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Pioneer rancher Bingham, 73
Services for Glen Lamar Bingham, a rancher who established one of the city’s first dairy farms and whose family came to Tucson more than a 100 years ago, will be held Monday.
Mr. Bingham, 73, died Thursday of a heart aneurysm, said one of his daughters, Janet White.
”He was extremely tenacious,” White said. ”He weathered drought, plummeting cattle prices and a volatile cattle market.
”He never gave up.”
Services will be held at Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Binghampton Ward, 3700 E. Fort Lowell Road at 11 a.m.
Mr. Bingham helped establish Binghampton, the area bound by North Country Club and North Swan roads to the west and east, East Fort Lowell Road to the south and the Rillito River to the north.
”He was one of the original Tucson pioneers,” White said. ”He and his father had one of the first dairy farms where Christopher City (apartments) is today. They farmed that whole area along the Rillito.”
Nephi Bingham and the Bingham family came to Tucson from Mancose, Colo., in 1892.
The Binghams were one of the first Mormon families in town, building the Binghampton church on North Fort Lowell Road, where some family members still attend.
All members of the Bingham family have attended the Davidson School since the school was founded, White said.
The family also helped found the Binghampton cemetery, which is almost a century old.
Mr. Bingham was born May 7, 1923, in Tucson.
In 1925, during the Fiesta de los Vaqueros parade, he was voted the ”littlest cowboy.”
Seventy years later, he decided to ride again in the 1995 parade.
”He was one of the few, remaining, true Arizona cattle ranchers,” White said.
He graduated from Tucson High School in 1942 and married Dorothy Manier, a Tucson native.
On Wednesday, the day before he died, the two celebrated their 54th wedding anniversary.
In 1953, Mr. Bingham and his father, Lamar, bought a cattle ranch in San Manuel, about 50 miles northeast of Tucson.
”Bingham Sacaton Ranch” was named after the family and the prominent type of grass that covers the land. It now handles ”several hundred cattle,” said White, who added her father was still active at the ranch.
”He had a lot of family help, and friends asking to help work on the ranch,” she said.
Her father also owned the former Catalina Dairy Farms and a sand and gravel company.
In San Manuel, Mr. Bingham and the family would grow corn and hay for their cattle.
At home, he was a master horse rider, she said. He also enjoyed tending to his garden, where he would grow green chiles and ”the best tomatos you have ever had,” she said.
Mr. Bingham is survived by his wife, Dorothy; sons Deryl, Doug and Jim; daughters Janet White, Glenna Hablutzel and Lydia Holcombe; 14 grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.
He also is survived by his brothers, Norman, Keith and Dale; and sisters, Velma Jones and Arlene Haymore.
Burial will follow Monday’s services at Binghampton Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Make-A-Wish Foundation, 639 E. Speedway Blvd., Tucson, Ariz. 85705.
(Dated Nov 09, 1996)
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Mt. Lemmon pioneer Tony Zimmerman dies
Creating a retreat from Tucson heat, he built Summerhaven virtually from scratch.
Tony Zimmerman, who developed much of Summerhaven through his vacation lodges and helped bring water, electricity and phone service to the mountain village, has died.
Often called the patriarch of Mount Lemmon, Mr. Zimmerman was 103 when he died Saturday afternoon after suffering a stroke.
”Mount Lemmon wasn’t really even a place before (his development). It was wild and untamed. He brought civilization there,” said son Bob Zimmerman, who runs a real estate office from a cabin his father built in 15 days.
As the owner of the Mount Lemmon Inn, one of several lodges he would buy, Mr. Zimmerman prided himself on making visitors feel welcome, often plying them with homemade pies and hotcakes.
When presidential candidate Thomas Dewey retreated to Tucson’s old El Conquistador Resort after narrowly losing to Harry Truman in 1948, Mr. Zimmerman figured the man needed a real respite from the reporters hounding him.
He issued an invitation to his Mount Lemmon Inn.
A day or two later, black limousines pulled up to the lodge. To the neighbors’ surprise, out stepped Dewey and his wife.
They chatted in the inn’s lobby, filling themselves with slices of Mr. Zimmerman’s wife Sena’s famous pies before leaving later that day, Bob Zimmerman said.
Inn was community center
Besides a vacation retreat, the inn served as the post office, movie house, dance hall and interfaith church.
Mr. Zimmerman built it in 1945, using lumber from his mountaintop sawmill. Along with sons Bob and Franklin, he fashioned the dressers and beds for the rooms.
In the late ’40s, Mr. Zimmerman collected the necessary 300 signatures and traveled to Washington, D.C., to obtain electricity for Mount Lemmon.
He also secured water rights to the mountain springs, news clippings reported.
Once Catalina Highway was completed in 1950, replacing the winding, hair-raising Old Oracle Road on the north face, Mr. Zimmerman began a daily bus service to haul visitors, supplies and mail to the thriving alpine village.
