O. W. RANCH

By Ed Delph
Published on August 1, 2001
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O. W. Ranch, Northern Gila County 11 Moon Mountain Trail
Phoenix, Arizona 85023

About 20 to 25 years ago, I was exposed to antique gas engines
and related antique machinery and the contagion was serious.
Fortunately about this time my wife and I acquired a cattle ranch
in the high country of Arizona, which proved to be an ideal place
to indulge this hobby. My objective was to have the machinery not
only running, but performing tasks that were consistent with the
age of the engines, such as ore crushing, pumping, shelling,
sawing, grinding, cutting, drilling, winching, elevating, milling
etc. Picture #1 is a view of our ‘Industrial Park.’

At this juncture we have about 15 engines, including the 1913 30
HP Western shown in Picture #2. The steam traction engine in
Picture #3 is a 50 year-old 1/3 scale 65 HP
Case. Picture #4 is of an old flat belt driven Belsaw sawmill.

On the ranch which is 118 years-oldis an original log blacksmith
shop which we have completely restored and put in a flat
belt-driven line shaft to run a drill press, power hammer, grinder
and metal cutting saw, part of which are shown in Picture #5. We
restored a 2 HP Mogul to power the line shaft.

We also built an authentic 70 foot flume to run a water wheel,
and have two hydraulic rams to pump water up hill to flume. I must
mention that the overshot water wheel was built by Hess Hawley, a
master machinist and blacksmith, to optimum performance
specifications as developed in the definite study on maximum
efficiency overshot water wheels by the University of Wisconsin in
1913.

Engine manufacturers represented in the collection are Plunkett,
Western, Fairbanks-Morse, Novo, Sattley, Atkinson, Mogul,
International Harvester, John Deere, and Fuller and Johnson.

It has been a very rewarding hobby, and what we have developed
could never have been accomplished without the help of many, many
people, and especially Jess Hawley, Dwight Joy, Grady Gaudy and
Larry Boeschling.

A final note rather than refer to this hobby as collecting junk,
we prefer to call it ‘Industrial Archeology.’

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