Arizona Highways, November 1995

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PAGE 50
COVER STORY
NOVEMBER 1995 VOLUME 71
PAGE 32
PAGE 38
Picture-taking Rides in the Superstitions
The mountains stand as a backdrop while riders adjust
their cowboy hats and scuff up their new boots then
mount up for three days of exposure to incredible scenery
in the legend-haunted range. And while they are there,
the Friends of Arizona Highways will teach them how to
capture that magnificent landscape on film.
HISTORY PAGE 32
Endgame for an Outlaw
The Apache Kid, an Army scout turned killer outlaw, was the
object of a massive manhunt, but was never found. Now, from the
century-old account of a Yavapai County rancher, emerges the
story of The Kid's death.
NATURE PAGE 12
Autumn at Superior's Arboretum
Long after the aspen have quaked their last in the north country, one
lingering patch of fall remains in Boyce Thompson's desert garden.
ANIMALS PAGE 18
Horses of the Conquistadores
How this herd survived for nearly a century in the cruel
canyons of the border country is history itself, says our author,
"a true Arizona saga."
PORTFOLIO
The Santa Rita Mountains
This is a sky island for all seasons, says Bruce Griffin, whose
fascination with the range drew him back time and again to
photograph its scenic beauty.
Focus ON NATURE
PAGE 24
PAGE 36
Visit from a Predator: the Giant Centipede
Its body is composed of 24 segments with a pair of yellow legs
attached to each. At eight inches in length, it's a formidable night
stalker. And its bite is toxic.
TRAVEL PAGE 4
Coming Soon: the Great Western Trail
The parks and the game and fish departments are in the final
phases of creating a border-to-border track for four-wheelers
and others.
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PAGE 4
DEPARTMENTS
Along the Way
What's in a name? Plenty,
say Apaches who are slowly
working toward substituting
Apache place-names for
English terms.
Letters 3
Event of the Month 43
Listen to them "fiddle
around" at Wickenburg
this month.
Wit Stop
He'd have been a star of the
NBA but for a certain lack of
talent.
Friends Travel Adventures 45
Legends of the Lost 46
The flood of 1890 drowned
a treasure in the Hassayampa.
Arizona Humor
Roadside Rest
Thirty years ago, America
was involved in the Vietnam
conflict. Captain Wheeler was
Arizona's first airman fatality.
Back Road Adventure 50
The scenic lushness of
Arizona's 'Deep South' is
yours on this month's
circle trek.
Mileposts / Events
Hike of the Month 56
On Table Top Mountain,
the going is rough but worth
the effort.
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PAGE 18
2
(OPPOSITE PAGE) Autumn
brings its mantle of color
to an aspen forest in the San
Francisco Peaks.
DAVID ELMS JR.
(FRONT COVER) Following a
winter storm, sunset descends
on Siphon Draw in the
Superstition Mountains, where
our author mounts up for a
trail ride on a Photo Workshop
with the Friends oj Arizona
Highways. Lookingfor
adventure and unique photo
opportunities, he finds both -
plus an unexpected link to
the Salado Indians who lived
in the area a thousand years
ago.See story on page 38.
WD. WRAY
(BACK COVER) Palmer agaves
and ocotillos punctuate the
grassy foothills below slopes of
the Santa Rita Mountains of
southern Arizona. See portfolio
on page 24. BRUCE GRIFFIN
44
48
49
POINTS OF INTEREST
FEATURED IN THIS ISSUE
54
Arizona Highways 1
ALONG THE WAY LETTERS TOT H E EDITOR
..... .. ....... . .. ...............................................................................................................................
Letters Reader time), they were bright and col­orful.
Today's pictures are still
beautiful and more realistic.
I hope to visit your state
someday. Meantime, I'll read
Arizona Highways.
Carol E. Stine
East Stroudsburg, PA
about the dismal prison.
That prison is a landmark
and full of very interesting his­tory.
If they both had the plea­sure
of going through it, maybe,
just maybe, they would under­stand
and wouldn't write such
disgusting stuff.
SAM NEGRI
BY KEITH SKEEN
T EXT B Y
ILLUSTRATIONS ARIZON􁪽􋵈
HIGHWAYS My very first action upon
picking up a new edition of
Arizona Highways is to turn to
"Letters." I especially enjoy the
numerous complaints.
Perhaps that is because I feel
a kinship in that I have a very
serious complaint of my own,
which I am finally inspired
to air.
How can you call your mag­azine
Arizona Highways when
you never show any pictures or
print any articles about high­ways?
In a publication called
"highways," one would expect
pictures of highways gently
curving through the land, ex­tending
to the horizon, or dis­appearing
into some great
metropolitan congestion (such
as Kingman).
