John & Jack Ladd
John & Jack Ladd
Bisbee - Cochise County
Inducted in 2020
Jack Ladd and his son John own the San Jose Ranch that runs ten miles along the Arizona/Mexico border south of Bisbee near Naco. Both are committed conservationists and have received awards for conservation practices on their ranch.
John’s great-grandparents, Walter and Lydia Fike, arrived in Arizona Territory from Missouri in 1894. They settled in Bisbee where Walter worked as a geologist for a mining company. The couple purchased a homestead south of Bisbee from Peter Johnson. The homestead included a hand dug well and in 1896 the family established the San Jose Dairy. There were sixteen dairies in the area but Fike’s was the largest; employing fifty men. They put up their own feed and the milk was taken by horse and wagon into Bisbee. The family was there when Pancho Villa and his men attacked Naco during the Mexican Revolution.
Walter served as a Justice of the Peace and he and Lydia were parents of seven children. He had arrived in Arizona suffering from lung problems and died three or four years after arriving in Arizona Territory. Lydia continued to successfully operate the dairy after her husband’s death and her children began establishing homesteads in the same area. Many of the workers also had homesteads and when they left the area Lydia obtained them.
Lydia’s youngest daughter Frances stayed on the ranch with her mother. She married Charlie Walker, the Wells Fargo agent in Bisbee. The couple became parents of five children and purchased a house in Bisbee so the children could attend school and participate in activities in town.
In the late 1920’s Lydia had discontinued the dairy and stocked the ranch with beef cattle purchased from Mexico. During the Depression, her daughter Frances and husband Charlie raised horses and had a riding stable for area residents at the ranch. In the 1940’s, the Walker’s acquired ownership of the ranch from other family members. A herd of Hereford cows were purchased from a ranch at Patagonia and driven to Naco. This herd became the nucleus of a fine commercial herd of Hereford cows in future years. Frances also joined a soil conservation district and as finances allowed, hired men to build dykes on the property and heal the erosion occurring in Greenbush Draw.
The Walker’s daughter Marie loved the ranch and with the exception of two years at Arizona State University, she refused to live anywhere else. Marie first met future husband Jack Ladd when he was delivering gas to the ranch from his father’s Shell dealership. Jack grew up in Bisbee and joined the ROTC program his senior year at Bisbee High School, serving in WWII. Upon his return he graduated as an engineer from the University of Arizona and went to work for Phelps Dodge. Jack was drafted into the Army during the Korean War. Jack and Marie were married in 1952 and the birth of their son John made their family complete.
Jack says Marie was an excellent rider and prided herself on horsemanship. She had been selected as Queen of the Bisbee Rodeo in 1947. Jack credits Marie with teaching him and John as well as her nieces and nephews how to cowboy on the ranch. Her main interests were the ranch and her family. She loved her white face cows, her horses, and her pet Javelina Susie.
The ranch was 6,000 acres and the Ladds were able to buy back part of the original homestead that an uncle had lost in 1917, increasing the size to 16,400 acres. Sixty percent of the ranch is deeded land and forty percent is state grazing land. It runs ten miles along the border and is three miles wide.
Jack began working with the Hereford Natural Resource Conservation District in brush control practices. The brush control project began in 1967 and 6,000 acres have been cleared. The contract with the National Resource Conservation District allows for cattle to be put back on the area after two growing seasons. With a good rain, the grass can sometimes come up right away.
John graduated from Bisbee High School and attended Cochise College followed by attending Northern Arizona University. While at NAU he met Jo Beth Sims from Phoenix and the couple were married in 1977. They lived in Phoenix for thirteen years and became parents of three sons. While in Phoenix, John went through a Union apprenticeship to become a carpenter and did commercial work. He always wanted to build a high rise and worked his way up to superintendent. John did get to build a high rise before returning to the ranch.
