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Q-Ranch: Historical and Archaeological Treasure

By Stephen H. Buck, Ph.D.

September 2005

Q-Ranch is located at 5700 feet elevation deep in the Tonto National Forest 10 miles southeast of Young, Arizona along the base of the spectacular Mogollon Rim. It was founded as a cattle ranch in 1893 by veteran Civil War Confederate Colonel Jesse W. Ellison and other Texas cattlemen who fled that state due to severe overgrazing by cattle. Ellison ran up to 7500 head of cattle on Q-Ranch land and leased grazing land until he sold the ranch in 1910 when it became part of cowboy Pecos McFadden’s Flying V Ranch, one of the largest cattle operations in Arizona.

While in Arizona, Jesse Ellison and his wife Isabella Stuart raised four daughters and one son, most of whom became seasoned ranch hands, horse riders, and big-game hunters. One of the daughters, Susan Helena “Lena” Ellison [1], produced a well-known photographic chronicle of life on an early twentieth century Gila County cattle ranch [2]. Another daughter, Helen Duette, married George Wiley Paul Hunt, the first governor of the State of Arizona and who went on to serve six additional early gubernatorial terms in the state [3].        

Lena Ellison, age 29, 1898

Q-Ranch lies in the White Mountains in Pleasant Valley, the setting of the infamous Pleasant Valley War, a bloody cowboy feud between a cattle-raising family and a sheep-raising family that raged between 1886 and 1892 [4]. As many as 25 men were killed in this conflict, and it is said that the lawless and brutal aspects of the Pleasant Valley War were key issues in delaying statehood for Arizona. Jesse Ellison may have been part of a secret local rancher-businessman vigilante group that helped to end the economy-ravaging turmoil by lynching some of the last holdout participants.    

In 1956,  Q-Ranch was acquired by Jefferson Jackson “Jack” Rogers of Phoenix. Jack’s son Jonathan was 5 years old at the time. The ranch ceased cattle operations in 1980, and parts were sold off to other members of the Rogers family for various uses. Today Jonathan operates 350-acre Q-Ranch as a B&B lodge catering to archaeologists, archaeology buffs, group retreats and vacations, hikers, and birders. It is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. 

And if the modern history of Q-Ranch isn’t enough, the property also contains the Q-Ranch Pueblo ruin, one of the largest and most important Mogollon/Western Puebloan Indian culture sites in north central Arizona.  The pueblo was occupied between A.D. 1265 and 1380 by up to 1000 residents and consists of two separate room blocks on either side of a large wash that was likely once a perennial stream. The smaller south pueblo block consists of about 60 rooms, while the larger north pueblo block is comprised of about 260 rooms, some three stories high, and surrounds a 75-foot by 75-foot open courtyard. The entire site was heavily vandalized by pothunters in past years. Ancient burial pits were found about 50 feet from the smaller pueblo during construction of the Q-Ranch/Ellison family cemetery in the late 1890s. The fenced commerative cemetery still exists and contains about a dozen graves, including Ellison daughter Mattie Ellison Nail, who married a son of the owners of the nearby Nail Ranch.    

The Arizona Archaeological Society (AAS) began excavating the Q-Ranch Pueblo in 1989 and continues to conduct work on weekends and in a summer field school every summer at the site [5]. Under the direction of AAS Q-Ranch Principal Investigator John Hohmann, Ph.D. of  Louis Berger & Associates in Phoenix, volunteers and college students can dig and learn new archaeological techniques under the tutelage of assorted experts, who also present educational seminars during the summer sessions. Allen Dart and Old Pueblo Archaeology supervised the summer sessions at Q-Ranch Pueblo in 1997 [6].

Many of the rooms at the site have interior walls covered with a smooth mud plaster still in place in pristine condition. The 12-inch-thick walls are constructed in kind of a mini-flagstone style, primarily of thin flat tightly stacked square and rectangular stones that were apparently quarried from nearby cliff areas and transported to the pueblo. Inter-rock seams of walls facing the exterior are sealed with mud plaster, perhaps to insulate against weather elements, while many walls not facing the exterior are only shimmed with many layers of smaller rock slivers in linear symmetrical patterns tightly wedged between the larger rocks.    

Jonathan Rogers describes one of the pueblo rooms of the ruins –

note the tightly stacked thin flat stones of the walls

Excavations at Q-Ranch have revealed that many of the rooms in the larger north block suffered a catastrophic fire in 1380 that may have led to the abandonment of the entire site. In this departure, a wealth of artifacts was left behind for future archaeologists. Examples include painted ceramics;  items made of stone, bone, and seashell; and painted, plainware, and corrugated-finish pots. Some of the more significant artifact findings in recent years include [6]:

·         A storeroom containing dozens of reconstructible pottery including stacked bowls and also containing stone manos, deer bones, polishing stones, flaked stone knives, a sparkly mica-clay unfinished vessel, and a puki (mould) for forming the bottoms of new clay vessels 

·         A room with a potsherd containing a painted macaw head, a projectile point with a curved tip similar to a macaw’s beak or bear claw, a bone whistle, and loaves of potter’s clay that have converging surface ridges from being stored in tight cloth or bags to keep them moist

·         A room containing an intact Gila Polychrome bowl 30 cm in diameter and a polished redware jar broken in half 

·         A south block room containing a complete polychrome seed pot and a stone arrow shaft straightener

·         Another south block room with a large rectangular stone button made of highly polished limestone

An intact plain-brown, red-slipped pot found at Q-Ranch Pueblo 

One of the most interesting artifacts ever found at Q-Ranch Pueblo is a small smooth stone panel with an intricate face painted on it with a mineral pigment stain. This was found by the Rogers family in the 1970s and is now on loan to the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff. Most of the numerous artifacts unearthed by the Rogers family during their 50 years on the ranch are on loan to the major natural history museums in Arizona.    

Jonathan Rogers operates his B&B lodge from May through October for a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 10 people at a time. The ranch house has 7 guest bedrooms sharing 4 bathrooms on two floor levels. Lodging at Q-Ranch includes 3 meals a day, one of which is a gourmet candlelight dinner each night as elk graze in the pasture behind the house. Jonathan can be contacted at 602-222-9796 in Phoenix or by e-mail to qranch@cybertrails.com.

[1]         http://azhistoricalimages.org/processDetail.jsp?view=detail&control=2118696939&keyword=    

             Photographs.&section=Search

[2]        Frontz, Kim. Q Ranch: Lena Ellison’s photographs of pioneer life in Gila County, Arizona, 1890s-1910. Journal of Arizona History. Summer 2002; 43: 153-172.

[3]        http://phoenix.gov/PARKS/papago.html (scroll down to Hunt's Tomb)

[4]        http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/az/statewide/history/1916/arizonay/pleasantvalley.txt

[5]        http://www.azarchsoc.org/QRANCH04/QRANCH05.html

[6]        Dart, Allen. Fabulous finds made at Q-Ranch Pueblo. Old Pueblo Archaeology. September 1997; Issue #10: 1, 5-7.