Customer Reviews

"We'll All Wear Silk Hats": The Erie and Chiricahua Cattle Companies and the Rise of Corporate Ranching in the Sulphur Spring Valley of Arizona, 188 (Great West and Indian Series, V. 61)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

'Silk Hats' is a very readable and fun book about cowboys, stockmen and ranchers and the struggle to establish ranches in Cochise County, Arizona in the 1880's.

The author is very sympathetic towards the men from back east that created the large corporate ranching operations, based in Tombstone, that dominated the cow business in much of Southeast Arizona during this period.He also delves into the basic conflict between these men, supported by Texas John Slaughter,Wyatt Earp and his brothers,and the local small ranchers, who are characterised in the book as nothing more than low-life rustlers.

Once Cochise County had been given a "good housecleaning" by Slaughter, Earp and company, the big boys were able to expand the herds quickly. Too quickly. The failure of the range due to overgrazing and other poor range management practices in just a few years collapsed the cow business and degraded the pristine high desert grassland. Much of this range still has not recovered 100-plus years later.

When the ranchers fail due to thier own greedy actions, the author laments the passing of an "era" that somehow rings hollow. Every stockman knows, when you exceed the carrying capacity of the range, bad things happen.