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John Snyder | Oral History
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John Snyder was interviewed on February 15, 2005 in St. George, Washington County, Utah by Milton Hokanson, a representative of the Grand Canyon-Parashaunt National Monument Oral History Project. He related his experiences ranching on the Arizona Strip, Mohave County, Arizona.
MH: When did your family [become] involved with the [Grand Canyon-Parashaunt National] Monument on the Arizona Strip?
JS: If you go back to [my grandfather] John Peter [Snyder], it would have been in the late 1800s.
MH: Way back!
JS: Yes, somewhere along in 1870.
MH: When they moved out there, was it for ranching or farming?
JS: John Peter was a miner.
MH: Did he work in the Grand Gulch Mine?
JS: No. He had [the] Snyder Mine out on Kelly Point. Then he ran up and down those canyons. We still find rock monuments [that were] his.
MH: He was prospecting and filing claims?
JS: Yes.
MH: Did he ever have a filing that produced any ore?
JS: He always told his wife [Anna Marie (Rasmussen) Snyder] that he was going to strike it rich! I guess they saw some of it. But he was murdered down there close to the [Colorado] River years ago.
MH: Wow! Tell that story. I haven’t heard that.
JS: I don’t know a lot of [the] details. Feldon could probably tell you [more]. I should have come more prepared with dates and [information].
MH: Just tell what you can.
JS: He [went] home to Jensen [Sevier County] Utah and told his family that he had struck it rich and gave them some gold. He said that he would be gone another year and he would be back. He went back down and worked his [mine], wherever it was, for a year. He crossed the [Colorado] River to the south and came out [on] an Indian reservation. When they found him, his mule was on one side of the river and his body was on the other side. He had been killed. Nobody knew who did it or what had happened.
MH: Were you ever able to find out who perpetrated it? Obviously, he had been robbed.
JS: Yes.
MH: Was [this] before 1900?
JS: No, he was killed after 1900. I don’t know [when]. I can look in some paperwork and find out.
MH: With him gone, how did your family wind up out on the [Arizona] Strip?
JS: When my dad was probably three or four years old, [John Peter Snyder’s] son, Ephraim Albert, and his family, moved out to Mt. Trumbull. It would have been 1918 or 1919.
MH: Just about [the time of] World War I or just after. Did they homestead?
JS: They homesteaded some property over on Mt. Trumbull and kept it until their family was raised. Dad went into the service at the beginning of World War II. He would send his [entire] paycheck home. The family lived off of half of it and put away the other half. [They] saved up and bought Penn Valley with the [money they saved].
MH: [That is] on the Parashaunt. Is that where you are still ranching today?
JS: Yes.
MH: Did your dad go to school at Mt. Trumbull?
JS: His total education was [through the] eighth grade at Mt. Trumbull.
MH: That is as far as Mt. Trumbull went in those days. [Then] you came along and he dragged you out on the [Arizona] Strip?
JS: There were ten of us [children] so there was a herd that he raised out there! Dad was a hundred years out of his time so we lived a [fairly] meager existence.
MH: It wasn’t exactly [the] malts and fast cars in St. George!
JS: [Laughter] No!
MH: Were you ranching at that time?
JS: Yes.
MH: What breed of cattle were [you] were running in those days?
JS: He had mostly Hereford cross. But we tried some different [breeds] through the years. We tried some Barzona [cattle] in the early 1970s, but mostly it was Hereford cross or milk cows.
MH: What is the brand?
JS: A F on the left hip.
MH: I guess you grew up on a horse when you were out there.
JS: Yes. I had lots of experiences out there. I don’t know what you want me to tell you. [Laughter]
MH: Who were some of the characters you met growing-up out there? Were any of the old [fellows] around? I am thinking of Bill Shanley. Would [he] have been gone at that time?
JS: No. What year did Shanley die?
MH: It was in the 1950s.
JS: I thought it was later than that.
MH: It may have been.
JS: We knew his place well because we would ride to it all the time as [youngsters]. It was up the hill from our place. I don’t know that I ever met him, but I knew his place well.
MH: I am trying to think of the fellow who moved to Flagstaff [Arizona] who had been out there for so long.
JS: Mathis?
MH: No, it wasn’t Mathis. His wife’s name was Mary.
