The Hunters

Yes, sir.  Every frontier town needed a hunter.  What?  You thought someone was gonna show up in a semi labeled "Wal-Mart?"

E. L. Water and his son were what was known as "market" hunters, supplying the butcher and townsfolk with meat.  Grizzly bears were a big problem, though.  (Well, grizzlies and Apache!)  The historic range for the grizzly was from the Pacific Coast to the center of Mexico, up to what is now Big Bend National Park on the Mexico/south Texas border, cattywampus through what is now Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas to the Missouri River, straight from there up into Canada pert-near to the North Pole!  Historically.

Today's range barely puts grizzlies in the U.S. at all (excluding Alaska.)  Granpa and I have seen them in the U.S. - but only on the U.S./Canadian in Glacier International Peace Park where one was moseying down the middle of the Going To The Sun Road like he owned the place - which he probably did! - and in Yellowstone National Park.

But in the boom days of Tombstone, Arizona, grizzlies were comfortably within the borders of their range, hanging out in the mountains all over what is now Arizona and New Mexico and down into  the country of Mexico.  And, yes, bear meat is good to eat - but you just don't really want to meet up with one on the trail very often!  Hunters would be perfectly happy bringing back elk and deer instead.  (Buffalo only ranged as far west as New Mexico.)

E.L. Water's son, John, encountered about an 800 pound grizzly on one of his "market" hunts.  He made it back all well and good.  Unfortunately, on a different hunt, his dad wasn't so lucky.  The newspaper article you see in the photo above is about Water's last hunt.  Even though he was only a couple of miles west of Tombstone, all the searchers found was his Marlin rifle, shown in the above photo.  No other trace was ever discovered.

The other necessity of life is water.  Tombstone got its water through twenty-one miles of 7" wrought iron pipe.  In 1882, the Huachuca Water Company installed this first reliable source of water to carry it from a reservoir in the Huachuca Mountains, across the desert floor, above and below ground - and it STILL supplies water to Tombstone to this very day!!  (I'm impressed!  That's 131 years!)

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