Show Low, Arizona

If you're thinking to yourself, 'That's a mighty strange name for a town,' I would agree with you. But what else would you expect from a town that was named after a card game?

Show Low is a community of about 11,000 hardy souls in Navajo County, northeastern Arizona. The town is surrounded by Apache Sitgreaves National Forest, one of the most spectacular forests in the Southwestern United States.

How Show Low came to be named is one of the most interesting stories in Arizona folklore history. Corydon Cooley and Marion Clark started out life as childhood friends and partners.

As children, they rode horses together to explore coyote and outlaw caves. When they grew into young adults, they decided to buy a ranch and raise cattle and horses. They also learned to play poker and spent their leisure hours in the bunkhouse gambling with the hired help.

Somewhere along the line Cooley and Clark lost their friendship. They became bitter enemies. Like a married couple that has been together too long, they decided enough was enough. They wanted a divorce. As one of their former wranglers said, 'It was either a divorce or a shootout, and nobody wanted to see that.'

One evening with a bottle of whiskey on the table, they decided to have a poker game, with just the two of them. The partners had accumulated a ranch of over 100,000 acres with plenty of fat cattle and good horses. They agreed that whoever won the poker game would buy out the other rancher and sever their partnership forever.

The game began.

It was a grueling marathon for both men. They played hard and fair, and the whiskey flowed freely. The game lasted all night and as the sun peeked over the magnificent Mogollon Rim which author Zane Grey had written about in many of his best-selling books, one of the partners -- history doesn't record who -- said, 'I'm tired and need some sleep. Let's end this nonsense once and for all. How about we cut the deck and show low? Whoever gets the low card wins the ranch?'

They agreed. Cooley turned up the deuce of clubs. The poker game was over.

Today Show Low's Main Street is called Deuce of Clubs. It's where the town's leading businesses, including the Show Low Chamber of Commerce, are located. Most of the other streets are named after the cards in a poker deck -- Ace of Hearts, King of Spades, and the like.

I worked on a newspaper in the White Mountains which surround Show Low and Payson, 90 miles distance, for about a year. My publisher was Donovan Kramer, whose father owned the Casa Grande Dispatch and several other newspapers in southern Arizona.

While gambling was not legal in Arizona, there were nearly as many high stakes poker games in Show Low, Payson and the nearby ranching communties as there were in Las Vegas 389 miles to the north. I remember going to one big game at a rancher's house.

The rancher had butchered a steer, flown in planeload of jumbo shrimp packed in ice from Lousiana, and hired a band to keep the ranchers' wives and daughters from getting bored.

Since the sheriff, a judge and the town magistrate were in the game, nobody was afraid of being raided by law enforcement.

My salary wasn't nearly high enough for me to compete with the deep-pocketed ranchers and their cronies, so I mostly watched the poker action. Back in those days, I was more interested in saddling a horse at the Kohls Ranch Riding Stable near Payson and taking an all-day ride to the old cabin where Zane Grey had written several novels, including 'Under The Tonto Rim.'

The ranchers were amused at my choice of hobbies. One threw his arm around me as they were settling down to a game of serious poker.

'Reporter, when are you gonna stop playing at being a cowboy and join us for some real poker,' he said.

I would smile. 'When I get a bankroll as thick as yours,' was my stock answer.

Zane Grey's cabin near Payson was seriously damaged by fire a number of years ago. There was an effort by several local people to restore it, but the costs and restrictions placed on them by the U.S. Forest Service prohibited the work from being done. Today from what I hear the cabin no longer exists. A Zane Grey historical museum is open to the public in Payson.

I am planning a trip to Show Low and Payson in the next couple of weeks. I want to show my daughter, who was born in Arizona, and my grandchildren, aged 10 and nine, what the Grand Canyon State is all about.

We plan to rent horses and take a ride through the spectacular Mogollon Rim country. The cabin may be gone, but the spirit of Zane Grey and two ranchers who used a poker game to settle a simmering dispute will live forever.

Author: Geno Lawrenzi Jr.

(Geno Lawrenzi Jr. is an international journalist, magazine author and ghostwriter. If you have a unique gambling story to share with him, you may qualify for a cash award. Send your story with all the details to glawrenzi@gmail.com ).