Situated amidst the White Mountains is the uniquely named Show Low. Located near multiple outdoor recreational areas including the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, Fool Hollow Lake Recreation Area, and the Petrified Forest National Park. It lies along the Mogollon Rim of eastern Arizona in Navajo County.
Etched across northern Arizona the Mogollon Rim is an escarpment forming the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau. Forested with ponderosa pine, its edge stretches two hundred miles from the border with New Mexico to the center of Arizona. The eastern part of the Rim combines with the White Mountains and is the home of the Fort Apache Indian Reservation.
Lyn Hawkins, a full-time RVer, and former resident of Show Low, Arizona told me how the town got its name, “it was named by the turn of a card… two farmers were fighting over their ranch and they decided that they would play a poker game to decide who would get it.”
According to the Arizona Memory Project, Marion Clark and Corydon Cooley, were the notorious card players responsible for naming Show Low. Clark and Cooley were partners who set up a ranch on 100,000-acres of ponderosa pine forest in a valley with a creek.
The ranch had a good mixture of grassland and forest, providing everything needed for buildings, planting crops, and raising cattle. The partnership soon soured and sometime around 1876, the two decided the winner of a game of “Seven Up”, would settle the issue of ownership over the ranch. Whoever won would gain sole control of all 100,000 acres.
Cool Old Games describes “Seven Up”, as a card game played with a standard deck by 2 to 4 players. Ace cards are designated low, while kings are high (A, 2, 3…J, Q, K), and suits (club, spade, diamond, and hearts) are irrelevant.
One player deals seven cards to each player. The dealt cards are lined up facedown, in front of each player, from left to right, and numbered one to seven. The undealt cards are placed in the center of the table.
The player to the left of the dealer draws a card from the stockpile. If the drawn card is an eight through a king, the player’s turn is over. If instead, the drawn card is an ace or any card through seven, it is kept by the player and placed above the corresponding numbered, face-down card.
An ace would be placed above the one card, a two above the two card, a three above the three card, etcetera; the facedown card is then turned over. If the card drawn by the player is, for instance, a four it would be placed above the player’s fourth facedown card.
That card would then be turned over, if the turned-over card is also a four, or an eight through king, it is discarded, and the player’s turn is over. Discarded cards are placed faceup in a pile next to the stockpile.
If the card is an ace, two, three, five, six, or seven card, it is placed alongside the four card. The next player then takes their turn pulling a card from either the stock or discard pile. The cycle is repeated until one player has lined up seven cards, ace through seven.
As the game wore on long into the night, Clark eventually said to Cooley, “Show low and you take the ranch.” Cooley turned over the lowest card, the deuce of clubs, winning the ranch. The city grew around the Show Low Ranch, whose main street would be named ‘Deuce of Clubs’ after Cooley’s winning card.
Marion Clark, meanwhile, “went off into history.”
THE CAMPER 