A remarkable sight along the north side of Lower Elgin Rd. is the seven-acre Douglas orchard. The property was originally homesteaded by Henry Z. Belue, a farmer/carpenter, and his wife and son. About 1924 the property was purchased by 16-year-old Volney Douglas, son of pioneer Irvin Douglas, to raise cattle. Volney and his siblings were living on their father’s homestead on Yucca Ash Rd. The story of Irvin Douglas and his descendants, who have lived in the Sonoita/Elgin area for more than 116 years, follows. Special thanks to Lena Stephens and Mark Douglas who provided information and photos for this article.
Irvin Douglas, born in Texas in 1861, moved to Arizona in 1887. In Yuma (1903) he married Maud Daisy Jacobs, who was born in Washington state in 1880. Irvin held several mining claims, and by 1907 he and Maud had moved to Sonoita to homestead 160 acres in the Yucca Ash Rd. area. They had four children: Grace Mary, Volney Marx, Ann Olive and Irvin, Jr.
Irvin’s mining job took the family to Nevada in 1918. Tragically, on Jan. 21, 1919, Maud was killed by an intruder in their home. Irvin and his oldest son, Volney Marx, returned to the Sonoita homestead; the other children joined them a few years later. [Barr, Betty. More Hidden Treasures of Santa Cruz County, 2008]. Irvin farmed/ranched on Yucca Ash the rest of his life. By 1935 his daughter Olive, her husband Emory Stoddard, and their seven children had joined him. Grace, her husband Frank Burch, and their seven children lived nearby. Irvin Jr. worked for Mountain States Telephone throughout Arizona. Irvin died in 1954, age 93.
Volney and his siblings all attended school in Patagonia. Volney had a keen interest in agriculture and played the violin in the school orchestra. Graduating from Patagonia High School in 1928, Volney immediately went to work for the Forest Service as a mule packer, switching to forest research while attending the University of Arizona’s College of Agriculture. He graduated from UA in 1932 and began working for the UA Santa Rita Experiment Station. [Nogales International, 12/10/1932]. By 1935 he was working as the Canelo ranger in the Coronado National Forest. [Arizona Daily Star, 10/24/1935]. In 1936 Volney married Blanche Audrey Lawson, and they moved to New Mexico where Volney worked as a range specialist for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service. The couple had five living children—three boys and two girls born between 1938 and 1953. Volney also attended graduate school at the University of Chicago and the California Institute of Technology.
Volney worked for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service in Texas and California and by 1947 was living in the Phoenix area where he was employed by the State of Arizona to “teach on-the-farm training to veterans on isolated ranches in the northern half of the state.” [Arizona Republic, 10/10/1947]. He also appraised land for the Federal Land Bank. Volney died in 1977, age 69. [Arizona Republic, 3/16/1977].
Mark Douglas, the youngest of Volney and Blanche’s children, was born in the Phoenix area in 1953. He graduated from Arizona State University and taught math, science and computer science. He remembers visiting his father’s property on Lower Elgin Rd. where his dad was raising registered Angus cattle. Mark planted his first apple tree about 1973 and in the 1980s moved to Elgin to develop his experimental orchard in the hopes that it would support his family and allow Mark to pursue his philosophical research/writing. He repaired the original Belue adobe home, and later built a second home to accommodate his family of five children. Mark also worked for the Forest Service and helped build the walkway around Parker Canyon Lake.
In its prime the orchard included over 1,000 trees and 400 varieties of apples. Nature’s challenges, especially freezing temperatures and the codling moth, limited the orchard’s commercial viability, but local residents have always enjoyed the delicious fruit. Today Mark’s daughter, Lena Stephens, teaches local youth about the orchard and its bounty.