JS: Mary and — I didn’t think I would ever forget his name! [Laughter]
MH: [Laughter] At any rate, did you know that family and their ranch?
JS: Yes, you bet. They were our neighbors. Gosh, that is bugging the heck out of me. [Jonathon Deyo] “Slim” Waring!
MH: “Slim” Waring, that is who it was.
JS: Mary [(Osburn)] and “Slim” [Waring].
MH: Was “Slim” still running cattle?
JS: Yes. In fact, [Fernard LeMoyne] “Buster” [Esplin] had just started working for him when we were youngsters.
MH: Would your dad have remembered Preston Nutter?
JS: Yes, he talked [about] Nutter all the time. I never knew him that I know of anyway.
MH: What about Bill Shanley? Was he as wild a [fellow] as everybody said he was?
JS: I guess so! [Laughter] I think he was [fairly] wild, but I didn’t know him. You hear stories [about] Jack Weston. He is buried on our place up there.
MH: He is? That is right. It was in Penn Valley and his brother, George, was buried there [also].
JS: We [bought] the ranch from George. Actually, they sold it to [Marion] Higley. They had it for a very short time and we [bought] it from them.
MH: Is Jack’s grave marked?
JS: Yes. Several years ago [David Spencer] “Spence” [Esplin] asked [Rudger] Clayton Atkin and some of [the ranchers for donations] and made sure they [put] a marker on it. We kept track of it as [youngsters]. We were always piling rocks around it and dreaming outlaw stories.
MH: That is quite a story. What do you do for water out there now?
JS: Hope and pray for rain! You hope it rains! [Laughter]
MH: You got plenty of it this year!
JS: Yes, this has been a good year. We have some springs down in the canyon. When we were [youngsters], a lot of those springs like Dripping [Springs] had more water. That is where we stayed most [of the time] when we were down there. It had more water than it does now-a-days.
MH: Was Dripping [Springs] a real cave or just a hollow?
JS: It is an overhang, but we slept many winters in it. Dad would take us down there and we would stay all winter long, there or [in] Devil [Canyon].
MH: Was that in Parashaunt [Canyon] or Andrus Canyon?
JS: Nickals Canyon is at the head of Little Mustang [Valley]. I don’t know if you know where that is, but it is down more around the south of Andrus [Canyon].
MH: Did you put your cattle down there in the winter?
JS: Yes. We would keep them down there in the winter and then summer up [in] Penn Valley. Some of my youngest memories were in 1970 or 1971. Dad decided he was going to try some [of the] Barzona breed. They are supposed to take the heat a little better. We took some down and were going to leave them there all summer long. That was my job at eight [or] nine years [of age] ─ to go down once a week, check the waters and springs and make sure they were still running. I don’t know if you know but dad put a lot of work down in there. He probably has over twenty miles of pipeline buried.
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MH: We were talking about some of the work your father did on some of the springs down there and how you would go down and check on [the] cows once a week. I assume you did that on horseback.
JS: Yes. It is about a ten-mile horseback ride down in there. I would take off one morning, go down and check all the waters, spend the night in the cave and then go back [home] the next day. That is where I was bitten by [a] rattlesnake down in [the] Dripping cave.
MH: You were bit by a rattlesnake? Now there is a story we need to hear!
JS: You probably don’t have time for it on this, do you? [Laughter]
MH: I am sure I do! If [inaudible] can do it, you can do it.
JS: Alright. I will make it quick. This time I decided to let my sister [tag] along with me. She was two years older than me. We took this pup down [with us]. We checked the waters and got to the cave after dark that night. We had a stick. Dad
had always taught us if you leave the snakes alone they will leave you alone. There had been many times before [when] we would roll our bedroll out right on the floor of the cave. We would wake up with rattlesnakes in bed with us. I can remember one being right on my chest. Dad always said, “Move slow and carefully and you will be fine.” So that is what we did.
We got to the cave and took the stick. There is an old table that Indians or miners, maybe even John Peter, I don’t know, had rounded the top of this rock. [They had] squared it out and made a table out of it. We had a grub box, an old milk crate on the back of [it]. That is where we kept our groceries. We would beat on that box with that stick. The spring is right behind it and so you would almost always chase a rattlesnake out of there. You would hear them rattling off. That is what we did. We tied [the] darn pup up in our bed that night. Of course, there were no lights. All we had in the summer was a fire. In the winter we had lanterns that we would [use to] light the cave. But in the summer all we had was the light [of the] fire.
