Bed Bug Services in Rio Verde, AZ.

The area surrounding the Rio Verde community, northeast of Downtown Scottsdale, was settled by small farmers in the 1880s, who grew hay and alfalfa to provide for the nearby Fort McDowell US Army camp (1865-1890) (now the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation). In the late 1890s, Frank Asher and William W. Moore acquired several of the small farm plots on the Verde River, combining them into what became the Box Bar Ranch; Moore later bought out Asher’s interest. After his death in 1929, Moore’s sons, Glen and Lin Moore, operated the Box Bar as a partnership, under the name “Moore Bros Cattle Co.”, with grazing leases both east and west of the Verde River. Lin Moore also ran the X2 Ranch, known as “Moore’s Well”, 12 miles (19 km) to the west, where he and his wife, Ada Lucille, had homesteaded in the 1920s. William Moore’s father, Ransom B. Moore, had emigrated to Arizona from California in 1883 and ranched for many years on the Reno Ranch, just west of the community of in Gila County. Ransom Moore, founder of what is now Banning, California, also served as Gila County’s delegate to the 16th Arizona Territorial Legislative Assembly in 1891.

The “Asher Hills”, overlooking the community to the west, were named for Frank Asher, who had been Glen Moore’s brother-in-law and William Moore’s partner for a time. The granddaughter of Asher’s wife Ella, Jacque Mercer, was selected as Miss Arizona and then Miss America in 1949.

In 1954 the Moore brothers retired from the active cattle business and sold the ranch and their holdings to the Page Land & Cattle Co. (Lin Moore retained the X2 Ranch; after his death in 1960, his widow continued to operate the X2 until selling it in 1970.) The Moores’ descendants, including historian Wyatt James, still reside in Maricopa County. A portion of Lin & Lucille Moore’s homestead property on the foothills to the south, known as “The Ochoa Place”, has recently been incorporated into the expanding McDowell Mountains McDowell Sonoran Preserve.