Can you tell me the connection between the Swindle Bar brand and James A. Reavis, the Baron of Arizona?
Floyd Anderson
Phoenix, Arizona
The Baron of Arizona, a.k.a. James Addison Reavis, arrived in the territory in 1882 with a gift of gab and a claim to nearly 12 million acres, stretching from today’s Sun City, Arizona to Silver City, New Mexico. An expert forger, he’d falsified old Spanish documents giving him a land grant owned by a fictitious Peralta family. He accumulated a sizable fortune and lived in opulence. His cattle were branded with a connected “PR” for Peralta-Reavis. When the plot was uncovered and the baron went to prison, the man who got the cattle burned a bar through the original brand and named his outfit the Swindle Bar Brand.
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