In his early forties, wanting to get out of the cold and to be outdoors, he and his wife and two teenage daughters, Pauline and Helen, took the train to Tucson arriving in February 1903. (Robert's younger brother, Dr. Mark Rodgers, had moved from Pennsylvania around 1895 to become one of the first physicians in Tucson. In 1906, Mark was the Secretary of the Arizona Statehood Association, and in 1910, he and two others filed to incorporate The Rodgers Hospital Training School for Nurses.)

 Robert and Anna bought a squatters right in what became the Huachuca Forest Reserve and set up home in May 1904 in a temporary structure made from the packing boxes in which they had shipped their belongings west. Among those were a piano, and an 1885 illustrated edition of Tennyson's Works which had been a present to them from Anna's brother Fred at Christmas in 1887.

 Robert began to play a significant role in the growth and development of the area. In 1904 he established the first Canelo post office (called "Canille" because he said he didn't know how to spell "canela") and he became the first postmaster, succceded by his wife as the second from 1906-1910. In 1906 in Tucson, he took and passed the exam to became a Forest Ranger; he was first assigned to the Rosemont station in the Santa Rita Reserve, and moved in 1907 to the Huachuca Reserve near his home. He began bringing order to the ranching and mining operations in the area and, not infrequently, met significant resistance to his efforts. He later wrote an account of those early years; click here to read it.

 In 1910, he was granted right to homestead 135 acres at what had become Canelo when the first Forest Ranger station was established there. He began construction on a substantial ranch house, and started farming corn and other crops, eventually adding cattle to the ranch, and naming it Hacienda Huachuca. Their two daughters and husbands also built homes nearby. Helen and Stanley Young divorced within a few years and moved away. Pauline and Arthur Young raised their children, Virginia and Sig, there for 10 years until they, too, divorced, and Pauline moved to Tucson with the kids.

Hacienda Huachuca in winter, 1912

 In 1923, Robert left the Forest Service to join the Plant Quarantine Section of the U.S. Horticultural Service in Nogales where he worked until his retirement. He and Anna celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary at Hacienda Huachuca in 1934 with a large number of family and friends. He was always known as "Gaddaw" to his family. His headstone which he shares with Anna says he was born in 1861; his death certificate says it was 1860.

 Pauline sold the ranch in 1947 after Robert died; Anna moved to Tucson to live with Pauline. In 1954, the ranch was sold again, this time to Douglas Whitney, who left it to his children Jim, Peter, and Phyllis, and it continues to be known as the Whitney Ranch.

 For a more complete biography with source references, click here.

50th wedding anniversary, Hacienda Huachuca, 1939

Written by his great-grandson Sig Corbin Smith.

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