And where are the in-depth
stories of such people as those
who fill chuckholes, or hold
traffic-control signs, or drive
gravel trucks, or paint center
stripes?
The only reason I stay with
your magazine year after year is
because I enjoy your outstand­ing
pictures and most of the ar­ticles
about the scenic wonders
and beauties of our state. I even
sponsor gift subscriptions to fa­vorite
relatives and friends in
other states.
But I search for highway
construction plans in vain.
Robert F. Wilson
Kingman
The Name's
the Thing,
So Say the Apaches
map of a 35-square-mile por­tion
of the reservation around
Cibecue, a community north­west
of Fort Apache. Basso had
been spending summers on the
reservation since 1958, when
he was an undergraduate at
Harvard University, learning
Apache history and customs.
"I began to see how super­imposing
an Anglo language on
an Apache landscape was a
subtle form of political oppres­sion
and domination," he said.
"Naming places" he declared,
"is a way of taking legal and po­litical
control of an area. Surely
one way of appropriating terri­tory
is naming it.
"When you ask Apache peo­ple
about how places got their
names, they tell you the ances­tors
made these names, and they
made them well. The names are
a mnemonic peg on which to
hang a social history, and I want­ed
to help bring them back."
With support from Tribal
Chairman Ronnie Lupe, Basso
obtained grants from two pri­vate
organizations and the
National Science Foun­dation.
While a graduate
student at the University of
Arizona, and later as a profes­sor
at Yale University, he spent
summers collecting place­names
and stories from people
in the Cibecue District.
Lupe said, "Hopefully, as
time flies, we will do the whole
reservation. Teach­ing
our kids the
Apache place­names
is one way
to connect them
to their culture."
Most places on
the reservation,
like most of Ari­zona,
were named
by Spanish ex­plorers,
mission­aries,
and Anglo l,••.
settlers or sol­diers
who didn't
nobody knows how to read
and write Apache," said Perry
Although a written form of
Apache was introduced several
years ago by a Christian organi­zation,
most of the 10,000
know the Apache names or
couldn't pronounce and spell
them, though the words de­scribed
the places accurately in
Apache.
For example, elderly Apaches
know the town of Whiteriver,
where the tribal headquarters is
located, as Ch'ilwosh, meaning
a "valley or natural grade for
the river to flow."
White Springs, near Cibecue,
is known as Tu'hagai, meaning
"water whiteness up and out."
Lupe indicated the non-In­dian
names were offensive be­cause
they contribute to the
eradication of the Apaches' link
to their culture.
Pointing to a dip in the ridge­line
of mountains east of White­river,
he said, "There's a trail
that goes through there. We
Apaches never gave it a name,
but it was the main commerce
and trade route between our
communities before the days of
roads and cars.
"Apaches always just refer to
it in our language as 'trail over
that mountain,' and people
know what you mean, but if you
look on topographical maps,
you see it's called U.S. Military
Trail. Our people used it long
before the military was here."
Not all Apaches agree with the
attempt to replace English place­names
with Apache names.
Bonnie Danford, an Apache
who speaks, reads, and writes
Apache, said her
children cannot
speak Apache,
"and I don't know
if younger kids
would get used
to using Apache
names. My son
knows one word
in Apache. It's
tsfgist'ff, which
means 'tortilla.'
"He learned it
because he thinks
it's English." n
NOVEMBER 1995 VOL. 71, NO. 11
Publisher-Nina M. La France
Editor-Robert]. Early
Managing Editor-Richard G. Stahl
Managing Editor, Books-Bob Albano
Art Director- Mary Winkelman Velgos
Picture Editor-Peter Ensenberger
Associate Editor-Rebecca Mong
Associate Editor, Books- Robert]. Farrell
Associate Art Director-Russ Wall
Production Assistant -Vicky Snow
Bob Brown
Fort Mohave Subscription Cost 􁪽􋵦first non-Indians to step 􁪽􋵬lfoot in Arizona some 400
years ago were courageous and
adventurous. Many of them
probably didn't consider that
they also were ignorant and
presumptuous.
As a result, the Spaniards
who arrived in the 1500s, and
the various settlers who fol­lowed
them, set about naming
mountains and rivers and
creeks as though these features
had not previously been la­beled
by the native inhabitants.
Apaches didn't have maps,
but it is clear that they had
names for places on what is
now the Fort Apache Indian
Reservation. The words Fort
Apache are a good example.
Old Indians knew it as Tx'og­hagai,
a word that is unpro­nounceable
in English but
which is clearly descriptive
in the Apache language.
