Click the play button on the video window to the see the storyIn 1870, two men, Marion Clark and Corydon Cooley settled upon 100,000 acres in northeast Arizona near the White Mountains.
"He and Marion Clark started a ranching business here, they sold barley and whatever they could down at Fort Apache," said Melanie Hefner, Director of the
Show Low Museum.
Several years later, however, Clark and Cooley had a falling out and thought it best to go their separate ways.
To decide who keeps the land, they sat down for a game of cards.
"They played a card game called 7-up, which is something like poker," said Hefner. "The goal of the game if you wanted to win, you had to pull and show the lowest card."
As the story goes, Clark said to Cooley 'show low' and you win the ranch. Cooley pulled the deuce of clubs and the rest is, as they say, history.
"By the late 1870s the area is being called Show Low," said Hefner. "By the 1880s he becomes our first postmaster and then its official, Show Low. Capital S, capital L."
More than a century later, nearly 10,000 people call
Show Low home.
The town has embraced its rather unique heritage. Instead of Main Street, Show Low has "Deuce of Clubs Avenue"
A statue of Cooley and Clark's infamous card game sits in the heart of downtown.
"I love (the name), it's so unique," said Hefner. "We have people coming in asking us, 'how did you get this name?' Its just a wonderful legend."
