The Triangle Bar is one of Arizona’s oldest cattle ranches. Located on the old Black Canyon Road in New River, just north of Phoenix, the property started as a stage station in 1879. An old adobe house was still standing when Frank Alkire purchased the property in 1886. Three years later, he brought his new wife, Asenath, to live on the ranch.
Asenath Phelps was born on Aug. 27, 1865, in New Orleans. Still a child when her family moved to St. Louis, she became friends with the neighbor boy, Frank Alkire. Years later, the couple reunited in San Diego and were married on Pacific Beach on April 10, 1889.
Frank and Asenath initially settled in Phoenix until Frank was needed at the Triangle Bar. A city girl, Asenath had no idea how remote her new home would be and the trials she would face in the wilderness, but she dutifully packed up their meager belongings and hopped aboard the buckboard for the long, dusty ride to New River, a trip that required an overnight stay on the trail.
Frank found a quiet spot for the evening and asked Asenath to search for firewood while he tended to the animals. Suddenly, Asenath shouted, “Come quick! I’ve gotten into trouble.” Frank found Asenath trying to wrestle a cholla cactus for firewood, her hands covered in cactus thorns. This time the cactus won, but Asenath would conquer far more during her ranching years.
Arriving at the ranch, Asenath discovered her new home consisted of three rooms with a wide porch and grape vines climbing up the porch posts. The roof was made of cottonwood logs, saguaro ribs, and hay, held together with a mixture of red mud and water. A resident snake, Old Bill, lived in the roof and was allowed to stay as long as it kept the rat population at bay. An ocotillo fence surrounded the yard.
Inside, Asenath eyed a long, well-used table that was big enough to feed all the ranch hands and visitors who usually arrived around dinner time (the stage to Phoenix stopped just outside her door). She quickly decided the timeworn oilcloth and tin dishes would have to go. Spreading a bright red checkered cloth over the rickety table, adding napkins, chinaware, and decent silverware, she went to work cooking for whoever showed up.
Frank wrote about his “Little Lady of the Triangle Ranch” in an unpublished manuscript housed at Tucson’s Arizona History Museum. He described Asenath as “a trim, slim, little figure of a girl,” and often joked about the difficult time she had adapting to Western living. But Asenath was made of studier stock than Frank could imagine. On more than one occasion, she gritted her teeth and did what had to be done to keep the ranch afloat.
An example of Asenath’s tenacity occurred when one of the ranch horses ran into a barbed wire fence, sustaining a massive cut that ran from its chest down its shoulder and foreleg. Frank was set to shoot the horse, but Asenath would have no part of killing such a magnificent animal.
Asking for a bucket of warm water, a sponge, antiseptic, and a long curved needle used to sew grain sacks, she found a skein of heavy embroidery thread in her sewing kit and ordered the horse blindfolded with its forefeet tied. Under her direction, one of the cowhands washed the large cut before holding the big flap of skin against the animal’s chest while Asenath sewed the horse back together.
The horse, seeming to understand what Asenath was doing, stayed fairly quiet during the entire operation. Once stitched, she had the men place a cloth around the horse’s neck and tie the ends to its legs for a bandage.
“Talk about grit,” Frank wrote about his petite wife. “She had it!”
Six weeks later, the horse was in good shape.
On another occasion, a wounded deer pinned Frank to the ground after grinding him into a cholla cactus. Asenath had to shoot the animal before it did dire damage to her husband — the first time she ever used a firearm. She spent the next few hours pulling cactus needles out of Frank’s posterior.
Indians appeared infrequently at the ranch but one day, Asenath looked up to see a band of Apaches approaching, escorted by a cavalry officer who was taking them to Fort McDowell. Asenath stayed back when a fight erupted between one of the men and a woman, but when the man struck the woman with force, Asenath was off the porch in a flash. Boldly separating the feuding couple, she took the woman to the house, bandaged her face, and gave her food before sending her back to her people. The two women did not speak to each other during the entire episode, but as the woman left, Asenath turned to Frank and emphatically stated, “No man could ever do a thing like that to me. I would kill him.” Frank believed her.
Asenath and Frank had five children; two died at an early age.
In 1895 the couple left the Triangle Bar Ranch to live in Phoenix. Asenath embedded herself in the town’s growth. She became director of the Florence Crittenton Home, originally a refuge for sick and destitute women, and helped establish local divisions of the Parent Teachers Association throughout Arizona.
She formed a Food Relief Group for families suffering from the cotton disaster of 1920 and is credited with providing hundreds of meals for those in need. She was a member of the Women’s Club of Phoenix and a leader in supporting laws to protect women and children. She was touted as “one of Arizona’s most notable grand ladies.”
In their later years, Frank asked Asenath if she would like to return to the ranch. She said no but she also admitted that those years on the ranch were the happiest time of her life. “Of course,” Frank said, “we were young then, and life had much to offer.”
On Jan. 3, 1950, Asenath died at age 84. She is buried at Phoenix’s Greenwood Memory Law Cemetery.
The Arizona Daily Star turned 146 years old this March. Its history is a part of Tucson history.
