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THE MOST EFFICIENT FIBER PRODUCERS ON EARTH:

Angora Goat Ranching in Yavapai County, Arizona, 1880-1945

By Mona Lange McCroskey

ew people remember that in the interim between World War I and the end ofWorld War II, the biggest industry in Yavapai County, Arizona, was theraising of Angora goats. At its peak in 1940 Arizona’s Angora goat popula-

tion was estimated to be about 200,000, of which about one-half were in SouthernYavapai County. The balance were scattered among Mohave, Pima, Pinal, Gra-ham and Greenlee Counties.

W. H. Hardy was reportedly the first rancherto import goats to Central Arizona, from Utahin the 1880s.1 The dry, brushy terrain ofYavapai County proved an ideal environmentfor them. Goat raising in the county centeredin the Kirkland-Wilhoit vicinity, with smallerdistricts around Mayer, Congress, Bagdad,Agua Fria, Walnut Grove, Peeples Valley,Castle Hot Springs, the Bradshaw Mountainsand the Verde Valley.

Most Yavapai County goat raisers came fromthe hill country of Texas, some bringing goatswith them. Established cattlemen turned togoat ranching, or added goats to their cattleoperations for three reasons: Arizona cattleproduction was beginning to surpass localmarket demands; buyers were demanding abetter grade of beef than was produced by thelonghorns that were driven into the state; andthe drought of the 1890s had been disastrousto the cattle business. As one rancher put it,“Mohair was the meat and potatoes of theranchers; cattle were a luxury.”2

Angora goats are native to the HimalayanMountains in Asia Minor. Dr. James B.Davis introduced them into the United Statesfrom Turkey in 1849, bringing them to hisfarm at Columbia, South Carolina, where they

thrived. He eventually sold his herd to hisnephew, Richard Peters of Atlanta, Georgia,who became known as the “father of the An-gora industry in the United States”.3 Animalsfrom Peters’ herd were shipped to Californiaand the Southwest, where the climate suitedthem well. More importations of TurkishAngora goats ensued, and in 1893 the firstAngoras from South Africa were introduced.By 1900 the descendants of these goats werefound on ranches in the West and Southwest,and in California.

Angora goats are a little smaller than otherbreeds of domestic goats. They have wide setspiral horns and a silky white fleece thathangs down in curls all over the body, ena-bling them to withstand extreme tempera-tures. The males are properly called bucks;the females, does or nannies; the young, kids;and castrated males, wethers. Angora doesalmost always have only one kid, as opposedto other breeds of goats where the norm istwins. Their fleece, known as mohair (fromthe Arabian word “muhayyar”, meaningchoice or select), grows eight to ten inches ayear. Hair from a good band of goats aver-ages up to three-and-a-quarter pounds peranimal per semi-annual shearing or “clip.”The goats can be sheared for up to ten years,yielding the best mohair during the fourth to

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sixth years. Kid mohair is of the finest, soft-est quality; each kid yields from one pound toa pound and a half of mohair. It is an ex-tremely durable fiber; sound absorbing, non-flammable, and insulating from heat and cold,which led to its description as a “luxury fiber”and “an aristocrat of fibers.”

The United States Department of Agriculture(USDA) has praised Angora goats as perhaps“the most efficient fiber producers on earth”.Although the USDA extolled the use of goatmeat and morocco leather, Angora goats inArizona were raised almost exclusively formohair.4 Fabric made from mohair resistsfading, is lighter and warmer than wool, andbecause of its elasticity it resists wrinkling,stretching and sagging. It was first used indress and suiting goods, furniture upholstery,and military braid and ornamentation. Mohairgrowers received a huge economic boost withthe advent of streetcars and the railroad Pull-

man car, where mohair was used almost ex-clusively in upholstery

Made into durable plush with a pile, mohaircontinued to stand up even with wear, and itwas almost dust repellant. It was also used inhats and hairnets, handbags, mufflers andshawls, draperies, carpeting, wigs, imitationfur, paint rollers, even clerical vestments andcinches. With the coming of the automobilethe demand for mohair rose again, for autotops and upholstery.

The Angora goat industry in Yavapai Countyprospered as new investors materialized andestablished goat ranchers enlarged their herds.By 1910 the goat census in Northern Arizonawas over 15,000, setting the stage for the es-calated production of mohair during WorldWar I,5 and in 1917 Yavapai goat men had anunprecedented year. “[Mohair] shippingstarted early in September from Kirkland

Brucellosis inspection under auspices of USDA, 1934.

