At age 36 and recently married, Thomas H. Rynning was appointed captain of the Arizona Rangers. Rynning had been a second Lieutenant of ‘B’ troop of the Rough Riders and served with Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba, taking part in all of the military engagements leading up to the surrender of the opposition forces at Santiago. In Arizona, he was the second captain of the Rangers and replaced Burt Mossman.

Rynning was born in Norway in 1866 and arrived in the United States when he was just two years old. He was orphaned at the age of 12 and began working in a Wisconsin lumber camp. In 1882, he moved to his sister’s home in Chicago and worked as a carpenter building stairways. At 18, he joined the Dragoons and served under General Phillip Sheridan during the campaigns against the Southern Cheyenne and the Chiricahua Apaches in 1885 and 1886. He was present at the capture of Geronimo and helped chase Sitting Bull and his band as they escaped to British Columbia following the battle at the Little Big Horn. He was honorably discharged from the Army, leaving service with a record of 17 battles against the Indians.

In 1902, Arizona Governor Alexander Brodie appointed Rynning as an Arizona Rangers captain. Four years later, Rynning led a force of volunteers into Mexico to assist the Mexican Rurales who were trying to control riots and bloodshed in the American-owned copper mines of Cananea.

On June 4 and 5 that year, the owner of the mine at Cananea, Colonel William Greene, sent out a plea to law enforcement officials in Bisbee and Naco. “We must have help. Send answer to Naco.” As the word spread hundreds of men swarmed into Bisbee anxious to invade Mexico and rescue their countrymen. Walter Dodge, the manager of Phelps Dodge Mercantile, told Rynning that arms and ammunition would be made available to the Arizona Rangers at the company store in Naco.

Rynning decided to act even though he might lose his Ranger commission for invading a foreign country. He selected men for a relief force, and they boarded a special train in Bisbee. Two veteran Rangers, Arthur Hopkins and Sam Hayhurst, helped him organize the group. Armed horsemen galloped into town, and Hopkins incorporated them into the group, which numbered more than 250. Another telegram arrived from Greene reading, “For God’s sake send us armed help.”

Horses and armed men boarded the train and headed toward Mexico. Just before midnight, a skirmish broke out on the border between Mexican and American horsemen. Two Americans were killed and sporadic gunfire broke out along the border. Sonora Governor Yzabel realized he could not stop the Americans, so he joined them on the train, which arrived in Cananea about an hour before noon. Rynning deployed several men to a hill to command the area, while Greene bravely addressed the miners from a touring car backed with Arizona Ranger rifles.

Rynning dispatched several men to the mine area where the night shift had come out throwing sticks of dynamite. He told the women to get inside their houses. They laughed and said they were just as safe inside as outside.

That evening Colonel Emilio Kosterlitzky rode into town as head of his Rurales forces. He proclaimed martial law, and the miners fled into the hills. Kosterlitzsky’s men captured several ringleaders and ordered that they be placed against an abode wall and shot (also known as adobe walled). For the moment the riot was quelled, but it was really the opening salvo of the Mexican Revolution. Rynning and his men were then ordered to get out of Mexico by Kosterlitsky.

Upon his return to Arizona, Rynning received a summons to appear in Governor Joseph Kibbey’s office in Phoenix. The captain obeyed the summons knowing that his commission was on the line. However, Arizonans regarded Rynning as a hero for his daring attempt to rescue Americans on Mexico’s soil, and the governor’s anger was soothed when he received an explanation of the events.

In 1907, Rynning was offered the position of superintendent of the Yuma Territorial Prison. Although he found it difficult to leave the Rangers, he was a skilled administrator and wanted the new job. Five years later he was replaced by a new superintendent, appointed by a Democratic administration. Rynning moved to San Diego.

In 1921, Rynning was reappointed as Arizona’s prison warden and moved back to Arizona with his wife and three daughters, locating in Florence where the new Arizona State Prison had been built. A decade later, he accepted a commission as deputy U.S. Marshal for the San Diego Division and returned to California. Nine years later, while tending his flower garden in San Diego, Thomas Rynning suffered a fatal heart attack. He had often summed up his life as being “a grand old pasear”, full of “bullwhacking, cowpunching, soldiering [and] border ranging.”—

Sources: Phoenix Tribune files, Arizona Historical Society; Gun Notches as told by Thomas H. Rynning

-Jane Eppinga. Photo courtesy Arizona Historical Society.