We tied the dog up by the head of the bed. Along in the middle of the night a snake came by. I sat up, and the first thing I knew, this snake was latched onto my shoulder. Of course, I was just a little [boy]! Anyway, I jerked him off and threw him out in the rocks. I didn’t know whether to wake my sister up and tell her or what to do. Finally, I woke her up. The horses were always up in the flat. We would hobble them at the cave and they would always go up [to] the flat up in the horse pasture. We went to get the horses. I got about halfway there and started getting sick. Finally, I told her what had happened. She took me back to the cave and then took off to get the horses and [came] back about daylight.
The last thing I remember [was that] I told her how to tie me on the saddle. I can remember her tying me on. [Laughter] As [youngsters], we were good at coming up with ways to do things. She tied me on. That was the first time she had been down in there because mom [Artie Frances (McCain) Snyder] never let the girls go do the things some of us boys did. She says that I woke up a couple of times [coming] up out of there on that ten-mile ride, but I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything about it. She says I told her which way to go a couple of times. Anyway, that night, just about dark, we got to the house. Dad said, “Well, he has lived this long. He is going to live.” He poured some black oil on [the bite] and put me to bed. I was a [fairly] stout boy until then and I lost about twenty-five pounds over the next few days. It was a fun experience! [Laughter]
MH: You obviously survived it. Did it scar you at all?
JS: I have a scar from it, yes, not too serious.
MH: How did your sister fare after all of that?
JS: It was a [very] emotional trip for her.
MH: I bet it was! She hasn’t been back since, I guess!
JS: Yes, she has been back. It was definitely a memory for her.
MH: Tell about the winters. Did you spend any winters out there?
JS: Yes. Even when we [were] a little older and came into [St. George] to the dugout for school in the winter, dad would always take us out [to the ranch]. In fact, [in all of] my growing-up days I don’t think we spent a Christmas day in town. [We] were always out working down in the canyon. We put in a cottontail line that is several miles long, a nipple pipe line. There are a bunch of pipelines out there that [my dad] put in that we still use today. Lots of work!
MH: Did you get much snow out there?
JS: Probably the worst year that I knew as a [boy], anyway, I was probably six or seven years old. We went out to cut ice off the tank at Penn Valley to put in the ice house. Dad was supposed to meet us up on top. This was over Christmas vacation. There was probably three feet of snow, but we finally made it and he wasn’t there. A couple of my brothers and I ended up hiking clear down to the bottom of the canyon to get him. We ended up taking the jeep [down] because he had broken the rear axle. We put it in front- wheel drive and were going to drive it up out of there because we couldn’t find him. We drove clear around to Mule [Point] which is about thirty miles and the front end went out. We ended up hiking back to Dripping [Springs] and we saw him just as we were getting back down there. There is a place where you look across Andrus Wash [Spring]. We saw him on the other side over by Devil [Canyon]. We were able to flag him down. It is a long way around even though it is a short way across the canyon. [We] had to go a long way around to get to each other. Fun memories!
MH: Would it get [very] cold out there in the winter?
JS: Yes. For a [child] it was miserable. [Laughter]
MH: How did you heat your cabin?
JS: When I was a [boy] we had a fireplace and two stoves up in Penn Valley. When I was probably a young teenager somebody stole the stoves. [They took] the organ, the crank phonograph and [they fairly] well robbed us. Now there is just a fireplace and a cook stove. We still use [them].
MH: Do you still spend quite a bit of time out there?
JS: Yes.
MH: How many cattle are you running right now?
JS: Two years ago when this drought was the worst, I got tired of hauling water and hauling feed.
MH: You and Orvel [Bundy] and all the rest of them.
JS: I sold out two years ago and we have just [started] going back this spring. [2005]
I have about thirty head over [at] Last Chance [Canyon] now. That is another place that I have out there.
MH: I hope that works out well. What about the saw mill? Was that running when you were growing up?
JS: Dad built our cabin out there with [lumber from that sawmill]. Some of the polygamy boys out there were running it.
