Apr 15, 2021 - Sale 2564

Sale 2564 - Lot 318

Price Realized: $ 312
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
CONNECTED WITH THE WALNUT GROVE DAM DISASTER (WEST--ARIZONA.) Articles of Incorporation of the Piedmont Cattle Company. 4 calligraphic manuscript pages on 2 sheets, 14 x 8 1/4 inches, plus docket sheet, bound on top edge with ribbon, signed by court clerks in Kentucky and Arizona, and bearing the embossed seal of the Boyd County Court in Kentucky; folds, minimal wear. Yavapai County, AZ, 12 June 1886
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Additional Details

This company was intimately connected with the Walnut Grave dam failure which wreaked havoc in Arizona four years later.

The Piedmont Cattle Company was founded with New York investment and incorporated in Kentucky, but as stated here "the corporation proposes to carry on business in Yavapai County in the Territory of Arizona . . . buying, selling and raising horses, cattle, sheep, and other live stock . . . and operating pipe lines, ditches and reservoirs for conducting, storing and distributing water for irrigating the lands of the Company." The visionaries were the brothers Wells and DeWitt Blake, Arizona miners whose main purpose was to create a dam through their related Walnut Grove Water Storage Company. The water was used for placer mining as well as cattle irrigation. The Walnut Grove Dam failed in February 1890, sending a massive wall of water down the gulch and killing innumerable residents.

The present document is a calligraphic copy of the original which had been recorded in Manhattan on 12 May 1886. This copy bears the certification of the clerk of the Kentucky court where it was recorded on 31 May. It is also docketed with a note by the county recorder in Arizona that it was "recorded at the request of DeWitt C. Bates" on 12 June 1886. This copy would have been retained by the company as proof of incorporation.