Polly Tipton (Photo by Cheryl Thornburg)By Cheryl Thornburg

Polly Tipton has fond memories of the Glenwood Fish Hatchery, which is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year. Her father, Elsworth Tipton, was the assistant foreman at the hatchery during the 1940s and they lived in a small rock house on the property. Polly was about one when they moved there. She and her two older sisters, Sally and Nancy, had a unique experience living in rural Glenwood surrounded by all the beauty of the Gila Wilderness and wildlife. That beauty still surrounds us today, but life was very different back then.

Polly talks about how hard her father and the hatchery foreman had to work compared to how the hatchery operates today.

For example, they did not just go and purchase food for the fish. Part of her father’s job was to purchase horses and mules that were marked to be slaughtered and bring them to the hatchery. He would then have to kill them and they would grind up the meat, which would then be fed to the fish.

Releasing the fish was also a labor-intensive project. Today they use trucks. Back then, her father had a team of mules with panniers for each of them. He would fill the panniers with fish in water and would pack into the mountains to the head of Whitewater Creek and other streams to release the fish.

Polly in hatchery cement pond (Photo Courtesy of Polly Tipton)It made for long days. But there were also lots of fun times. Polly speaks fondly of swimming in the cement ponds as a toddler. ‘They always left one of them without fish so we could swim in it,” she said. One day when her father and George Anderson were working away from the ponds, Polly was tempted to swim with the fish and climbed into one of the cement enclosures with them. It turned out to be a bad idea – immediately fish jumped into her swimsuit and were wiggling around. Polly said she was afraid they might eat her alive – but she didn’t know what to do – she knew she was in big trouble. If she yelled for her dad to help he was going to be angry – and if she took off her swimsuit, she would be in trouble too. “You just didn’t do that back then.” Ultimately she called for her dad who came with a very stern look on his face. “Sis, it looks like you’ve got a problem,” he said, and he promptly turned her upside-down and all the fish fell back into the water. Needless to say, Polly never tried that again.

Her tales of life back then are reminiscent of “Little House on the Prairie” – they walked along a trail to a two-room school house with no running water and an outhouse. To get a drink, you would hand-pump the water from the well and cup your hands to drink it.
“It was a country life,” she said, “It was a wonderful life.”

Today, Polly runs Double T Homestead, a cozy lodging establishment on Catwalk Road (NM 174), not far from the hatchery. She’s still surrounded by the beautiful countryside and enjoys sharing it with her guests. For more information about Double T, contact Polly at 575-539-2812 or check it out at www.doublethomestead.com.

Hatchery foreman George Anderson and Polly's father, Ellsworth Tipton, watch as Polly enjoys wading in one of the cement ponds." (Photo Courtesy of Polly Tipton)