Ft. Grant, that nestles in a grove of cotton trees at the foot of
Mt. Graham, the noblest mountain in southern Arizona.

The Sierra Bonita ranch is situated in the famous Sulphur Spring valley
in Cochise County, Arizona, which is, perhaps, the only all grass
valley in the Territory. The valley is about twenty miles wide and
more than one hundred miles long and extends into Mexico. Its waters
drain in opposite directions, part flowing south into the Yaqui river,
and part running north through the Aravaipa Canon into the Gila and
Colorado rivers, all to meet and mingle again in the Gulf of California.

Fine gramma grass covers the entire valley and an underground river
furnishes an inexhaustible supply of good water. In the early days of
overland travel before the country was protected or any of its
resources were known, immigrants, who were bound for California by the
Southern route and ignorant of the near presence of water, nearly
perished from thirst while crossing the valley.

The water rises to within a few feet of the surface and, since its
discovery, numerous wells have been dug and windmills and ranch houses
dot the landscape in all directions; while thousands of cattle feed and
fatten on the nutritious gramma grass. Its altitude is about four
thousand feet above the sea and the climate is exceptionally fine.

The Sierra Bonita ranch is located on a natural cienega of moist land
that has been considerably enlarged by artificial means. In an average
year the natural water supply of the ranch is sufficient for all
purposes but, to guard against any possible shortage in a dry year,
water is brought from the mountains in ditches that have been
constructed at great labor and expense and is stored in reservoirs, to
be used as needed for watering the cattle and irrigating the fields.
The effect of water upon the desert soil is almost magical and even
though the rains fail and the earth be parched, on the moist land of
the cienega the fields of waving grass and grain are perennially green.

The owner has acquired by location and purchase, title to several
thousand acres of land, that is all fenced and much of it highly
cultivated. It consists of a strip of land one mile wide and ten miles
long, which is doubly valuable because of its productiveness and as the
key that controls a fine open range.

The original herd of cattle that pastured on the Sierra Bonita ranch
thirty years ago was composed of native scrub