Phelps Dodge transferred Jack to Phoenix and from 1982-1991 he commuted from the ranch to Phoenix. During this time period, Marie was running the ranch while Jack went back and forth to Phoenix in his employment with Phelps Dodge and John was working as a contractor. Jack’s job as Director of Labor Relations at Phelps Dodge collided with his job as a rancher. He was seriously hurt in a fall from a windmill on the ranch during the time he was acting as negotiator in the strike between Phelps Dodge and the Unions. After five weeks in Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, he returned to the negotiations using a walker or his crutches. Jack worked for Phelps Dodge for 39 years, nine of them commuting to Phoenix, retiring in 1991. He has been a full-time rancher for the last twenty-eight years.
In 1991, John and his family moved back to the ranch. A bull, Woody, was purchased from Lee Wood and was the beginning of the ranch’s cross-bred herd. The herd was built up with Angus and Brahma bulls on Hereford cows. The Brahma Hereford cross produced F1 heifers and black bulls were put on these heifers. The ranch was divided into nine pastures and for a time the cattle were rotated between pastures and round-up was an easy affair. With all the illegal border crossers, fences are continually cut and gates left open so it is no longer possible to rotate between pastures. The three-mile width of the ranch makes the area attractive to illegal border crossers, particularly those with heavy drug loads, as crossing those three miles gets them quickly to Highway 92 that runs between Sierra Vista and Bisbee.
Marie passed away in December 2012. There are four houses on the San Jose Ranch. John and Jo Beth live in one, Jack and wife Margaret in another and cousins in the remaining two houses.
John is active in the Arizona Cattle Growers’ Association, currently serving as 2nd Vice-President. For many years he has served on the Border Working Group for the association. In addition to traveling to Washington, D. C. with Jo Beth to meet with various government officials regarding border issues, they have met with both Federal and State officials at their ranch and in various Arizona locations in Cochise and Santa Cruz Counties. John has been contacted numerous times for interviews by various media outlets around the world and has been interviewed for publications such as Time magazine. He is a professional who works closely with the Governor’s office, the State Land Department and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
John and fellow Cochise County rancher Fred Davis were honored by the Arizona Game and Fish Association for their support and participation in creating a video production for education purposes depicting farmers and rancher’s views regarding hunting, land management, wildlife conservation and sportsmen’s access and associated impacts for recreational uses on private, State and Federal lands. John is featured in Scott Baxter’s photography book celebrating Arizona’s 100th Anniversary – 100 Years, 100 Ranchers.
The completion of the Horseshoe Draw Erosion Control Project on the San Jose Ranch won a prestigious Arizona Association of Counties (AACo) award for Cochise County. San Jose Ranch has two conservation easements and a BLM easement protecting the San Pedro. 3 generations – Frances Walker, Jack and John Ladd have worked with the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture with proven conservation practices.
Jo Beth has retired as a speech pathologist with the Sierra Vista School District. She and John’s three sons are grown and live off the ranch. Justin works for Arizona Game and Fish in Habitat Restoration; Kenny is a brewer at Kona Brewery in Hawaii. Randy is with Smith Pipe and Steel while his wife Libby is a recruiter for Arizona State University. They are parents of Jack Truman and Owen. Justin and Randy are often at the ranch and with grandsons Jack Truman and Owen, they are the fifth and sixth generation to carry on the ranching tradition of the San Jose Ranch.
Affiliations
John Ladd
Arizona State Journeyman Carpenter
Chairman – Hereford Natural Resource Conservation District
2nd Vice-President – Cochise-Graham Cattle Growers Association
2nd Vice-President – Arizona Cattle Growers Association
Co-Chair of Border Working Group – Az Cattle Growers Association
2018-2019 Executive Committee Member-at-Large – Az Cattle Growers Association
Involved with border issues in Washington D.C. and Arizona on both a State and Federal level.
Honored by Arizona Game and Fish
Cochise County Sheriff’s Ranch Advisory Team
Jack Ladd
Graduate – University of Arizona
Military Veteran – WWII and Korea
Member – Hereford Natural Resource Conservation District
Appointed Board of Supervisors – 1991
President – Coronado RC&D 1999 Tri-County Study of Sustaining & Enhancing Riparian
Migratory Bird Habitation on the Upper San Petro River
NRCD Representative on the Upper San Pedro Partnership Advisory Committee
Conservation Heritage Award from Hereford NRCD