MH: The Colorado City [Arizona] boys came down and were running it?
JS: Yes. He traded logs off of our place for rough-sawn lumber to build the house. The walls are all adobe [bricks]. He filled them with mud. But the roof and all the lumber are [from there].
MH: Do you remember when it burned?
JS: No, I don’t. There was a time when [the] Gublers were out there burning the sawdust that started [the saw mill] on fire again. I remember that one. As a [boy] we went up [there] a lot of times and hauled sawdust to fill the walls of the ice house and to put on the garden. But, no, I don’t remember it ever operating. It burned down before I came along or could remember, anyway.
MH: What was your favorite horse?
JS: There was an old mare we had named “Jane” [that] was probably the best [horse]. But I always got stuck with “Sandy.” I got the ornery ones and the [youngsters] got the better ones! [Laughter]
MH: Can you remember your first saddle?
JS: Yes. Most of us rode bareback, though. When we were growing-up, dad had one good saddle and one old saddle. The rest of [the riding] was all bareback.
MH: You learn to ride that way, don’t you?
JS: Yes. Most of our young life [we rode] without a saddle. Dad couldn’t afford more.
MH: Can you remember your first pickup [truck]?
JS: Oh yes! I had saved a little money and when I was fifteen years old I bought a brand new 1976 Chevy. I was [really] living high! I guess the first vehicle [my] dad had was an old Jeep. Then he had an old two-ton truck that ran for awhile. Most of the time we were growing-up he had a 1962 one-ton Ford [truck].
MH: [Did] you bounce from St. George to Penn Valley a couple of times in that?
JS: Yes. We have been over that road a few times!
MH: I bet you have.
JS: I think I learned to drive [that road] a little faster than dad ever did, though. [Laughter]
MH: That was going to be my next question. How old were you when you started driving?
JS: I think I knocked my first [side] mirror off when I was six [years old]. That was miserable to knock a mirror off. Dad didn’t look at that too highly!
MH: But you had to drive! [Inaudible]
JS: Yes. I guess I was a little different than most of my siblings. The rest of them liked to stay at the cabin if dad would let them. But I was always with him. [One] time, [when] I was four years old, he wanted to leave me at Penn Valley and go down into the canyon [to] check the waters. It was fall and I remember there was snow on the ground. He wanted to leave me there and I wasn’t about to be left. I guess I followed him for a mile bawling and he kept telling me to go back. I never went back. Finally, he threw me on the back of the horse and took me down to Chuckwalla Cove which is a little cave that he, mom and the older [children] stayed in when they were down there. It was a little eight [feet] by ten [feet] cave. He had walled the face of it off and put a door on it. He left me there in the afternoon and told me to stay there. He took off over to Nickals [Canyon] to check the water there. I took off following him and sometime in the middle of the night he found me. I guess I had been lost for six or eight hours hiking all over that country. He built two or three fires around the hillsides and ended up finding me. It was a fun experience!
MH: That story was worse than the rattlesnake.
JS: I never would be left behind. I was always with him and always working. So I started doing a lot of things [fairly] young.
MH: When you were growing-up, were there a lot of deer out there?
JS: Yes. There was a lot more than there are now. I cannot tell you all the stories I should about that! I was probably about nine years old when I shot my first deer. We had an old single shot .22 and dad had an old .30-30 that I still have. He gave me that old .22 [and would] give me two or three mornings to find some meat to feed the family. If I couldn’t do [it], then he would take the .30-30 out and get one. But I got [fairly] good [and] every week or two went out and got one. But I don’t tell these [fellows] that anymore! [Laughter]
MH: There is a lot they don’t have to know!
JS: Back then, the [game] warden would come out in the middle of the summer. We would have jerky and meat hanging. He knew we needed it and never said a word. It was a different life than it is now-a-days.
MH: It was a lot different. When did you come back into St. George? [Did] you go to high school here?
JS: Yes, I did. I am the middle of ten [children] and the older ones were schooled out there at the ranch until they [were] older. About the time I [was] ready to start going to school, dad came [to St. George] and bought a piece of property out in the [St. George] Fields. [He] built a dugout back into the mountain [and] that is where we lived. We would spend most of the winters there and summers out [at the ranch].
MH: Your mother must have had her hands full with all those [children] [inaudible].
