San Bernardino ranch was purchased by John Slaughter in and became his home in . It was originally a land grant awarded in to Ignacio Perez by the government of Mexico and comprised 29,644 hectares or 73,240 acres. It lay entirely in Mexico, until the Gadsden Purchase of , which added an extensive border strip to the vast territory that had fallen to the dominion of the United States as a result of the Mexican War. Then the line as established between the two countries divided it into two unequal parts, the larger in Mexico, the remainder in Arizona. Slaughter bought the property from the descendants of Perez.
In the days of Spanish dominion, a presidio garrisoned by Spanish soldiers stood at San Bernardino guarding the northern frontiers of Mexico against savage Indian tribes. The mesa near the ranch house is still called the Mesa de la Avansada or the Mesa of the Advance Guard. Near the presidio, the pioneer Spanish padres established a mission. Crumbling adobe walls of a once extensive building in Mexico a mile south of the ranch house are believed to mark the site of this ancient religious house.
Twenty years ago, two Mexicans with pack burros camped for the night at these ruined walls. No one at the ranch paid any attention to them. Next morning they were gone. But they had left exposed to view in the earth within the old cloister enclosure a deep boxlike receptacle lined with cement from which had been removed a cement slab that had served as lid. The cavity was empty. What it had contained remained an enigma. The two strangers had plied pick and shovel only in this one spot, and it was evident they had worked with a chart or secret directions to guide them. The cement-lined receptacle, it was suspected, had been the treasure vault of the old padres.
The old emigrant trail to California crossed the ranch land, and in the gold-rush days of ’Forty-nine was crowded with ox teams and prairie schooners. The ruts of the heavy wagons are still deep in the earth, and at a distance, the old road shows as a distinct yellow line running for miles across the mesa east of the ranch house. Opening upon this mesa is Guadalupe Canyon leading through the Guadalupe Mountains to the Animas Valley in New Mexico. It was in Guadalupe Canyon that Old Man Clanton and his five companions were ambushed and murdered by Mexicans. Twenty miles northeast is Skeleton Canyon, scene of the massacres of Mexican smuggler trains by Curly Bill outlaws.
San Bernardino ranch, intact today, is a domain of baronial extent. Its boundary fences are mountain ranges, its corner posts sun-kissed peaks. Watered by Guadalupe Creek and the Rio San Bernardino, it occupies the width of San Bernardino Valley and extends from the Guadalupe Mountains on the east to the Silver Creek range on the west and from the San Simon Valley watershed on the north to six miles south of the Mexican border. The international line is within a stone’s throw of the front porch. Back of the barn lies Mexico. You may see a mule cropping grass in the United States while its tail is busy switching flies in a foreign land.
John Slaughter built a home here at San Bernardino worthy of a cattle king. About his long, one-story adobe house with its deep, cool verandas, giant cottonwoods formed an oasis in the treeless valley. Like a little village were the great stables, granaries, work shops, and outhouses, with a commissary store for employees. Orchards and vineyards arose. Five hundred acres, irrigated by seven artesian wells, yielded crops of corn, wheat, oats, barley, and vegetables. Thirty thousand cattle under Slaughter’s brand pastured on the San Bernardino ranges.
The hospitality of San Bernardino ranch grew into a tradition. John Slaughter kept open house. Everybody was welcome. The family hardly knew what it was to sit down at a table without guests. Soldiers, statesmen, diplomats, frontiersmen, American cowboys, Mexican vaqueros, distinguished men and men undistinguished came and went in endless procession. When Douglas had boomed into a city eighteen miles west, with Agua Prieta adjoining it across the border, house parties filled the ranch with gaiety almost every weekend.
Men who were making history in Mexico rode over the line and sat at ease on the piazza while they discussed international adventures and problems with John Slaughter in Spanish, which he spoke as fluently as his native language. Among them were such notable persons as Madero of tragic memory; Huerta who rose on the ruins of Madero’s fortunes; Pancho Villa, romantic bandit of the hills, who fought his way to the capital at the head of a victorious army and, from the ancient palace which had been the home of viceroys and emperors, ruled supreme in Mexico; and Alvaro Obregon who broke Villa’s power at Celaya and Leon and sent him reeling back into the deserts from crushing and final defeat at Agua Prieta.
Days of peace at San Bernardino brought out the kindly human side of John Slaughter’s character. He loved children and children loved him. The old frontier fighter was never happier than when sitting on the porch watching a troop of boys and girls at play. His grandchildren were constantly visiting at the ranch and brought their little friends. Slaughter made the little ones his companions, took them on horseback rides, bought them candy, harmonicas, and trinkets at the store, told them stories, fished with them in the creek, heaped their plates with good things at the table, and always sent them home with a silver dollar in their pockets.
“Willie Greene, four years old, Mr. Slaughter’s grandchild, came to the ranch with a pocketful of marbles,” said Mrs. Hankin. “But it happened that just then no little boys were there