The word, said Edgar
Perry, a member of the White
Mountains Apache tribe and a
linguistic specialist of the White
Mountain Apache Culture Cen­ter,
refers to a place "where the
white reeds or grasses grow like
arrows," an accurate description
of the rolling valley east of Salt
River Canyon where Fort
Apache is nestled.
On most parts of the reser­vation
today, only the elderly
members of the tribe are likely
to know a place's Apache
name, and therein lies a sensi­tive
issue for Indians involved
in a project of restoring Apache
names to places now identified
by English words.
"All of the mountains around
here have Apache names, but
they're not on the map because
IIF YOU SAY "COW"
TO APACHES, THEY JUST
SEE THE ANIMAL,
NOT A WORD SPELLED OUT.
NOBODY KNOWS HOW
TO WRITE DOWN THE NAMES
OF THINGS AND PLACES.'
Arizona Highways is certainly
worth every penny it costs.
Don't feel bad about the in­crease
in price. We lost one of our
newspapers because the price of
newsprint went up so high.
Keep up the good work.
Anna Murchison
Houston, TX
Panoramic Pictures
The panoramic pictures in
the July '95 issue - outstand­ing.
More. More.
Also thank you for adding "ef­fusive"
to my vocabulary in an
editorial reply on the "Letters"
page.
Finance Director-Robert M. Steele
Fulfillment Director-Bethany Braley
Information Systems Manager-Brian McGrath
Production
Director-Cindy Mackey
Coordinator- Kim Gibson
Design Manager-Patricia Romano McNear
Herbert H. Deighton
Escondido, CA Our domestic subSCription
price was raised from $1 7 to
$19 a year in July to heIp offset
a 30 percent increase in paper
costs and a 20 percent hike in
postal rates.
Governor-Fife Symington
Director, Department of Transportation
Larry S. Bonine
Arizona Transportation Board
Chair: linda Brock-Nelson, Scottsdale
Vice Chair: Sharon B. Megdal, Tucson
Members: John 1. Hudson, Yuma;
Jack Husted, Springerville;
Donovan M. Kramer Sr., Casa Grande;
Burton Kruglick, Phoenix;
Jerry c. Williams, Morenci
Cultures
Regarding "Roadside Rest,"
July '95, the U.S. has long been
referred to as the melting pot,
but when it comes to our cultur­al
identities, we abhor melting.
As we "walk in two worlds,"
we face "failed assimilation."
Gosh, that sounds like cause
and effect.
Medicine Wheel
Shame on you for allowing
Melanie Johnston to legitima­tize
the "medicine wheel" of the
New Agers ("Four-wheeling in
Sedona's Backcountry," June '95).
This is trashing the Sedona
area not unlike the jerks with
spray cans. The Forest Service
considers it illegal. Check it 6ut.
Robert 1. Smith
Flagstaff
Toll-free nationwide number
for customer inquiries and orders:
(800) 543-5432
In the Phoenix area or outside
the U.S., call (602) 258-1000
laVerne L. Oliver
International Regional Magazine Salome
Association
Magazine Rediscovered IFM\
members of the White Moun­tains
Apache Indian Tribe have
never learned it, Perry said.
Speakers of the Apache lan­guage,
he observed, see images
rather than words.
"If you say 'cow' to Apaches,
they just see the animal, not a
word spelled out," he noted.
"Nobody knows how to write
down the names of things and
places." Some tribal members,
in fact, cannot even speak
Apache "and don't care about
the language," he lamented.
However, Keith Basso, an an­thropologist
who learned the
Apache language, has spent
seven years gathering Apache
place-names and re-creating a
When I was a little girl, I used
to go with my grandmother to
visit a friend down the street.
While they chatted, I sat and
read her Arizona Highways mag­azines
that dated back to 1954.
I loved to look at the pictures.
When I was about 1 0, my
grandmother's friend passed
away and left all her Arizona
Highways to me.
lt wasn't until recently that I
stumbled across a recent copy
of your magazine. I guess I just
never thought it would still be
in print. It's still as beautiful as
ever, and I enjoy it very much.
What a difference in print
and pictures today than in the
'50s. To a little kid (me at the
Best Regional &. State Magazine
1995, 1993, 1992, 1991
Western Publications Assn.
Best Monthly Travel Magazine
1994 Silver Award, 1993 Bronze
Award, 1992 Bronze Award
Society of American
Travel Writers Foundation
We did and it is. The
Forest Service dismantles
all such structures when it
finds them.
I'll bet Mr. Wilson's favorite
book is Gulliver's Travels.
What a great letter. Arizona Highways® (ISSN 0004-1521) is
published monthly by the Arizona Department
of Transportation. Subscription price: $19 a year
in the U.S., $29 elsewhere; Single copy $2.50.