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Valley, at a price of thirty-eight cents perpound, the highest ever paid.”6 In 1927 thestatewide goat population had increased to185,000 and more than a million pounds ofmohair were produced; prices averaged fifty-seven cents a pound.7 The superior marketcont inued in to1928, when thequality fiber pro-duced in YavapaiCounty was com-manding high pricesin the Boston Mar-ket. Governmentstatistics show thatmohair income inArizona increasedfrom $65,000 in1909 to $301,000 in1939.

In 1934 Arizonag o a t r a n c h e r sformed The ArizonaMohair GrowersAssociation. Itadopted the motto“For lasting beauty,use mohair.” Itsgoals were to pro-mote closer coop-era t ion amonggrowers, collect andcirculate information relating to the produc-tion and marketing of mohair, and to advancethe interests of the industry. The organizationheld regular meetings in Prescott, with occa-sional meetings in Wickenburg, Safford, andThatcher, but most of the group’s activitieswere centered in Yavapai County. Associa-tion members were interested in and dis-cussed a wide range of topics, including soilconservation, dipping, livestock inspection,predators, and proposed revisions to the StateLand Code.

Yavapai County goat raisers struggled duringthe Depression. Informants described thesmall goat ranches during that time as “hunterand gatherer operations” and “starvationsituations.” Low mohair prices combinedwith a severe drought and automobile strikes

in Detroit causedmany ranches tofail.

In 1934 YavapaiCounty AgriculturalAgent E. S. Turvillewas in charge ofadministering acontract for the pur-chase of surplusgoats by the gov-ernment. A droughtrelief meeting washeld in Denver todetermine regula-tions and terms ofthe stock reductionpurchase, at whichthe USDA Bureauof Animal Industryruled that the pur-chase would be ofnannies only. TheMohair Growersobjected to the rul-ing on the basis that

their goat populations were about sixty per-cent wethers and forty percent nannies, andthe sale of nannies only would result in an“unbalanced reduction of herd productivityand mohair sales.”8 A. A. Johns, President ofthe Arizona Wool Growers, enlisted the helpof Arizona Congresswoman Isabella Green-way in urging a reconsideration of the ruling.

Under the 1934 National Brucellosis Eradica-tion Program, women in Yavapai Countywere hired to administer USDA approvedtests to goats for brucellosis. Other 1930s re-

Goat Herder Amelia Chavis, circa 1920s

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lief legislation also provided funds for theconstruction of a tannery six miles north ofPrescott on the Ash Fork Highway to stimu-late the local economy. Arizona was one ofthe leading cattle, sheep, and goat-raisingstates in the nation, and up to that time hideshad been shipped out-of-state for processing.The tannery had a daily capacity of 250 goator sheep hides, or 125 cowhides. Tanned An-gora goat hides with hair were used for rugsand robes; without hair they went into work-men’s gloves and morocco leather. The tan-nery was equipped with modern, up-to-datemachinery that reduced the time for tanning,and “the hides [came] into the tannery in theraw state at one end of the building and[went] out the other as finished leather” inthree to five weeks.9

In 1938 the Mohair Growers entered into anagreement with Phoenix Packing Company inan effort create a market for goat meat. Thegrowers would sell chevon to Phoenix Pack-ing, which agreed to open a meat market tosell goat meat, and not to sell any meat “incompetition to goat meat.”10 (Goat meat wascalled chevon until the end of World War II,and also cabrito.11) It was often sold as mut-ton or lamb because of the universal prejudiceagainst goat meat. Under the agreement theranchers were required to pay freight to getthe goats to Phoenix, and they received such alow price that, in one stockman’s words, “itwould have been more profitable to us toshoot the goats on the range.”12

