Buckhorn Baths exhibit by the Mesa Historical Museum (was up in Mesa Public Libraries)

1. Hidden Mesa: Rediscovering the West
Art from the Buckhorn Baths Collection
Alice and Ted Sliger’s Buckhorn Baths and Wildlife Museum is important to the history of Mesa for many reasons.
• The Baths, a 10-acre property at Main Street and Recker Road, is the best-preserved hot mineral-water springs resort in Arizona. In its
heyday, the Buckhorn’s bathhouse contained twenty-five hot tubs, several massage rooms, a café, and a beauty parlor.
• The Baths also attracted numbers of well-known visitors to Mesa who came for their health.
• Amateur taxidermist Ted Sliger filled its public rooms, floor to ceiling, with Arizona-wildlife specimens.
• Most famously, The Baths played a huge role in attracting the Cactus League to Arizona. In 1947 the New York Giants made it its spring
training base camp so players could soak their aching bodies in the hot mineral water, and other teams soon followed.
• Alice and Ted Sliger also collected the work of Western artists—most notably that of George Frederick and Arnold Krug, both of whom
were living at the Buckhorn Baths up to the time of their deaths. Hidden Mesa offers a representative, never-before-exhibited selection
of their artwork.

2. Alice Annette O’Barr Sliger
Alice Annette O’Barr Sliger lived her whole long and eventful life in Mesa, attending Old
Alma School, Mesa High School, and working her way through Tempe State Teacher’s
College, later ASU. In the late 1920s, she taught all eight grades at a school in Sasabe, AZ.
When Alice returned to Mesa, she taught at Old Alma School from 1930 to 1935.
Alice married Ted Sliger in 1935, and in 1939 their Buckhorn Baths adventure began with
their discovery of the hot mineral springs. The Sligers had two children, Marilyn Alice
and Theodore Newton. Active in her church, Alice was also a founding member of the
Soroptimist International of Mesa Club, and, all through her life, she admired and nurtured
artists. Alice O’Barr Sliger died at the age of 103 on November 9, 2010.
Ted Sliger and Alice Annette O’Barr Sliger
Photo courtesy of the Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr Sliger Collection

3. Alice Sliger
George Frederick
Oil on board 1961
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr Sliger
Collection

4. Marilyn Sliger
George Frederick
Oil on board 1960
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr Sliger
Collection

5. “The Tiger”
Teddy Sliger 0.1875 in
George Frederick
Oil on board 1960
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr Sliger
Collection

6. Theodore William “Ted” Sliger
Theodore William “Ted” Sliger was born in Texas, but was
raised in New Mexico. He moved with his family to Arizona
in1923 where he homesteaded and built the Desert Wells
gas station on the Apache Trail in 1926 that included a small
taxidermist business. In 1935 Ted and Alice moved to the
site of what was to become the Buckhorn Baths and Wildlife
Museum. Ted Sliger also ran a Greyhound bus depot at
Buckhorn and was postmaster of the Buckhorn Post Office.
Listed in “Who’s who in Arizona,” Ted was a member of both
the Mesa and Phoenix Chambers of Commerce and one of
the founders of the Mesa Host Association. Ted Sliger died on
November 9, 1984.
New York Giants players Davey Williams and Hoyt Wilhelm, Alice Sliger, Ted Sliger,
and Giants Manager Bill Rigney, February 1957.
Photo courtesy of the Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr Sliger Collection

7. Theodore “Ted” W. Sliger
George Frederick
Oil on board 1961
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr Sliger
Collection

8. Ted Sliger’s braided leather lariat,
spurs and boots
Photograph: Ted and Alice Sliger
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr Sliger
Collection

9. Arnold Otto Krug
Arnold Otto Krug Courtesy of JoAnn King
Arnold Otto Krug was born June 7, 1896, in Forest, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Krug’s 1917
WWI draft-registration card gives his residence as Forest, Wisconsin, and describes him
as blue-eyed and brown-haired. In 1920, he was still living at home with his parents and
siblings, listed in the census as a laborer. In 1930 Arnold Krug lived in a Milwaukee boarding
house, working as an auto mechanic. Shortly afterward, he came to Arizona to follow his
passion for painting. A self-taught, but disciplined artist, he would go into the desert at
the same time every day to paint, and the Superstition Mountain range became one of his
favorite subjects. At various times from 1927 to 1942, he lived in Arizona and California, but
was living at the Buckhorn Baths at the time of his death on May 8, 1942. Arnold Otto Krug
is buried at the Rienzi cemetery in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin.

