Once upon a time in The Rip Roarin' 20's, a dozen Arizona Sheriffs drove the same car--a Big Six Studebaker Duplex Phaeton. When officials of the Studebaker Company heard about the Arizona popularity of their Big Six they sent a hired gun writer out to wrangle up some pot boilin' stories of Law & Order Southwest Style. Studebaker was so impressed, they official renamed their car "The Sheriff" and began a vigorous promotion campaign in the Saturday Evening Post, Boys Life and other publications of the era.
Grover F. Sexton never met an exaggeration, a hyperbole or a flaming metaphor he didn't like or couldn't find a way to use. To say Sexton was a professional purveyor of purple prose is an understatement. Sexton tacked the word "Major" onto his name but nobody ever really know "major" of what. "Sexton's origins are murky, but before he became a Studebaker employee he had experience working on early aviation experimentation, followed by military police duty in Europe during WWI. After the war he also spent time as newspaper reporter."
As chance would have it, Sexton rolled into Prescott, Arizona, just in time to get Deputized by new Sheriff Two Guns Weil. "Deputy Sheriff Sexton was provided a badge and a Winchester Rifle and was assigned the Studebaker Big Six model patrol vehicle. This Big Six Vehicle had no emergency lights or an apparent siren, but it did have Sheriff's Office graphics and a vehicle badge on the front bumper."
Quotes use in the above narrative were obtained from:
http://bit.ly/2UKp0zw
After hob-nobbing with Two Guns, Sexton would parlay this newfound Deputy status as an entree into the offices of 11 other Arizona Sheriffs. Sexton always obtained the bare bones of a dramatic law enforcement escapade upon which he could drape his overabundance of shameless exaggeration and downright fictitious embellishments.
Above graphic courtesy Steven Ayres via:
http://bit.ly/2Sj2En1
Studebaker officials apparently lived by the rule "Don't let the facts stand in the way of a good stories" and they lapped up Sexton's prose like purring kittens. The Studebaker marketing machine leaped into action and printed a classic of the 1920's automotive advertising genre. "The Arizona Sheriff" distributed en masse to dealers all across America and became an instant hit.
Benton Clark's superb illustrations, as well as genuine photos of the actually elected Sheriffs themselves fanned the flames of consumer desire. How could consumers resist the image of an "Old Time .45 Six-Gun and a Modern Big Six Motor Can." The campaign was pure marketing magic!
Above graphic courtesy Steven Ayres via:
http://bit.ly/2Sj2En1
Fortunately for Studebaker, their Big Six was a mighty machine that could back up the hype and walk the talk. In fact, modern automotive analysts have called The Sheriff Big Six America's first "muscle car." That's quite a tall order to fill but the Big Six lived up to its legend. We obtained this photo of a Big Six in the Studebaker Museum at this link:
https://forums.aaca.org/topic/90054-studebaker-whiskey-six/
A Duplex Phaeton was essentially a hard top with roll up side curtains. This Studebaker "...was seemingly made for the desert: Wide-open enough that air could circulate through the car as you drove, yet with a hard cloth top to prevent the top of your head from getting pummeled by the sun’s angry rays. The retractable side curtains, which rolled up like a window shade, didn’t do much for security, but in the colder and rainier days of an Arizona winter, they were sufficient for comfort."
Source of quote:
https://www.hemmings.com/blog/article/swift-justice-1926-studebaker-sheriff-duplex-phaeton/
Here is the Wiki for The Big Six:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studebaker_Big_Six
The Studebaker engine really did deserve its moniker of "Big Six. Check out these monster specifications:
Specifications
Engine Inline six, iron block and head, cast en bloc, valves in side
Bore and stroke 3.875 x 5 inches
Compression ratio 4.5:1
Horsepower 75
Transmission Three-speed manual, single-plate dry clutch
Brakes Mechanical drum
Suspension Semi-elliptic leaf springs (front and rear)
Wheelbase 120 inches
Curb weight 3,475 pounds
(Source of specs: https://www.hemmings.com/blog/article/1926-studebaker-sheriff-duplex-phaeton/)
For a thorough discussion of how the Sheriff might deserve to be called America's first muscle car see:
"New Yavapai County Sheriff Edwin G. "Two-Gun" Weil, had just won election as the liquor enforcement candidate. It appears that the voters of Yavapai County just then were ready for stricter liquor enforcement than provided by his predecessor. As historical records note, former Sheriff George C. Ruffner would give Prescott citizens advance warning when he was going to a "sweep." This "sweep" would consist of Sheriff Ruffner driving around the square in his wagon several times. Of course no arrests or seizures were made, as all bootleggers, speakeasies, bars or other liquor-consuming citizens in the county seat would stash their stills, pour out their drinks or otherwise close their doors."
