Borderland Heritage History: C. B. Ruggles

 

C.B. Ruggles transcript

Hello! This is Susan Barnum with Borderland Heritage History brought to you by the El Paso Public Library.

In today’s episode, we’re traveling back to the Wild West, discovering a lost mine, some legendary borderland beasts and finding love in Anchorage Alaska.

C. B. Ruggles was born on April 22, 1880 and was named C.B. because he was born on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy train on the way west. C.B. was raised in Oregon where he learned to be a good cowboy and was friendly with members of the Modoc Nation.

At some point, the family moved to Kansas. In 1900, he married Jane McVey in Stafford Kansas. They had a few children, one of whom died as an infant.

The family moved to New Mexico where C.B. worked for the Cliff Cities Pack Outfitters. He also hunted coyotes, roped mountain lions and broke horses. C.B. lived in New Mexico for 15 years, and must have heard the legend of the lost Tayopa mine during that time. The mine was reputed to hold vast wealth and any prospector who could find it would certainly be quite wealthy.

In 1921, he traveled to El Paso, Texas and then further south into Chihuahua, Mexico in order to do some prospecting. For six years, he prospected and searched for the Lost Tayopa Mine. He had considerable medical knowledge that he’d learned from his father and used it to treat miners and Native Americans in the area who called him “El Doctor.”

He met folklorist and writer, J. Frank Dobie in 1928 and told him about where he believed the lost Tayopa mine was located. Dobie would eventually write about the mines in his book, Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver originally published in 1939. Not only did C.B. believe that he had found the location of the Tayopa Mines, which he claimed in the El Paso Times in 1928, but one year before, he claimed to have trapped a legendary ounce. The ounce is a cryptozoological creature that has never been positively identified, yet legends abound regarding its existence.

Whether the ounce was real or just a strange variant of a cougar, C.B. was determined to hunt new game. He moved to Alaska in the summer of 1928 where he planned to hunt Kodiak Bears. C.B. met his second wife, Etta, in Anchorage. Etta was also a hunter and trapper and drove her own dog sled.

Henrietta or Etta was born in Sweden in 1897 and emigrated to Salt Lake City with a group of Mormons at age 17. She married C.B. in 1929 and the couple lived together in Alaska, hunting and trapping. Later, C.B. would write about surviving as a hunter in Alaska for the Saturday Evening Post. Etta Ruggles also talked about their Alaska experiences to women’s clubs.

C.B. and Etta moved to Arivaca, Arizona in the 1930s where they lived on a mining claim north of the city.  They were still living in the area in the early 1950s where they were active in the community.