Mary Kidder Rak knew nothing about the cattle business. In fact, she “was terrified when the mildest cow even looked my way.” Yet she spent most of her life chasing after wayward cows, feeding and caring for them, plus all the cooking and cleaning it took to maintain her 22,000-acre Rucker Ranch in the rugged and often unforgiving Chiricahua Mountains.
Born in Boone County, Iowa, on Aug. 4, 1870, Mary Kidder was destined for a life of academia. Graduating from Stanford University in 1901 with a degree in history, she taught in San Francisco schools and eventually became superintendent of the San Francisco Associated Charities that provided relief during the 1906 earthquake.
While still in college Mary met Charles Lukeman Rak, who was studying forestry at the University of California. The couple married in 1917 and headed for Tucson where Charlie went to work for the U.S. Forest Service and Mary taught social science at the University of Arizona.
But Charlie, a native Texan and the son of a cattleman, was eager to return to ranching. In 1919, he and Mary bought what used to be Camp Rucker, an old Army fort (initially called Camp Supply) that was first established in 1878 to ward off raiding Apaches. The fort was abandoned in 1881 and served as a ranch for several owners before the Raks took it over and lived in what used to be the officers’ quarters.
For over 20 years, Mary and Charlie worked the ranch, a hardscrabble job that took every minute of the day and sometimes into the evenings. Not only was Mary the housekeeper and cook, she was on call when extra help was needed around the ranch. If they were shorthanded or Charlie was away on business, Mary abandoned the house for a horse and drove, fed, rounded up and branded cattle. It was tough work.
She had to adapt to the isolation of ranch living since Douglas, the closest town, was over 50 miles away. Even when Charlie encouraged her to make the trip, she balked. “If you don’t go somewhere pretty soon,” he told her, “you will forget how to talk to other women. … By and by all you will be able to do is to ‘moo’ when they speak to you.”
Mary preferred to spend what spare time she had writing about her desert home, describing herself as “a ranchwoman who writes,” although her first book, “A Social Survey of Arizona,” was a compilation of Arizona’s social services.
In 1934, she wrote “A Cowman’s Wife,” describing the land and those ornery cattle she had learned to tolerate and grown to love. She followed this book in 1936 with another about her time on the ranch, “Mountain Cattle.” “Border Patrol” was published in 1938, outlining the history of the early U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Southwest. “They Guard the Gates: The Way of Life on the American Borders,” was published in 1941.
It was her books about life on the ranch that gained Mary fame. In “A Cowman’s Wife,” she described the amount of work it took just to get ready for the long trip into town on a cold winter day.
“We get up at four o’clock, cook and eat breakfast and do the indispensable chores of milking and feeding horses and chickens. Kettles of water are heated to warm the cockles of the truck’s heart. A hind wheel is jacked up; motor oil is drained and warmed on the back of the stove until the whole house reeks like an engine-room at sea. While I dress in my town-going garments, Charlie pours boiling water into the radiator and warm oil into the crank-case. Then he cranks, cranks, cranks! … Charlie lowers the hind wheel to the ground; then goes inside to warm his half-frozen hands, put on a necktie and his best shoes. We are on our way.”
When she ventured out alone, it was with heart-thumping trepidation that she would not have car trouble before completing the 10-hour round-trip drive to Douglas and back.
On one such excursion in the middle of the summer, she had successfully made it to Douglas, completed her errands, visited friends and was on her way home when a tire blew on one of the loneliest spots along the dirt-packed, rutted byway.
Having dressed in one of her few nice dresses for her outing into town, Mary had also donned a light-weight coat over her outfit to keep the dust at bay. But with the sun blazing overhead and no one to help her change the tire, she knew she would have to tackle the job herself.
“It was a hot day,” she said, “far too hot to wear a linen duster over my dress all the time that strenuous job would take me. I peeled off my dress and hung it on the fender where I could grab it quickly in the happy event of an arrival. Then I set to work.”
The sun was merciless as she removed the punctured tire and patched it. With sweat pouring down her face, she was ready to pump up the tire and replace it on the rim when she heard a car approaching. Fearful that finding a half-naked woman along the side of the road might deter anyone from stopping, “I jumped for my dress and slid it over my head.” A gentleman cowboy stopped to help, and a grateful Mary was soon on her way again.
In 1921, the ranch headquarters burned down and the Raks moved into a small cottage that had previously been used by local cowboys. They sold Rucker Ranch in 1943 and by 1951 they were living on a ranch just outside of Douglas called Hell’s Hip Pocket.
On January 25, 1958, Mary died. Charlie followed her 23 days later. Their ashes were scattered across Rucker Ranch.
In 1970 the ranch was turned over to the U.S. Forest Service.
Mary and Charlie left their estate to the University of Arizona. The Mary Kidder Rak Scholarship assists students in agriculture and home economics.