It is generally conceded that the environmentsuffered from the presence of so many goats.Excessive grazing and trampling left the landbare. Although the mainstay of their diet wasbrush, the goats also ate grass, weeds, andforbs right down to the ground, which did notendear them to Southwest cattlemen. State-ments in USDA bulletins glossed over the factthat Angora goats denuded the landscape, andjustified using them to clear brushy land by

keeping the foliage and buds stripped offduring the growth period.”13

The Mohair Growers were striving to be goodstewards of their grazing lands when in 1938the Land Use Committee addressed a letter tothe Federal Forest Service, the Soil Conser-vation Service, and the Agricultural ExtensionService at the University of Arizona in Tuc-son in 1938. Wanting to arrange “for a moreprofitable long time use of their ranges,” thestockmen requested a survey to determine (1)to what extent and under what grazing condi-tions goats were inclined to injure the rangecover; (2) a proper method of appraising thecarrying capacity of different types of rangewhen used for goats; (3) how far it was prac-tical to pasture goats and cattle on the samerange; and (4) how the carrying capacity ofthe range would be determined.14

The Agricultural Extension Service, in coop-eration with the Mohair Growers, the South-west Forest and Range Experiment Station ofthe U.S. Forest Service, and the Soil Conser-vation Service, agreed to conduct a survey todemonstrate whether or not goats could behandled on a profitable basis over a period ofyears and still maintain the maximum pro-ductivity of the natural resources of therange.15 The land had previously been ap-praised on a cow basis and the conversion ra-tio determined to be five goats to one cow,which the goat men felt was too low onbrushy range. Range areas were selected onthe Scott and Young ranches in Peeples Val-ley and the Maddox and Rainey and Resleyranches in Skull Valley. The ranchers agreedto cooperate in keeping stocking records onthese ranges, to determine to what degreegoats could use the ranges and still continuein their usefulness as a watershed and pro-ducer of range forage.16 Preliminary findingsof the survey, released in April 1939, werethat the average grazing capacity of themonitored areas was about fifty goats or eight

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and one-half cows per section year round,taking into consideration that the range was invarying stages of deterioration due to pastdisturbance, and that the same range in goodcondition could support a larger number oflivestock per section.

The Mohair Growers also established rangestudy plots on the Charles Rigden ranch in1939 to study goat grazing and make plans touse the range to their best advantage.

Some Yavapai Family Goat StoriesA few goat raisers, and many of their descen-dants, still have Yavapai County connections.A. G. Walker began ranching in ArivaipaCanyon, raising registered bucks. After hiswife succumbed to the 1918 flu epidemic,Walker drove a small herd of Weathersbybucks17 on foot to the Wagoner area, a dis-tance of over two hundred miles, where hesettled on the abandoned McKinley miningclaim. His five children rode the train fromSafford to meet him in Kirkland. In YavapaiCounty Walker added does to his Yavapai op-

eration in order to raise mohair. His daugh-ter Cassie married Roy George, also a goatrancher. Ora, a few years younger, vowedshe would never marry a goat rancher, thenmarried Clifford Gray and lived with him ona goat ranch near Bagdad for thirty-twoyears.

In 1925 Nathan Tenney moved his large fam-ily from the Wilcox area, where he had beenin partnership with his father and brother in a25,000-head goat raising enterprise, to a lo-cation off the Senator Highway near Prescott,where he converted an old barn into livingquarters. A big goat shed and corrals wereconstructed just to the east of the house. Ten-ney’s children herded goats on his range,which extended east from the homestead tonorth of “P” Mountain, south two to threemiles, west to the White Spar Highway, andnorth to the homestead. Tenney also acquireda goat dairy from his neighbors, the Her-rings.18 Some milk was delivered to Prescotthomes, but most of it went to Fort Whipple fortuberculosis patients. Goat milk has a high

Nannies clearing jump board on their way to graze.

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fat content, does not separate easily, and istherefore easily digested. Tenney was one ofthe few ranchers who successfully sold goatmeat. He marketed it from the back of a cov-ered truck at the forks of the road fromJerome to Clarkdale and Cottonwood. In the1930s Jerome was a booming mining townwith a lot of Mexican workers who likedcabrito.Nathan Tenney’s son Boyd later servedtwenty years in the Arizona Legislature withdistinction. As a young man Boyd raisedgoats also. He recycled materials from hisfather’s old goat-milking shed into a barn andlived on the property for many years.

W. J. “Will” Satathite moved his family toArizona in 1911 from Texas by way of NewMexico, for his wife’s health. Satathiteworked on the Dysart Ranch near Glendalefor a year before buying land and goats inwestern Peeples Valley from Bill Dearing ofPrescott, and a few acres on Kirkland Creekfrom Bob Cannon. In 1926 Satathite movedhis operation to Thompson Valley. Hisdaughter Pearl worked goats with her threebrothers as a family crew, holding the ani-mals’ horns as they were branded on thenose, and “tromping” mohair into the bigsacks to be loaded onto flatcars.

