The Pleasant Valley War was a feud between two ranching families on the Arizona frontier: The Grahams and the Tewksburys. About three decades before Arizona became a U.S. state, Gila County–and the rest of the territory–was being overrun by American cowboys. They had their own vendettas, loyalties, and codes for living. In 1882 Samuel Graham, his wife Jane, and their five children were invited to Pleasant Valley by their friend Edwin Tewksbury. The Grahams were Irish immigrants who lived in Oklahoma before they ventured west to try ranching. The head of the Tewksbury family, James, had been a miner in San Francisco before establishing a settlement in Arizona with his family. He got married and he and his wife also had five children. The first signs of bad blood between the families began to show about two years later.
\nThere were several incidents that have been claimed as the catalyst for the war, but each of them stemmed from organized theft–which had been rampant in the area long before cattle had. In the early days, when the Grahams and Tewksburys were on friendly terms, they shared a common enemy: the Stinsons. It was primarily the Tewksburys who they had it out for, and the Grahams made the first crack in the glass when they entered a shady contract with the Stinsons. Arrangements were made for the Grahams to be paid in cattle in exchange for spreading false claims about the Tewksburys. The feud escalated through acts of revenge until nobody in the territory was safe to claim neutrality. Baseless accusations turned to gunfights, cold-blooded murder, and organized theft.
\nIn an essentially lawless land with little order, few natural resources, and no shortage of desperation, it was not uncommon for ranchers to wake up and find that their cattle had been stolen. As the population grew Pleasant Valley became increasingly treacherous and unwelcoming. G.W. Shute, the District Attorney of Gila County, warned, “Strangers entering the Pleasant Valley disappeared completely. Horse thieves infested the whole of the country. A cattleman or farmer, when he turned his horses upon the range, never knew whether or not he would see them again.” In one case, the Daggs brothers–who were in cahoots with the Grahams–drove a herd of sheep, belonging to the Tewksburys, off a cliff.
\nThe Grahams instigated and perpetrated so many of these heinous acts that they were labeled “thieves” and untrustworthy by the Tewksburys, but this didn’t stop them from gaining some powerful allies. James Houck, deputy sheriff of a nearby county, as well as many popular cattle suppliers of the territory sided with the Graham family. The Tewksbury sons, who were half-Native American, were called a variety of racist slurs by their enemies. At one point there was a fifty-dollar reward offered to anyone who would bring in a “Tewksbury Scalp.”
\nThere would be no peace or goodwill to end the war. One of the last and most brutal events of this fateful vendetta took place on Tewksbury Ranch in 1887. The Grahams and some of their associates murdered John Tewkbsury and one of his sons. Their bodies were guarded outside by their killers, so that their bodies would be mutilated before a proper burial. Of this twisted act, Jim Tewksbury stated, “No damned man can kill a brother of mine and stand guard over him for the hogs to eat him, and live within a mile and a half of me.” By the time it was all over, every member of the Graham family and their faction had been killed.
","sponsor":null,"accessinfo":"","lede":"Desperation, betrayal, and revenge accompany one of the bloodiest feuds in U.S. history.
","website":"","related_resources":["Carlson, Frances C. “JAMES D. HOUCK: The Sheep King of Cave Creek.” The Journal of Arizona History 21, no. 1 (1980): 43–62. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42678233.
","Cherry Creek Lodge History. Accessed March 7, 2024. https://cherrycreeklodge.com/about-the-lodge/history-of-the-lodge/
","Woody, Clara T., and Milton L. Schwartz. “WAR IN PLEASANT VALLEY: THE OUTBREAK OF THE GRAHAM-TEWKSBURY FEUD.” The Journal of Arizona History 18, no. 1 (1977): 43–68. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42678037.
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