"Mommy, is Grandma Thelma coming this weekend? She hasn’t come in a long time!" I complained next to my mom as she made Kool-Aid for the five of us kids for lunch.
"She might." That was the only hint I was going to get. I loved it when Grandma Thelma came to stay with us. I knew that she lived in a rest home somewhere but at age ten, it did not matter. She was ‘old’ and funny to me but I loved her, and she loved her grandkids. Grandma would give us quarters to help unload her bags into the house. Then, she would slip us a whole dollar when my mom was not looking.
Her name was Thelma Gibson Godfrey and she was not my grandmother, she was my great grandmother born in 1897 in Iowa. She was the most interesting person I knew growing up in a small town hardly anyone has ever heard of. I am constantly saying to people, "Oh, it is in the bootheel of New Mexico." But, in reality, it is not that far; Animas is about a two and a half-hour drive from Las Cruces. Off I-10, take State Highway 338 south, around mile marker fifteen is the area where I was raised. My mother was raised even farther south on the same road around mile marker sixty a few miles north of Animas Peak (8519 feet).
The Land Before 1890
Located in the Southwest corner of current day New Mexico, the Animas Mountains were shook by a volcanic eruption of immense proportions twenty-seven million years ago. Fast-forwarding several million years to the 1600’s, this area was occupied by the Apache Indians known as the Chiricahua Tribe (Bremner 1998, 1).
The Apache call themselves Inde, or Nde ("the people"). The Chiricahua Apaches were a nomadic tribe of the desert Southwest. These people were hunters and cultivators but when the Spanish started settling the area, they went to raiding settlements then on to the American settlers. They attained their greatest fame as guerrilla fighters defending their mountainous homelands under the Chiricahua leaders Cochise, Geronimo, Mangas Coloradas, Victorio, and Juh. In 1886, Geronimo and Juh surrendered and sealed the end of the Apache opposition (Skyhawk 1997, 1).
Another valley close to the Animas Valley was the Playas, Hachita Valley. This was a crossing place for the Mormon Battalion that crossed through here on their way to Mexico to be rid of the persecution they felt in the United States against Polygamy. Around 1850, my paternal ancestors crossed into Mexico and raised their families in Chihuahua. Today, most of the descendants live in Southern Arizona and New Mexico.
The Godfrey Ranch Beginnings
Born in Kansas in 1886, George Amos Godfrey moved to Colorado in 1903 at the age of seventeen. George wanted to see the world, get away from the normal way of life. The next year, he moved to St. Louis with relatives and wrangled himself a job at the World’s fair grounds attending to dairy cattle. This was his first experience with cattle. This experience helped him get a job with the Lee Brothers of San Angelo, Texas taking care of show herd. He drove this show herd to Elgin, Kansas to market. Since he was always willing to try something new, he got a job dipping cattle against Texas Fever. (The cattle tick was the most common and economically important tick on cattle in the Southern States. This tick and the cattle fever it transmitted cost the cattle industry in this country as much as $40 million annually. The tick has been eradicated from the U.S. except for small isolated areas in Florida and along the Texas-Mexico border, but reinfestations to other areas have occurred from time to time (Scheibner 1992, 12)).
>From Kansas, he went to the Osage Nation in Oklahoma with a herd of cattle as a cowboy-flunky. His goal was to go to North Dakota and Canada. He got a job with the W.R. Ranch at Ft. McCloud putting up hay. In January of 1906, he got a job on a sheep ranch in Montana hauling hay and dragging the snow off the grass for the sheep with a four-horse team. In the spring, he went to work for the F Triangle Cattle Company at Veliern, Montana. He put in a dam that took two years to complete.
George had an Uncle Jim in Seattle, WA and went to work for him in 1909. He kept in touch with a friend in Hachita, NM and told him he was looking for even newer worlds to conquer. His friend, Charlie Webster, told him to come on down. After riding on a lumber boat from Seattle to San Francisco, he bummed his way on the train to Lordsburg. He paid to get the rest of the way to Hachita arriving with only $10 in his pocket (Mullane 1973, 1).
Victorio Land and Cattle Company. (Better known as the Diamond A Ranch or the Gray.) George took a job with the Diamond A ranch, which has its own unique history. It started with George Hearst, father of William Randolph Hearst. It was not the cattle that brought this man to New Mexico, it was the mines in Silver City. (He had mining investments like the Homestake in South Dakota and the Anaconda in Montana.) He was a wealthy man, saw an opportunity, and bought the Gray ranch in 1882. This was his first purchase towards the ranch but many other purchases would follow. There were four men in this endeavor, Hearst, James Ben Ali Haggin, Lloyd Tevis, and Addison Head. "There were over a hundred land transactions recorded in Hearst’s, Haggin’s and Head’s names during the 1880s and ‘90s, and after the turn of the century there were some three hundred more land buys made in the Ranch’s corporate name" (Hilliard 1996, 22).