JS: The poor woman! I think we drove her nuts! It was a tough life. I look back at my mom and, in her later years, she got to where she told some wild tales. I don’t blame her at all. It was a tough life she had and it was hard. Dad lived a hundred years out of his time. She would see the way [other] people lived and we just weren’t living that way. It was hard. My mom and dad got a divorce when I was twelve. I stayed with dad and everybody else went with mom. It was a tough life for her.
MH: [Did] your dad continue to run the ranch after [the divorce]?
JS: Yes. Then he lived with me until the day that he died.
MH: Did [you] drag your family out there, your wife and [children]?
JS: Yes, I have them hooked. In fact, my oldest daughter is twenty-one [years old and] loves it out there. She grew up doing a lot of the same [things] [only] not as hard as [when] we grew up. We would go all summer and we might see “Buster” [Esplin] and his family maybe once. Other than that, we didn’t see anybody.
MH: Did you have a garden out at the ranch?
JS: Yes. We had two of them. We had one right up at the house where the drain water from the house [could] water it. That was our small garden. Then we had a big one down by the tank. [We had] probably two acres of garden every year.
MH: That is a job in itself.
JS: That is what we lived on. We would come in [here] during the fruit season and pick fruit [to] take it back out [for canning].
MH: Did Bill Shanley or any of those [fellows] have stills out there?
JS: I know where two or three of them were, but I don’t know [if] they were theirs. There is one that still has quite a bit of [equipment] [in] down there [but] I think it was actually [there] before Bill’s time.
MH: Archaeologists might want to look at that. Anything over fifty years is historic now. [You] don’t know if there is any product left or not?
JS: [Laughter] There is still some [inaudible] there.
MH: I always ask two questions that are sort of a little departure from normal. The first one, and I always get interesting answers to this, so I am going to throw it at you: what is it about the Parashaunt area and the Arizona Strip in general, that keeps bringing all of you [folks] back? Everybody I talk to, that is all they want to do is go back to the [Arizona] Strip. Reed [Miles] Mathis is ninety-seven [years old] and he still wants to go back [to] the ranch. What is it out there that gets you going [so] that is the only place on earth?
JS: It gets emotional because it is that to all of us, to me especially. I guess the biggest part of it is [that] it is where we grew up. That is what we know. But there is more to it than that. It is the quietness, the peace and the getting away from people that makes [up] a part of it. I guess [what] gripes me the most about [President William Jefferson] Clinton and his [Grand Canyon-Parashaunt National] Monument out there, he changed all that. He took something that could have remained [as the] old west for a long time and ruined it.
MH: That leads me right up to my next question which is: given the fact that it is a monument now, how would you like to see it administered and managed?
JS: The problem with all of this administering and managing is [that] all of a sudden you get all of these [people who] want a job and want to excel in their job. So they come out there with all these big grand ideas of how they are going to make it their own personal [project], whether [they are] in the police force or whether [they] are in the BLM [Bureau of Land Management]. They want to start improving roads. They want to get people out there. A monument wouldn’t bother me if there was something they were going to look at. He should have
made Tuweep a monument and left it at that. But to turn the rest of [the land] into a monument is just making it so that people [will] think there is something to go see. They go out there, tear up the roads and think they are going to [travel] on to Phoenix [Arizona] and they cannot make it through there. They have no clue [as to] what they are doing. I get frustrated when I think of this monument. I am probably the wrong [person] to be talking to.
I think back to what my dad said when I was a [boy]. He said the best days of the BLM were when there were two men [who] ran the BLM. When I was a [boy] there were fifty-eight men and who knows how many men there are [in the organization] now. You stop and add up all those vehicles that go out there. Most of them load up their lunch in the morning, go out and maybe do an hour’s worth of [work] and then they drive back. All of that is ruining the [Arizona] Strip in my opinion. The whole works is over-managed. I see nothing but [the situation] getting worse.
MH: Fair enough.
[END OF TAPE]
Description
John Snyder was interviewed on February 15, 2005, in St. George, Washington County, Utah by Milton Hokanson, a representative of the Grand Canyon Parashant National Monument Oral History Project. He related his experiences ranching on the Arizona Strip, Mohave County, Arizona.
Credit
NPS
Date Created
02/15/2005
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