The Making of Guns of Ponderosa -- Part IX

Lieutenant Amiel Whipple (died as a general in the Civil War) surveyed a railroad route across northern Arizona to California in 1853. This route was finally used by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railway, which eventually became the largest railroad company in the United States. In my part of the country, the AT&SF came through in 1881. They received a tremendous amount of land from the government to finance their railroad -- every other section on both sides of the track for something like forty miles (I'm writing this off the top of my head).

Until the railroad came in, the town on the Little Colorado river that eventually became county seat of Navajo County was called Horsehead Crossing. The railroad renamed it Holbrook. The spur line that ran from Holbrook south to Snowflake and on into the White Mountains to terminate in McNary (Ponderosa) was built by the AR&SF. It first hauled beef, sheep, and wool to eastern markets, then massive amounts of rough-cut lumber from Southwest Forest Industries.

The railroad brought the people, true, but it also carried out the produce and brought back the money. Because of that spur line and the stands of mighty Ponderosa pine in the White Mountains, the town of Ponderosa flourished.

Scatterguns

Photo from Chuck Hawks' article on American Double Guns.

Shotguns played as big a role in the West as did rifles and sixguns. At the saloon, you could figure the barkeep had a scattergun behind the counter. More than one lawman carried a sawed-off shotgun as well as a pistol. Doc Holiday used a shotgun in the gunfight at OK corral. Wells Fargo had shotgun riders on every stagecoach carrying a strongbox. The list goes on.

Although Colt made a revolving shotgun in the pre-Civil War days, the side-by-side type were most often seen. In Appaloosa and Resolution (haven't read Brimstone yet), Everett Hitch carries an 8-gauge shotgun. The monster Vigo carried in the movie may well have been a W.W. Greener. The reason I think so is that certain Greeners cocked when the breech was broken to eject the spent shells and reload. It seemed when Vigo snapped the 8-gauge shut, there were no hammers to pull. Am I right?

The photo above is a Winchester 21, one of the fine American shotguns and a favorite. Other well-known scatterguns included Parker, A.J. Fox, Ithaca, LeFever, and L. C. Smith brands.

Where I tend to have my characters carry Greeners because I like the sound of the name, it might as well be an Ithaca or a Smith. I'll have to think about that.

Cowboy poet Paul Hatch, an old high school classmate

Back in September of 2009, the graduating class of 1959, Snowflake Union High School, held its 50th anniversary reunion. I was there. Class president Joe Spear was there. VP Larry Butler, Secretary Kathy Rogers, and a bunch of class members that included Phyllis Carlyle, school teacher and rancher's wife, Johnny Gonzales, who was the coolest dresser in the class, Gary Bigler the singer, and Paul Hatch, the cowboy poet. Catch Paul's cowboy poetry right here.

The Making of Guns of Ponderosa -- Part VIII

Let's talk about guns.

In fiction, Sam Colt's revolvers play a larger role than any other handgun. Clair Huffaker's Guns of Thunder Mountain featured Civil War era Joslyn side-hammer revolvers, but Colt's were by far the most popular. Louis L'Amour used a 12-shot revolver to save one protagonist's life, unfortunately I don't remember its name. Some gunnys used Remingtons and some Smith and Wessons, but Colt reigned supreme.

In Guns of Ponderosa, Dan Brady, the young deputy, uses Dragoon Colt, so I thought I'd talk about that type of revolver. Actually, the first Dragoon Colt was responsible for keeping Sam Colt in business.

War started with Mexico in January 1846. General Zachary Taylor's troops were armed with flintlock muskets and Model 1841 .54 caliber caplocks known as Mississippi or Jaeger rifles. Their pistols were caplock single-shot horse pistols and a few Paterson Colts. Mounted troops soon realized they needed more firepower, and a young captain named Samuel Walker, a former Texas Ranger, was sent north to negotiate with Sam Colt for a heavy repeating handgun similar to the Paterson. The result was the 1847 Whitneyville-Walker Dragoon in .45 caliber.

The 4-pound monsters reached American troops late in the war with Mexico, unfortunately after Captain Walker had died in the battle for Huamantla. These big pistols were carried by US Mounted Dragoon troops for the rest of the war, and the order for the pistols from the War Department put Sam Colt firmly in the repeating arms business.

Another smaller Colt Dragoon pistol was produced from 1848, but the one Dan Brady carried was a converted Whitneyville-Walker Dragoon from the War with Mexico.



This photo is from Age of the Gunfighter by Joseph G. Rosa and published by the University of Oklahoma Press. The top pistol is a Whitneyville-Walker Colt. The pistol directly beneath it is an 1948 Dragoon Colt. The partially visible pistol is an Model 1860 Army Colt, and the pistol fitted with a stock is a Third Model Dragoon .44. The guns are the property of the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum.

The Making of Guns of Ponderosa -- Part VII

Ponderosa was a company town. Directly or indirectly, most of the townspeople earned their living from the Comstock Log and Lumber Company. In my boyhood days, the McNary general store is where even people from Show Low, 15 miles away, went for dry goods, especially work clothes. The only hospital in the area was in McNary (read Ponderosa), too, and I had a hernia repaired there in 1955.

Thus, when Matt Stryker starts making things difficult for Nate Cahill and his cohorts, Cahill naturally turns his attention toward the major company in town. A rat tells Nate of a large amount of money to be sent to Wells Fargo in Holbrook. So Nate decides to rob the train, as that's the logical way to send a big bunch of cash. Not.

Brand new start

At last I'm started on a new BHW. The working title is A Man Called Breed. The story begins at La Paz on the Colorado River and moves out into the Mohave Desert. Breed is a man who shuns sixguns in favor of a 14-inch Bowie knife and a one-in-a-thousand Winchester '73.

In Arizona military history, there's a half-breed scout named Mickey Free. My man Breed is not based on Free, but the scout was a well-known breed. Another well-known half white, half Indian family was the Tewksburys, who lived in the Tonto Basin near the Mogollon Rim.

Now I have my character and his complication. A girl is in the equation all ready. We'll just have to see where it all goes.

Photo of Mickey Free: Sharlot Hall Museum.

The Making of Guns of Ponderosa -- Part VI

What about the naming of Ponderosa? The town's not named after the Cartwrights' famous TV ranch. Actually, in the first draft the town's name was Sponsellorville. One of my readers said no one would remember the town's name, that it was too difficult. Well, Pete Sponsellor ran sheep on the mountain near the town, and his sheep were shipped to market on his own siding which we all knew as Sponsellor's Siding, so I naturally thought Ol' Pete wouldn't mind if I named my fictional town after him. After the reader complained, though, I renamed the town Ponderosa, after the tall pines that Comstock Log and Lumber cut into planks to help build the West.
The photo's from the Show Low Historical Society and is a little later model of engine than the one that would have run in Guns of Ponderosa, but the atmosphere is the same.