Final Report, September 1998 Vegetative Cover Monitoring, Public Perception Survey, and Public Outreach Programs for Chino Winds Demonstration Project (Phases I and II): Use of BMPs on Arizona Rangelands to Minimize NPS Discharges from Grazing Activities

THE YAVAPAI RANCH

The oldest settlement of the Yavapai Ranch is located at Cienega Spring, located on the southern boundary of the ranch. North of this spring the water table is deep or nonexistent and there are no major springs. Cienega Spring was homesteaded in 1870 by a surveyor named Henry Marion and a partner, an ex-soldier, Otto Webber. For the next 20 years, Cienega was run as an isolated, almost subsistence, farm/ranch. An orchard and small field were planted at the spring and a ditch was dug to carry the water to the Lower Corrals.

Sometime in the late 1880's a second homestead was established at a tiny spring or seep at New Water, 10 miles to the west of Cienega Spring. A hand hewn log cabin still stands at that site. A later homestead was also established at Atkins camp, five miles to the north of Cienega Spring, on the edge of the Chino Valley. These later homesteads were incorporated into the giant OO Ranch to the north. During the depression, the OO went bankrupt and was taken over by the bank who leased it to a variety of cattlemen. The area was so poorly watered that only partial use was possible, in fact, there are areas of the Ranch that were, until recent years, never grazed by domestic animals.

Between 1940 and 1950, the southern part of the OO was bought from the bank by a cattleman who also bought the Cienega, uniting them to form the present day Yavapai Ranch. Better cattle and horses were purchased, wells drilled and tanks constructed to increase the amount of water. The latter effort was not successful over much of the Ranch but was an improvement over no water. The first efforts at modern range management and pasture rotations were begun, though lack of water often limited the opportunities for such management.

The Yavapai Ranch is located on the upper reaches of the Verde River and Bill Williams River watersheds. The north boundary is 13 miles south and the south boundary 25 miles south of Seligman, Arizona The 110,000 acre Yavapai Ranch is unique in Arizona in that it is composed of private land (51%) and National Forest land (49%) arranged in a checkerboard pattern (Fig. 1).

The topography of the Yavapai Ranch consists of plains and hills with elevations from 4,900 feet on the east boundary to 6,800 feet on Red Mountain in the south central portion of the ranch. The soils on the ranch are primarily Mesic Semiarid Soils. The loam alluvial soils of the plains support open grassland vegetation. The gravelly and limy alluvial soils of the plains and hills support a grassland vegetation with scattered pinyon and juniper and or brush. The soils of the hills have developed mostly on limestone and basalt parent material and support pinyon-juniper woodlands and chaparral vegetation. A small area at the highest elevations are Frigid Subhumid Soils that support a stand of ponderosa pine.

The Yavapai Ranch annual precipitation is about 12 inches at the lower elevations on the east side of the ranch to 20 inches or more at the higher elevations to the west and south on the ranch. About half of this precipitation is winter precipitation. The normal (based on 1961-90) precipitation for Seligman, Arizona is 12.56 inches (Fig. 2 and Appendix B-2). The fall and winter precipitation at Seligman (5,250 ft. elevation) and Chino Valley (4,750 ft. elevation) (Fig. 2) are representative of the precipitation at the Demonstration Cell along the eastern boundary of the ranch. The elevation at the Lower Corrals in the Demonstration Cell is 5,173 ft. and is located approximately 24 miles south of Seligman and 27 miles northwest of Chino Valley. For the period of October 1996, through April 1997, the winter precipitation was 5.81, 5.11, 5.50, and 4.25 inches, for Seligman, Chino Valley, and Plots Y-2 and Y-6 on the Demonstration Cell, respectively (Appendix B). Precipitation from summer thunderstorms can be extremely variable in time and location, so summer precipitation may not be well represented by events recorded other than on site. For the summer and fall months of May through September 1997, precipitation was 5.84, 8.04, 6.65, and 7.75 inches for Seligman, Chino Valley, Plot Y-2, and Plot Y-6, respectively (Appendix B).

Precipitation records are available for specific locations on the Yavapai Ranch and for some time periods during the project (Appendix B-4), but data were not recorded for any location throughout the period of the project (1992-1998). Seasonal precipitation data for Seligman and Chino Valley (Fig. 2) are used to show the seasonal precipitation through the monitoring period. Generally, the winter and spring precipitation was favorable for the area from fall of 1990 to the spring of 1995. The summer of 1993 was dry at Seligman and Chino Valley (Fig. 2), and this lack of rainfall in this summer extended over the Yavapai Ranch. An extreme dry period for the project area occurred from October 1995 through May 1996. Only 2.46 inches of precipitation was recorded at Seligman, 1.33 inches at Chino Valley, and 1.80 inches at the Yavapai Ranch Headquarters during this period. Precipitation during the summer of 1996 also was below normal at Seligman (Fig. 2), and generally summer storms throughout the area, including the Yavapai Ranch, were limited and widely scattered.