Here is another article I found in the desk in Douglas. It doesn't have a date on it and I can't find what newspaper it is. However, it has to probably be one of the local newspapers in our area.
Judy and Ken currently live in Las Sendas which is the area that this article is about. It is a very beautiful development in east Mesa. This is about our cousin, Joan Scott. She was married to John Edward, Johnny's son, for over 50 years.
Blame the horses: Woman solves Spook Hill mystery
By Rand Kull
Staff writer
MESA--The mystery of the naming of Spook Hill in northeast Mesa is solved.
Joan Scott, 59, says she recalls growing up near the hill with her five brothers and sisters on the defunct Red Mountain Ranch, a small dude ranch north of McDowell and east of Power Road.
Scott says family members and guests often took horse rides along the trails up the 110-foot-tall hill.
"We used to ride our horses up the hill, and they always did shy or spook," said Scott, now a resident of Leisure World retirement community in east Mesa.
She said there were no cattle or sheep on the desert land. It was a nonworking ranch, formerly called El Rancho Grande, that catered to the Western image sought by up to 20 tourists at a time.
Scott recalled that in the mid-1940's, shortly after her father and mother, Bob and Nona Beaugureau, moved the family from Chicago and began running the guest ranch, a party of surveyors and topographers stopped by,
"They asked my dad what they called it, " she said. "He said Spook Hill," because of the way the horses acted when they neared it.
"We just thought there were rattlesnakes on the ground that spooked them. Or maybe gophers."
City officials for years have tried to determine how the hill got its name. Checks with the city's library and state historical records offered no clear answer, according to Mesa Parks Director, Joe Holmwood.
Legend was that cattle or sheep became distrubed when they approached the hill, perhaps because of wind noises, he said.
The dude ranch's heyday was from 1946-54. After that, it became to costly to operate. Bob Beaugureau, who had operated a trailer-rental business in Illinois, sold the ranch in 1957. He died four years ago.
Scott said she was saddened to see that hill's current owner, Sonoran Land Development Co. whose president is developer Roger Steill, was seeking to change the name to Spirit Hill.
Steill said he feared that some people might perceive the name to be a racial slur. He is developing a golf course-home subdivision around the hill and wanted a name with less controversy.
The city parks board also plans to consider renaming Spook Hill District Park in east Mesa later this month or next, partly because of the name's potential to offend.
However, Soctt said there was never derogatory meant in the naming.
"It had nothing to do with racial bias," she said.
Scott planned to reister an objection to the name change with the Arizona Geographic and Names Board, which considers name changes for the state's topographical features.
The board is not expected to meet until September to review the Steills' suggestion, acting board Chairman Tim Norton said.
"It is kind of special," Scott said. "it would be kind of sad to have it gone It was a wonderful period in my memory."
Scott said her parents also were responsible for giving Red Mountain its name by word-of-mouth. It used to be called Granite Reef.
Ironically, Scott said, many of the old-timers who had lived in the area were upset with the Beaugureaus for changing the mountain's name. The name Red Mountain since has been picked up and used in the titles of home developments and several businesses in east Mesa.
(And on the side in a picture which I will try to post, is a picture of Joan. It says "Joan Scott has numerous mementos from the days when her parents owned the ranch on which Spook Hill is situated. Among the items is a photograph of her father, Bob Beaugureau.)
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