Senator Hardt and Rose Mofford

August Valentine “Bill” Hardt was a champion of rural Arizona, a hardworking long-time legislator who got things done. After a variety of jobs, including vacuum cleaner salesman, road grader, underground miner, and sporting goods store owner, Hardt entered local politics in the 1950s and the state legislature in the 1960s. Eventually, he dedicated more than thirty years of service to Arizona’s rural citizens. He claimed that a guardian angel sent him to Arizona instead of California, and those who have benefited from his legislation would agree.

The Early Days…
Hardt was born in 1906 on a farm in south central Texas, on the outskirts of Hondo, just west of SanAntonio. His grandparents on both sides were part of a large wave of German immigrants who came to the Republic of Texas in the early 1840s, back when it was still an independent nation. Their farm wasn’t that far from Mexico, so Hardt said by his first day of school he spoke more German and Spanish than he did English. In his autobiography, what he remembered most was the hard work: chopping weeds, pulling cotton,milking cows, feeding chickens the work was dawn to dusk and never done. Even when he was young, Hardt thought to himself, “I want to get away from all of this and do something else.”

As he showed a talent for studies, Hardt was sent off to live with various aunts and uncles so that he could go to high school. He did well in school, and even won a prize in a speech contest. After high school, Hardt got a job at a San Antonio laundry. He played right field for the company baseball team, alongside a young soldier named Dizzy Dean. Of course, Dizzy went on to become a star pitcher for the Cardinals, Cubs, and Browns, and then one of the country’s most popular sports announcers from the 1940s through the 1960s. From there, Hardt used his gift for gab to sell vacuum cleaners door to door in Colorado and Nebraska. In his autobiography, Hardt said that was an important phase of his life, because that’s when he changed his name.

One day he went for a walk and wound up at a free dinner and show for young people at the Methodist church. Hardt said when he told him he was from Texas and his name was August Hardt, the M.C. shouted, “No, no Texan is named August. This is Wild Bill Hardt from Texas,” like the cowboy movie star William S. Hart. The name caught on with all his new friends, so he figured, “why not?” and started signing his name A. V. “Bill” Hardt, much to the surprise of his German kinfolk back in Texas.

Working the CCC camps…

Not long after that, the Great Depression hit, and no one was buying; so Hardt headed back to San Antonio. Walking down a Bandera street one day in Bandera, Texas, he said a “guardian angel” walked up to him and told him about the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps. Hardt enlisted on April 20th, 1933. Everyone thought they were going to California, but when the train got to the station at Bowie, Arizona, the orders had changed. They were transferred to a smaller train, and were on their way to Globe. Their first camp was at the J. K. Ranch, near Pinto Creek, about ten miles from Miami. The Miami camp was a mixture of local and out-of-town boys who worked with shovels, trucks, and bulldozers to create ForestService roads in the White Mountains. That summer they were moved to Los Burros Camp, near Pinetop. Hardt said the town had six saloons and two dance halls, and a permanent population was not much more than twenty. The new camp was headquarters for the “cat skinners” who operated caterpillar tractors. One Sunday, some of the CCC young men decided they’d go to Sunday school in McNary, and that’s where Hardt met his wife, Athia. After their first meeting, the young Texan said she managed to show up everywhere he went. Soon afterwards, they got married in Holbrook, and the newlyweds spent their honeymoon at the Wigwam Motel. When working on roads got too cold, a friend told Hardt that the mines were hiring in Globe.

Coming to Globe…

Bill Hardt in front of his Unique Sporting Goods Store which was a fixture in downtown Globe for nearly 30 years.

After staying in a boarding house in Lower Miami, Hard cashed his first check, rented a house on Mesquite Street, and sent for his wife and their new daughter, Kathy. They were out of the cold, but a layoff at the mines now threatened their livelihood. Hardt had a lot of ambition though, and was sharp enough to land on his feet every time. This time it was an unusual opportunity for a man who would eventually win many awards for public service. Even as a teenager, Hardt said he could I could never pass up a bet. So when Globe Smoke House owner Tom Wanslee offered a job as a card dealer, it seemed only natural to take what he could get. Soon he was making more than he had as mucker at the mine, and was able to send for Athia, who had been sent to her parents’ home in McNary after the layoff. Now she would bring their daughters Kathy, and a new arrival, three-week-old Hazel Jo to their home in Globe. Not long after that, Hardt got a letter from Inspiration Copper inviting him back. He was doing so well as a dealer he almost turned them down, but Wanslee convinced him that dealing cards was no job for a family man. Hardt soon got promoted to timber man at the mines, building support frames for underground tunnels, and even got trapped in a cave-in once. The next time the Inspiration mine shut down, the now-skilled Hardt was able to go right to work for the Miami Copper Company.

