Espil Sheep Company

Inducted in 2013

Mar 4

Flagstaff/Litchfield - Coconino/Maricopa County

Inducted in 2013

In the 1800s, when Pete Espil was growing up on the family farm in the Pyrenees Mountains of France, Basque family tradition dictated that the oldest son inherited everything and the oldest daughter became a nun. With no prospects at home and the lure of a possible job in California, Pete and his oldest brother Martin, the second and third sons, set out on an adventure that would change family history forever.

The story of how the Espil brothers, Jean Pierre “Pete” and Martin, made their way from their birthplace in the town of Bygory, where their parents raised sheep and farmed to the United States, is a little foggy. In various versions, Pete’s age ranges from twelve to between 16 and 17. Our story has the brothers and their friend Jean “John” Achabal stowing away on a ship bound for America in 1886. Another says the boys bought passage on a cargo ship and worked their way across. Whatever the true story, the boys landed in New Orleans and made their way across the country to the West Coast. The Espil brothers went to Los Angeles while their friend settled in Idaho. Pete and Martin took the stagecoach from Los Angles to Sacramento, where Matin got the coveted job on a sheep ranch. Pete found the weather too wet in northern California so he eventually moved south to Long Beach where he found a job with a rancher.

Long Beach wasn’t to Pete’s liking because of the oil in the soil that got into the sheep’s wool. The rancher he was working for at the time didn’t pay him. When he left, he had nothing but a $20 gold piece in his pocket. In 1892 Pete boarded a train, and when he got to Flagstaff, the mountains felt like home, so he stayed. It was there that he met a man by the name of Harry Emback, who was the ranch accountant for the Babbitt’s Co Ranch. Emback recognized Pete as a sheepherder and offered to find him work. The pair remained friends for the rest of their lives.

Pete worked for Hugh Campbell for the next seven years, saving every cent he made. A trusting young man, he left his money in the care of his employer, but when Campbell abruptly left Arizona, he took Pete’s hard-earned money with him and left the bank with nothing but his flock of sheep. Pete was asked to take over the operations until they could be sold. He was offered the entire lamp crop that year for his help, giving him the means to start the Espil Sheep Company.

The 99-year permit on the 175,000 acres of land for summer pasture was secured from the U.S. Forest Service in 1902. He later added a section of land purchased from the Otando family to his holding. Pete built his first cabin at Reese Tank on the San Francisco Peaks. The sheep needed a permanent water supply, so in 1926, Pete and Pete Auza built a water pipeline from Pat Springs to the ranch’s center. They built two more thanks further down the mountain.

As the family grew, more room was needed, so the Espil Sheep Company bought the Deadman Ranger Station and converted it into a ranch headquarters with a horse, corrals, a large barn, and a roping arena so the men could play their favorite sport, team roping.

In the early 1900s, Pete and other Arizona sheep ranchers purchased a mile-wide strip of land from the Phoenix Valley to Flagstaff to eliminate the problem of crossing private land. When I-17 was built in the early 1970’s it was constructed over the Woolgrower’s Trail but bridges were built to allow the animals to pass under the freeway. Wintering his flock at the Sheep Camp in Litchfield Park, Peter would drive them up the Woolgrower’s Trail to Flagstaff for the summer, walking them the 130 miles each way for many years.

Pete’s granddaughter, Liz Espil Monney, remembers that bucks were added to the bands each spring while they were on the trail. The ewes were bred during the six weeks to trek from the Valley to their summer pasture in the San Francisco Peaks.

In later years, the pregnant ewes were shipped down by train in October, but eventually, the company bought White Freight liners to transport the animals. Liz recalls the trucks being painted bright turquoise with a big sign on the side proudly announcing Espil Sheep Company, Litchfield—Flagstaff.

Pete married when he was in his forties. He and his wife, a Basque woman by the name of Isadora Aristoy, had three children: Michel Pierre “Pete,” Dora, and Lois. Luann Espil Robertson, the daughter of Pete’s son Louis, recounted how the two boys, Pete and Louis, joined the company in the 1940s, growing it into the most significant sheep operations in the state at its peak in the 1960s. In the 1970s they also fed feeder lambs and acquired a herd of steers. Peter and Louis were voted top agri-cultist of the month by the Kiwanis Club.

Pete and Louis’ daughter were involved in promoting wool. They all made wool outfits and modeled them in the “Make it with Wool” contest. Espil wool was shipped to woolen mills in Utah and Oregon.

The Espil family raised sheep in Arizona for over 100 years. The company no longer exists, but the memory of those who watched the sheep being moved around the valley and up the mountains should not be forgotten.

The Espil ranch was sold in 1986.