Paul Felix
Florence - Pinal County
Inducted in 2010
Paul Felix fondly recalls his grandfather's camaraderie with the Indian community living on the reservation, a testament to the family's deep roots in the local community. "They were people that didn't have too much, and my grandfather used to help them out in any way he could. The Apache, the Pimas, and the Papagos (now Tohono O'odamO'odham) were very pleasant." He said, "The folks used to know the old-timers. They used to stop by and visit with them, and they used to go to the reservation and visit. The reservation's only two miles right there. That's all Pima reservation."
Recognizing the need for education in the area, Felix’s grandfather, Jesus, donated land and built a one-room schoolhouse. Despite the county's financial constraints, he ensured that the school had teachers, even volunteering for some women who had received a college education. The nuns from Florence also came to teach catechism to the children from neighboring farms. That worked fine until a tornado picked up the building and moved it about a mile away. Not one to be defeated by something as trivial as a tornado, Jesus and his son started all over, once again having to deal with the lack of county funds to hire teachers.
Felix raised Hereford cattle and farmed. "The ranch was a pretty good size, so they had plenty of cowboys.” They used to have a commissary. My mom and some of the aunts would cook tortillas and tamales. They had food for all the cowboys, so when we had a cattle drive, they'd take off across the desert right through San Tan and straight to the capital. They had some salt cedars right around there. They'd park all their wagons right there. Then they'd take their cattle and go down, I don't know if it was Washington or one of those streets, and go to the far side of Phoenix," Paul said. The drive would end at the Tovrea ranch. "(They'd) make their sale and then they'd come back and pick up the wagons and go by Hayden Flour Mills and pick up the flour and sugar." The drive was made about two or three times a year.
Jesus split the ranch between his four sons, Salvador, Pedro, Juan, and Manuel, around 1926 and moved to a house in Florence. Paul's father, John, was the first farmer in Pinal County to raise cotton on his share of the property. "At that time, there wasn't any cotton, so he'd plant it like you do barley. No rows." Paul remembers making harvesting the fields difficult but still got about a bale to an acre. He said, "All of it was long staple. They grew like trees. There were big, big plants."
When Jesus first came to the area, water was plentiful, but in later years, drought and heavier usage presented problems. He dug a shallow well to supplement the irrigation water harvested from the Gila River in the 1880s. Today, that well is dry, but in 1954, Paul initiated a permit from the State to drill a well to supplement their water supply, allowing more crops to be raised.
Paul planted cotton, barley, wheat, alfalfa, and other crops. "We have other stuff we can grow but can't because there isn't a facility. Sweet potatoes grow well. Safflower grows well, but we can't grow any because we don't have the equipment. We'd have to ship it elsewhere, which wouldn't be profitable."
An engineer employed by the USDA's Soil Conservation Service, Paul was responsible for keeping track of the static water, the type of well, what they had hit, and the level at which the well was being dug.
It also fell into Paul's realm to help laser-level nearly all of Pinal County's land. Paul's son Mark, an engineer, has followed in his father's footsteps.
The upgrades in equipment and methods used today have intrigued Paul. "He gets in that truck, and the truck has a panel the same as an airplane. It records distance, elevation, and everything. When he gets through, he can send the information to the office. When it goes in there, it's all ready. Before, we had thousands of figures. We had big maps, and we had to do four surveys. My fingers were pooped from all the writing." he laughs. Paul and Mark have an estimated 50 years of primarily designing irrigation systems. Much of the land leveled in Pinal County and the water savings accomplished during those early years can be attributed to the Felix legacy.
Looking back, Paul realizes how lucky he was to be doing something he loved for so many years. "I worked with a lot of good people. The farmers had problems. They'd come into the office. They'd say, "Here's my pocketbook. Here's what I have. I have these problems, and we'd have to solve them. "It was challenging work, and Paul reveled in it.
Today, the farm has been leased out. "The fellow who farms our place is next door here. He farms everything from Florence to the mountain here to Coolidge."