Hardt began working on contract with Miami, which meant long hours, but lots more profit. By 1946 he was earning top wages, plus bonuses. Hardt’s namesake, August Valentine Hardt Jr., was born in 1940, followed by the youngest Hardt, Athia Lee, in 1948. Away from work, Hardt bought a lot and hired a crew to help him build a house at 1089 Oak Street. Bill’s gaunt appearance prompted the head of mine operations,a British “Cousin Jack” named Joe Harris, to warn Hardt that he was in danger of working himself to death.Once again, Hardt got a lucky break. He overheard someone balk at the price for Wanslee’s place, and snapped it up before the original buyer could make up his mind. Then he bought the nearby barber shop and beauty parlor, and even started a loan business, but eventually the card games and pool tables gave way to sporting goods. Hardt said he had always been an ardent fisherman and big game hunter, and his idea to sell equipment and supplies was “an instant hit.” He opened Unique Sporting Goods where the store the Unique Loan Company had been. Hardt said that from the day he opened in 1953, the sporting goods store never failed to grow, so he dropped the other businesses to focus on the best enterprise.
By that time, Hardt had been getting a lot of experience with public speaking from his involvement in the Lions Club, Knights of Pythias, Oddfellows, and Elks. The club men were community leaders, and Hardt said that when he was elected mayor, five of the six city councilmen were members of the Pythian Order. Hardt got into politics in the late 1950s because of his ability to work out differences among Gila County Democrats. He was elected to the Globe City Council in 1958, and the council asked him to run for mayor in 1960. Public services were his main concern, taking action to ensure an adequate water supply for Globe. After eight years in Globe politics, Hardt ran for the Arizona House of Representatives. The Democrats had a strong organization in Gila County, and he said his daughter Athia Lee worked hard in the Young Democrats. When Senator Clarence Carpenter passed away, Hardt ran for his seat in District 4, and remained there for almost three decades. John Gregovich was the mining companies’ favorite in that election, but he dropped out and Hardt won. Writing about Gregovich in his autobiography, Hardt said, “He was a real gentleman, not a rough-neck like me.”

Bill Hardt and Mo Udall

At this time many people became concerned about living conditions and health issues of the farm workers. Hardt said more active Democrats often had to team up against old line party leaders, such as Senator Harold Giss, in order to pass socially responsible legislation.Voters kept sending him back to the Capitol, and Hardt eventually became chairman of the Senate Appropriations committee. There he worked hard to pass bills for new prisons and dams in rural areas, as well as funding for jobs for young people in the summer. Hardt remembered one time when Governor Bruce Babbitt got very angry with him. “He called me a ‘stubborn old bastard’ and almost ran out of the office. Fifteen minutes later, he was back. He just stuck his head in the door and yelled, ‘I mean that respectfully, sir.’” Hardt had a reputation as being a fighter for the rural areas, especially for jobs and improvements. Hardt’s move to put prisons in rural counties was unheard of at that time. It met with opposition, but he persevered, and Winslow was the first to benefit. The former Route 66 town had fallen on hard times when Interstate 40 bypassed them, and the railroad closed their offices there. He also helped his home town of Globe with a correction center. Hardt was proud of his accomplishments, saying, “I’m happy to have taken part in bringing forth these economic benefits.”

Cartoon by Az Republic cartoonist, Steve Benson, upon Hardt's retirement at age 90.

According to Hardt, the most important legislation he was able to pass relieved homeowners from taxation.Finally, after several failed attempts, he changed the wording so that it only applied to those over 65 and with limited incomes. It still failed several times, but when Tucson Senator Douglas Holsclaw and others from the Republican majority began to back it, the bill finally passed in 1980.