John Resley gained his start in the Angoragoat business in New Mexico, where he tookgoats in exchange for his $30-a-month wages.When he had acquired a small band he drovethem to Bumble Bee, where he herded themon the open range for about a year. WhenResley moved to Ferguson Valley he was oneof the few growers who rotated his goats fromone pasture to another, thereby providing “anoccasional change of bed grounds” as ad-vised by the USDA to prevent overgrazing,19

although the ground around his goat corraland sheds was badly trampled. Resley fencedfour one-mile-section pastures and ran aboutfive hundred wethers.

A Labor-Intensive OccupationRaising Angora goats was a labor-intensiveprocess, repudiating the USDA’s claim thatthey were “a robust, elm-peeling, can-eating,neglectable [sic] animal”.20 The animals weredivided into bands of about 1,200, eachtended by a Basque or Mexican herder and acouple of dogs. Some growers did their ownherding, a few on horseback. As a generalrule, a minimum of at least one band was re-quired for success. Good breeding stock wasvital, and the stockmen traveled to Oregon,New Mexico, Utah, and Uvalde, Texas, tobuy top-notch bucks, for which they paid fivehundred dollars or more. The bucks werepastured and given supplemental feed duringthe breeding season, since the quality of mo-hair was dependant upon them.

The browsing goats required close supervi-sion. Unguarded, they wandered off and be-came prey to predators. The stockmentrapped year around to protect their animalsfrom coyotes, bobcats and lions. The Preda-tory Animal Control Program managed thepoisoning of predators when dogs and goatswere off the range. Almost every goat mancould relate incidents in which they lost num-bers of goats to predators that sometimes ap-peared to kill multiple animals “just for fun,”leaving the dead goats uneaten. The Bureauof Biological Survey in Arizona was perenni-ally short of funds and personnel to provideeffective predator control, with the result thatwhile field men were working one part of thestate, predators were building up in other lo-cations. Compounding the problem, thepredators became wise to traps and lures usedby unskilled private trappers and the price ofpelts dropped so low that trapping was uneco-nomic.21

Kidding season, from about April 15 to June15, was the busiest time of year for goat rais-ers. In the early years some of the ranchersmoved their goats to the desert floor around

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Congress and the Harquvar Mountains to takeadvantage of the warmer weather. Nannies,kids, and “kid boxes,” or baby goat shelters,were scattered all over the desert and the hill-sides.22 These boxes were numbered and ar-ranged in rows eight to ten feet apart. Eachmorning the nannies that appeared ready tokid were kept in a corral. As soon as the kidwas born and up on its feet, nanny and kidwere staked beside a numbered box.23

By April when the kids were born the nannieshad been sheared. Many ranchers painted anumber on them to match the box, and whenthe kid was born it was immediately paintedwith the same number, to keep it from gettingmixed up. When the kids and nannies hadbonded sufficiently that they could find eachother, usually two or three days, the kids weremoved to a corral where they could exercise.After foraging all day the nannies came downthe trail in an orderly line, “like beads on anecklace,”24 bleating, and each nanny wentright to her own box. A few had to be “moth-ered up,” but they soon all went directly to

their own kid. At night the nannies often layin front of the boxes to protect their kids.

“Jump boards” were placed across open corralgates to keep the young kids in.25 As soon asthey were able to jump over the board, theywere allowed out to graze with the band.During this time the herders watched closelyfor tired kids that lay down to sleep; theywere “real coyote bait” if left behind. Asidefrom the hard work involved, everyone agreedthat the young goats were a joy to watch. Thekids were incredibly agile, able to go mostanywhere, getting along better in the rocksthan on flat ground. They ricocheted offbuildings, hitting the walls with all four feetand then bouncing in another direction.Sometimes their antics left a vehicle in sham-bles.

Herders lived in small tents, or in board andtin shacks furnished with a bed and a woodstove, often putting up fences to keep thegentle, curious goats out of their camps. In1930 herders’ wages averaged thirty dollars a

Rancher’s kid visits a kidding camp in the desert.

