Leopold, was the “Artist in Residence” for the Santa Fe Railroad.
42 Poker discards.
43 At the moment of truth, one account has Doc awkwardly placed
when Baily made his move, leaning forward with both hands to
rake in a pot, his knife concealed in the sleeve of his coat.

26
his steaming innards spilling over his belt”44. Kate,
dressed in hastily borrowed cowboy clothes, distracted
the mob of 300 by setting fire to the town’s hardware
store.

The pair fled north to Dodge City where Wyatt Earp still
worked a Deputy Marshall. Doc resumed gambling and
Kate found gainful employment in a “sporting house” op-
erated by James Earp’s wife Nellie “Bessie” Earp45.

Thus, it was Big Mike’s 1880 “reform movement” to pro-

tect the labor interests of professional “sporting women,”
at the expense of amateurs trying to hustle up a few
bucks on Saturday night, that inspired Big Nose Kate to
follow Doc Holliday and relocate to Tombstone, where on
October 23, 1881 the Earp Brothers and Doc Holliday
found Hollywood fame for the part they played in the
“Shoot-out at the OK Corral.”

***
Revolution & World War Drives Poor Mexicans
North

The northern movement of poor Mexicans into the United

States began in the 1870s with the ever increasing

44 Doc Holliday the Gun Fighter, Matt Braun, page 179

45 “Big Nose Kate”, Wikipedia

27
“cheap labor” needs of the railroads and the Arizona cop-
per mining industry. It continued in the aftermath of the
Mexican Revolution and World War I.

The Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) created the first

large influx of war refugees and political exiles wanting
to escape what seemed to be endless poverty, pesti-
lence, and war in Mexico.

Later, In the aftermath of WWI, the movement north in-

creased when returning American soldiers (including my
grandfather Lew Warden46) moved away from rural
America for the glamor of bright city lights, and higher
paying jobs in a rapidly expanding industrial manufac-
turing economy. This post-war movement was memori-
alized by Sophie Tucker and Eddie Cantor in “How Ya
Gonna Keep Them Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen
Paree?”

Unlike the illegal entrants of 2006, these Mexicans were

“welcomed in47” and employed by ranchers and farmers,
grateful to find “cheap labor” to fill the growing void cre-
ated by the exodus of American labor from the farm.

46He left “Pappy” Warden’s ranch in the Los Osos Valley and went
to work for P.G. & E.
47 Welcomed Mexican Invasion, NY Times, June 20, 1920

28
These Mexicans were hardly hostile “invaders looking to
steal American jobs,” as they would later be character-
ized. They were recruited48 and preferred to American
workers because their poverty, desperation, and fear of
deportation, encouraged them to tolerate lower pay and
working conditions that others would not.

In 1920 (and now), increased cheap-labor supply was a

shot in the arm for the growth of the southwestern econ-
omy, and for the increasing profits made by farmers and
ranchers.

Other employers, industrial employers, were quick to

make bids on this illegal labor supply49, notably the rail-
roads and Arizona copper mining interests. For years,
throughout the Southwest, the railroads had employed
“illegal” Mexicans as a primary labor force50, but by 1920
they were sending them to other sections of the country
as well. The box car home of the Mexican track worker,
aka “Traquero,” became a familiar sight to the new white

48 California Perspectives on American History.

49 In 2007 employers were still “bidding” for their share of the
illegal labor supply. George Bush’s deal for “Immigration Re-
form” collapsed because of congressional squabbling on the dis-
tribution of illegal immigrant labor.
50 Traqueros: Mexican Railroad Workers in the United States,
1870-1930

29
immigrants living in the northern states who did not
know that people like “Mexicans” even existed.

Today, it would be wildly unpopular in certain “patriot”

circles, but absolutely accurate to say that non-citizen
Mexicans (aka “illegals”) were the primary labor force
which built the American railroads, primarily the Atchi-
son, Topeka and the Santa Fe across northern Arizona,
linking St. Louis, Missouri with California and the South-
ern Pacific Railroad which completed a line from New Or-
leans to Los Angeles by way of Tucson and Yuma51.