In addition, Hardt helped increase rural employment by funding Shoen Dam to prevent flooding in Navajo County, repairing Lyman Dam and River Lake Dam in Apache County, and providing financial aid to help rural counties pay for AHCCCS (state health care). As an avid sportsman, he also supported game and fish projects throughout his legislative career, and acquired funding for colleges in Payson and Thatcher. A team player, Hardt acknowledged the mutual support of representatives Polly Rosenbaum, Jack Brown, and “Bunchie” Guerrero, among others, who all worked on each others’ bills to get them passed. At times, his Democratic colleagues may have wondered about the accolades he received from Republican legislators, “but they also know that I never voted against any of their bills that were reasonable, and I always stood with the Democrats on every bill when they took a caucus stand,” Hardt said.
During Hardt’s last term in the legislature, Rusty Bowers was commissioned by the Arizona Mining Association, to do a bronze bust of Senator Bill Hardt and placed it on the third floor of the Senate building. But perhaps the highest honor, the one that would keep his name forever in the minds of those in he served, came in 2004. That is when the stretch of Highway 188 between U.S. Highway 60 and State Route 87 was officially named Senator Hardt Highway. The dedication ceremonies were attended by former Governor Rose Mofford and longtime Arizona legislator Polly Rosenberg, then 102 years old. By the time he passed away in 2001, Hardt’s life spanned the most rapidly changing time in U.S. history, from the beginning of the industrial era, through two world wars and the Great Depression, to man walking on the moon. He held a wide variety of jobs and positions, and was never afraid of a hard day’s work. “Having worked in the lumber camps, the copper mines and finally my own business, the Unique Sporting Goods store in Globe, gave me an insight that helped me to relate to the needs of the people of my district,” Hardt said when he retired in 1996, taking with him the title that fit him best, “Mr. Rural Arizona.”

By Arizona Historian Jim Turner and Pioneer Newsman George H. Smalley

Several years ago I had the good fortune to interview Mrs. Yndia Smalley Moore, born in Tucson in 1902, and former Director of the Arizona Historical Society. She told me many stories about her father, George H. Smalley, who was District Clerk in Globe from 1905 through 1912.

A typical prospector is shown here in "camp." Circa late 1800's about the same time period as George Smalley's article. Photo courtesy of Gila County Historical Museum

Lung problems forced Smalley to move to Arizona in 1896. Like many other authors exiled to the Southwest for their health, Smalley got a job as a reporter. He covered the mining beat for the Phoenix Republican, but wrote stories for St. Louis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco newspapers. Mark Twain and Bret Harte made Wild West stories popular, and Smalley kept up the tradition with down-to-earth stories of cowboys, prospectors, and even outlaws he met in his travels across Arizona and Mexico.

Interstate 17 from Phoenix to Flagstaff is full of interesting signs denoting our Old West prospecting past, with colorful names such as Bumblebee, Bloody Basin, and Big Bug Creek. Smalley’s holiday tale takes place in a silver mining camp about 20 miles southwest of Prescott in the Bradshaw Mountains. No need to change a word of it, this is how he wrote it more than a century ago, typed verbatim from yellowed newspaper columns pasted on faded construction paper at the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson.

________

Santa Claus Arrived There Two Days Ahead of Time

By George H. Smalley

_________

Big Bug, Arizona, Dec. 23, 1898  –  Santa Claus arranged his dates so as to arrive at Big Bug Creek two days ahead of time. He did this purposely to accommodate the schoolteacher of the camp, Miss Clay Henshaw, a Phoenix young lady. Miss Henshaw had previously won the hearts of all the miners in the camp, and it is not strange that Santa Claus succumbed to her charms and slid down off the Bradshaws a couple of days early.

There was excitement the entire length of the creek as I rode into camp last night. Miners were bringing their families down the trails from their homes perched on the mountainside. The lanterns they carried threw gigantic shadows across the gulch and my horse was in a constant state of terror. It was with difficulty that I ever reached the camp at all. The miners were coming down from their homes to attend the Christmas festivities, and the gulch rang out joyous echoes as the young rushed toward the schoolhouse yelling their ovation to Santa Claus. On the road, a procession of miners dressed in their best togs moved toward the schoolhouse. Everywhere were figures moving in the dark and my bronco tried to recognize each shadow with a toss of his body that would be called bucking in some countries.

