Remembering An Empire
The pioneering effort to build the Empire Land and Cattle Company in Arizona got underway in 1876 when two Englishmen, Walter Vail and Herbert Hislop, came to Tucson Arizona and purchased the Fish Ranch, located about 50 miles southeast of town. This small ranch was destined to grow to become one of Southern Arizona's largest cattle ranches. It is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places. This exhibit chronicles the early years of that ranch, its people, and its activities as represented in manuscripts at the University of Arizona Libraries, Special Collections.
In 2006 an initial investigation of manuscripts in Special Collections regarding the Empire Ranch revealed that among the materials the University of Arizona Library owned was an 1890 hand written field diary that Edward Vail (Walter Vail's brother) kept while on one of the last cattle drives out of Arizona to California. The drive was undertaken to escape higher freight rates imposed by the Southern Pacific Railroad. Edward Vail, Tom Turner, and eight Mexican cowboys crossed the desert from the Empire Ranch to San Diego with close to 900 head of cattle. Due to their success, the railroad rescinded their rate increase and many Arizona cattlemen benefited from Vail's effort. The agreement, however, stipulated there would be no more cattle drives.
Vail later provided a series of articles for The Arizona Daily Star in 1922 called "Diary of a Desert Trail" in which he expanded on facts first recorded in his trail diary about the cattle drive. The library had microfilm copies of this series. Further investigation revealed that the library also owns the map that Vail marked on his trek. He numbered in ink the camp locations used during the cattle drive on this Territory of Arizona map fragment. Much more was discovered, including photographs, and the idea of a physical exhibition on the Empire Ranch evolved. The exhibition was mounted July 10 to September 5, 2008. Much of the material used in the physical exhibition has been prepared for extended access via this web exhibit.
Special Collections exhibits coordinator, Bonnie Travers, worked with curators Deborah Matthews and Keri Williams, two graduate students in the School of Information Resources and Library Science at the University of Arizona, to prepare both the physical exhibition and the electronic file content for the web exhibit. Ginger Bidwell was hired by the Digital Library and Information Systems Team at the UA Library as web designer for the web exhibit project.
The University of Arizona Libraries wish to thank the Empire Ranch Foundation for encouragement and support for this exhibit. Special acknowledgment is due to Alison Bunting, President of the Empire Ranch Foundation in 2008, for providing the exhibition lecture, "Arizona’s Empire Ranch: A prominent Past and Promising Future," on September 2, 2008.
We extend our thanks to the Friends of the University of Arizona Libraries who sponsored the Spetember 2, 2008 reception and lecture and to the University of Arizona Libraries for underwriting the costs of the web exhibit.