In the early part of the twentieth century, this author’s

maternal grandmother, Hazel Leopold, lived in Santa-Fe,
New Mexico where she was employed as the Artist in
Residence for the Santa Fe Railroad. Hazel was greatly
impressed by the scenic beauty of the southwest and
sympathetic to the plight of the Indian and Mexican in-
habitants, a sentiment which she expressed and passed
down to family members through her paintings and
Christmas cards.

These Mexican railroad workers traveled with their fam-

ilies. As the cards of fate were shuffled and laid out,
small support colonies sprang up along the tracks. It was

51 Traqueros: Mexican Railroad Workers in the United States,

1870-1930

30
natural the interactions between Americans (aka those
of European origins already here) and people from what
was in effect an alien culture, (aka “the other side of the
tracks”) began to create political, social, and economic
problems.

The New York Times described many of the cultural prob-

lems caused by American and Mexicans living near each
other, caused by a significant difference between the
American and Mexican psychology and character.

“These Mexicans are filled with racial pride…they

are sentimental and romantic. They descend from
Old Mexico which is unmixed Indian descended
from the Aztecs, Toltecs and subject races of the
country conquered by the Spaniards that were not
wiped out.” 52
Agriculture employers found it “good business” to give
these Mexicans, especially those with families, a per-
sonal interest in his job in the hope of keeping him at it.
Thousands of acres of cotton plantations were sub-
rented in Texas and Arizona (just as deep South post-
Civil War landowners had introduced sharecropping as a
method to keep the former slave on the plantation) in
small lots to Mexican families, giving the “invading”

52 The Welcomed Invasion

31
Mexican a feeling of independence, a vested interest in
the enterprise, and a reason to stay on the farm.

But sharecropping was more than what the N.Y. Times

called a “wise policy.” It was also a way of creating a
captive, hard-working, cheap labor force for agricultural
industries—farming and ranching—and keeping them
working on the farm to take the place of American-born
workers, like my grandfather, who were leaving the
ranch for more exciting opportunities in the big cities.

Agricultural employers considered these Mexicans to be

“docile, taciturn, physically strong, and able to put up
with unhealthy and demanding working conditions53”, all
excellent qualities American employers wanted for their
“strong-back, labor intensive” industry.

Overlooked by all those who have researched this issue

was the poor Mexicans’ most important quality; their
status as “illegal,” and their fear of deportation. It was
their fear of discovery that kept them “docile”, captive,
hardworking and essentially in bondage. They were pro-
tected only as long as they kept their mouths shut,
stayed on the farm and kept working twice as hard, twice
as long, for half as much pay as their American

53 Mexican Immigration by Assistant Professor Julia Young.

32
counterparts. Pressure from the farmers even convinced
Congress to reduce appropriations for border control to
the point where immigration law was only enforced in
the cities, and haphazardly at that54, affording Mexicans
easy entry into America, and easy access to farm jobs.
As long as these Mexicans remained on the farm, they
were relatively safe from “La Migra”, and everything else
except outright economic exploitation by their employ-
ers. If they left the farm or complained of their wages or
living conditions, they were subject to a list of horribles
which included beatings, arrest, deportation and return
to Mexico where they would, once again, face the oner-
ous economic conditions which had inspired them to
leave in the first place.

In Arizona rancher Kemper Markley, who was both a man

of the soil and a man to be feared, was a founding mem-
ber of “the Phoenix Network55” and one of the richest
men in the state. Marley owned a number of “strong-
back, labor intensive” agricultural enterprises including
cotton fields and cotton gins, cattle and sheep ranches,
feed lots and meatpacking houses. Additionally, he
owned hundreds of sections of prime land, in California

54 The Welcomed Invasion.

55 An informal group of Arizona’s most powerful founding families.

33
and Arizona, destined for eventual commercial and resi-
dential real estate development. Marley, an establish-
ment “pilar of society”, was appointed to the board of
directors of banks, water and utility cooperatives and
various state commissions.

And Marley ordered vigilantes with ax handles to break

up strikes by Mexican farm workers who objected to pay
and working conditions. Allegedly Marley paid for the
1976 murder of Reporter Don Bolles56 who was exposing
fundamental Arizona land corruption, rip-off schemes,
protected by government officials (including prosecutors
and judges) which operated at the highest levels57.

