Henry Zipf (far right) at his boyhood home, the Feldman Ranch House in, Dudleyville, Arizona.
Henry Zipf 2010
About ten miles north of the dusty desert town of Mammoth, Arizona, you’ll see a dilapidated homestead with a red tin roof. I knew it as the PZ Ranch, and passed it every day when I lived in Aravaipa Canyon.
I longed for a chance to some day tour the place. I was dying to know if it had any of the original moldings, and if so, what did they look like?
My chance came when I was invited to tour the ranch with a few other local folks. The tour was given by none other than Henry Zipf, great grand-son of the original 1890 owner, George Pusch.
Henry lived in the house when he was a boy, and his narrative was filled with simple, happy childhood memories of life on the ranch — the people, the animals, the landscape.
In the late 1800′s the PZ was a working cattle ranch, grew a number of crops, and also served as a stagecoach stop for those traveling along the San Pedro River.
When I walked inside the tumbledown old home, I was elated to find that most of the moldings were still there.
The baseboard, door trim, picture rails, were all made from simple, one inch thick flat-stock.
All of these ranch moldings are wide — about 10″ tall for the baseboard and about 6″ wide for the door trim and picture rail.
