The Hashknife Outfit

By Kristy McCaffrey

The Hashknife cowboys rode the high desert of northern Arizona in the 1880s, part of an old west mythology of violence, cattle rustling, and range disputes. But the truth is more mundane, involving drought, falling cattle prices, and a convoluted public-lands policy.

Hashknife cowboys worked for the Aztec Land and Cattle Co., an investment firm based in New York that was formed in 1884. Livestock was considered a good investment, so Aztec bought one million acres at fifty cents an acre from the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad, which had acquired the land as a gift from Congress. Aztec then purchased 32,000 head from Continental Land & Cattle Co,. a Texas outfit that marked its cattle with a brand that resembled the type of knife cowboy cooks used to cut vegetables—the hash knife.

There were problems from the very beginning. The company owned every other parcel of land, with the alternating sections in public domain, which were open to homesteaders. This pattern of ownership is sometimes described as a checkerboard. Although many people weren’t willing to risk homesteading because the land was too arid to farm, there was grass everywhere. Everyone—Mormon settlers, horse owners, sheepherders, and independent cattlemen—put their stock out to graze. The result was chaos.

Hashknife cowboys in Holbrook, AZ
Circa 1900

The Hashknife cowboys didn’t bother determining which land parcels belonged to them. They turned their cattle loose like everyone else, and ran out smaller operators. The ruthlessness of the cowboys is up for debate, but they earned a reputation as a rough-and-tumble bunch. Not only did locals steal Aztec cattle, but so did the Hashknife cowboys themselves.

By the 1890s, it was clear that the land had been overstocked and thousands of cattle perished. In 1898, Aztec shareholders voted to sell the land, cattle, horses and other property. They sold the Hashknife brand and some of its cattle to a local rancher named Jim Wyrick, who was financed by the pioneer northern Arizona Babbitt family. The Babbitts acquired the brand when Wyrick went broke, and still own it today. A line of purebred horses has been named after it, as well as a Zane Grey novel.

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