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Jim Hester came to the area in 1910 as a cowboy for the Swathout Cattle Company. Mr. Hester discusses the cowboy experience and moving cattle through the Joshua Tree area when it was open range.
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Interview with Jim Hester
Mr. Hester discusses the cowboy experience and moving cattle through the Joshua Tree area when it was open range.
- Credit / Author:
- Ranger Reino Clark, Joshua Tree National Park, National Park Service
- Date created:
- 02/08/1975
JH: As I said, I was a cowpuncher. In those days, if you was a cowpuncher, you had a pair of chaps, and a horse, and a sixshooter, and a big chew of tobacco, and you didn't care too much about--the main things that you cared about was the red light district in San Bernardino and the red light district at Red Mountain, and the rest of the world didn't mean too much. I'm really serious. It didn'tRC: Your dad in Colorado sold them to this ranch....
JH: Sold them to the ranch in Summit Valley, old Flores ranch in Summit Valley. My older brother and myself were told to bring these horses out here, a hundred head of horses. So we left in the early spring, I was just a punk kid. I was born in 1894 and this was 1910.
I was 14 years old, and my brother was 8 years older than I am. So we had a couple saddle horses and a lumber wagon and some bacon and beans and a little salt and pepper and baking powder and some coffee. Course dad had been back and forth across here several times driving cattle between Arizona, California, New Mexico and even up north, up to the northern part of the state and down to the Irvines in Orange County. He drove cattle down there. So he knew the area. So he drew a map and he says, Well, at a certain time of day you'll see two peaks of such and such a thing and that'll be such and such a thing, and there'll be a water hole about so and so, and you head for that". Well, this was all open country in those days, well practically all open country.
There were ranches across there but you didn't have freeways and railroads and fences to contend with. So we started for California with these horses and three and months a half/later we were here. Now a lot of people said, How'd you get by the Indians?" Well, that was no problem; we gained horses. We had more horses when we got here than we started with. And we didn't steal them. Now people wanted to know how those things happened. So while I'm giving you this information you might want to think about it to help you make a story because you probably don't hear this very often because most of those writers never rode a horse.
When you start out to move a bunch of horses like this, the first thing you want to have is a couple of good geldings. Stay away from your studs. Don't have studs in it but have a couple good geldings and a couple good mares you can use as sort of a lead horse. And have some horses that you can catch without too much effort and work with your horses a week or two or maybe a month before you start out. Know your water holes and head for your water holes every night and don’t push your stock till they get panicky. And if we did kill, which we did in a couple cases, Indians' horses, we'd give them two horses or three horses for the one we killed. And we had no trouble. Course we had little problems, wasn't as though it was all riding in the back end of a Rolls Royce. But there was no real trouble. And we come all the way across. That was in nineteen hundred and ten. "Well, they said, "How about long places?" Yes, we had long places.
We had 75 and 80 mile stretches without water. But when you get in a spot like that, first thing you knew what to do about it. And the second thing, you wouldn't try and get out in the middle of the sun and drive like a wild man when the sun was a hundred and ten degrees and up and push your stock through there. And another thing they said, "How many miles did you ride?" Well, we estimated to ride about 3,500 miles. Well, it isn't that far there. But we go back to what I said a little while ago. When you're moving livestock, you've got to follow water, you see. And we didn't have any freeways so you have to go through where you can go through.
So you have to know where to go. But you've got to follow the water. So I've been in this country in and out.
Now, we come out here and we brought these out here to the stock people. And that way we became acquainted. And I stayed out here and worked for them. And then I'd go back home. And then I'd come back out here. Now I didn't work twelve months a year for Swarthout. I didn't work twelve months a year for Black, because in the first place, a cowboy's job wherever he is, it's very rare that he works twelve months in the year for one outfit because their season is not that long. so you come out here and you work for an outfit three or four months and then you'd be--they call them drifters in motion pictures. We didn't call them that. I don't think we called them anything. We just went looking for another job. They call them drifters or saddle bums now. I don't remember that they called us a saddle bum or drifter or anything else.