In 1910, George Godfrey took up a homestead of 160 acres west of the Hatchet Gap. He borrowed $1,000 from his brother-in-law in Seattle to buy cattle for his new homestead. He made improvements on the homestead, sold it to the Diamond A for $800, and used that money and some savings to pay back the brother-in-law. For $100, he bought a loss by default lease of a school section in Cottonwood Canyon (now called Godfrey Canyon) in February of 1915 and this is where it all started, The Godfrey Ranch.
Wedding Bells Rang in the Valley
A man by the name of Bob Kincheloe along with George each borrowed $11,000 from the El Paso Cattle Loan Company during World War I. They bought Mexican Cattle and made improvements on the ranch with the $11,000. They camped together at the Kincheloe place just over the hill north of the Cottonwood Canyon Property.
George decided to move back over the hill when his friend Bob decided to get married. He was living here when he too decided to marry. On June 1, 1918, he married Thelma Gibson. She was an educated woman having her teaching certificates to teach in the County. She had been teaching in Walnut Wells in Southern Hidalgo County since 1916. She told a story about teaching in those days. She was only nineteen when she started teaching and she had a few rowdy students. She did not know what to do so finally one day she whooped them good. The welts were still visible when one of the boys got home later that day. The little ‘brats’ deserved it! A school board member’s son was one of the boys spanked and a complaint was filed. Because of the complaint, a justice of the peace issued a warrant. The trial was held and everyone was there. This was a big deal since this kind of thing did not happen all the time in Hachita. What was the outcome? She was let off the hook due to luck. One of the boys during the trial gave the jurors a taste of what she had to deal with every day and found her not guilty.
Growing Bigger
Purebred cattle were unheard of in this rough country. But, George knew that if he were going to make any money in the cattle business, he would have to improve his herd. He bought pureblooded bulls and started to phase out the Mexican cattle. George leased 4,000 acres of forest permit land and two school sections adjoining the original homestead during World War II. The government needed money to fight the war; this made him able to purchase the 4,000 acres from the Coronado Forest in 1943. At the same time, the Diamond A bought lands from the forest (Godfrey 1991, 1).
In 1928, George bought the Fanny Spear Ranch that was adjacent to the Holmes-Mattox Ranch in Animas. Between this time and 1940, an unknown acreage of BLM and State Land was leased. A series of purchases then occurred: 1940, purchase of the George Gilland Ranch; 1941, purchase of the X T Ranch and adjacent leases; 1946, purchase of the George Wright Ranch and adjacent leases; 1950, purchase of the Douglas Bryant Ranch.
Family Life
George and Thelma had one son, William ‘Bill’ Godfrey. He married a Deming girl named Evelyn Katz, and they had four daughters. George and Thelma gave the homestead place to Bill and Evelyn after living there for forty years. They moved to the Bryant place in 1958.
The four granddaughters of George, Pam, Rhonda, Brenda, and Thelma grew up with the ‘ranch’ life at the original homestead house. By this time in the nineteen sixties, there were only two schools in Hidalgo County, Animas and Lordsburg Public Schools. The girls went to school in Animas, driving thirty miles to and from school each day. To hear the four girls tell stories from their childhood makes people laugh. "Our house was so big, but going back now, it must have shrunk."
For a past time, the girls hopped into the pick up truck and would go rat stomping. It would get late in the evening and they would shine a spotlight on the rats in the dark. There was an old seat wired to racks on the top of the pick up cab. This is the area where the ‘stompers’ would sit. The driver would stop when a rat was sighted and the stompers would run off the top of the cab trying not to step on the windshield. The driver's job was to try to keep from running over any people while trying to keep the rats in the headlights (Richardson 1998, 1). The rats were Kangaroo rats. Kangaroo rats live in colonies in arid regions and burrow into the ground, from which they emerge at night to feed on seeds, fruits, vegetation, and some insects. They are capable of surviving for long periods without water, which they derive from their food. They produce up to three litters per year, usually with two to four young in each litter (Microsoft Corporation 1995, 2). You can see how easy it was for the population of these rodents to get out of hand.
For fun, the girls used to play with the horses and do lots of riding. They would go off, build forts, and play games when they were younger. Brenda told a story of building a corral out of yucca poles and penning the horses up. The girls took off the saddles and went to build a fire. They packed potatoes and coffee, a coffee can, and a cast iron frying pan when they would go on adventures. Thelma said they would stop because they were tired from running from the posse. You see they would pretend to be outlaws and sometimes circle a hill or a group of trees to lose the posse. Well, the horses stepped right over the yucca poles and went back to the house. Poor Thelma and Brenda had to walk all the way back to the house. When the girls were older and in high school, they mostly rode during the works and in the summer.
