Jim & Connie Brown
Tonto Basin - Gila County
Inducted in 2008
Along with opportunity, the Arizona Territory offered renewal and hope, as the Jim and Connie Brown history illustrates. Jim and Connie’s story is unique, but Jim’s great-grandfather witnessed the renewal and hope. He migrated to the Arizona Territory from his Mississippi plantation. Facing financial ruin after the Civil War, he chose to leave the plantation behind and seek a new life as a rancher in the Southwest. He found something agreeable in Arizona since his great-grandson, Jim Brown, represents the fifth generation in Arizona. The story also demonstrates that Arizona always was a place to “start over” or begin again.
Not many people can thank a cattle truck for getting them together, but not many people like Jim and Connie Brown. Their life together began in 1949 when Jim offered Connie a ride to Payson in his truck when she needed transportation from her aunt’s ranch in Globe to the northern Arizona city. Agriculture even had the last word about when they could get married. They postponed their wedding until the haying was done.
Connie graduated from high school in Long Beach, California, in May and decided to move to her father’s hometown of Payson. She got as far as her aunt’s ranch in Globe but didn’t have a way to get any further. Enter Jim Brown. Jim was driving a cattle truck for his father’s cattle business and delivered a cattle load in Globe. A gallant young man, Jim, offered Connie a ride in his truck. Little did they know that ride would be the beginning of a lifetime commitment. They started to date and married that September.
Jim is a fifth-generation Arizonan. His great-great-grandfather came to the Arizona territory in the 1800s. A plantation owner in Mississippi, he faced financial ruin because of the Civil War, so he decided to move west and build a new life. Jim’s grandfather served as a page at the Senate in Prescott and later had a freight hauling company using teams of horses and wagons. He met Jim’s grandmother, who was the sister of a ranch owner in Globe by the name of Hicks, at a boarding house where she was staying. They married and took up relinquishments and a homestead at Rye, where they settled and raised cattle and a family. They had two girls and a boy, Jim’s father, Harry.
The family’s ranching heritage has been passed down from generation to generation. When Jim came along, the family lived on a spread at Rye. He attended first grade at the little one-room schoolhouse at Gisela, just over the hill. He finished his schooling in Payson, graduating from Payson High School in 1944.
By age 13, he was already punching cows on his dad’s ranch. “When I got out of high school at 17, I went to Gisela, lived there, and farmed that property and the property on Rye (Creek). We grew barley and hay, mainly hay for the cattle,” Jim said. “My father bought and sold cattle, along with the ranch business, and I hauled cattle with him,” Jim remembers. “We used to haul cattle to auction out here at 19th Avenue and Buckeye Road. I hauled lots of cattle over the old Bush Highway. I was delivering cattle in Globe once when I met Connie, and we married. We were married two years, and the first set of twins came along.”
Connie and Jim’s two sets of twin boys, Bill and Joe, and Jim and Harry, were born six years apart at Gisela. Ranch life was not easy, but Connie loved it. With a growing family and a ranch to pay off, Jim frequently took construction jobs driving heavy equipment to help pay the bills. “I didn’t like the city, so it didn’t bother me to be out on the ranch by myself.” Connie said. “A lot of times he had to go off to work and I’d be there by myself but I wasn’t bored. You don’t get bored on a ranch. There’s always things to do. I thought it was fun. Hard work but fun. We didn’t have babysitters. The kids always went with us so they had fun. We all had fun…and we never got snake bit. I was more afraid of the snakes than anything.”
“After we moved to 76 (ranch), I was afraid of the scorpions cuz up there on the mountain they had some big ones. They’d be on the ceiling and fall on me. I didn’t like them too much. But the kids grew up to enjoy themselves. They didn’t have TV. We didn’t have TV. We didn’t have any of that stuff,” she said.
Connie raised a few pigs, learned to irrigate with siphons or with a tarp, and took care of the cattle when Jim was away. The boys have always helped on the ranch, and the tradition continues. The entire family lives and works on the ranch. Jim likes to say that he was an only child and Connie just had one brother, but now their family populated most of Tonto Basin.
While they were in Gisela, Jim was contacted by the University of Arizona to do some experimental work, testing seed at the ranch at Rye. They grew sunflowers and had a grinder where they would grind the seed. What wasn’t ground was fed to the cattle. They also grew milo and oats. They had a combine and sacked the oats. Connie remembers her days sewing the burlap sacks with needles and string.
Jim and Connie bought the 76 Ranch around 1958 and lived there until it was sold in 1969. Then, they moved to the H4 Ranch at Jake’s Corner in Tonto Basin. Across from their place, there was a stage stop offering transportation from Payson to Globe in a large buggy called a hike. The trip was a two-day affair: one day down, an overnight stay, and home again the next day. The stage would make stops along the route, dropping off passengers and mail.
Connie reminisces that the family has always enjoyed living at the H4. “It was kind of a fun place because the ranch part of it was on a lot of big steep mountains. Every time we had company, they wanted to go on the mountain. We had to pack them back in there and ensure they didn’t get on a horse that would buck ‘em off. And then all four boys enjoyed their life there because they knew every rock under there and had lots of wildlife and stuff. We had line camps up there. They’d come home from school on Friday, and I’d have their horses saddled up, and they’d go up and meet their dad, and then they’d stay the weekend. He’d send them home Sunday night, and they’d be ready to go to school again. The boys helped their dad work cattle while they were there.”
Both ranches were on creeks, and Jim had always worked on flood control projects. Today, the H4 is run by the boys and their families, and the conservation work has been passed on to Bill and his wife Lori, who are working with the Livestock Conservation (National Conservation Resource Service) NCRS.
The NCRS monitors the moisture on the ranch. The Browns set up tubes to see how much rainfall they get. They check range conditions by measuring the grasslands to check dry weeds and ragweed. They are also participating in a watershed project.
Although Bill and Lori handled the project, Jim and Connie were very involved. Jim runs the heavy equipment while working on the water lines, and Connie feeds the gang. Everyone loves seeing her wagon coming because they know a good meal is coming.
The Browns have added between 25 and 30 watering areas on public land that they lease from the Forest Service. By installing 10,000-gallon storage tanks and running pipelines in areas formerly unusable, they are leaving a conservation heritage in the Tonto Basin that will live on for years to come.