William F. (Bill) Keys came to the area in 1910 as a miner, spending the rest of his life mining and homesteading the Desert Queen Ranch.
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Interview with Bill Keys Clip #1
Mr. Keys tells the story of the discovery and claim jumping of the Desert Queen Mine.
- Credit / Author:
- Ranger Steve Smith, Joshua Tree National Park, National Park Service
- Date created:
- 10/21/1966
Bill Keys Interview 21 Oct 1966 Interviewed by: Steve Smith, Lost Horse District Transcribed: Faith Lane, Keys Ranch Caretaker,10 Jan 2015 [Audio has background noise of hammering, sawing, and general construction noise throughout.]Billy Keys: So, uh, this Desert Queen was first found by a man by the name of James who is buried at the Lost Horse well. In 1894, he worked at the Lost Horse Mine, and Sundays he went prospecting, and he walked five miles across north, over north from the Lost Horse, and found the Desert Queen Mine. Well these cowboys, went riding out after cattle out through the Desert Queen Valley; why they'd notice any fresh track either by coyote or wildcat or anything, they were that keen. They were as keen as a coyote as to marks in the ground. Well they saw this big man track, going and coming. Going north and then coming back. Well, they said, I wonder what he went north forth for…let's follow it up. And they followed it up and found his monument, and the gold, and his notice in the monument. So, they said, Well, this is a rich thing. We just go back and we'll set up a scheme, and we'll go up and kill him, and we'll get the mine. So George Meyers, Jim McHaney, and Charley Martin made up the party. And they went up there and they called James out. They said Oh, come out here, we found a rich strike up here. Do you own it? Well, James said All right, I'll come up there and see. And when he came up, Charley Martin had testified in court in San Bernardino that he had rheumatism so bad he could hardly walk on this trial, but he managed to go backwards fifty feet and pick up the gun that George Meyers laid by a Joshua tree and he said he'd never taken that gun off before that time. But on this occasion he took the gun off and laid it by the Joshua tree, and Charley Martin backed with all of his rheumatism and got this gun as James advanced up the hill. So when he got close enough, Charley Martin shot him, killed him. So then, they had to make up a scheme that this fella had a knife, this James had a knife and he made stabs at him, backing him this fifty feet as bad as that rheumatism that he had. But he said he went backwards so doggone fast that the fella could never get but skin deep with his knife. Eighteen times. And George Meyers said he hollered like a pup when Jim McHaney did the stabbing.
Steve Smith: [Laughs]
Billy Keys: Yeah. So then they went in and notified an attorney in Los Angeles. Byron Waters was one of the famous attorneys in Los Angeles, and Byron Waters told me, in his own house, after he was blind, and told me the story about how he went out before it was known that the man was dead, and fixed up the deal and the trial and cleared these men. Byron Waters told me that himself after he was blind, and in his own house, so he said he cleared them.
So then they went to work on the mine, and Bill McHaney came out of the mine one morning and Johnny Wilson had been picking up this float of the Queen at Twentynine Palms and 'rastra'ing it for a grub stake. But he couldn't find the mine because the channel had changed. The wash channel had changed. So he missed it. But when Bill McHaney drove out with a four horse team with ore that run a dollar a pound to go to the Pinon Well run by the Tingman, Holland & Company, two stamp mill, and made the first mill run there. So Johnny Wilson when he saw Bill McHaney driving along with a four horse team, he was hunting jackrabbits at the time and saw Bill McHaney, and he went over to to Bill McHaney and he looked at a piece of that ore and he said Why that's the stuff I used to find at Twentynine Palms, and I couldn't find the mine! Yeah. Why Bill, he says, You've found the mine that I've been looking for for twenty years. So Bill went on for Pinon, and a mill run was made. And Jim McHaney, after the mill run amalgam was retorted, and left a sponge. Well there was $47,000 in that sponge. So as Jim McHaney was riding out with his sponge, Tlngman said, Jim how about that $35 grocery bill that you owe me? Well he says, I'll pay you just as soon as I cash this in. Well, he says, Let me clean out that trough and I'll call it square, that trough there, that trap. Why, he says, If you think there's anything in that go ahead and yes, we'll call It square. And Tingman cleaned up $600.