10. Untitled
View of the Superstition
Mountains
Arnold Krug
Oil on canvas c. 1935
Theodore W. and Alice
O’Barr Sliger Collection

11. Untitled
View of the Superstition Mountains
Arnold Krug
Oil on canvas c. 1935
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr Sliger
Collection

12. Untitled
Desert Flora
Arnold Krug
Oil on canvas c. 1935
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr Sliger
Collection

13. Untitled
View of the Superstition
Mountains
Arnold Krug
Oil on canvas c. 1935
Theodore W. and Alice
O’Barr Sliger Collection

14. George “Smoke Tree” Frederick
George “Smoke Tree” Frederick was born
in Lee County, Iowa, on 9 May 1889. At the
age of three, he moved with his parents to
Europe, attending the Royal Academy of Art
in Munich where he studied interior design.
While growing up in Germany, Frederick
often read about the American West and
dreamed of someday becoming a cowboy.
In 1911, Frederick returned to the United
States and traveled west, eventually arriving
in Texas where he discovered that being a
cowhand wasn’t as exciting as it had been
described in books and magazines, and soon
began painting the people and scenery of
the West instead of punching cattle. George
Frederick, a colorful character, often wearing
enormous sombreros and brightly colored
checked shirts, married Alan Yantis, a writer
of popular Western pulp fiction, in 1934.
Frederick primarily painted landscapes
and portraits of Native Americans and
local cowboys. He was given the nickname
“Smoke Tree,” later shortened to “Smokey,”
because smoke trees, common to the desert
washes of the Southwest, appeared in so
many of his landscapes. The Fredericks
moved to Arizona around 1941, living
in Tucson, in Mesa near the Superstition
Mountains, and in Wickenburg. In the mid
1950s George Frederick was the “portraitist
in residence” at the Grand Lodge on the
north rim of the Grand Canyon. George
Frederick was living at the Buckhorn Baths at
time of his death in September 1964.

15. Left: George Frederick’s paint kit
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr Sliger Collection
Center: George and Amee Olivia “Alan” Yantis Frederick
Photo courtesy of L. Tom Perry Special Colleciton,
Brigham Young University
Top: George Frederick at the Grand Lodge, North
Rim, Grand Canyon 1953
Photo courtesy of Special Collections, Sherratt
Library, Southern Utah University

16. Self Portrait
George Frederick
Watercolor on board 1953
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr
Sliger Collection

17. Paloverde in Bloom
George Frederick
Oil on Board
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr Sliger
Collection

18. “The Old Warrior”
George Frederick
Oil on masonite 1945
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr
Sliger Collection

19. Untitled
George Frederick
Oil sketch on board
1958
Theodore W. and
Alice O’Barr Sliger
Collection

20. “Uncle Billie Crosby”
George Frederick
Oil on board February 25, 1953
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr
Sliger Collection
Billie Crosby was the grandson of
Jacob Hamblin:
In the spring of 1879 Jacob
Hamblin, the Mormon scout and
emissary to the Indian Nations, took
up residence in the Milligan Fort
(Springerville area) and was
appointed to preside over the LDS in
the Round Valley area. His stay was
short-lived, however, when personal
matters called him away the
following winter.
Arizona Capitol Times, Dec. 9, 1994

21. Untitled
George Frederick
Oil on masonite 1956
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr
Sliger Collection

22. Untitled
George Frederick
Oil sketch on board
c. 1935
Theodore W. and
Alice O’Barr Sliger
Collection

23. “On Apache Trail – Arizona Superstition
Afternoon”
George Frederick
Watercolor 1949
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr Sliger
Collection

24. “Early Morning – Vermillion Cliffs
Northern Arizona”
George Frederick
Watercolor 1952
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr
Sliger Collection

25. “Land of the Giant Cactus (AZ)”
George Frederick
Watercolor 1950
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr Sliger
Collection

26. Sketches from Life Nature
George Frederick and his wife Alan Yantis loved Mexico. This 1940 sketchbook,
entitled by Frederick “Sketches from Life Nature,” is written bilingually in English
and Spanish. Its nearly 200 loose-leaf pages contain observations on Mexican life
and culture, a travelogue recounting their adventures in Mexico, biographies and
comments on Mexican artists of note, philosophical comments about art and art
mediums--and even Spanish language lessons.
The Fredericks seem to have traveled extensively in Mexico over the years—judging
by a section in the sketchbook discussing the colorful traditional Mexican clothing
and lamenting the intrusion of modern dress—and clearly related to the country
and its people. The sketchbook text was probably hand-written by Alan Yantis
Frederick with illustrations by George Frederick.

27. Sketchbook
George Frederick
1940
Theodore W. and Alice O’Barr
Sliger Collection

28. Buckhorn Mineral Baths and Wildlife Museum
The Mesa Preservation Foundation wishes to preserve and reopen
the Buckhorn Baths and its restoration was the second most popular
idea posted on the City of Mesa’s idea-gathering website. Everyone
who experiences the Baths hopes that its significance to Arizona will
be recognized and rewarded by a rebirth of the Buckhorn Mineral
Baths and Wildlife Museum.
The State of Arizona has recognized the Mesa Preservation
Foundation as a nonprofit corporation. To learn more about the fate
of the Buckhorn Mineral Baths and Wildlife Museum contact:
Mesa Preservation Foundation:
P.O. Box 539
Mesa, AZ 85211-0539
Phone: 480.967.4729
Email: mesapreservation@gmail.com
Website: www.mesapreservationfoundation.org/