"CAUGHT!
Photograph of the arrest of I.P. McKelvie at his moonshine still in a tiny rock canyon of the Santa Maria Mountains the day after he beat Tex Elliott, bootlegger, on the draw, shooting Elliott dead. Near Sheriff Ed G. Weil (left foreground) the moonshiner's rifle is seen on a rock. "Dad" Denny, deputy sheriff, is seen in the lower right corner, covering the moonshiner with a rifle. This picture was taken by "The Deputy from Yavapai" just as Sheriff Weil and Deputy Denny covered the moonshiner with rifles and he elevated his hands. Fifty gallons of illicit liquor were seized in this arrest. McKelvie was acquitted of the slaying charge, having fired in self-defense."
Above quote courtesy Steven Ayres via:
http://bit.ly/2Sj2En1
"Within two weeks of his election he blew into the Tia Juana dance hall at Cottonwood near the monster Jerome Copper mines at night, with two deputies and his six shooters. He lined 45 men and 22 women in the place up against the wall, sent his deputies through the place to gather up two truckloads of evidence, drove the whole crowd out into the street, nailed up the dive, and went on back home.
While waiting for his deputies to collect the evidence, Sheriff Weil sat on a pool table, legs dangling over, and two pistols displayed, careless-like. The men with hands up grew restless. So Weil began joking with them and finally told them to go sit down and be good little boys. The whole 45 obeyed as though they were in Sunday school.
Among the 45 men were some bad hombres, a number with several notches in their pistols. But Weil did not even take the trouble to relieve them of their guns, telling them he supposed none of them wanted to commit suicide. The tough, wide open, vicious Cottonwood dives are wide open no more. A little white mule corn liquor is smuggled in there, of course, as everywhere, but just try to buy a drink after the word has come that Ed Weil's big Studebaker car is on that side of the mountains! Try and get it! They know that Studebaker can go anywhere, and does. And that makes this mountain bobcat of a sheriff highly pleased."
(Editor's Note: The "Verde Copper News" took issue with Sexton's lurid narrative. ON January 15, 1926, the newspaper made this comment: "There is not and never was any such dance hall operated in Cottonwood as above stated. These statements are all absolute falsehoods and the writer should be taken to task for his slanderous remarks and may yet be.")
The full article containing the above quote can be found at this link. The article is protected by a strict paywall. However, you can buy a one day access for 99 cents and it would be well worth the cost to read the full article y history columnist Glenda Farley that appeared February 10, 2020.
https://www.verdenews.com/news/2020/feb/10/verde-heritage-1925-cottonwood-pool-hall-raide/
The reign of Two Guns didn't last long. "Chasing ridge runners, busting up stills and arresting homicide suspects in town and out in the vast rural expanses of Yavapai County became common practice during the Weil Administration, but after two years of stricter enforcement the voters had a change of heart and former Sheriff Ruffner was reelected, serving until his death in 1933."
Source of above quote:
http://bit.ly/2UKp0zw
Naturally, The Pima County Sheriff owned A Big Six. Author Sexton and Yavapai Deputy described the murder of a Mexican sheepherder and invented a 12,000 foot elevation peak for the perp to run up and hide. Sexton then once again reached into his bottomless bag of purple prose to describe the role of The Big Six in the fugitive's capture:
"Sheriff Bailey got Deputy F.E. Murphy, an old-time sheriff himself, into his Studebaker, and they covered the indescribably rough 28 miles to the foot of the Sierritas in 38 minutes. Along this road can still be seen the abandoned wrecks of half a dozen other makes of cars that have broken down under the strain of the difficult travel and have been left to travelers to pick apart for spare parts. For five days and nights, unceasingly, the sheriff's big Studebaker car circled the mountain ranges, rarely on any road whatever, watching every burro trail. That became tiresome. So Bailey, a "delicate" fellow of some six feet and 200 pounds, who can kink a piece of cattle wire and snap it in two with his bare hands, just started right up the mountain, leaving the car midway up, so if Pablo got below him, Murphy could start the chase at once."
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| Photo by Susun McCulla |
Fortunately for Fans of The Studebaker Sheriff, Walter Bailey somehow arranged to keep his Big Six after he retired from the Pima County Sheriff's Office. The car was in good shape when it was donated to the Arizona Historical Society. It was then restored to its original glory and put on display in the organization's Museum on the University of Arizona campus. In March 2018 the Editor and his wife, Susun, were delighted to find this legendary law enforcement vehicle gleaming on the museum showroom floor.
