The Pleasant Valley War
Arizona, The Youngest State
McClintock, 1913, page 484

One of the bloodiest features of Arizona's history was the 
Pleasant Valley War or Tonto Basin War.  It began with the 
driving southward from near Flagstaff of several bands of 
sheep, reputed to have been the property of the Daggs brothers.  
Theretofore, the Rim of the Mogollons had been considered the 
"dead line" south of which no sheep might come.  There were 
allegations at the time that the Tewksbury brothers had been 
employed to take care of any trouble that might materialize 
over the running of sheep out of bounds.  At first there 
seemed to be little active opposition, but early in 1885 a 
Mexican sheepherder was killed.  The opposition centered 
around the Graham family to which gathered a considerable 
number of cowboys and cattlemen.

Tom Graham later told how at first he tried to use a form of 
moral persuasion.  Not wishing to kill anyone ,there would be 
a wait till the sheepherder began the preparation of his 
evening meal and then, from the darkness Graham would drop a 
bullet through the frying pan or coffee pot.  This intimation 
out of the night usually was effective in inducing the herder 
to forget his hunger and to move his band very early the next 
morning.

Several old residents of the Tonto Basin section decided that 
twenty-nine men had been killed in the war and that twenty two 
graves of men of the graham faction could be found in the 
vicinity of the old Stinson ranch.  Only four of the Tewksburys 
died, but the most awful feature of all was the manner of the 
death of two of them.  John Tewksbury and one Jacobs had brought 
in bands of sheep "on shares."  Both were ambushed near the 
former's home and killed.  Their bodies, in sight of the house 
were left to be devoured by hogs, while members of the Tewksbury 
family were kept away by a shower of bullets from a hillside 
on which the Grahams watched.  Finally Deputy Sheriff John 
Meadows entered the valley, to bury what was left, defiant of 
the wrath of the Grahams.  The Tewksburys were half bloods, 
their mother a California Indian and it is probably their 
actions thereafter were based upon the Indian code of revenge.  
Few were left of the Blevins family of the Graham faction.  
The men shot at Holbrook by Sheriff Owens were active 
Grahamites.  The elder Blevins was killed in the hills 
near the Houdon ranch and a skeleton found in after years 
is assumed to have been his.  Al Rose was killed at the 
Houdon ranch by a party of a dozen Tewksburys as he was 
leaving the house in the early morning.  The favorite 
mode of assassination was from ambush on the side of a 
trail.  One of the last episodes was the hanging of 
three of the Graham faction, Scott, Stott and Wilson, 
on the Rim of the Mogollons by a large party of Tewksburys.  
The three had been charged, possibly correctly, with 
wounding a Tewksbury partisan named Laufer and summary 
retribution was administered by hanging them on pine 
trees, hauled up by hand, with ropes brought for the 
purpose.  John Graham and Charles Blevins were shot 
from their horses in the fall of 1886 by a posse from 
Prescott, headed by Sheriff William Mulvenon, as the 
riders were approaching under the impression that the 
officers had departed from a mountain store in which 
the visitors still were in hiding.  Both were mortally 
wounded.  Mulvenon made several trips into the Basin.  
There was a bloody battle at the Newton ranch, which had 
been burned and abandoned.  Two cowboys, John Paine and 
Hamilton Blevins, had been killed at the Newton ranch, 
while William Graham had been ambushed and killed on the 
Payson Trail.  George Newton, formerly a Globe jeweler, 
was drowned in Salt River, while on his way to his ranch 
and it was thought at the time he had been shot from his 
horse, though this is not now believed.  His body never 
was found, though his widow offered a reward of $10,000 
for its recovery.  Sheriff O'Neill of Yavapai County led 
a posse into the valley but most of the damage had then 
been done.

Resident in the vicinity was J.W. Ellison, one of the 
leading citizens of the basin.  He states that at first 
the Grahams had the sympathy of the settlers, all of whom 
owned cattle and appreciated the danger to their range from 
the incursion of locust-like wandering sheep bands.  But the 
fighting soon became too warm for any save those immediately 
interested, for the factions hunted each other as wild beasts 
might have been hunted.  Mr. Ellison frankly states that he 
saw as little of the trouble as he could and is pleased that 
he managed to avoid being drawn into the controversy.

In the end the Tewksburys were victorious, with a death list 
of only four.  One of the fleeing grahams was Charlie Duchet, 
a fighter from the plains.  He had celebrity from an affray in 
which he and an enemy were provided with Bowie knives and were 
locked together in a dark room.  It was Duchet who emerged but 
permanently crippled by awful slashes on his hands and arms.

The end of the war was the killing of Tom Graham.  His clan 
about all gone, in 1892 he had fled from Tonto Basin and had 
established himself and his young wife on a farm southwest of 
Tempe.  He had harvested his first crop of grain and was 
hauling a load of barley to town.  When about opposite the 
Double Butte school house he was shot from ambush and his 
body fell backward upon the grain.  The deep was witnessed 
by two young women, named Gregg and Cummings, who positively 
identified Ed Tewksbury as one of the murderers.  A.J. 
Steneel, a Winslow cowboy, later declared that he had met 
Tewksbury, riding hard on the Reno Road on his way back to 
Pleasant Valley, 120 miles, whence a strong alibi later was 
produced.  Tewksbury and one of his henchmen, John Rhodes, 
were arrested and charged with the crime.  Rhodes was 
discharged at a preliminary hearing before a Phoenix 
Justice of the Peace, after a dramatic attempt on his 
life by Graham's widow.  She tried to draw from her 
reticule her husband's heavy revolver, but the hammer 
of the weapon caught, giving time for her disarmament.  
Tewksbury was found guilty of murder in the first degree, 
although well defended. His attorneys, however, found 
that his plea of "not guilty" had not been entered on 
the record of the District Court and so the verdict was 
set aside.  There was a second trial, at Tucson, on 
change of venue at an expense probably of $20,000 to 
Maricopa County, resulting in a hung jury.  Over 100 
witnesses had been called.  Then the case was dismissed.  
Tewksbury died in Globe in 1904 where for a while, he had 
served as a peace officer.

Soon after the Graham murder, a lad named Yost was 
assassinated while traveling through Reno Pass, on the 
Tonto Basin road.  There was general belief at the time 
that the murder had been committed by the Apache Kid, 
but it was considered significant that Yost had been 
connected with the Graham faction.


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