On the historic Sanborne Fire Insurance maps of downtown Flagstaff, this imposing walled sandstone open court is listed as a ruin, nearly from the time it was built in 1926. Flagstaff’s Basque community called it La Cancha (the court). It was a site where fierce games of handball were played in fair weather as a diversion from herding sheep. This is the only historic Basque handball court left in Arizona and one of 12 existing in the West.

The ball court (pelota) was part of a complex of housing that included a Basque boarding house and dining room. Since herders spent weeks on the range, coming into town meant a clean bed, hot running water, Basque meals and opportunities to meet other Amerikaniak (New World Basques) who gathered at the hotels.

The Flagstaff court rises nearly three stories at the back wall and is supported by three stone buttresses with steps built into the north wall. The poles near the top were for netting, which kept the handballs from flying over the top.

The game was played with a leather ball using the naked hand or a wood beater shaped like a racket to bounce the ball off the back wall. The court has not been used for many years and has become a repository for cast-a-way treasures.

The ostatu (small hotel), which was known as the Tourist Home, still stands to the south of the ball court on San Francisco Street in downtown Flagstaff. Jesus Garcia and his mother built the Tourist Home in the 1920s. Travelers and regular boarders frequently stayed at the hotel. Young immigrants were directed to the hotel by relatives who were staying in northern Arizona or by other Basques near immigration posts.

Most Basque businesses were easy to find; they were nearly always located near the railroad or main roads. New residents of the area could connect with ranchers who could not spend a long time in town trying to locate experienced help. Families back home in Europe were able to use the hotel as a mailing address, and local Basques used it for meals cooked by Basque women, a clean bed and conversation in their native language.

Jeronima Echeverria, author of Home Away From Home, a History of Basque Boardinghouses, wrote about “a young Fermin Echevvria” who left Navarre, France and arrived in Flagstaff to meet his brothers at Jesus’s boardinghouse. “Jesus” was easy to find, since it stood a block and half from Flagstaff’s railroad station on the corner of a large intersection. Ironically, both Fermin and (brother) Matias met their future wives at the ostau, and both women were the proprietor’s nieces.” Northern Arizona University’s Cline Library Special Collections have several images of Basque wedding receptions pictured on the front porch of the Tourist Home during the 1920s.

The property is still intact and for sale. The Tourist Home has not been modified from the 1920s and includes the original bath, kitchen and bedroom furnishings. The backyard has an old Majestic stove oven that was used to bake the sheepherder bread for the hotel’s guests who ate family-style in the dinning room.

Jesus sold the hotel sometime in the 1930s or 40s, and it has had only one other owner who continued to run it as a boarding house until recently. Locals are hoping the property will be preserved as a piece of woolgrower history. —

—Joan Brundige-Baker. Photo courtesy Pioneer Museum, Arizona Historical Society.