Dinner Pocket, Littlefield

Source document Quoted word for word from HALS AZ-3-F. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, Littlefield vicinity, Mohave County, Arizona Dinner Pocket is located on the Shivwits Plateau about 75 miles south of St. George, Utah, in township 30 north, range 11 west, north 1/2 of section 21 (Gila and Salt River Meridian). Its geographic coordinates are latitude longitude (North American Datum of These coordinates represent the southwest corner of the site s cabin.

Source document Quoted word for word from HALS AZ-3-F. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Dinner Pocket is the southernmost in a series of line camps within Waring Ranch, a large cattle-grazing operation on a remote plateau north of the Grand Canyon in the Arizona Strip. J. D. Waring assembled the ranch between about and and operated it with the assistance of foremen and hired cowhands into the late The Dinner Pocket camp, established by rancher William Shanley before at the site of a natural water reservoir, comprises a log house, corrals, and a fenced grazing area adjacent to a natural water reservoir.

Source document Quoted word for word from HALS AZ-3-F. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Dinner Pocket, a component site of Waring Ranch, was documented by the Historic American Landscapes Survey of the Heritage Documentation Programs of the National Park Service. The principals involved were Richard O Connor, Chief of Heritage Documentation Programs; Paul D. Dolinsky, Chief of the Historic American Landscapes Survey; and Jeff Bradybaugh, former Superintendent of Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument. The documentation was produced during the summer of by project supervisor Christopher Stevens, landscape architect, with Anne E. Kidd, architect; Alexander Matsov, architect; and R. Benjamin Lawrence, landscape architect intern. The large-format photography was completed by James Rosenthal. Jet Lowe created the aerial DINNER POCKET HALS AZ-3-F (page 2) photography.

The historical report was written by historian Michael R. Harrison in Related Documentation: For detailed information on specific sites within Waring Ranch, see the following HALS documentation: Waring Ranch, HALS AZ-3 Horse Valley Ranch, HALS AZ-3-A Pine Valley, HALS AZ-3-B Green Springs, HALS AZ-3-C Spencer Camp, HALS AZ-3-D Shanley Camp, HALS AZ-3-E For additional context on historic ranching and economic activity within the boundaries of Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, see: Tassi Ranch and Springs, HALS AZ-2 Pine Ranch, HALS AZ-4 Grand Gulch Mine, HAER AZ-78 PART

Historical Information

Dinner Pocket was one in a series of line camps used by J. D. Waring to operate his ranch on the Kelly Point plateau north of the Grand Canyon. The history of the camp is given below. For a more complete discussion of the natural and historical context of Waring s entire ranch, see the narrative overview in HALS No. AZ-3 (Waring Ranch). The earliest historical reference to the Dinner Pocket appears in the notes of a government surveyor who surveyed the surrounding section of public land in 23. He wrote, There is one settler, William Shanley, who has a house and corral in sec. 21 at head of the canyon, known as Dinner Pocket, and a log and brush fence enclosing a large area East of canyon in secs. 16 and 21 [encompassing about 400 acres].

Shanley s improvements, and a small corral on line bet. secs. 15 and 22 are the only ones in the Township. 1 Shanley, a cattle rancher, built a number of small line cabins and corrals across the southern end of the Shivwits Plateau in the and According to Mack Miller, a former fire lookout at Mount Dellenbaugh interviewed by historian Mike Belshaw in Shanley blasted a trail down to the natural water reservoir at Dinner Pocket so his cattle could reach it from the canyon rim. It was so narrow Shanley would have to prod the cattle down 1 Federal surveyors field notes, Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office, Book pp. 72 73, quoted here from a summary document located in the Waring Ranch files, Grand Canyon- Parashant National Monument headquarters, St. George, Utah.