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month. It cost the growers an additional fif-teen dollars to board them on staples includ-ing coffee, canned milk, flour, lard, salt pork,beans, chilies, canned tomatoes, raisins, driedapricots, and of course, goat meat. It was asolitary life, with only their dogs for com-pany.

Starting at the age of about six months thegoats were sheared twice a year, once duringthe last of February to the middle of March,and once during the last of August to the mid-dle of September, giving their protective haira chance to grow back before the onset ofcold weather. Timing of the shearing wascrucial, since Angora goats have no body fatlayers and are especially vulnerable to thecold until their hair grows back. Keepingthem dry and warm necessitated the use oflong, low sheds with metal roofs, boarded onone or two sides. Summer showers wereknown to have killed whole bands, andbunching up in their attempts to keep warmsmothered many more. Herders were re-quired to get in the sheds and “loosen up thepacked goats.”26

To maintain the health of the band and pro-duce maximum weight, the goats were dippedfor lice and scabies at least once a year, aftershearing. Every rancher had a long dippingvat filled with “Cooper’s dip.” The goatswere driven in at one end and forced to swimthrough the dipping trough to the other endwhere they emerged onto a draining platform.A few goat raisers did their own shearing.Most, however, preferred to bring in contract

crews of perhaps four to six men. Someshearers were local, but crews of Mexican orTexas shearers regularly started in SouthernArizona and worked their way northward,using different methods of shearing.27 Inevi-tably there were nicks and cuts, which weredoctored immediately to prevent screwworminfestations. A skilled worker could shear150 to 200 goats in an eight-hour day. One ofthe Morales sisters from Octave was reputedto be able to shear more goats in a day thanmost men. The clips were sorted into twogroups, kid and doe/wether and then rolledup, cut side in, and tromped into six-by-four-foot wool bags placed upright in a frame.Full, these bags weighed 350 to 500 poundseach. It took three or four men to roll themonto a truck for transport to the railhead atKirkland or Wickenburg.

At the mills the mohair, in standard lengths ofsix inches, went through a series of steps be-fore it was ready for use: sorting and gradingby hand into seven degrees of fineness,28

washing (there was a twelve percent shrink-age), mixing from different geographical ar-eas for uniformity, straightening, combing(twice), carding, and spinning. Men whosorted took extra safety precautions not to in-hale the dust from the fleeces, which some-times contained anthrax bacillus and caused“wool sorters’ disease.”29

After clipping, the mohair was taken to cen-tral locations where the growers and buyersmet, and sold at auction. (There was an auc-tion barn at Kirkland Junction. If mohairprices were low, the stockmen often storedtheir clips in the barn until the followingyear.) The day after the auction the growersworked together to transport the mohair to thenearest shipping point, where the loadingdock would be stacked high with big sacks ofmohair, branded with the grower’s initials.Viola “Vi” (Irving) Warren was a mohairbroker for many years. She owned and oper-

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ated the Skull Valley store, where she ex-tended credit to goat ranchers. Their accountswere paid up twice a year, after shearing.Mrs. Warren traveled all over Arizona, con-tracting for mohair to be shipped to mills inthe East.

More Yavapai Goat Raising StoriesTwelve-year-old Dona Leffingwell was livingon the old Walker ranch in 1930 with hermother and her siblings when she met Rich-ard “Dick” Whitehead. Whitehead was aVirginian who came to Fort Whipple as agravely ill tuberculosis patient, having beengassed in World War I. While hospitalized,he became interested in goat ranching andbegan learning about the business. Upon hisrecovery (he lived to be ninety-two), White-head homesteaded in the French Gulch areaand bought goats, then acquired more landand more goats until he had establishedYavapai County’s largest goat ranch. Donawas interested in horses, and she began car-ing for Whitehead’s horses on the Walkerranch.

Dona’s family moved to nearby French Gulchand her mother commuted to Kirkland, whereshe worked as a cook at the hotel. As a teen-ager Dona began helping the Mexican herd-ers on the Whitehead ranch, packing in sup-plies on horseback and learning the intrica-cies of shearing, herding, and kidding. WhenDick acquired some polled Hereford cattle inthe 1930s, Dona began riding with him. Theymarried in 1936 when she was eighteen. TheWhiteheads lived in a rock house built byDick in one of the most remote parts of Yava-pai County, where Dona broke horses andraised two sons in addition to helping with thegoats. She remarked, “I didn’t get out muchsocially. I was too busy trying to keep every-thing fed up.”30

Mattie Sorrells and her husband David, ahealth seeker, homesteaded in Peeples Valley.

