Walter Vail and the Empire Ranch: From a $1,174 Purchase to a Multi-State Cattle Business

Who Was Walter Vail?

Walter Lennox Vail was born on May 13, 1852, in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, and grew up partly in Plainfield, New Jersey. In mid-1875 he left home to seek his fortune in the West, spent a few months as a mine timekeeper in Virginia City, Nevada, and by November was writing about an Arizona sheep business, according to the Wikipedia biography of Vail.

He ended up as a cattleman instead. By the time he died at 54, the company he led spanned southeastern Arizona, parts of California and, through partnerships, land elsewhere.

How the Empire Ranch Began in 1876

On August 22, 1876, Vail and his English partner Herbert R. Hislop bought the ranch and 612 cattle from Edward Nye Fish and Simon Silverberg for $1,174. John H. Harvey joined as a third partner that October. The ranch sat in the grasslands between the Santa Rita, Rincon, Whetstone and Huachuca mountains, and the Empire Ranch article records that the first purchases of cattle continued the next year, including 793 head and Durham bulls in 1877.

The Empire Land and Cattle Company was formed in 1882 according to one source and incorporated in 1886 according to another, with Vail as the main shareholder. Carroll W. Gates bought a half interest in 1889.

Herefords, Partners and a Growing Company

By 1898 most of the nearly forty thousand cattle in the company's herds were Herefords. At its peak the Arizona ranch controlled about 180 square miles of rangeland, though the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum says the company grew to over a million acres with various partners. Those figures measure different things, owned land against controlled and leased range, so treat them as reported rather than exact.

The business reached beyond cattle. The museum notes involvement in mining, oil, horse racing and real estate, and the ranch's Total Wreck silver mine, discovered in 1879, produced over $500,000 before closing in 1889. With Gates and J. V. Vickers, Vail also formed the Panhandle Pasture Company, which bought land in Sherman County, Texas, and Beaver County, Oklahoma.

The Move to California and the 1890 Cattle Drive

A long Arizona drought pushed Vail to shift his main operations to California in the late 1880s. He leased land in the Temecula Valley, set up headquarters in downtown Los Angeles and bought several ranches, including Rancho Pauba, which the family later expanded to more than 87,500 acres. He leased Santa Catalina Island in 1892 and Santa Rosa Island in 1901.

One part of that move is remarkably well documented. In 1890 the Southern Pacific raised freight rates, so the ranch drove about 900 cattle more than 500 miles to the Warner Ranch near San Diego instead. Walter's brother Edward Vail and foreman Tom Turner led the drive with six vaqueros and a cook, and Edward later published his diary, as the Bureau of Land Management's retelling explains.

Death, Succession and the Empire Ranch Today

Vail died on December 2, 1906, in Los Angeles from complications of a tram accident, and was buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. His sons took over and renamed the firm the Vail Company, which the museum says the heirs managed until 1964. The Empire Ranch was sold in 1928; a syndicate bought the Temecula ranches in 1965; and ranching on Santa Rosa Island ended in 1998 after the National Park Service acquired it in 1986.

The Empire Ranch passed through Boice family ownership, then to the Bureau of Land Management in 1988. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, joined the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area in 2000, and is supported by the Empire Ranch Foundation, founded in 1997.

Honors and Where to Learn More

The Hall of Great Westerners entry records his induction in 2018 and describes him as a leader of the Empire Land and Cattle Company for 30 years. For more on ranch life at farm.FM, see the ranching section and a farm.FM story about Arizona ranching.