Elizabeth "Betty" Hazen attracted some attention as a contractor building home south of Tucson. A female contractor in the 1960s was unusual to say the least.
Hazen didn't start out building houses. She first came to the Tucson area with her husband, who performed in rodeos. She also competed and acted as arena secretary. The couple bought a ranch and put everything into expanding it.
Later on, the two went their separate ways and Betty Hazen expanded her horizons.
From the Arizona Daily Star, Sunday, Dec. 2, 1945:
Self-Sufficient Life Is Won By Rodeo Professionals Here
By BERNICE COSULICH
Jimmie and Bettv Hazen are professional rodeo performers. They also are ranchers and artisans. They built their own adobe house their Lazy JB Ranch southwest of Tucson in the Twin Buttes area. He is in 28th position this month in the all-round cowboy world championship ratings, but also tools leather, carves wood, and does fine wrought iron work. She is a rodeo secretary, has ridden bucking broncs, but can build fence, too leather, kill rattlesnakes, and tailor frontier pants and shirts.
Far from the crowded rodeo arena where Jimmie Hazen ranks as a top bronc rider and Betty Hazen keeps the official scores, the couple are shown in the seclusion of their Lazy JB Ranch, near Twin Buttes. She designs colorful rodeo costumes and aids Jimmie in tooled leatherwork. (Photo by Levitz)
Their story Is of the successful combination of several activities to earn a living and have fun doing it. It also is preparation for the day, as he puts It, "when I get a little older and more crippled and can't make a living riding the shows. When I get scared to sit down on a bronc or steer. I'II quit."
Here Between Times
They make the rodeo circuit in northwestern states and go to the big eastern events at Madison Square Garden and in Boston. But between times they operate their small cattle ranch and make tooled purses and belts for sale. The cowboy clothes she tailors she trades "for something I want and otherwise couldn't afford, as the stud fee for my mare," she said.
Hazen, born in Iowa and raised in California, has been a cowboy and professional rider all his life. He rides bulls and bareback broncs and announces shows. A few years ago he broke his neck in a Montana show, but had a contract to announce a rodeo at Belle Fourche, S. D., three days later. In a plaster cast, he was driven by Mrs. Hazen to keep that engagement. He made the announcements from a swivel chair in the judges' stand while "riders and grandstand swayed before mv eyes." Twice he has broken his neck during rides and is reluctant to enumerate other breaks, but they include arms, ribs, pelvis and ankle.
How a young woman raised in Evanston, Ill., came to win proficiency as a steer and bronco rider, which her husband has asked her to discontinue, and then as arena secretary is another story.
Another Story
She was raised in Evanston, her father, Earle Press, being an architect, real estate operator and manager for Chicago business buildings. She was more interested in riding than in sewing in those school days. In fact, in the seventh grade her sewing teacher "one Miss Comstock used to sit down and cry because I sewed so badly. She'd be interested to see the pants and shirts I tailor now."
Finishing high school, Mrs. Hazen picked the University of Arizona for college work, but was more interested In a horse she kept at a nearby stable than in English or chemistry. She liked her animal husbandry course. Then one day at the Tucson rodeo she saw a pair of bright red, patent leather boots on one of the cowboys. She met him, married him in 1939. Her parents were a little "startled" by the event. But Mrs. Press has fitted so into western life now that when on visits from Evanston she won't ride a horse unless it bucks a little.
Mrs. Hazen likes the life of a rodeo trouper, as do many of the wives of riders and stock handlers. For the last three years she has more than earned her way as arena secretary, which includes making up the judges lists, keeping stock records, conducting the drawings for what bronc or steer a rider will get, paying off the cowboys after events and sending records to the Rodeo Association of America.
Leads To Hobby
It was the cowboys love of being beautifully dressed, plus the expensiveness of tailored garments, which led Mrs. Hazen to making shirts and pants. It is quite a fad now for cowboys' wives to tailor their own and their husband's shirts, she said. Few, however, become proficient with frontier pants, which Mrs. Hazen finds are quite simple โ "you cut your own pattern, then four pieces of cloth, pin-fit them on you, and sew them up."
