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A Little About BeDillon’s

In 1984 there was an ad in the paper; it read “BeDillon’s Cactus Garden for
sale to the right buyer”. I had lived in Casa Grande for 30 years but had never
seen the garden, so I wasn’t interested. In 1986, a friend of ours hired us to
do a fund-raiser at BeDillon’s for a congressman from Tucson. BeDillon’s was
a home and the owners, Lee and Annabel BeDillon, rented it out for special
occasions. I walked in the gate to design the setup and fell in love with it in 30
seconds and thought if it was still for sale and my wife also liked it, then we
would buy it. When my wife arrived, she agreed. I asked Ron BeDillon if it
was still for sale and he said it was. I asked him to call his father and set up a
meeting with us the next day. Mr. BeDillon told us what he wanted and we
countered a little lower with him carrying the paper at 6%. The BeDillon’s had
turned down three full-cash offers from others that were going to bulldoze the
site and build apartments, after they sold off all of the assets. The BeDillons
agreed and in 1987, 761 days later, we made the transition from a beautiful
home to a unique restaurant.

BeDillon’s was built by a man named Jean Vallette and his wife Mattie in
1917. Jean was born of nobility in Germany and his father was head of the
German army during World War I. He did not like his assignment in Riverside
California and got back on the train and came back to a place he remembered
when he passed through earlier. He met and married Mattie who was the
youngest of 11. He liked to drink, smoke and eat chocolate, she was the worker
and did most of the labor to build the home, office and rental home. Jean died
in 1945 and Mattie died Christmas Eve of 1949, her family sold off most of
the artifacts collected for a song and left the unwanted pieces in the office for
15 years until the BeDillon’s purchased the property. The original adobe walls
of eight feet had been reduced to a foot or two from vandals and weather, one
of Lee’s first projects was to ask the city to let him have five adobe structures
that were to be bulldozed. They were a lumber yard, a bar and three homes; Lee
had his Industrial Art classes help him dismantle the structures and brought
the blocks on a flatbed to his new home where he instructed the class as to how
to build the adobe wall. He constructed a wooden roof to protect the blocks.

The Vallette’s had built an office for their storage and transfer company and
when the BeDillon’s bought the site, the office was full of artifacts that were not
desirable to the first buyer years earlier. Mr. BeDillon transformed the office
into an apartment for his daughter and her new husband with their wedding
in the garden, it marked a sort of coming out party for the garden. Many of the
guests saw the beauty of the gardens and the BeDillon’s hosted several hundred
weddings in the next twenty years.

BeDillon’s has been open since 1989 and has been featured in Phoenix Home
and Garden, The Arizona Republic four times, the cover of Arizona Highways
and has been in the top twenty-five restaurants outside the Metropolitan areas.
All six of the Jackson children have worked there and three still do along with
our son-in-law as the Chef and from us all WELCOME.

(520) 836-2045
800 N. Park Ave • Casa Grande, AZ 85122
bedillonsrestaurant.com