George paid his granddaughters, Brenda and Thelma, $20 a day starting when they were nine and ten years old working on the ranch. They would gather the yearlings and take care of the horn-weights for the registered cattle. These yearlings were the replacement heifers (young female cows) used for future use on the ranch. Horn-weights were used to bend down the horns towards the head for perfect placement. The girls would brand the registered number assigned to each cow on the horns close to the head. The weights were screwed on making the horns grow downward. Once the horns were in place, the weights would be removed. This all took place in the pens. The girls had to separate the cattle into two groups: weighted and not yet weighted. The cows that were picked would have to try to jump through the shoot and they would have to catch them around the neck with the big metal shoot. This metal shoot had to be pulled down hard and fast to lock it in place and hold them while they removed the weights. Keep in mind that these cows were 500 – 600 lbs. It was hard work according to Brenda and Thelma.
The work was just that, work. They would leave early in the morning in the dark to get to the pastures before daybreak. On the big days when branding would take place, Thelma and Brenda were put at the tail end of the herd. This was the worst place to be according to Brenda because you eat a lot of dust and it is boring. Once you get the herd to the pens, the girls were in charge of the shots for vaccinations and the doctoring. Doctoring would be placing medicine on the calves where they had been dehorned or castrated. To dehorn the cows, the cowboys would put what was like a sharp pair of pliers at the base of the horn and close the handles. Brenda said this felt like rubbing your front teeth down a chalkboard.
This ranch branded when the caves were younger than most ranches because these girls were the flankers. They were not stout enough to wrestle a 500-lb. calf. Flanking is standing over a calf and bending over to grab the calves’ neck. The other hand grabs the flank (the back leg connects to the body). The thrust of the pulling this calf up and throwing it down knocks the breath out of them. Knocking the breath out of them makes it easier for the girls to sit down on them to tie them up. One of them would push the back legs forward and the other would sit on the shoulder and bring the front legs back. Then they would cross the legs in and out of each other and tie with a small nylon rope called a piggin’ string. The knot used to tie calves down was a square knot. Most ranches do not do this anymore. They use a chute today (Been 1998, 2).
The cattle were driven twice a year that went from the mountains in the springtime to the flats. In the winter, they drove them back into the mountains. (It was easier for them to find food under trees and rock overhangs in the desert like mountains.) It was seventeen miles one way. On the map, you can see from the Godfrey Camp. From here, they would drive them to the Adobes or the Dobie camp to brand and spray. They would leave the cattle there over night and the next morning they would take them to the XT camp (Been 1998, 1). The calves were hauled in a bobtailed truck because they were too small to make the drive.
George Godfrey cooperated with the New Mexico State University in experiments dealing with land and grass testing and pregnancy testing programs, Vitamin A testing and parasite control programs. He was a clever student of range practices and feeding and parasite control, and of rat control and plant spray programs conducted by the federal government.
Cattlemen of the year was a big honor given to men by the New Mexico Cattle Association. George won this award in 1959. This was not to be his last. In 1962 he was awarded the New Mexico Amigos Award. George’s efforts to improve his herd won more business and this added business led to better production of more and better beef. This led him and his wife to many parts of the World. Thelma joined George in attending the National Convention of the National Cattlemen’s Association in Havana, Cuba in 1950. During the late fifties and early sixties, they traveled even more according to their passports: Western Livestock Journal Tour in Hawaii, 1960; Four weeks in South America on a Stockman’s tour, 1961; and traveled to the South Pacific on a livestock study tour including New Zealand and Australia. They were able to study the breeds and methods of the cattlemen in Holland, Norway, Denmark, Austria, Ireland, Sweden, England and Scotland on a Livestock Research tour in 1964.
Being the Vice President of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association for three terms and President for two, he was able to go on many cattle grower and legislative committee meetings to further the committee’s interests. George was also a member of his local school board for seven years and director of the Lordsburg Chamber of Commerce. He was also a representative of the United States Chamber of Commerce.
In 1970, George won the Agriculturist of Distinction of NMSU in recognition of his 61 years of outstanding service to agriculture in New Mexico. Having never run for any political office, he however was very active in the furtherance of good government. Being a firm Republican, he spent many hours in Washington and Santa Fe giving time and money helping his country and his fellow ranchers.
After battling sickness for years, George passed away on May 5th, 1973 at his home thirteen miles away from the town of Animas at the Bryant Place. Bill and Evelyn separated and sold their part of the ranch in 1978 to the Gray. At this time, Thelma Godfrey sold her holdings also to the Gray Ranch. She moved to Deming then on to Las Cruces when she too would eventually pass away in July of 1991 at the age of 93.
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