In the fifties, Marley was prosecuted for operating a se-

ries of Phoenix-based whorehouses (Marley was guilty as
charged) but successfully defended by future Supreme
Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, an aggressive

56 Wagner, page xiv. In Desert Injustice, Robert Kaiser presents a

different viewpoint. He says the Bolles hit was ordered by Ari-
zona pioneer descendant Brad Funk, (a longtime friend of Harry
Rosenzweig and Barry Goldwater), organized by former Gold-
water attorney Neal Roberts, and carried out by Chicago hit-
man Carl Verive, aka “Heavy Duty”. See Desert Injustice L294
and L308-L313.

57 The Politics of Murder: Organized Crime in Barry Goldwater’s

Arizona, Wagner, pg. 23

34
young lawyer on the way up, who helped Marley “beat
the rap.”

But, what the hell: running whorehouses in Arizona was

no big deal. It was almost a sport, like horse and dog
racing, or even a business expense for the economic
elite, politically powerful and mob connected. Long be-
fore his Hollywood “makeover” and transformation into
lawman and “hero” Wyatt Earp ran whores58 in Peoria,
Illinois, and his sister-in-law, Bessie Earp, operated two
“houses of ill repute” in Wichita. Harry Rosenzweig, the
Chairman of the Republican Party and Barry Goldwater’s
right-hand man was rumored to have operated a bunch
of ‘em.

***

Cheap Mexican Labor in Arizona:

In 1917 the communist led I.W.W. organized the copper

miner’s strike against Phelps Dodge and other mining in-
terests resulting in what is known as the Bisbee Depor-
tations

The 1917 Bisbee Deportations, and the ultimate failure

of the federal courts to protect citizen rights59—or to hold

58 Steve Gatto
59 This author, whose political viewpoint is based on his support
for JFK, Cesar Chavez, and Martin Luther King, absolutely
35
powerful economic interests accountable for grotesque
violations of law—are particularly important to this story.

On July 12, 1917, in Bisbee Arizona, I.W.W. union or-

ganizer Fred Watson, and 1,200 other striking copper
miners, were rounded up by an armed vigilante force led
by Cochise County Sheriff Wheeler acting without a court
issued warrant, placed in boxcars, and dumped across
state lines into New Mexico in a process eerily similar to
what the Germans did to round up the “troublemaking”
Jews in the Warsaw ghetto in WWII60.

In Arizona the I.W.W. had been particularly successful in

recruiting Mexican workers, who were routinely given
lower paying jobs or paid less for doing the same job.

Several months after the deportation, President Wood-

row Wilson set up the Federal Mediation Commission to
investigate the Bisbee Deportation, including Felix
Frankfurter who later was appointed to the U.S. Su-
preme Court.

detests communists. However; communists have a constitu-

tional right to organize and present their argument. This author
opposes any government suppression of viewpoint merely be-
cause it is “unpopular.”
60 I’ve heard some “Protect the Border” folks advocate “all Mexi-
cans should be rounded up and placed in boxcars, with the
trains running 24/7 and taken deep into Mexico and dumped
off.”

36
The investigation concluded the copper companies were
at fault and the unions blameless.

In May 1918, the US Department of Justice indicted

Phelps Dodge and Calumet and Arizona executives, in-
cluding Walter S. Douglas, (the former college roommate
of President Wilson,61), Copper Queen Mine General
Manager Grant Dowell, and Loyalty League organizer,
Miles Merrill. Sheriff Wheeler, John Greenway, and Wal-
ter Douglas’s brother, James Douglas, Jr., could not be
arrested, since they were serving in the War in France,
and Walter Douglas, who was in New York, did not ap-
pear in court.

However, United States v Wheeler was thrown out by

Judge William Morrow in San Francisco, as a matter to
be resolved by the State of Arizona, not in federal juris-
diction.

Arizona law clearly made kidnapping a felony. However,

when serious vested financial and political power inter-
ests are at risk, the scales of justice (in Arizona) always
seem to balance in favor of the business friendly

61 Bisbee Deportation

37
“establishment62”, whom this author refers to as “they,”
or “them.”