This sewing or even the tooled leather work is quite secondary to her interest, or his, in the ranch. At the moment they are "running a fence" around some new land they acquired and hope to farm. He digs the post holes, she tamps in the earth around the posts and helps string the barbed wire.
Acquisition of their Twin Buttes ranch has been a six-year project which is far from completed, they said. They began in 1939 by buying 40 acres, "the only piece we could find where the owner was willing to take $15 down. That was all the money we had." They pitched a tent on the land and began its development.
Growing Acres
The number of acres has grown through the years, as has the house which they have built themselves. Between earning money at the rodeos, all their efforts have gone into earning funds by other means so the ranch and house could grow. One year they gathered desert spoons and sold them to Tucson curio dealers, "short changing ourselves by selling them for 15 cents a dozen when the retail price was then $1.50."
The only labor they hired for the house was an adobe maker. They laid up the walls themselves "and it is surprising how heavy adobes get, the higher the wail goes." They gathered saguaro ribs for the ceiling, found railroad ties on an abandoned roadbed in the Twin Buttes area, and cut down prickly ocotillo for ramada roofs and chicken fences. She carved the frame of the screen door, while he made the wrought iron grill, with their cattle brand in the center, for the main entrance door. His carved wood pieces of bucking broncos and racing steers are in niches in the living room walls.
For three years young, modern Mrs. Hazen's only cooking facility was a fireplace, but now she has butane gas for stove and ice box. She didn't mind the fireplace era "because food tastes so much better cooked over an open fire." She doesn't mind that they have four miles to go to their mail box and 23 miles to Tucson to shop. "I make one trip to Tucson a week and that is one too many," she said. They have no telephone. What she does miss is a well and the fact they haul water three miles, but the well driller has promise to dig them one soon, "but he's said that for years."
Life's Frontierness
"What you like about living out here, this way, is the frontierness of life," she said. "The coyotes howl every night and eat up friers, if I try to raise them, which I don't any more. In the spring I killed a rattlesnake almost every day as I rode or walked over the ranch, and had the shivers for an hour afterwards because I hate them.
"But you love the crisp mornings with the calves bawling and the chickens talking to you. The colt comes down to the house, looks in at the bedroom window until he sees Jimmie's about ready to leave the house, then trots off to the corral to wait to be fed. You call to the animals and they answer back. It is friendly."
Hazen is amused with his wife's insistence on naming all the animals on the place and getting so sentimentally attached to them that it is an emotional struggle when one has to be butchered to provide them beef. Their p[rize bull, Junior Anxiety Mixer the 41st she insists on calling Alley Oop. He's proud of the way she has hand-raised two dogie calves, Sister and Buster.
Self-Sufficiency
They delight in their own self- sufficiency at the ranch. A cow provides them milk, whipped cream and butter. A flock of chickens gives them eggs and meat. Once or twice a year they slaughter a beef, usually accompanying that event with a barbecue party for friends.
"We're just getting started," he said. "We're ambitious to develop this land with good soil conservation practices and build up the quality of our herd. Then there is that new piece of land we want to farm.
"I'll go on with rodeo riding and announcing shows for a while. Of course, when you play Square Garden and Boston any more, even if you make $1,700 as I did on my last trip, expenses eat up your prize money. But one of these days when I begin to feel afraid in the shute to get down on my bucking stock I'll know it is time to quit. Then we'll have the ranch.
The couple divorces in 1947. But Jimmie Hazen didn't go away quietly.
From the Star, Thursday, Jan. 31, 1952:
Wife Quick on Draw, Halts Mate's Advance
James R. Hazen, 38, of Jaynes Station, was treated at the county hospital for a bullet wound in his right hand yesterday following an altercation with his estranged wife.
Betty Hazen, of Sahuarita, told sheriff's deputies she shot Hazen when he appeared outside her home and called out, "Get your gun. I've got one and I'm coming in.
When he attempted to force the screen door open, she fired twice, Mrs. Hazen said.