When she was widowed in 1925 and left withthree small children, Mattie moved to Yavaand carried the mail from the Hillside station.Meanwhile, she astutely added property toher holdings, buying parcels from neighbor-ing miners and ranchers. Sorrells went intothe Angora goat business with the help of herbrother, Will Satathite. When she neededherders, she sat in her car along “WhiskeyRow” or on North Cortez Street in Prescott torecruit them as they came out of the bars.When she was short of herders her daughter,Minnie Mae, helped herd on horseback. Mrs.Sorrells hauled supplies from Wickenburg inthe winter, and from Prescott in the summer.When the introduction of synthetic fibersended the mohair market in the mid 1940s,she sold and shipped her goats to Texas.31

Fashion Plays a Negative Role“Flat fabrics” were displacing pile fabrics inautomobile upholstery for two reasons. One,women “whose tastes and preferences dictatethe sales of automobile and of household fur-niture,” complained that the mohair fabricswere hot and uncomfortable, and that the pilesurface irritated their skin through the sheerstockings and thin clothing they were wearingas fashions changed. Two, the advent ofrayon and cotton blended fibers provided anattractive variety of textures and colors forupholstery. “Texture rather than service dic-tated the selection.” Mohair growers wereurged to consider both an educational cam-paign and a research program in an endeavorto stay in the market.32

Nel Sweeten Cooper knew a lot about goatraising and the selling of mohair, since shewas born in the Angora country of Texas. Nelwas a regular visitor on the Aubrey Gistranch in Skull Valley when she met Roy Coo-per, who with his father John Thomas and hisbrother Will were in business as Cooper andSons. In 1923 the Coopers had ten bands ofgoats and five bands of sheep, which she said,

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“they moved about over the country much asdid one of the nomads of Eastern Europe.”Nel and Roy were married in Prescott in Feb-ruary 1923, and they boarded the train toCongress Junction. Nel’s two-week “honey-moon” was spent in the Henderson Hotel,until the shearing was completed, the mohairand wool sold and shipped. She wrote:

“All this time, in the midst of the hecticshearing, a place for me to live was beingprepared. It was a lovely camp, which was tobe temporary. It was two tents, eight feet byten feet, walled up with lumber two feet high.Our bedroom tent was floored with one-by-twelves. The kitchen tent faced the bedroomtent with a space between, shaded by a largepalo verde [tree]. There I began my cooking“career.” I knew how to cook, but I didn’tknow how to cook in great quantities . . .Now there was the kidding and lambing crew,the herders—twenty to twenty-five men. Imade many mistakes, but I finally learned toput enough chili tepines [sic] in the beans toburn the bottom out of any herder’s cast-ironstomach.”33

After their marriage, Roy Cooper home-steaded near Wagoner, attracted there by theabundant Hassayampa River water and goodgrazing forage. Nel filed on her own home-stead, giving them more range. Cooper keptsome goats and added cattle to his enterprise.Soon he began buying out neighboring ranch-ers along the river, and he built cattle-shipping pens that doubled as shearing cor-rals for the goats.

Catherine Janes worked beside her husbandCecil, who ran 6,000 goats between Wilhoitand Wild Horse Basin on unfenced range.She remembered that in 1943 it took threedays for them to drive a band of goats fromWilhoit to the Basin. Janes herded them onhorseback and she drove a pickup truck whichserved as their chuck wagon. Janes not only

herded and sheared his own goats; hesheared for others. Catherine tromped themohair into sacks. She related that one yearthey were asked to help with shearing at theCooper ranch. When the Coopers discoveredthat Catherine and her one-year-old son wereliving in a camp under a tree, they insistedthat she move into their home.34

Mrs. W. B. “Hattie” Young was active in theArizona Mohair Growers. She authored anarticle in which she described the goats interms of personality:

“What sort of creature is this goat with hissudden snorts of distaste, his insatiable curi-osity, this animal which cans the sunshine,wraps [it] into the long staple of his Mohairand holds it safe for ages, this animal with isbeautiful long, curly, white coat of hair, thiscreature which is so fastidious and yet such aroughneck? “If he is being herded and you remain per-fectly still, curiosity will get the best of himand back he will come to investigate. If you’llcontinue to remain still he will be nibblingyour clothes in a few minutes, but he will notallow you to touch him . . . He is happiestwhen playing on large rocks, bending trees oryour automobile.