Send subscription correspondence and change
of address information to Arizona Highways,
2039 W Lewis Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85009.
Second-class postage paid at Phoenix, AZ and
at additional mailing office. Postmaster: send
address changes to Arizona Highways, 2039 W
Lewis Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85009. Copyright ©
1995 by the Arizona Department of Transpor­tation.
Reproduction in whole or in part with­out
permission is prohibited. The magazine is
not responsible for unsolicited materials provid­ed
for editorial consideration.
Our West Coast
Yuma Prison
Thank you for the article "Ari­zona's
West Coast" Quly'95).
We now know the area is one
we will definitely avoid. Sounds
like real honky-tonk,
What a terrible thing to do to
the Colorado River and the area
surrounding it.
I was appalled by two re­sponses
you received ("Letters"
June '95) about the Yuma Ter­ritorial
Prison story in the Feb­ruary
'95 issue. This has been
eating me up for almost a month
now, and I just had to write.
The two writers told about
how disappointed they were
􁪽􋵃 Contains 10% deinked
\t:r:;J post-consumer waste. Marcia Levey
PRODUCED IN THE USA Flint, MI
2 November 1995 Arizona Highways 3
"Look down there," I said,
pointing at a long string of tiny
cars slowly climbing the twisting
highway toward the old mining
town of Jerome. "They think
they're seeing Arizona, but I'll
bet they don't even know this
place exists."
BACK ROAD
ADVENTURERS
My companions nodded in agreement.
Our caravan ofJeeps had taken us by prim­itive
roads into a lonely mountain environ­ment
that few people see.
Earlier that morning, we had driven over
a web of ranch roads in the Prescott Na­tional
Forest east of Interstate 17, seeing
antelope prance nervously then effortlessly
run from one hill to another.
We passed picture-book ranches, saw
chunky; square-bodied Hereford cattle, and
we surprised so many mule deer we lost
count.
We next crossed the freeway and traveled
a few miles west on the paved Cherry Road
(State Route 169). Then we were back on
dirt roads again, climbing to the isolated
hamlet of Cherry and then up and up,
through ponderosa pine forests, old forest
fire bums, and deep lost canyons, until we
topped out on the mighty hump of Mingus
Mountain.
A short time before, we had left the pines
behind and were winding along the cha­parral
shoulders of Mingus Mountain. Be­low
us was the great sweeping scope of the
Verde Valley from Jerome to Clarkdale to
Cottonwood. The course of the Verde River
was marked by the greenery of cottonwood,
mesquite, and willow trees.
But we could see the rounded tips of
Sedona's famous red buttes poking up
through the haze of distance. Beyond and
TEXT
BY BOB THOMAS
PHOTOGRAPHS
BY DAVID ELMS JR.
(LEFT) Our expedition wends through the
desert east of Florence, explOring the kind of
back roads that will make up Arizona􁪽􋵳
segment of the Great Western Trail.
Arizona Highways 5
1=,.,331;1.,·, .• TRAIL
(RIGHT) Jess Chinn, left,
author Bob Thomas, state
parks' Terry Heslin, and
four-wheeler Gary Keller
check a map while
discussing possible routes.
(OPPOSITE PAGE) The
four-wheel-drive group
that Thomas traveled
with enjoys a view from
a vantage above Superior.
above all this were the great ramparts of the
Mogollon Rim.
Everything we had seen and done this
day was free and available to just about
anyone who had a backcountry vehicle. We
had Jeeps, but so far we had not found it
necessary to put them in four-wheel drive.
A regular two-wheel-drive pickup truck
could easily have followed our trail.
Trouble was that much of the public -
except those with a keen interest in the
high and lonely places - doesn't know
these roads exist.
That will change soon as Arizona opens
its segment of the Great Western Trail, a
system of dirt roads that leads from the
Mexican Border to Utah, and, eventually, all
the way to Canada, 3,000 miles to the
north. Utah has its system of back roads
nearly in place, and Idaho and Montana are
expected to wrap up their routes before
Arizona completes its survey
Gary Keller, 50, of Phoenix, a four-wheel­drive
enthusiast since he was a teenager,
said he believes the total distance, given the
twisting nature of primitive roads, will be
much greater. Keller estimates that if a driv­er
travels the length of Arizona from Naco
to Fredonia on dirt roads, the trip will be at
least 800 miles long.
Keller and fellow Jeep drivers Jess Chinn,
Jerry Huddlestun, and Dick Bergeron are
mapping a practical route that will ulti­mately
be incorporated into the Great
Western Trail system.
