Arizona Daily Star from Tucson, Arizona • Page F032

PAGE 32 ARIZONA AT 100 SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 2011 ARIZONA DAILY STAR THEY WENT WEST TO RANCH SCHOOLS I 1 ft tric plant purring smoothly, or building a cattle gate and guard, or clearing ground for some community project or, perhaps, branding a calf or packing a horse for a trek into Mexico," the Star said. At the Evans school, which claimed its 1902 founding made it the oldest in the Southwest, each boy owned his mount. They held rodeos, played polo and went on pack-trips into the mountains almost every weekend. Arizona also had a few ranch schools for girls. What we now know as Hacienda del Sol Guest Ranch Resort opened in 1929 as a "home away from home" for girls.

The resort said its students included "some of the country's most elite families: Vanderbilt, Pillsbury, Maxwell, Westinghouse, and Campbell, to name a few." Today, a national directory of boarding-ranch schools lists four in Arizona. Arizona Daily Star. Arizona ranch schools put their own spin on the boarding-school experience. Some wealthy families sent sickly sons west to recover their health. Other parents believed the ranch lifestyle would teach their boys to be competitive and accountable.

The Star described the Fresnal Ranch school southwest of Tucson thusly in 1937: "Founded on Arizona's traditions and using the American cowboy as a symbol of self-reliance and courage, the ranch school gives its 3 0 boys each year more than just "book larnin' required for them to pass college-entrance board examinations. It gives them equipment for meeting and participating in life Fresnal boys spent mornings in classrooms; "afternoons those are the fun times are spent chasing truant cattle on horseback, or helping to keep the elec- ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY 100125 Boys and instructors on horseback at the Evans School in 1938. JOHN F. KENNEDY'S MONTHS AS AN ARIZONA RANCH HAND WHEN DUDES ROAMED THE RANGE: I II I I SN I IIAI I A Al ITAT AAllAlirA A I laUta KANlrnto LIVIINu Kan Arizona Daily Star. There's plenty of argument about when and who started the first guest ranches in Arizona, but there's no doubt they reached their heyday when the emphasis was on the word "guest." Many started out as working ranches whose owners decided to improve their year-round cash flow by taking in visitors willing to rough it.

That didn't last. Advertisements from 1948 promised moonlight picnics, croquet, heat- According to historian Michael O'Brien in his book "John F. Kennedy: A Biography," it was the first paying job either brother held. They received a dollar a day and worked six days a week over four months, he wrote. (Other sources say they stayed two months, received nothing more than room and board, and also built corrals and helped with the cattle.) Work wasn't the only thing the future president did out West.

O'Brien quotes a letter Kennedy wrote to a friend in which he describes in crude terms a visit to a Nogales whorehouse. Arizona Daily Star. Joseph Kennedy got it into his mind in 1936 that his two oldest boys would benefit from manual labor in a good climate. Through a friend, he found out about the J-6 Ranch near Benson. The younger of the two sons, John, was just about to turn 19 and had recently spent time in a Boston hospital while doctors figured out whether he had leukemia.

John and Joe Jr. headed out to Arizona, where John G.F. Speiden put them to work on a crew building adobe offices on his ranch. by the week, and the price included meals and horses. Today, the Metropolitan Tucson Convention Visitors Bureau lists nine guest ranches in Southern Arizona: Tanque Verde, Hacienda del Sol, Rancho de la Osa, White Stallion, Sunglow, Price Canyon, Triangle Apache Spirit andElkhorn.

Some promote themselves as places for weddings and corporate retreats. Others offer spa services and wireless Internet. And horses, of course. ed pools, hayrides, songs around open fires, tennis, golf, polo, badminton, air-conditioned rooms and well- stocked cocktail bars Eastern dudes who wanted the real West could ride "gentle" horses and hunt anything from quail to deer. Most guest ranches became a resort version of summer camps for kids.

It's what the customers wanted, and by the late 1940s, Southern Arizona boasted upward of 100 guest ranches. Many charged.