“If he is accustomed to being herded, he loveshis shepherd as his shepherd loves him. Herequires a lot of attention but repays hismaster by producing a fiber, which has nosubstitute for quality and durability.”35

In 1931, 32-year-old Katie Van Cleve and herhusband Manuel moved from Casa Grande toa 640-acre homestead east of Congress Junc-tion, which took in Antelope Canyon and thesurrounding hills. In their first year of goatranching, the Van Cleves dealt with sheepencroachment on their grazing land, conten-tious miners, rustlers, inclement weather, and“baby goats everywhere” during kidding sea-

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son. In addition to canning, cooking, sewing,raising chickens, and fixing up a 13-by-14-foot cabin hauled in from Casa Grande, Katiehauled mohair to the warehouse, repairedfences, and helped in the branding, dipping,and shearing. She wrote in her diary, “Havebeen too busy and too worn out to write”;“Worry and hard work have made me lookolder”; and “A quiet depression of helpless-ness settles over all of us.”36 Not surpris-ingly, it was reported a couple of years laterthat Katie had run off with the postmaster atCongress Junction.

Press releases from the USDA document theupswing of the mohair industry after the dis-astrous year of 1934. In 1935 the outlook wasfavorable; consumption of mohair was up;prices advanced; surplus stock was reduced;goat numbers declined; and feed was plenti-ful. 1937 again brought higher prices andconsumption, lower production costs, andhigher goat prices. The outlook was for in-creased production. In 1939 prices were evenhigher and the clip had been sold by Novem-ber 1. The war situation and the automobileoutput were “important strengthening influ-ences on mohair prices.37 1940 saw the peakof the mohair industry in Central Arizona.

The Effects of World War IIIn the early part of World War II the demandfor mohair increased when restrictions wereplaced on the use of wool for civilian use.Mohair, too, was restricted, but was deregu-lated in 1942.38 At that time it was estimatedthat the War Production Board releasedtwenty-five to thirty million pounds of mo-hair, “fibre [sic] unsurpassed in beauty,warmth, color values, and adaptability.”39

In 1942 the future of mohair was more un-certain, as alluded to in an article in theAmerican Wool Council newsletter: “Wartime [sic] elimination of automobile manu-facturing, drastic changes in furniture manu-

facturing, and the cessation or limitation ofother industries consuming mohair, have re-sulted in destroying a market for between 60and 70 per cent of the total annual output.”40

The End of an EraBy 1945 the mohair market was still decliningbecause (1) The OPA removed price ceilingson meat and the importation of cheap Argen-tinean wool. (2) There was uncertainty as tothe continued use of mohair in manufacturing.(3) the predator problem on goat ranges wasincreasing.

As a result, most of the remaining goats inArizona were sold to individual buyers andshipped to California or Texas. YavapaiCounty rancher Boyd Tenney ingeniouslyentered into a contract whereby he deliveredfifty goats a week to feed the Navajo workersat the Bellmont Ordnance Depot fifteen mileswest of Flagstaff.

The stockmen were happy to return to cattleranching since it was much less labor-intensive, and few vestiges of the goat-raisingperiod survive. There were a few feral goatsin the Skull Valley area until the late 1940s.The overgrazed rangeland has long since re-covered. In March 1952, the Arizona MohairGrowers treasury balance in the amount of$798.36 was donated to the Arizona BoysRanch and the group was dissolved becausethere was “no prospect of needing an organi-zation for this industry in Arizona any-more.”41

ENDNOTES

1 “Wealth on the Ranges”. Yavapai Magazine, (April1914): 7.2 Mattie Sorrells. Letter to author from Kathy Moore,Congress, AZ. 06 March 2003.