Nearly every weekend the group, mem­bers
of the Arizona State Association of 4-
Wheel Drive Clubs, tries to explore a portion
of the proposed GWT. Monitoring their
work is Terry Heslin, 35, off-highway vehicle
program coordinator for Arizona State Parks.
I hitched rides with the group for three
weekend exploration trips, traveling a wide
variety of terrain from low desert near
Florence all the way to the 7,000-foot-high
ponderosa pine forests east of Flagstaff.
6 November 1995
One of the best areas I saw was a section
from Box Canyon along the Gila River east
of Florence to the Walnut Canyon area
west of Kearny
Not many persons get into this huge tan­gle
of canyons, cliffs, and cacti, Keller said.
Some of the canyons, believe me, are truly
magnificent.
Another area, east of Superior and north
of Kearny, is four-wheel-drive country
supreme. Consisting of ledges, slick-rock,
and granite reefs, the roads - if you can
call them that - had to be traveled so slow­ly
and carefully that nary a rock was lifted
by a spinning wheel. At some of the worst
spots, members of our party stood in front
of each Jeep as they negotiated the bad
places and directed and coached the drivers.
"Come on, come on. Turn a hair to the left
and get that wheel up on the rock. Now
bump the right tire against the ledge and
bounce on up. There. Good going. Now
crawl on up the rest of the way Piece of cake."
And it was.
As envisioned by state parks and the
Arizona Game and Fish Department, the
other participating agency, the roads can be
used by all manner of vehicles as well as by
hikers, horseback riders, and mountain
bikers.
Some of the roads are county roads that
are kept graded, have culverts and shoul­ders,
and are capable of sustaining speeds
of 40 to 50 mph. Some are strictly four­wheel-
drive roads that will be a satisfying
challenge to any Jeep, truck, or sport-utility
owner. And some roads are narrow, bumpy
two-trackers that lead across the desert or
through a national forest. Most of the latter
can be driven by regular pickup trucks.
"You don't have to drive the entire road,
border to border," said Keller. "Just pick
and choose what kind of outdoor terrain
suits you.
"In winter, explore the desert; in summer,
Text continued on page 11
Arizona Highways 7
10 November 1995
'*S331;J·,·,··TRAIL
Continued Jrom page 6
drive the high country in the north.
Arizona has just about everything," he said.
All the Arizona roads that make up the
Great Western Trail are old roads - 50
years or better - that have long been part
of the public land system.
While the actual route is still up in the
air - the Navajo Indian Reservation por­tion
remains undecided pending the ap­proval
of the tribe - Heslin, Keller, and
their friends are giving wide berth to des­ignated
Wilderness Areas, sensitive envi­ronmental
terrain, hiking trails, and
national parks and monuments.
"We do not want the GWT to be in con­flict
with any hikers' trails like the Arizona
Trail that also goes from the Mexican border
to Utah," Heslin said. "We'll stay away from
their hiking trails, but they're welcome to
use ours."
So far the plan has garnered widespread
support. All six national forest supervisors
in Arizona have endorsed it; the BLM and
State Land Department say they have no
problems with roads over their lands; and
little towns like Kearny are enthusiastic.
Kearny, like many mining communities,
has been hurt by the economic slowdown
and is looking for new, more reliable sources
of revenue than the booms and busts of
copper mining.
The GWT program calls for "focus points"
along the route at which travelers will make
certain communities their headquarters for
meals, motels, groceries, and gasoline.
"Each focal point will offer different things
to do-off-road trails, historic places, lakes
for boating or fishing, bird-watching, hiking
trails, or wildlife viewing," Keller said.
"Kearny will be one of our focus points
because it has just a wealth of four-wheel­drive
roads and historic areas. You can
spend a week of full-time four-wheeling
and not trace out all the roads," he said.
I admit I like driving remote dirt roads.
(PRECEDING PANEL,
PAGES 8 AND 9) Cumulus
clouds float over high
grasslands around the
San Francisco Peaks.
(FAR LEFT AND LEFT) In
the mountains east of
Superior, the group gets
a rough ride when the
trail drops into a
boulder-strewn wash.
It's a grand adventure in every way. I found
it engrossing to maneuver over the ever­changing
terrain, to judge the best way up
or down, and to learn the various gear and
power train possibilities.
Throw in elk, deer, antelope, eagles,
quail, squirrels, rattlesnakes, coyotes, and
bears; creeks running with icy snowmelt;
high-country trout lakes; miles of ponder­osa
pine forests; desert washes with bot­toms
of treacherous loose sand; saguaros;
awesome cliffs and old lava flows, and you
can't help but feel adventuresome.
To my thinking, the grandest scenery
seemed to be up high. Some of the roads
took me to places so remote I doubt that half
a dozen persons a year saw them. There were
some areas that seemed to be lost in a sea of
peaks, mountains like waves that stretched
unblemished into the purple distance.
