Eulalia Bourne (1895–1984)

Eulalia "Sister" Bourne was born on a West Texas homestead and raised in New Mexico. The eldest of five girls, she was called "Sister" by her younger siblings. At age 17, she married William S. Bourne, a man more than twice her age; they divorced in 1915. In about 1910-1911, the couple moved to Arizona and Eulalia got her first teaching job in a one-room school in Beaver Creek. At the end of her second year, she was fired for dancing. Her next teaching job was at Helvetia, a small mining camp in the Santa Rita Mountains southeast of Tucson. None of her students spoke English, and she began to learn Spanish from them. In 1920, she enrolled in the University of Arizona in Tucson, and graduated with honors after 10 years of working her way through college by teaching in local schools. She took a job in the isolated ranching community of Carlink Ranch, Redington, east of Tucson. There she created The Little Cowpuncher, a mimeographed newspaper, written and illustrated by her students. The paper moved with her from school to school for the next 11 years. With its lively, detailed descriptions of ranch and school life, it is now seen as a unique historical document of Southern Arizona ranching communities of the period. Eulalia Bourne retired from teaching in 1957 and lived at her own homestead in Peppersauce Canyon above San Manuel, and later at her GF Bar Ranch on Copper Creek, east of Mammoth. Her first book was the memoir Woman in Levi's (1967), followed by Nine Months Is a Year at Baboquivari School (1968), Ranch Schoolteacher (1974), and The Blue Colt (1979), a children's book. She was honored by many organizations, including the Arizona Press Women, Arizona Library Association, and the Cowgirl Hall of Fame.