Interview with Roy Wilhelm, December 24, 1992

'''Roy''':  Well, that comes along with what is known as the "Concho curse."  The people in Concho, the Mormons that, they put the names in a hat, see, they put the description of land, see, so many acres when they got all their people that wanted to settle there.  They had these plots surveyed and numbered they put 'em in and a man comes up and pays his money and draws out of there it's up to him what he got and over to Concho there was part of that land that was sandy loam where the sand had washed down over this clay and mixed in with it until it wasn't clay soil anymore but it was had enough clay in it that to  hold the moisture and nutrients and it was good.  Good land and bad land.  The bad land, when it rained you couldn't even walk across it cause you got about that much mud on each foot, that old sticky mud.  Well, those guys had a hell of a time getting their seed back, but the guys with the good land, man, Concho was all right.  It was the garden spot of Arizona, they called it.  Well these people that had the bad land, they concocted a scheme.  Why not take the water that they impounded there in the Concho Reservoir and ditch it down the stream course? Down to the Hunt valley, where it was all good land, down where Doc Ellsworth was and then they could all have good land.  But these other guys cited 'em to the fact that the evaporation on that much ditch, the evaporation and sinkage would lower the stream 'til none of them would have anything when it got down there.  Well they hung on that point.  They even got to where they were takin' their guns to church with them.  All belonged to the same church, see.  Then they got to where they wouldn't go to church at all and it was just a bad situation.  So they sent one of the apostles to straighten it out, so he would talk to one faction and the other faction and the other faction trying to get 'em something, a little common ground.  And they couldn't, the longer he was there the worse it got.  Finally he decided that it was a lost cause and there was just nothing could be done about it, cause these people wasn't gonna budge.  Anything was said about it, crystalized it more than ever.  So he advertised that he had the solution to the whole thing and to come and have one big meeting.  And he beat the bushes until they all got out to see what he had to say.  And he told 'em that the situation was beyond human power to resolve it and that he had the authority to release them from their call as colonizers.  And he says,  "I release you from your call.  You're free to go where you want to.  Concho is no more as far as the church is concerned.  I release you with this prophecy:  That Concho will wither and die like a melon on a dead vine."  Which it has.   

'''Roy''':  Yeah, that's right.