A former rocket scientist and Arizona State University (ASU) provost, Charles E. Backus “Chuck” never forgot his farming roots in West Virginia and Ohio, nor his love for the rugged West. Meeting his bride at Ohio University, he and Judy were married before the move to pursue advanced degrees in nuclear engineering in Arizona.
Hiking became a hobby, boosted in the mid-1960s with climbs in the Alleghenies and Sierras, near his job with the Westinghouse Astro-Nuclear Lab. The vistas included cattle ranches nestled among creeks and canyons.
The Backus family moved back west in 1968 as chemical rocketry gained sway at NASA, and the newly organized ASU needed a professor of engineering and applied sciences. Among those were animal and range sciences, and by the 1970s Backus took to “auditing” those with the fervor of any young rancher. It helped that the engineering dean was a rancher and became a mentor as well. It also didn’t hurt that the dean’s son-in-law was a Farm Credit loan officer, who mentioned in 1977 a pending foreclosure of the historic Quarter-Circle U Ranch.
Later that year, the family bought into the 10-acre headquarters of the 1876-established ranch. Situated along the Superstition Mountains in rugged Tule Canyon, the purchase included a few cows to show new stock what to eat and where to drink. Past ownership was so convoluted that it took more than 40 years to establish Backus ownership on most of the 140 private acres.
The main prize was leasing nearly 14,000 state and federal acres. Hired ranch managers varying from rogues to cowboy heroes worked to help adapt land and the permitted 207 cows to a continuous stream of new ideas. Leftover cows from 1977 were so wild, many never came in after serving their purpose as wilderness guides.
Backus traveled the world for ASU, demonstrating practical uses of solar energy, his focus having veered from nuclear power. The ranch served as a demonstration of possibilities, but this was not simply academic. Too far off the main power grid for highline service seven miles away, solar was the only means of operating a modern ranch, and the far corners of public rangeland greatly benefitted from solar-powered water pumps.
Solar-powered cement mixers played a part in this.
Though he advanced in academia to ASU provost at retirement 27 years after the purchase, Backus devoted most of his “spare time” to building the ranch from the arid, rocky ground up. One of his first steps was establishing a close relationship with the local range specialists with the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS).
Detailed mapping and monitoring soils and plants over time showed the way and tracked steady improvement from controlled grazing access and strategic water source establishment. The conservation experts even monitored cow pies to find out woody brush species were an important dietary component.
Mandatory branding with the QCR “soap pot” mark moved ahead from rope-and-drag to a wood fire to a propane-fired branding iron at constant temperature and solar-electric by 2007. When smoldering after-effects of welding on new corrals gutted the 1880s stone barn, the ranchers built back better. After land-grant Arizona University consolidated its role as the only ag school, another kind of fire sale from ASU of trusses and more led to a large tack room for the horseback-only ranch.
Backus couldn’t stay on the sidelines in the state’s broader cattle industry and helped organize the Arizona Natural Beef Cooperative for a 10-year run that delivered great industry knowledge, if little profit. In 2000, looking forward to full-time ranching, he bought a home near Show Low with a six-month summer grazing lease on U.S. Forest Service land that let him double the herd size to 400 pairs. He also began to research the market drivers behind beef prices and how to achieve significant premiums, first contacting the Certified Angus Beef (CAB) brand in 2006.
Few engineering professors faced the end of a successful academic career with less trepidation. Backus just kept applying all the trappings of scientific inquiry and progress as enthusiasm for a bright future in ranching grew. He also kept teaching, from city school children learning the basics to ranching peers sharing ideas with invited animal scientists for seminars at the Quarter Circle U. The last half of his book, closing with three appendices, delves into specifics on herd management and innovation on the ranch.
Seventeen years at the helm of the family’s ranch saw remarkable accomplishments in quality, producing beef that was more than 50% USDA Prime. Nearly all beef from the 200 steers annually qualified for the premium Choice Certified Angus Beef brand, and Backus was honored at the CAB 2016 annual conference with a Progressive Partner award for innovation.
Backus never stopped pushing for land and herd improvement, zeroing in on herd efficiency in feed conversion, rate of gain and managing for a favorable impact on the range until a second retirement to enjoy family and write in his golden years.
Those who fully answer the call of a demanding second career as retirement looms will certainly appreciate “My Life in Cattle Ranching,” by Charles E. Backus (Tempe: Clear Creek Publishing, 2025. $38.29 Amazon [hardcover, 261 pages with photos]}
