The Last Arizona Ranger: Remembering Harry McPhaul, Lawman, Prospector, Legend
By Skeeter Wesinger
April 15, 2025
In an era when the American West was still being shaped not by policy but by the blunt instruments of grit, lead, and willpower, Henry Harrison “Harry” McPhaul carved his own story into the sun-bleached soil of Arizona.
He arrived in Yuma around 1897, just as the frontier was fading and statehood remained a distant promise. Some men came west to escape; others came to build. Harry, it seems, came to do both.
He quickly found himself in the thick of the territory’s law-and-order struggle—first as a constable, then as a guard at the Yuma Territorial Prison, where discipline was as much about reputation as regulation. He later became a deputy sheriff, and then Yuma’s town marshal, earning the respect—and perhaps the fear—of both outlaws and citizens alike. But of all his titles, one stands alone: Arizona Ranger.
McPhaul is remembered as the only Yuma resident ever to serve in that elite corps. The Rangers, active between 1901 and 1909, were no ordinary deputies. They were handpicked, armed to the teeth, and expected to ride into the most dangerous corners of the territory without backup. It was frontier justice at full gallop—and McPhaul was right in the saddle.
But Harry wasn’t just a man of the law—he was a man of the land. After hanging up his badge, he turned his attention to prospecting, chasing the shimmering illusions of gold and copper in the Gila Mountains. His claim near the Dome Bridge became something of a personal kingdom. The bridge itself, later renamed the McPhaul Bridge, spanned 798 feet and held the title of Arizona’s longest suspension bridge until it was retired in 1968. Today, it stands abandoned, a skeletal echo of a past that refuses to die.
Even in old age, Harry never really slowed down. A Life Magazine photo from November 3, 1947, shows him reclining against a tree, map in hand, eyes fixed not on memory, but on possibility. He was still looking—still hunting—for that next big strike. In that same article, he reportedly boasted of killing five men. Whether in self-defense or as part of his duties, he offered no justification. The number was presented like a resume line—grim, unapologetic, and final.
Harry’s story ended at the Arizona Pioneers’ Home in Prescott, where he spent the last six years of his life. On March 4, 1948, the last breath of a frontier lawman slipped quietly into history. His death certificate recorded him as a retired miner. But that’s not what he was.
He was a husband, once, to Mary Emma “Mae” Despain, whom he married in 1894. Together, they raised five children—Francis, Hortense, Thomas, Gladys, and William. But even family life couldn’t fully tame a man whose soul was more wilderness than hearth.
When he died, his body was returned to Yuma, to the place that had made him and that he in turn had helped shape.
Harry McPhaul didn’t just live in Arizona—he became part of it. In his bridge, in the fading records of Ranger deployments, in the dust of the Gila, his story endures. And like the gold he chased, it glints just beneath the surface—waiting to be discovered by those who still care to dig.