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The ‘Baron’ of Arizona and Other Historic Hucksters

Khalid Elhassan October 31, 2019 27 min

14. The Baron of Arizona Cashes In

Vincent Price and Ellen Drew in the 1950 movie ‘The Baron of Arizona’. Janus Films

James Reavis had no intention of actually evicting the occupants of his “barony”. He simply wanted to extort as much as he could out of them in rent or quit claim fees, to support him and his “noble” wife in a manner befitting an aristocratic land magnate. Surprisingly, it was the large and wealthy landowners who proved to be the easiest marks: they figured it was cheaper to pay the Baron of Arizona, instead of risking litigation that might end in the loss of their valuable properties. Arizona’s biggest mining company paid him $25,000, and he got the Southern Pacific Railroad to cough up $50,000. Thousands of others paid smaller fees, which added up to a nice bundle.

At some point, even the US government fell for the con, and considered paying Reavis millions of dollars to settle the claim. All in all, Reavis collected about $5,300,000 in cash and promissory notes – the equivalent of about $160 million today. With that kind of loot, James Reavis and his wife Sophia were able to live it up in style. In addition to various ranches, they maintained nice homes in Arizona, New York City, Washington, DC, San Francisco, St. Louis, Madrid, and Chihuahua City. They traveled throughout Europe, and mingled with the Spanish aristocracy. Many of the Spaniards saw through his scam and figured he and his wife for frauds, but they got a huge kick out of the brazenness of it all, and how he was tweaking the yanquis’ noses. So the Spaniards went ahead and feted the “Baron and Baroness of Arizona”.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.