“Hurrah for Santa Claus!” yelled the kids, and each one tried to make as much noise as he could so that Santa Claus would have no trouble in locating Big Bug Creek. The little fellows ran up and down the narrow camp street, scaring the horses and making the dogs bark. The kids were determined that he should not escape, and the echoes of the gulches repeated the sounds and sent them over the hills and snow banks as if they, too, were lending their power to attract the white whiskered man and his fleet-footed four-in-hand reindeers.

The snow on the mountains, the whistling of the wind in the pines, and the cold made it seem like Christmas Eve. All that was needed was the presence of Santa Claus. As I rode into camp, the kids thought I was he. I am not surprised that my horse was mistaken for a reindeer, for he pranced excitedly as the band of boys approached.  At the one restaurant in the camp I was informed that I could not get supper because the cook and waiter were making preparations to attend the “doings” at the schoolhouse. I tried to bribe the cook, but she was true to her Santa Claus. The corral man kindly directed me to a store where I might get a lunch of sardines and crackers. The storekeeper’s wife made a pot of tea to go with the meal and take away the chill.

As I sat down to eat there was a renewal of the ovation to Santa Claus outside, and presently Deputy Sheriff Johns rode into camp. His great mustache was white with frost, and snow clung to his spurs and boots. I asked the deputy sheriff where he was going to sleep and he said he knew where there was a stack of hay. There was not an empty bed in the camp, so I made up my mind to follow Deputy Sheriff Johns to the haystack.

The big schoolhouse was filled with miners and their families, and the wooden benches were crowded soon after the doors of the house were thrown open to the visitors. The little ones who were to take part in the entertainment were seated on the front benches. Sometimes the room broke out in loud whispers as some little fellow discovered a drum hidden in the branches of the big Christmas tree, which took up a large portion of the room. Some precocious youth set the alarm on the wall clock to ring at 8 o’clock, and this started the crowd laughing. A little dog that was resting near the big box stove jumped to his feet and turned to look at the clock, and Santa Claus entered amid the disturbance. The young folk jumped to their feet and greeted him, and old Santa danced down the aisle with the most approved rag-time step.

Before the presents were distributed the school children performed under the direction of Miss Henshaw.  Mrs. Carpenter, who was well known in Phoenix as Miss Maggie Williscroft, assisted the teacher and took part in a pantomime performance, which was interesting. After the tree was unloaded, the house was cleared for dancing. This pleasure was enjoyed by a large number until after midnight. The Christmas festivities in Big Bug will long be remembered.

“You have to ask me questions, or I can’t remember things.” That’s what Yndia Roca Smalley Moore told me after one of our first taping sessions. She was born in Tucson in 1902, but lived in Globe in its heyday, from 1905 until 1912. We began our Thursday afternoon oral history chats when she was 93, and for an Arizona historian like me it was a dream come true, like taking a Sunday drive into the past with your favorite grandmother, listening to Yndia’s eyewitness accounts of Arizona history in the making.

You could tell by the way her eyes twinkled when she talked that her years in Globe were some of the best parts of Yndia’s very full life. Tucson was still a frontier town back then, and it still had much of its Old World Spanish culture. But Globe City, the rough-edged mining camp, was a much more exciting place for a kid to grow up. Yndia had her favorite memories, and was a delightful story teller. You could tell she enjoyed telling the stories as much as we listeners loved hearing them.

When talking about Globe, she usually started off with the story about her father George reading a letter from his father back in Minnesota. In the days before radio and TV, singing around the piano and reading letters at the dinner table were popular forms of entertainment.

A hanging crowd-Globe Az courtesty of Gila Historical Museum

“It says here Aunt Susie died,” George read one evening when Yndia was about four or five years old. “Oh, who shot her?” she asked. It seemed like no one ever died any other way in Globe in those days.

George Smalley’s father was a newspaperman, and he was in the business for many years himself. He met Yndia’s mother, Lydia Roca, when he was an investigating mining reporter for the Phoenix Republican. Lydia came from a prominent Chilean-Mexican merchant family who opened their first store in Tucson in 1864.  The Smalleys were one of thousands of multicultural families that helped settle the West. George came to Phoenix for his health in 1896 and became a reporter, editor, and eventually publisher of the Tucson Post.

After serving as secretary to territorial governor and former Rough Rider Alexander Brodie, Smalley When President Theodore Roosevelt selected Rough Rider Alexander Brodie to be Arizona’s territorial governor, Smalley was appointed clerk of the newly-created Fifth Judicial District.