Will people go there? You bet your dif­ferential
they'll go.
Off-highway vehicle use in Arizona, de­spite
the state's small population, is extraor­dinarily
high: an estimated 5.1 million user
days per year. The Arizona Department of
Transportation says residents own more
than 550,000 off-highway vehicles, includ­ing
279,617 four-wheel-drive vehicles.
Yet, says the Arizona Off-Highway
Recreational Plan, "there are only a handful
of officially designated OHV sites or trails
in the state."
With the Great Western Trail, the OHV
owners will have a legitimate reason to use
their vehicles as they were designed to be
used - mastering the primitive rough
roads of Arizona's backcountry.
And looking down on those who are
afraid to leave the beaten track. H
Phoenix-based Bob Thomas owns three Jour-wheel-drive
vehicles and spends most oj his recreational time driving
little-known dirt roads and two-trackers in Arizona:S
backcountry.
David Elms Jr., also oj Phoenix, loves to travel the lonely
roads oj Arizona:S outback.
Arizona Highways 11
COLONEL THOMPSON'S
DESERT GARDEN
H ARB 0 R S THE
o F F I V E CONTINENTS
(LEFT) Chinese
'd been overcome by a late-breaking yearning for
fall, an unpredictable impulse that sometimes af­flicts
even we desert rats. I've never much missed
shoveling snow, snugging children into longjohns,
or fighting frozen engine blocks, but at some point
each year I'm generally overcome by an unexpectedly
intense yen for golden cottonwoods, crimson walnuts, and
yellow sycamores.
Should such a sensation overcome you in Phoenix dur­ing
the death throes of November or the first crystallizing
of December, there is a spot nearby that can soothe your
angst. Long after the aspens have quaked their last on the
fringe of Flagstaff and the explosion of fall has fizzled
from the Four Comers down to Mount Graham, this one
lingering patch of color glitters in Colonel Thompson's
desert garden 60 miles east of Phoenix and down the road
from the old mining town of Superior.
Sitting there atop a fused outcrop of volcanic residue,
I watched wind rustling through the golden surge of cot­tonwood,
sycamore, Chinese pistache, and ash trees. The
pistache trees
abandon summer
greenery for canopies
that first tum golden,
then crimson at the
T EXT B Y PET E R ALESHIRE
PHOTOGRAPHS BY GARY JOHNSON
Boyce Thompson
Southwestem
Arboretum. Arizona Highways 13
(ABOVE, LEFT) Magma Ridge, which rises above Queen Creek in the arboretum, sustains
a variety of trees, including paloverdes, cottonwoods, and oaks.
(ABOVE, RIGHT) Among the arboretum's more unusual plants are rare boojum trees,
which have been known to arch toward the ground and take root at their tips.
tempestuous sea of fall-drenched trees
lapped against the base of my hill like
breakers turned molten by the sunset.
The Boyce Thompson Southwestern Ar­boretum
spread out all around the penin­sula
of stone on which I perched. To my
right, cacti from all over the world squat­ted,
reared, and lurked - spiny, wattled
monsters with misshapen forms crafted to
withstand the rigors of the deserts of five
continents. To my left, gigantic red, gold,
and yellow trees gathered from streamsides
throughout the world jostled one another
in an intense struggle for sun, water, and
space along the banks of Queen Creek.
I savored the cool caress of the sun-soft­ened
winter breeze, balanced atop my 30-
million-year-old hummock of ash left over
from the cataclysm that crafted the jagged
Superstitions range and the outlandish cliffs,
buttes, and volcanic stumps of looming
Picketpost Mountain. Some 70 years ago,
iconoclast, miner, and entrepreneur Col.
14 November 1995
William Boyce Thompson built a house on
a nearby crag and bought up some 350
acres of spectacular Sonoran Desert running
back up into the rugged depths of Queen
Creek Canyon. Thompson acquired the title
"Colonel" in 1917 when he helped lead a
Red Cross medical supply mission to Russia
in the wake of the revolution.
A longtime lover of plants, Thompson
hired a botanist to layout his garden,
which gradually evolved into a spectacular
Nature preserve and plant research center.
He eventually established, with the assis­tance
of the University of Arizona and the
Arizona State Parks Board, a foundation to
maintain and expand the arboretum for the
general public.
Sitting on my rock, I let my eye wander
across the swaying treetops, enjoying the
fall sampler that included both the stalwarts
of a Sonoran Desert stream and colorful
immigrants like the flaming Asian pome­granates
and the lurid Chinese pistaches.