DINNER POCKET HALS AZ-3-F (page 3) it to the water. Miller also reported that Shanley, who had a reputation for drinking and at one time operated a still with others on the Parashant, maintained a rock house in the canyon where he would go when he was on the dodge. 2 The precise location of this rock house is not known, but two Native American rock shelters stand in the canyon near Dinner Pocket. (See Archeological sites, below.) Although he made improvements there, Shanley did not own the land at Dinner Pocket, and it is unclear how long he used the site. In he quitclaimed his interest in the house, corral, fence, and trail to the Pockets to fellow rancher and sometime partner J. D.

Waring, who since had run cattle out of Horse Valley about 10 miles up the road.3 Waring presumably began to make use of Dinner Pocket as a line camp about this time, although he may have used it earlier in collaboration with Shanley. Actual ownership of the site by this time, however, was held by the Santa Fe Pacific Railroad Company, which had received the 320 acres surrounding Dinner Pocket as part of an 83,486-acre grant from the federal government in When the railroad divested itself of this land in Waring purchased it. He sold it back to the government in for management by the National Park Service as part of Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Since Dinner Pocket has formed part of Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument.4 PART II. PHYSICAL INFORMATION A.

Landscape character and descriptive summary Dinner Pocket sits on the western edge of the narrow Kelly Point Plateau, just at the point where a narrow unnamed side canyon opens down into Green Spring Canyon. Immediately below the canyon point, a cavity in the rock forms a natural reservoir, or pocket, that collects runoff from the plateau. Petroglyphs on the rocks above the pocket demonstrate Native American use of the site, which later became a natural spot for a rancher s camp after white settlers began grazing cattle and sheep in the region. The site is isolated by the adjacent canyon. A single, rocky dirt road connects it to other points on the plateau. B.

Character-defining features 2 Mike Belshaw and Ed Peplow, Historic Resources Study, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada (National Park Service report, Aug. 3 Quitclaim deed from William Shanley to J. D. Waring, Mar. 27, Waring file, Bureau of Land Management Offices, St. George, Utah. 4 Serial Land Patent No. Mar. 20, [Santa Fe Pacific Railroad Co.], Land Entry Files, Records of the Bureau of Land Management (RG National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, Belshaw and Peplow, Historic Resources Study, Santa Fe Pacific Railroad Co., Release beginning Whereas, by deed dated February 1, Waring land files Lake Mead National Recreation Area headquarters, Boulder City, Nev., folder Lands, Waring, part 1 of 2.

The relevant warranty deed for Waring s sale of Dinner Pocket to the federal government appears in Waring land files DINNER POCKET HALS AZ-3-F (page 4) 1. Natural features a. Topography: The site lies at the head of a steep depression that leads down into Green Spring Canyon. The precipitousness of this cliff aside, the site is relatively flat and littered with basalt rocks. b. Vegetation: The site is lightly wooded with Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma) and pinyon pine (Pinus monophylla) trees interspersed with fields of scrub brush, especially big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata), and grasses. Also seen are cholla (Optunia c. Water: The water collected in the natural pocket just below the canyon rim forms the only water source on the site.

Because annual rainfall on the Shivwits Plateau averages 15 or less annually, the pocket is dry for periods of the year.5 2. Designed features a. Land use (spatial organization): Dinner Pocket, as its name implies, was basically a resting spot, with a cabin to shelter in and a corral to keep horses, both placed in close proximity to the water pocket. Although two fences create a large protected zone north of the cabin, it is not clear whether cattle were meant to be confined within this zone or excluded. b. Circulation: Two lines of fencing once controlled the movement of cattle across the Dinner Pocket site. A barbed wire fence marks the site s northern edge. It begins at the canyon edge and runs an indeterminate distance to the east-northeast.

A second, partly collapsed fence made of juniper poles runs in a southerly line from the boundary fence to the corrals, then from the corrals to the north corner of the cabin and finally from the west corner of the cabin to the canyon rim. The triangular area bounded by this fence and canyon rim contains about 2 acres. There are two gates in the barbed-wire fence to either side of where it meets the picket fence, and another gate a short distance to the east where the access road crosses the fence. The road approaches the site from the east but turns south as it passes through the northern fence. After passing the corrals and cabin the road continues southward down the peninsula for 3 miles, where it turns west and terminates at the canyon rim a further 2 miles on. c.

