The Jordan Family once owned the land which is now Clarkdale and he led the suit that led to a settlement for the damage to Verde Valley farmers from the acid rain caused by the smelters.
Will Jordan farmed what would become Clarkdale and after selling to the United Verde, moved his family to Bridgeport. When acidic smelter smoke affected family orchards and fields, Will led a lawsuit against both the UV and UVX copper companies. With settlement of that suit, sons Walter and George began to farm and raise apples in Sedona. The Sedona Historical Society occupies the original Walter Jordan homestead. ©Sedona Heritage Museum
According to a piece of history written in 1933 by Everett Augustus Jordan, He along with J. H. and W. F. Jordan and their friend Herb Thompson left Cape Elizabeth, Maine the day after Christmas 1877. The four headed for the wilds of the west and particularly the vast opportunities then to be found in Central Arizona’s Verde Valley. He does not mention how they heard about the Verde but it turned out to be an epic adventure which was the vanguard of many of the Jordan family coming here.
The four traveled via various railroads crossing at one point into Canada and stopped a short while in Fairfield, Iowa to visit relatives. From there they made it to Ohama, Nebraska where they boarded an immigrant train to San Francisco on what was known as the Overland Route – the first transcontinental railroad which had been completed 8 years earlier in 1869.
From San Francisco they boarded a steamer which encountered an incredible rough storm just after they left the Golden Gate – spending two nights and three seasick days locked below deck in a pitching vessel out on a wild ocean. The storm had destroyed the docks and they came ashore in small boats sent out to get them off the ship. When they finally arrived at the small town of Los Angeles the newspaper there said their steamer had been sunk and that all aboard had all been lost.
The next word of the four is at Yuma where they had expected to take a paddle-wheel steamboat up the Colorado. Finding the river low and a smallpox outbreak there they hired a rowboat and the 4 of them pulled it up the river to the town of Ehrenberg surviving on fish and game they shot along the way. They then bought tickets from Ehrenburg to Prescott via the stage and from Prescott finally hitched a ride into the Verde with a local farmer.
Everett Jordan homesteaded 160 acres in Middle Verde along the east side of the river just north of the Davis family and across the river from Parson J. C Bristow – both of whom came in the 1875 Wagon Train. He made his living early on selling hay to the quartermaster at the military post of Fort Verde.
Everett Jordan’s cousin, William Albion Jordan, came west along with his friend Rufe Kinsman in 1880, taking pretty much the same route Everett had taken – though by the time they came the southern Pacific railroad was completed through to California and they made it into Arizona by way of Yuma to Maricopa. From Maricopa they traveled to Prescott in a freight wagon and finally made their way into the Verde.
Will or W. A. as he was sometimes known, teamed up with Everett to farm for a couple of years there in Middle Verde. They supplanted their farming income by shooting ducks in the winter which they sold to the military. They also helped with the cattle roundups each fall. Will was also a bit of a musician, playing at various dances in Cornville and around the Verde.
While the two were farming at Middle Verde a romance bloomed between Will and the neighboring Hard Shell Baptist Reverend James Clawson “JC” Bristow’s young daughter Annie. Annie has been called a “Wild Child” by some of her god fearing family as she came to some of the dances where Will was playing. In any case the couple was married on May 26, 1889, in Camp Verde. Will was 29 and Annie was 20. Over the years they had 9 children together.
By the time Will and Annie were married Will had moved up river above Cottonwood to Rattlesnake Hill on the east side of the river opposite what is now Clarkdale. Will had orchards to tend, fields to work and kids to raise so that time in the 1890s was a time of hard work, growth and emerging prosperity. As children came Will had a carpenter named Carlton build onto the original one room cabin which resulted in a large comfortable two story home overlooking the farm and the grand sweep of the river. The house had all the latest conveniences and the couple hired Ebba Quail to help Annie with the children and chores. The children included Chester, Stella, Mary, William, Alice, Walter, George, Charles, and James. Walter Jordan would later say that all nine kids Discovered America from Rattlesnake Hill.
William Andrews Clark had come to Jerome with Joseph Giroux in 1887 and on Valentines Day, 1888 they had taken extensive samples of the then known workings of the United Verde Copper mine.
With his extensive wealth he soon turned his original $30,000 investment in an option to buy the United Verde Mine and holdings into one of the most profitable copper mines in the world.
In the interests of efficiency he built a new smelter directly over the top of the mine workings as well as the United Verde and Pacific Railroad from Jerome to Chino Valley. This smelter was soon running 24 hours a day and spewing Sulfuric acidic smoke from the tall smokestack which then drifted down into the Valley and onto Will Jordan and his neighbors’ farms up and down the River. The effect of this smoke was to slowly turn the soil from a rich loam into a sterile medium in which nothing would grow. It even killed the earthworms.
