Our New Membership Orientation went well and I want to thank everyone for attending. I want to send special thanks to Fry’s Food, 10450 N. La Cañada Dr., Oro Valley and Nothing Bundt Cakes, 7278 N. Oracle Rd., Tucson, AZ 85704 for donating snacks and refreshments for our members at the orientation on December 4th. We hope to have another orientation sometime next year. Come back and check the events calendar for future dates.
We are looking for volunteers for the Second Saturday in December to help at the Steam Pump Ranch for hours between 9:00am – 1:00pm. If you can help volunteer for anytime between those hours, it will be appreciated.
Please help in one of the following areas:
Ranch House Tours – Docents
Selling Water to visitors
Membership solicitation
DATE: December 10, 2016
TIME: 9:00am – 1:00pm
LOCATION: Steam Pump Ranch, 10901 North Oracle Road, Oro Valley, AZ 85737
Please RSVP to me at: jojosamdg@gmail.com
How did the Hohokam (ho-ho-KAHA), build their Pithouse dwellings and make their tools. Archaeology Southwest bring this challenge to Steam Pump Ranch Heritage Garden as accomplished Archaeologists re-erect Honey Bee site Pithouse.
THE FIRST STEAM PUMPS IN ARIZONA – A German emigrant, filled with dreams of becoming a big cattleman, helped solve the problem of a lack of water supply for herds of cattle near Tucson. George Pusch was born in Frankfurt in 1847. After a short stay in New York, he headed west, to Tucson, Arizona. He soon persuaded a young friend from Switzerland, John Zellweger, to join him here. They pooled their resources and in 1874 bought the Steam Pump Ranch on Oracle Road just south of the Canada del Oro crossing. The partners installed the first steam pumps in the territory, pumping water into holding tanks. Ranchers from all over the Arizona Territory brought their cattle herds either to Tucson or Red Rock for shipment back east, and the Steam Pump Ranch was the spot where cattle were watered down the day before they were loaded onto stock cars. Pusch charged 15 cents a head for watering cattle. Ranchers were paid by the pound as the cattle entered the stock cars for their long journey to distant cities and were more than willing to pay. Pusch and Zellweger also had 15,000 head of cattle branded “PZ.” Attorney Henry Zipf, George Pusch’s grandson, tells that mounted Apaches circled his grandfather’s wagon at the Antelope Plains, northwest of Oracle Junction, as the family traveled from the Steam Pump to their ranch on the San Pedro. By Connie Allen Bacon