Of course, the Coconino County Sheriff had to have a Big Six, too! Sexton must have been beside himself with glee as he typed out these words: "As the crow flies, John was 132 miles away. But even John's Studebaker could not sail as the buzzard soars in this largest county in the world, and his speedometer read 198 miles when he pulled out of the virgin forest (where no road has been to this day) onto the brink of the mightiest chasm in the world, the Colorado River Canyon.
Ninety miles had been made through the trackless woods. Ninety miles of primeval plateau hills and ridges, rock-strewn between, the cathedraled trees in places that never before beheld a human being. And through this wilderness, an automobile -- a Studebaker, of course, for to a Studebaker alone The Arizona Sheriff turns to cover these impossible miles!
There were only two places along its winding miles whence the thieves could come out of its vast depths, and here Sheriff John and his deputy sat to watch, like terriers at a rathole. It was January -- cold, windy. The glow of a campfire, far down at the bottom of the canyon, had betrayed the hiding place of the trio, all desperate, heavily armed men.
Above quote courtesy Steven Ayres via:
http://bit.ly/2Sj2En1
Perhaps the most famous crime story involving Sheriff Parsons included a dramatic life and death struggle in front of Grand Canyon's El Tovar Hotel. You can read the full story of a thwarted robbery using the link below. Simply scroll through the publication until you reach the article entitled: "Trapping the Midwest’s Deadly Bandits" by Mike Ennis.
https://grandcanyonhistory.org/uploads/3/4/4/2/34422134/top_2014_4.pdf
(Editor's Note: It is not known if Editor John Parsons is related to Sheriff John Parsons. However, Sheriff John Parsons looks enough like the Editor's Grand Dad to be his brother!)
Sexton "...found that both good roads and bad roads gave the sheriff's Studebaker a severe test. Across the mesa stretched broad smooth high ways devoid of intersections where the throttle was thrown wide open and left open. There were wagon trails up into remote mountain valleys where the car was driven relentlessly in the teeth of ruts, rocks and steep grades. There were stretches of desert where no trace of trail existed but over which criminals must be pursued by a car crashing through brush and cactus stumps in the night."
"Stories of Arizona sheriffs - their courage, their humor, their keen intelligence-as collected by Major Grover F. Sexton, Deputy Sheriff of Yavapai County, have been published in a booklet entitled "The Arizona Sheriff," incidents picturesque, romantic, thrilling - explain how these soft-spoken, hard-driving men with nimble guns keep the highways and byways of Arizona safe by swift and certain capture of wrongdoers."
Source of quote: Studebaker ad in "Boys Life" January 1926, Page 45
http://bit.ly/2SjdWYv
Well, Buckaroos, Thanks for reading! We're sorry to say you can't send off for your free copy of "The Arizona Sheriff." Nope, cowpokes, the going price for a copy of that there 48-page pile of purple prose starts at $100 and runs all the way to $200! Check it out here:
http://bit.ly/2OMPsVj
We wish to give a Special Shout Out & Huge Thanks to Prescott's Steven Ayres for his time and efforts in transcribing text and scanning graphics from an original copy of "The Arizona Sheriff." Ayres posted his material in 2013 on The Studebaker Drivers Forum. The Ayres Collection of work can be found here:
http://bit.ly/2Sj2En1
Studebaker was no stranger to building super stout vehicles whose reputation made the rounds far and wide across The American West. One of the five Studebaker Brothers actually got his start producing wheelbarrows in California. Many of the famous cover wagons that settled the West were produced by The Studebaker Brothers. There Wiki is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studebakeochise
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On May 22, 2020, we added the Cochise County part of the story. Here 'tis:
"Catching rum runners along the Mexican border is far from the tame motorboat pursuit on the open sea.
When a sheriff out in Arizona starts after a car laden with contraband whiskey, mescal or tequilla, the two race off across Arizona's multitudinous square miles with no regard for roads, cactus or even mountain ranges.
Take your choice -- an Arizona desert or an Arizona valley -- and racing across it in an automobile, often at night and not infrequently even then with lights out is somewhat (!!!) different from gliding down a boulevard to work.
Sage brush, thick as it may grow, is only three or four feet high, and that doesn't count. Sand, 'dobe mud or rocks underneath give precarious going.
Here is a big patch of soto -- stumps solid as basswood, from two to six feet high and six inches through, bearing on the top of a big ball of spiney, prickly, bayonet-like blades.
There is a weird looking forest, reminding one of Dante's inferno or a witchland, of ocatilla. Fingers an inch thick and seven to ten feet long, tough as leather and literally covered with prickers half an inch long, grope into the air like the tentacles of an octopus.