“Of course, no one ever died a natural death in Globe,” Yndia said. “There was always a shooting. I remember my father coming home and telling about these things, you know.”

She said that most of her best stories begin, “one time when my parents were out of town . . .” One of those trips, Yndia’s nursemaid (Mattie) told her that if she was a good girl, instead of her afternoon nap she would take her to a hanging that took place behind the courthouse, next to St. John’s Episcopal Church.

“Well, I couldn’t wait,” Yndia said. “I was so excited, because Mattie made it sound exciting.  And so she dressed me all up and down we went to the hanging.  And, oh, there was a lot of singing and everything and I thought it was wonderful.”

“It wasn’t depressing; it was sort of fun because all these Negroes were there singing, and shouting hallelujah.  Of course they were mourning, probably, but I thought they were having a great time; at least I was having a good time.  I wasn’t afraid at all,” Yndia said. Yndia said that as a reward for being well-behaved she got to carry home a swatch of the hanging victim’s hair!

Lydia Smalley was devastated when she found out her little girl had witnessed such a gruesome event, and asked Yndia if she was scared. “Why would I be frightened?” Yndia said. “There was that figure dangling at the end of a rope, but I didn’t connect it at all.”

Not long ago, I walked around behind the courthouse. When it comes to historic atmosphere, Globe ranks right up there with Florence, Bisbee, and even Tombstone. I bet no little girl has seen a hanging in Globe for more than a century; I’m sure lucky to have talked to one that did.

By Jim Turner, Arizona Historian

Whatever happened to Globe? From prehistoric times to the 1960s, the mining towns of Globe, Miami, and Superior played an important part in Arizona’s history. In the months to come we will tap the history books, as well as diaries, memoirs, and even legends, to unearth these buried treasures from an area that used to be much more well known.

Getting down to basics, Arizona history is about water, minerals, and Apaches. In prehistoric times the most important of that trio was water. Anthropologists, like realtors, believe that there are three important items that make for a perfect home: location, location, location. Since much of Arizona is semi-desert, water supply is a key item in settlement patterns. The largest native populations in the state lived near water and it is no accident that the Hohokam and later the Salado cultures thrived in the Globe-Miami area. It would be hundreds of years before Europeans started to search the Southwest for something more valuable to them than water.

The California Gold Rush of 1849 had more impact on mass migration, the world economy, and society than any other single event before or since the discovery at Sutter’s Mill. Not only did it foster the first big joint-stock corporations and fund the Industrial Revolution, it also shifted the minds and souls of the common man from a rural-agrarian homespun religious base to a get-rich quick materialistic focus.

When the gold “panned out” in California, a large backwash of prospectors headed east to strike it rich in Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona. Gila County’s silver and copper deposits figured largely in the state’s mining history.

But metallic riches brought Anglos into an area already populated and as renowned historian Robert Utley said, there was bound to be a “conflict of cultures.” The struggles of the people we know as Apache make Arizona’s history different than any other state; the Globe-Miami area was right in the middle of the earliest action just after the Civil War. A few years later ranchers prospered in relative safety after General Crook enlisted Apache scouts to track down the resisters and put them on reservations.

Globe is so much a part of the legendary Wild West that Ed Schieffelin – whose fame began when he found his Tombstone silver mine – and even Billy the Kid walked its dirt streets in the 1870s. There were the usual robbers, posses, and lynchings, but also things the movies usually ignore, such as Chinese, Cornish, and Welsh immigrants. But by the turn of the century the frontier era was just about over and people began to arrive for still other reasons.

Copper was king and cattle ran a not-so-close second. But once the railroads and automobiles arrived another of Arizona’s “Five C’s” – Climate – drew people to Globe and Miami. The Fred Harvey Company offered “Indian Detours” along the Apache Trail, the fresh air attracted Healthseekers, and the lake created by the Theodore Roosevelt Dam brought fisherman, boaters, and campers.

In the weeks that come, this column will feature stories about the importance of the Globe-Miami area to Arizona history from the earliest residents, through statehood, to “the future of our history.” We’ll talk about the famous personalities that made the area unique, from Indian scouts Al Sieber and Corydon Cooley to the salt of the earth ranchers and lawmen that left their legacy in memoirs and letters to their loved ones Back East. Whether you’re a pioneer descendent or relative newcomer, we think you’ll find these stories educating and entertaining.