This perennial flush is the legacy of one
of Nature's most intriguing schemes. Trees
adapt two basic approaches to winter: they
either lavish resources on producing tough,
frost-resistant leaves or whip out huge
quantities of flimsy leaves they can afford to
lose. These thin, broad leaves soak up en­ergy
through the salad days of summer but
wither with winter.
The early chill of fall triggers a cascade of
physiological changes as the trees draw nu­trients
out of the vulnerable leaves then seal
off the now dispensable leaf. The whole
process is orchestrated by the release of cer­tain
chemicals, which produce the dramatic
change of colors with the seasons. The
green chlorophyll retreats into the stems to
be replaced by other stress-related chemicals
that come in reds, yellows, and browns.
Of course we're inclined to mourn the
dying leaves, but that's because we think in
straight lines instead of the circles with
which Nature builds. In fact, fall isn't death
DESERT GARDEN
(ABOVE, LEFT) From a patch of prickly pear cactus, a blue agave sends
a massive shoot skyward in a heads-up display of its blossoms.
(ABOVE, RIGHT) When Col. Boyce Thompson created the arboretum at Picketpost
Mountain, he built a house high on a nearby crag, above a grove of date palms.
but merely another turn of the wheel. The
blaze of the trees, the leaf litter, and the rel­ative
hush of winter offer just another tran­sition,
encouraging diversity, especially in an
ecological treasure trove like the arboretum.
The arboretum's managers maintain me­andering
trails through about 100 acres of
gardens open to the public and conduct on­going
studies of plants, insects, and animals
throughout the total 350 acres and an adja­cent
1,000-acre swath ofthe Tonto National
Forest. About 80,000 visitors a year wander
along the shaded trails and creek, poke
through the crowded cactus garden, add
unexpected birds to their lifetime lists, pick
through the bookstore and gift shop, and
collect stray facts about desert plants.
The arboretum also shelters 207 species
of birds, 48 species of reptiles and amphib­ians,
and 37 species of mammals - in­cluding
the occasional mountain lion that
leaves its startling footprint along Queen
Creek as it patrols for deer, javelinas, and
small mammals. The 800 varieties of cacti,
3,000 drought-resistant plants, and remark­able
trees, shrubs, grasses, and flowers from
across the world make the arboretum a
botanist's dream and a hiker's delight.
I treated myself to a complete circuit of
the guided trail, clutching the booklet that
offered insights into the leafy, thorned, suc­culent
world of plants at one numbered
stake after another. I realized as I started
how little credit we give plants for their re­markable
adaptations, although we all live
on their forbearance. They've penetrated
the mystery of sunlight, contriving to pro­duce
energy from a distant star.
We're all merely parasites on that re­markable
ability, breathing the oxygen they
produce as an afterthought and clinging to
the end of the food chain which starts with
the magic of chlorophyll. So I resolved to
spend the day appreciating plants and look­ing
for signs of the complex interactions by
which they keep the rest of us alive.
The newly developed legume garden
provided one of the first stops, an array of
drought-tolerant, desert-loving plants that
sprout bean pods, bundling their seeds
with their own life-support system. These
varieties of mesquite, paloverde, acacia, and
others made it possible for most of the
Native American desert cultures to survive
in a harsh environment, supplying a sea­sonal
bounty of nutritious foods that could
be turned into an array of edibles and
stored for long periods.
The loop trail led on into one of the most
peculiar cactus gardens I'd ever encoun­tered,
bristling with the thorned glory of gold­en
barrels, mutated monstrosa, shaggy
hedgehogs, and an array of strange species
that seemed stolen off the set of a science-fic­tion
movie. Meandering, looped side trails led
through a sampling of Mohave, Sonoran, and
Chihuahuan desert plants - each distinctive
and equally weird - like the improbably
upside-down boojum trees of Mexico.
Arizona Highways 15
DESERT GARDEN
My amble then took me to Ayer Lake, a
reedy man-made duck pond which feeds
the arboretum's irrigation system and har­bors
a sampling of endangered desert fish,
little darting wigglers whose ancestors
evolved remarkable adaptations to the scat­tered'
unpredictable, hot-and-cold-running
seeps, springs, and streams of the desert.
They've been driven out of most of the ri­parian
areas that survive by water diver­sions,
cattle, and foreign fish. I sat awhile on
a bench, watching some feathered paddlers
- widgeons, mallards, and a wayward teal
- bobbing for treats in the shallows.
Then I trudged up a gentle hill and
stopped to admire the sea of waving trees
below in the rugged gash of Queen Creek.
Winding down past Thompson's fortress
on the hill, I strolled through the soothing
canopy of the streamside forest, savoring
the stream's murmur, the dappling of the
late light, and the overwhelming variety of
plant life.