Now are bunches or hummocks of sacaton grass, or larger hummocks of sacahuiste or beargrass, to run into which is like hitting a potted palm.
Back and forth through this run arroyos -- deep gullies worn by floods. Now a dry-wash, or stone-covered riverbed, gives relief from the thorny vegetation, but makes up with stones and ruts.
All around are mountains, stretching steeply up for 4,000 feet, with sharp-ridged buttes or flat-topped mesas in between. Two decades ago, they said only a burro could cross much of it. Now they say only a Studebaker can traverse it.
Over east of Douglas, up San Bernardino river and the Rio Blanco, or White River, past Apache Mountain and into the Chiracahuas was a favorite route for rum runners from Old Mexico into the States. Opium came with it, and, for several years, much marihuani, the deadly weed smoked with cigaret tobacco.
Here was where Percy Bowden, a deputy sheriff at 18 and known for miles around as the "fightin'est bare-handed sheriff on the border" won his reputation by overtaking 1,300 automobiles laden with whiskey during less than eight years, and bringing them all in.
"Those were the days, when the automobile first came to be used for smuggling," now reminisces Bowden, who is chief of police of Douglas. "Every kind of a car was used, big and little. I remember one great, big Simplex that one fellow used. He had a piece of 90-pound railroad rail bent around and fastened on in front for a bumper.
"That was to knock down fence posts and soto stumps when we got to running them across country.
"Guess I must have knocked down 500 miles of wire fence in those years myself.
"I got kind of discouraged, when they gave me my first car, a small Studebaker. Some of those big cars could have run over me. But, boy! how it could get over that rough ground!
"It stood the gaff so well that within two years almost every successful rum runner had bought a Studebaker; it was the only car that could give us a run. The only reason we caught them was that the 15 to 20 cases of liquor each carried was a weight handicap for them.
"Most of the flats were fenced off for ranches. When the whiskey runners would see us coming, they'd turn out lights and beat it across country, right through the brush. Nothing left for us to do but turn out lights and take after them.
"Light of the stars helped us to steer shy of buttes and some arroyos. We stopped occasionally to listen to where they were plunging on, and then we'd head after them.
"Talk about thrills. If you can beat plunging through the dark and all that prickly brush at 30 miles an hour and then suddenly dropping into an arroyo all covered with stones at the bottom, I'd like to know how. And if you can find another make of car that can stand it, I'd like to see it.
"All you can do is turn and follow the arroyo out till it's shallower, then turn out and start after them again. If you turn on lights, they'll see them and dash off in another direction.
"We always knew they were heading for some road, so we'd head that way too.
"The lighter cars bumped around so much, and the long thorns on the ocatilla and the sand burrs punctured tires so often, they had to give them up.
"The bigger cars could thrash through the brush, but they couldn't stand up under such driving. They'd break down and we'd grab them.
"They always carried guns, but I never had any shootings. "Soon they got to getting the same make of cars we used and then it was any man's race. The federal prohibition law helped, for now we can confiscate a car carrying liquor."
This is the same kind of work that made famous a group of old time peace officers who now are employed in, or make as their headquarters, the salesrooms where are sold the Studebaker, in which they lived while in service. There's Bert Polly, deputy sheriff and constable; Bill Sherill, another deputy; Frank Riggs, most peaceable of men but who knew every bad man in Arizona and old Mexico for years; young Johnson, Frank's nephew; Tom Mooney, former constable and deputy.
Hardly a day passes but Red Gannon, now a lease operator but a while back a deputy sheriff known by his .45 pistol to every outlaw in the county, drops in to chin a moment with his old cronies and sit in a Studebaker again, or Broncho Billy Woods, ranger and government officer for years, or Billy Brakefield, another famous deputy and half a dozen others come in and sit on Johnny Bowden's desk and stop all work of automobile selling as they chat over the old days.
Every one of them had been cowmen. Every one started his sheriff-ing on a cow pony, and every one took part in the maintenance of order during the transition period, when the suregoing, fast motor car replaced the picturesque horse and saddle. The cow pony is to them a romance, as to you and me. But the cars they use are as close to their hearts as their big six shooters, for the car and the six-gun were their very existence.
The Studebaker Sheriff Big Six wasn't just popular in Arizona. This is definitely a Big Six with a 1927 license plate. The archive photo title says, "Three Los Angeles plain-clothed police men crouched behind car aiming their guns, circa 1925."
Source:
https://dl.library.ucla.edu/islandora/object/edu.ucla.library.specialCollections.latimes:561