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3 O. C. Fisher. The Speaker of Nubbin Ridge: TheStory of the Modern Angora Goat, San Antonio, TX:The Tally Press, 1985.4 Practical Angora goat Raising. C.P. Bailey andSons. San Jose, CA. 1905.5 “Wealth on the Ranges”, ibid. 7.6 “Goat Men Prosper”, Yavapai Magazine, (October1916): 11.7 “Mohair: Most Versatile of Fibres Gains a New War-time Importance,” Unidentified article Mohair GrowersAssociation (MGA) Papers, c. 1942.8 Grace M. Sparkes, letter to Turville. January 2, 1935.MGA Box 2, F.7.9 Outstanding Projects of Arizona C.W.A., E.R.A.ERA Collection, Photo Box 19, Sharlot Hall MuseumArchives, Prescott, AZ.10 Agreement between Mohair Growers Association ofArizona and Phoenix Packing Company. August 1938.MGA.11 “little goat” in Spanish.12 J. Verne Pace, letter to Cooper. June 3, 1939. MGABox 2, F.713 “The Angora Goat”, USDA: 6.14“Cooperative Range Goat Study Working Plan,Background and Objectives” April 1939, Box 2, F.7,MGA:18.15Ibid. 1.16 Ibid. 3.17 Jacob Prospect Weathersby and his son, Neuel O.Weathersby, of Klondyke, Arizona, raised some of thefinest registered Angora goats in the country.“’Weathersby Angoras’ commanded good pricesthroughout the nation, with $1,500 sales for an Angorasire not unusual. A Weathersby bred and owned An-gora buck was the nation’s grand champion one year.”Richard G. Schaus in The Arizona Cattlelog, n.d. Box12, Schaus Collection, MSS 6, Arizona HistoricalFoundation.18 Tenney built a milking shed with feed troughs oneach side of an “alley,” and installed a pasteurizingplant. In the shed were benches for the nannies tostand on while they were being milked.19 “The Angora Goat”, U.S. Department of AgricultureFarmers’ Bulletin No. 1203, Washington, D.C. (No-vember 1926): 10.20 Ibid.21 The salaries of hunters employed by the BiologicalSurvey were paid one-half from state funds and one-half from matching federal funds.22 The boxes were usually made from two twelve-by-one-half inch boards nailed at the top to make an A-frame, with a back. They had no floors and were easilystacked for storage between seasons. Some stockmenbuilt square boxes with a floor.

23 Virtually all Arizona mohair growers used the “stakemethod” as opposed to the “corral method” where nan-nies and kids were all kept together.24 Pearl Satathite Ethridge.25 Made of a two-inch plank eighteen inches high witha four-inch strip on the top for a “nanny step,” the jumpboards were too high for the kids, but they allowed thenannies to leave the corral.26 Lyman Tenney.27 Will Satathite had a “shearing plant” where the con-tract crew stayed and worked. Neighbors brought theirgoats to his ranch for shearing. Belt-driven gasolineengines powered shearing machines fitted with combedcutter heads Some shearers constructed board troughs,tied the goats up, and rolled them around in the troughsas they sheared. Another technique was to cut a squarehold in the shearing-shed floor so that the shearer’sright leg would fit into it to the knee. The goats wereput into small pens so that the shearer could reach out,catch one, and throw it over his knee. Others shearedby the “sheep” or “Mexican” method, setting the ani-mal on its rump, shearing the belly and between thefront and hind legs, then quickly tying all four legs androlling the animal on the floor to finish the job.28 Mohair sorters served a three-year apprenticeshipand, with their delicate sense of touch, were able todetermine the diameter of individual hairs. They alsoconsidered the length and color of the mohair. “Just AHair’s Breadth.” Unidentified newspaper clipping,MGA.29 Practical Angora Goat Raising, ibid. 33.30 Dona Whitehead interview with author, 1995.31 Kathy Moore. Correspondence with author, March6, 2003.32 Ibid. 2-3.33 Nel Sweeten Cooper in Arizona National RanchHistories of Living Pioneer Stockmen, vol. 2. comp.and ed. Betty Accomazzo (Phoenix, Arizona National,1979: 129-165.34 Catherine Janes. Letters to author, 1996.35 Mrs. W.B. Young. “Angora Goats,” Arizona High-ways (May 1940): 28.36 Bill Roberts. “A year in the life of a goat herder’swife”, The Traveler (July-August 1997): 1, 4.37 USDA Press releases, 1936-1939. MGA Box 2, F.8.38Ackerman, F. Eugene. “A Survey of Mohair Mar-kets, Past and Future,” Woolfacts. American WoolCouncil, New York (c. 1942): 6.39 “Mohair: most versatile of fibres gains a new war-time importance.” MGA.40 Ackerman: 1.41 MGA Minutes, February 7, 1947.