In the case of “We the People” vs. Big Copper both the
state and the federal courts ignored “the rule of law.”
They responded out of practical consideration for the
enormous economic power wielded by Arizona mining in-
terests, whose operations were financed by eastern
banks. Arizona state prosecutors declined to take to take
any action against the principals of the copper compa-
nies, instead going after a singular piece of “low hanging
fruit,” charging one low level Phelps Dodge employee,
Harry Wooten, and a deputy, in place of Sheriff Harry
Wheeler. Quite predictably, the trial ended in a not guilty
verdict.

The aggrieved union leaders filed civil suits in state court

against 224 of the vigilantes but the copper companies
reached into some very deep pockets and all but one of
the civil suits were settled out of court.

Phelps Dodge began open pit mining operations in 1917,

in Bisbee and eventually throughout the state. Open pit
mining which requires less skilled labor, produces a hor-
rendous environmental aftermath, which is still visible in

62 In New Mexico the pioneer establishment which murdered Eng-

lish immigrant John Tunstall, thus spawning the Legend of Billy
the Kid, was referred to as “The House.”
38
Arizona today. So, it was convenient to dispose of the
skilled labor force, who operated the mineshafts, employ
more unskilled Mexican labor, and still produce copper
at a substantial profit. Phelps Dodge’s operations contin-
ued without significant interruption until the Bisbee
“open pit” mines were closed in 1974. Having broken the
back of the labor movement in Arizona, Walter Douglas
controlled the Bisbee operations until he retired in 1930
and shared those in Jerome, Arizona, with his brother
“Rawhide” Jimmy Douglas63. He died wealthy at his
home in Chauncey, New York in 1946.

What IS the I.W.W.?

In 1905 the I.W.W.64 (Industrial Workers of the World,

members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies"),
held a convention in Chicago, attended and supported by
socialists, anarchists, Marxists, (primarily members of
the Socialist Party of America and Socialist Labor Party),
and radical trade unionists from all over the United
States, mainly the Western Federation of Miners.

The I.W.W. aimed to promote worker solidarity in the

revolutionary struggle to overthrow the capitalist

63 James Douglas Jr.

64 IWW

39
employer class. In particular, the IWW was organized
because of the belief among many unionists, socialists,
anarchists, Marxists, and radicals that the AFL not only
had failed to effectively organize the U.S. working class,
but it was causing separation rather than unity within
groups of workers by organizing according to narrow
craft principles. The Wobblies believed that all workers
should organize as a class, a philosophy which is still re-
flected in the Preamble to the current IWW Constitution:

“It is the historic mission of the working class to do away

with capitalism.”

The 2006 National Day of Protest for Worker’s Rights and

Immigration Reform and the subsequent “Riot in Armory
Park” were both organized and directed by Pima County
Legal Defender Isabel Garcia, Public Defender Margo
Cowan, Kat Rodriquez, and other ideological descend-
ants of the same socialists, anarchists, Marxists who at-
tended the 1905 Chicago convention and organized the
strikes against Arizona copper mines.

The Pima County “Pro-Raza Open Border” leadership,

particularly Isabel Garcia and Margo Cowan, made no ef-
fort to hide to hide their pro-communist sympathies.
They even acknowledged it by using “raised fist” and
other communist imagery in their literature, communist

40
verbiage in their public appeals for “solidarity,” declaring
their open support for shared communist organizations
like the PLO.

More importantly the Pima County media, whose basic

function is to know these things and to ask the hard
questions, failed to even respond to this writer when he
raised these issues via email and during his rallies.

Still don’t think the “Dirty Commie Rat Bastards,65” sup-

ported by a sympathetic left-wing media, have been us-
ing impoverished Mexicans to overthrow the American
government for the past 100 years?

You’re right: They’ve been at it longer:

First Draft of Chapter II:

Arizona Pioneers Were Hard Men © 2020
by Roy Warden
roywarden@hotmail.com

65 Politico, June 30, 2017: These are the same communists who
now direct the Portland Riots.
41