Steve Smith: [Laughs]
Billy Keys: Yeah. So they called that square. Well he went on with this sponge, and he shipped that. And when the returns came he paid Charley Martin for killing James $47,000. And that was for Charley Martin's third Interest.
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Interview with Billy Keys Clip #2
Mr. Keys describes what the area was like when the first Euro-Americans arrived.
- Credit / Author:
- Ranger Steve Smith, Joshua Tree National Park, National Park Service
- Date created:
- 10/21/1966
Billy Keys: When Bill McHaney came across there, 1874, with an Indian guide. And he came across that summit up there in Yucca Valley, and when he got on this side, he said their track was the only wagon track there was. He said there was big droves of antelope on each side of the wagon were curious...curious. And would run a little ways and stop to watch that team, and run a little ways and stop to watch that team for several miles. And they were curious animals. And seeing that team, you know...well they'd get frightened and they'd run a little ways and they'd look again. And, he said, the grass in the valley then waved like a wheat field.Steve Smith: Then as things dried up...well, then...what, the antelope left? Do you know what time [inaudible]...
Billy Keys: Oh, they're gone. All gone. Surprise Valley and all the antelope country. Mm hmm.
Steve Smith: Were there antelope here when you were here?
Billy Keys: Nope. No, no, no.
Steve Smith: It was before you got here.
Billy Keys: There was no more antelope after they'd began to bring the cattle in.
Steve Smith: Oh, I see.
Billy Keys: In 1879, they brought the cattle in. There was no more antelope. They disappeared.
Steve Smith: I see.
Billy Keys: Yeah. They were killed and... disappeared. Gone. Like the Ibex. Yeah.
Steve Smith: Change of climate...
Billy Keys: Well, the mountain sheep is still here, but he'll be gone. His time is coming.
Steve Smith: They're becoming rare.
Billy Keys: Yeah.
Steve Smith: There's not as many of them around. They figured there's about 150 or so. Here now.
Billy Keys: Oh, is that so?
Steve Smith: Ralph Wells. [Transcriber's note: Ralph E. Wells, co-author (with Florence B. Wells) of Bighorn of Death Valley, National Park Service, 1961.]
Billy Keys: You know that... down here... that coming across that dirt road, there. That left a streak of dust there for a mile or more. That streak of dust would scare a mountain sheep, he'd go clear out of the country. Yeah.
Steve Smith: I didn't know that.
Billy Keys: Anything like that you know... unusual, well they'd be afraid of it and they'd leave.
Steve Smith: Mm hmm.
Billy Keys: Mm hmm. Yeah.
Steve Smith: Well, they're curious too... like the antelope.
Billy Keys: Curious animals. Yeah. When the Indians came up here from Coachella Valley... In 19... the fall... spring of 1911. I was milling here, and the sheep would come and stand on the rocks there and listen and look where those stamps are dropping. That noise. The Indians came here to hunt sheep, and the grass was thick all around here. They could stake their pony right here... And they shot the sheep and load those animals and go back to Coachella. Yeah.
Steve Smith: Uh-huh.
Billy Keys: Well they were welcome. I didn't care. It wasn't mine.
Steve Smith: Mm hmm.
Billy Keys: Yeah. Get all they want!
Steve Smith: Well, they have to live too.
Billy Keys: Six or eight sheep would stand there and they could easily shoot them.
Steve Smith: Oh, sure. Did they have firearms then?
Billy Keys: Huh?
Steve Smith: Did they have firearms then? Were they using...
Billy Keys: Firearms! rifles!
Steve Smith: Rifles?
Billy Keys: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they were well-equipped. And they had a pack animal or a saddle animal. They came up here for the purpose of killing sheep and taking the meat back. Mm hmm. Yeah. They gave me meat.
Steve Smith: Mm hmm.
Billy Keys: Sheep, it's a red meat. Very, very nice. And... as good as any beefsteak you'll ever eat.
Last updated: August 10, 2023