Pleasant Valley War
| Pleasant Valley War | |||
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 Edwin Tewksbury in the 1890s, the last surviving Tewksbury to be involved in the feud.
Commodore Perry Owens, as Sheriff of Apache County, Arizona, 1886-1888.
 A rare image of Tom Horn examining a lasso.
Frederick Russell Burnham in Arizona Territory during 1881.
 John Fletcher Fairchild, member of sheriff Mulvenon's posse and later sheriff of Coconino County
 An unidentified member of Sheriff Munvenon's posse
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| Date | 1882 - 1892 | ||
| Location | Tonto Basin, Arizona Territory, United States | ||
| Causes | Racism, land disputes, revenge killings | ||
| Result | Indecisive. Annihilation of the Graham faction. | ||
| Parties to the civil conflict | |||
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| Lead figures | |||
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| Casualties | |||
| 35-50 killed | |||
The Pleasant Valley War, sometimes called the Tonto Basin Feud, or Tonto Basin War, or Tewksbury-Graham Feud, was a range war fought in Pleasant Valley, Arizona in the years 1882-1892. The war was fought between two feuding families, the ranchers Grahams and Tewksburys. The Tewksburys, who were part Indian, started their operations as cattle ranchers before branching out to sheep.
Pleasant Valley is located in Gila County, Arizona, but many of the events related to this feud took place in neighboring Apache and Navajo counties. Other neighborhood Arizona parts, such as Holbrook and Globe, were the setting of its bloodiest battles. Although the feud was originally fought between the Tewksburys and the Grahams against the well-established cattleman James Stinson, it soon involved other cattlemen associations, sheepmen, hired guns, cowboys and Arizona lawmen. The feud lasted for about a decade, with its most deadly incidents between 1886 and 1887; the last-known killing took place in 1892.
The Pleasant Valley War had the highest number of fatalities of such civilian conflicts in United States history, with an estimated total of 35 to 50 deaths, and the near annihilation of the males of the two feuding families. The Pleasant Valley War was one of the deadliest and well-known range wars, and gave Arizona Territory a reputation for not being ready for statehood. Years after its end, many books and articles were written about the feud, and a number of gunmen made a name of themselves for their participation.
Edwin "Ed" Tewksbury was born in 1858 in San Francisco, California, and was the second son of former miner James D. Tewksbury and his Indian wife. The family was composed of four sons and one daughter and owned a great number of horses and cattle as they started out their ranching business. The Grahams were originally from Northern Ireland in 1851 before migrating to Ohio, and were composed of Samuel Graham as the head, his wife Jane, and their five children Allen, Margaret, Mary, John and Thomas. Jane died in 1861, and Sam married Mary E. Goetzman, who had seven children. In 1881, John and Thomas staked claims in Arizona.
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