Views and vistas: Visitors approaching from the road see a flat, low-density prospect filled with scrub brush, grasses, juniper trees, and some pinyon pines. In the short 60 walk from the cabin to the rim above the water pocket, a broad and spectacular canyon view opens, looking miles across Green Spring Canyon toward the sheer cliffs of Suicide Point. d. Constructed water features: none. 5 Belshaw and Peplow, Historic Resources Study, Susan J. Wells, The Shivwits Plateau Survey: Archeology at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Publications in Anthropology 56 (Western Archeological and Conservation Center, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 18. DINNER POCKET HALS AZ-3-F (page 5) e. Buildings and structures Cabin.

The cabin at Dinner Pocket is a one-room structure made of juniper logs. It measures about 13 x 15 . Sawn lumber chinking fills the gaps between many of the logs in its wall, and the single door in the southeast wall and the single window in the southwest wall are framed with sawn lumber also. The roof, partly collapsed, is made of small juniper logs laid between the side walls and two central log beams that run the length of the building. Additional small logs span the space between the central beams, creating a flat roof with sloping sides. A roof extension once projected about 8 beyond the southeast wall of the cabin to shelter an outside area adjacent to the front door. This extension has now entirely collapsed.

The remains of a basalt- rock hearth and chimney rest in a pile within and without the northwest wall. Corrals. Fifty feet north-northeast of the cabin sit the remains of a roughly circular corral, about 50 in diameter and about 6 high. It is made of juniper posts stood upright and braced together with encircling lines of double-strand barbed wire and a single horizontal band of juniper logs, lashed in place with more barbed wire. The remains of a second, smaller, 20 x 20 corral of similar construction abut the main corral to the northeast. f. Small-scale features: The east-west-running barbed-wire fence along the northern boundary of the site is supported by juniper poles.

The fence that runs north from the corrals is made of closely spaced juniper poles lashed together with barbed wire, a construction method similar to that used to make the corrals themselves. A similar line of pole fencing runs southwest from the cabin to the canyon edge. g. Archeological sites: A number of Native American archeological sites probably associated with the Pueblo II period (AD 900 appear at Dinner Pocket. On the rim, artifact scatters and the remains of small structures dot the landscape along the nearby canyon rim. For example, two bedrock mortars appear 80 southeast of the cabin; dozens more are located all along the canyon rim. Below the rim, numerous petroglyphs appear on the north wall of the canyon adjacent to the water pocket.

More than a dozen anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, geometric and abstract designs have been documented. Just below these rock art panels, adjacent to the pocket, stands a rock shelter measuring about 6.6 wide x 3.3 high x deep. A second rock shelter stands about 164 southwest, along the south rim of the canyon. It measures about 10 wide x 6.5 high at the entrance, 2 high at the rear and 10 deep.6 PART III. SOURCES OF INFORMATION A. Primary Sources Land Entry Files. Records of the Bureau of Land Management (RG National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, 6 Wells, Shivwits Plateau Surve, 84, 230 37. DINNER POCKET HALS AZ-3-F (page 6) Waring file. Bureau of Land Management offices, St. George, Utah. Waring Ranch files. Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument headquarters, St.

George, Utah. Waring land files Lake Mead National Recreation Area headquarters, Boulder City, Nevada. B. Secondary Sources Belshaw, Mike, and Ed Peplow, Jr. Historic Resources Study, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada. National Park Service report, Aug. Wells, Susan J. The Shivwits Plateau Survey: Archeology at Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Publications in Anthropology 56. Western Archeological and Conservation Center, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, DINNER POCKET HALS AZ-3-F (page 7)

Figure Page

Figure 1. The cabin at Dinner Pocket, From Western Farm Management Company, Appraisal Report of Waring Ranch, Mohave County, Arizona, for National Park Service, Waring land files Lake Mead National Recreation Area headquarters, Boulder City, Nevada.