THE MATSUURA CAFE

Two cafes served the Rising River area when the sprinkler irrigation age began, hundreds of laborers that included illegals, migrants, and Navajos being necessary to break out ground from sagebrush, pick rock, move sprinkler pipe and harvest the crops. One was repurposed in the early 1970s when Nonpareil bought property for their cattle and agricultural operation, and another to the west by a mile or two, the Matsuura Cafe, was partially a support system for the crews and families of the five Matsuura brothers who farmed the area but also provided other workers with sustenance. Above, the Matsuura Cafe as it now stands.

Above, Luis Matamoros looks through the cafe's remnants. His family lived nearby in the 1960s, living in one of the hundred-plus boxcars that housed workers for the twelve thousand acres of the Rising River Area.