In his memoirs, he estimated he sold several hundred parcels of land on the mountain between 1940 and 1970.
”He would stop people in the street as they drove through the village and sell them property. He was a very friendly and charming man,” Bob Zimmerman said.
Born to Swiss parents, Mr. Zimmerman grew up among a dozen siblings in Ottawa, Kan. He moved to Arizona in 1912, lured by teaching jobs paying $90 a month, nearly twice the Midwestern pay.
Arriving in Blue, a remote ranching enclave north of Morenci near the New Mexico border, Mr. Zimmerman began his 30-year Arizona teaching career.
Longing to see a beautiful teacher from another ranch, Mr. Zimmerman climbed on his horse. Soon he spotted her across a river, washing her long auburn hair.
Mr. Zimmerman waded into the rapids, trying to cross, but the current swept him and his horse downstream. He saved himself by grabbing the horse’s tail as it swam to the other side. Drenched and quite embarrassed, Mr. Zimmerman rode back upstream to her.
Impressed by his zeal, the teacher, Aseneth ”Sena” Dungan, married him in 1920.
Five years later, they moved to Tucson, where Mr. Zimmerman taught mathematics at Safford Middle School. He also taught for two summers at Tucson High School.
First trip to Mount Lemmon
He made his first trip to Mount Lemmon to hunt deer in 1937. He didn’t shoot any deer, but was captured by the mountain’s crisp air and evergreen splendor.
Soon after, Mr. Zimmerman began selling real estate for Randolph Jenks, who owned much of the non-government land. Mr. Zimmerman sank $2,500 into buying two mountaintop acres that included a store and five cabins.
By 1943, he knew it was time to retire when he briefly dozed off in class, Bob Zimmerman said.
In his second career, Mr. Zimmerman bought a sawmill in New Mexico and trucked it piece by piece up Mount Lemmon. The mill supplied the lumber for many of Summerhaven’s cabins and Western movie sets for Old Tucson Studios, his son said.
As the mill business blossomed, his real estate holdings grew to dozens of acres. At times, Mr. Zimmerman owned the Catalina Lodge, La Mariposa and the Pine Tree Lodge, which burned down in the ’60s.
His most notable property, the Mount Lemmon Inn, fell out of his hands between 1964 and 1971. He and son Bob reopened it, but fire burned down the hotel six years later as the elder Mr. Zimmerman slept in a nearby cabin.
Pima County opened a one-room schoolhouse for the Mount Lemmon children in 1953 and later named it the Zimmerman Accommodation School. It still operates today.
Mr. Zimmerman’s wife’s failing health prompted his move down the mountain in 1980. She died five years later.
‘He was always an optimist’
Though successful in logging and real estate, Mr. Zimmerman had his share of bad luck.
When he was in his 70s, powerful gusts blew him off his truck as he cinched down a lumber load. He broke his neck, but returned to the mill the following week, steadied by a neck brace, his son recalled.
”He had his share of misfortunes in life, but he never let it get to him. He was always an optimist,” Bob Zimmerman said.
In his later years, Mr. Zimmerman maintained his lifelong love for the outdoors, traveling along the back roads of Switzerland and New Zealand with relatives.
In his mid-90s, he still chopped wood for fires, said daughter-in-law Fran Zimmerman, who is Bob’s wife.
Back home, the hearty man with the thick shock of white hair and piercing blue eyes would rise at 5 a.m. to tend to his ”Garden of Eden”- his berry bushes, vegetable patch and honeybee hives.
Grandson David Barnes of Tucson once asked his secret to longevity.
”He told me, ‘I’ve never had a shot of whiskey and never owned a credit card.’ ”
His grandfather’s only vice, if cards can be called such a thing, was cowboy pitch. He played nearly every day until he died, almost always drubbing his opponents, Barnes said.
Until a week before his stroke, Mr. Zimmerman lived independently in his midtown Tucson home with his beloved Kitty Kat, who comforted him the day he died, said Tucsonan Mary Ellen Barnes, one of Mr. Zimmerman’s daughters.
Besides his pioneer legacy on Mount Lemmon, Mr. Zimmerman leaves behind four children: Bob Zimmerman, Mary Ellen Barnes and Norma Marquard of Tucson, and Franklin Zimmerman of Philadelphia. His eldest daughter, Majorie Farmer, died this summer. He also had 15 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Family will gather for a wake Thursday – on what would have been his 104th birthday – and then hold a memorial service at 2 p.m. Nov. 27 at First Christian Church, 740 East Speedway Blvd.
The family suggests contributions be made to the church; Carondelet Hospice Services, 1802 W. St. Mary’s Road, Tucson 85705; or the Zimmerman Accommodation School, 1260 N. Sabino Canyon Parkway, Mount Lemmon 85619.
(Dated Nov 18, 1996)
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