The Jaynes Station farm worker was driven in a car to the sheriff's office by his wife and left there.
No charges have been filed, sheriff's deputies said.
Then came Betty Hazen's second career. From the Star, Sunday, Aug. 28, 1960:
Sahuarita Contractor Proves Woman's Place Is Building Homes
And What's More, She Homesteaded The Land On Which The Homes Are Built
By CHARLOTTE CARDON
Not many proud parents can boast of living in a home that was designed, con-tracted and partially built by their daughter. If the boys feel there are still a few strictly masculine jobs such as surveying, bricklaying and electrical wiring that only they can cope with, they just haven't been around . . . enough. And they haven't met Elizabeth Hazen a charming, soft-spoken young woman in her late thirties whose vocation at the moment is home building. She even manages to make such tasks and hard, back-breaking work seem like fun and something that 'every girl should know.'
Unusual tri-level plan makes use of native materials
Betty first built this adobe tri-level western ranch house for herself โ as an experiment with materials and ideas. Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Earle Press came for a short visit from Fvanston, Ill., and found it so comfortable that they have stayed and made it their year around home. The homesite is several acres of low desert foothills close to Sahuarita about 20 miles south of Tucson.
Las Quintas Serenas, meaning peaceful country estates, is Mrs. Haven's special dream which is taking substantial form on 640 acres she homesteaded when she first came to Arizona.
One afternoon a year ago last summer when the temperature was 108 she went to work on the project, hired a surveyor and started to mark off the desert. Driving a bulldozer and road grader herself, she cut the main road, two and a half miles long. She then formed a corporation to provide water for the total acreage.
A subdivision of five-to-19-acre lots was sold out by September and Mrs. Hazen started to build houses. In addition to her parents' home four or five are already occupied and several are near completion.
Exposed beams of bedroom grew in nearby forest on Mt. Lemmon
Southwestern design seems to fit in beautifully with the surrounding landscape and, whenever possible, Mrs. Hazen has used materials close at hand and products of the skilled craftsmen in nearby Nogales, Sonora.
The walls and partitions of the Press house are of 45 pound adobe bricks made from the topsoil of the lot. Roof beams are pine and fir poles brought down from Mr. Lemmon; the roof is of mission tile. Mrs. Hazen laid up the native volcanic rock of the 12-foot fireplace wall.
As a working contractor, who speaks fluent Spanish to Mexican members of her crew, she pitches in when necessary to help out at all kinds of jobs. She lays adobes, puts in wiring, designs and installs light fixtures . . . a Mexican tinsmith fashions them . . . or installs plumbing. She plans as well as builds fireplaces.
The Press house has refrigerated air conditioning and electric heat. Adobe walls are sealed with a silicone chemical inside and out, making them impervious to heat or moisture.
The Santa Fe furniture was designed and built for the house and was made to order of cedar or mahogany. Closets are papered in abaca cloth from the Philippine Islands . . . the contractor is also an expert paper-hanger. In her spare moments she sews.
(Coming next week: a picture feature of the upstairs apartment in her parents' home where Mrs. Hazen has her own private quarters.)
Those photos, which ran Sunday, Sept. 4, 1960, follow:
A breakfast bar and kitchenette that can be hidden from view by mahogany sliding screens are part of the apartment's large living room. Wood finish is mahogany throughout; Mexican tile is yellow and blue. Out of camera range is a convenient cabinet bar with storage space for glassware. A hallway to the left leads to a complete dressing room and a bath.
Mrs. Hazen's workroom equipment reveals her varied skills and interests. The room contains a drafting table, counter for tools and a sewing machine, all of which she uses in decorating and furnishing the houses she builds as a contractor. Her parents' home includes woodcarving and metalcraft she created; she made the curtains here.
Unplastered adobe bricks of the exterior wall are left exposed around the fireplace; seal coat prevents crumbling. The fireplace hood is of cast iron. Magazine table was made from a batea tub Mrs. Hazen found in Costa Rica and is typical of wooden vessels used by the Indians there. Apartment consists of this room and the screened porch seen at left.