The Sonoran Desert regulars seemed like
old friends, enormous cottonwoods, syca­mores,
and willows, crowded together in a
great-trunked display of the bounty that
lined so many desert streams before we
turned the wood and water to our own
uses. But all along the trail, I encountered
exotic interlopers: trees with thorns, bark
of cork, and branches with smooth, sinu­ous
shapes.
(LEFT) In one impressive arboretum grove,
flOUrish some of the tallest Australian
eucalyptus trees in North America.
WHEN YOU GO
The Boyce Thompson Southwestern
Arboretum is about an hour east of
downtown Phoenix, three miles west of
Superior. To get there from Phoenix, take
the Superstition Freeway east to Apache
Junction, then turn southeast, right,
onto U.S. 60.
The arboretum offers several hiking
trails, none of them too difficult. The
High Trail is narrow, and - as its name
implies - offers a superb view of the fall
foliage canopy below. Watch for the
arboretum's "eucalyptus grove" and the
multiarmed 200-year-old saguaro. Don't
miss the gift shop and retail plant
section. Take a lunch to enjoy at the
picnic area, where you will likely spot a
variety of curious and hungry birds and
The climax came when I rounded a cor­ner
to find myself standing in a small
grove of Chinese pistache trees, arrayed in
a mind-numbing splendor of red and or­ange.
I sat mutely in the midst of the gar­ish
grove, trying to sort through the rush
of feeling inspired by the glowing exuber­ance
of color.
It seemed like a gushing sunset, caught
in midglory and prolonged. The leaves
glimmered in the breeze, shifted like drifts
of jewels on the ground, and fluttered
through the air like dying dreams. I don't
know how long I sat there, seeking the
riddle to the psychological mystery of fall.
But at some point I became the phe­nomenon,
losing track of time and any in­terest
in mysteries beyond the play of light
in the leaves.
I'd been nearly lulled to sleep by the
sound of the wind in the trees, when a flick­er
of iridescent color caught my eye. Velvet
black and brilliant blue provided an unex­pected
note of grace in the first shiver of
December - no doubt the pipevine swal­lowtail
butterfly that arboretum Curator Dr.
Carol Crosswhite had told me about - a
powdery ecological parable. The swallowtail
butterfly lives in a tight ecological triangle
that includes a vampire fly and the pipevine,
a crafty flower with a bad reputation.
The butterfly lays its eggs only on the
pipevine, a small brown plant with cork­screwed,
pipe-shaped flowers, once used
by Indians to treat snakebite and by snake­oil
salesmen to treat everything from ty­phoid
to smallpox. All these concoctions
depended on the bouquet of chemicals the
plant produces to keep from being eaten.
squirrels, as we did. Best times to go?
Year-round, keeping in mind that late
autumn and early winter deliver fall
color and spring brings wildflowers. In
March the arboretum throws a big party
honoring its part-time buzzard residents,
and every April there's a big plant sale.
Wear comfortable walking shoes, take
binoculars, a hat, and don't forget the
sunscreen. The desert gardens sit at an
elevation of 2,400 feet, so expect
temperatures to be a little cooler than in
Phoenix.
The arboretum is open daily except
Christmas, 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. Admission is
$4, adults; $2, ages five to 12; and free,
four and under. The following areas are
wheelchair accessible: visitors center,
However, the purplish caterpillar of the
pipevine swallowtail evolved a digestive
tract designed to gobble pipevines, and it
can even concentrate the plant's defensive
chemicals in its body to make itself un­eatable.
Oddly enough, although the swal­lowtail's
caterpillar can survive only on
pipevines, the butterflies don't actually pol­linate
the pipevines.
That function is performed by a small
bloodsucking fly that mistakes the pipe­vine's
musty, flesh-colored flower for the
ear of a mouse. The fly buzzes into the
flower, lands, and slips down through a for­est
of downward-pointing "hairs." The hairs
trap the fly until it is covered with pollen,
then they wilt to allow the fly to escape and
carry the pollen to another plant.
Sure enough, my fluttering guide soon
led me to a pipevine. I felt a rising surge
of gratitude to Colonel Thompson as I
stood there, breathing the plant's cast-off
oxygen, identifying with the hungry
caterpillar, the bloodsucking fly, and a
butterfly smelling of flowers. Then I
found a comfortable seat and let the day
deepen as I savored a second chance at
fall and counted passing butterflies, wind­tumbled
leaves of gold, and my many
blessings. n
Peter Aleshire prepares his lists offall photo ops
months in advance, but despite his interest in ecology he
avoids bloodsuckingjlies whenever possible. He also
wrote about a Superstition Mountains trail ride in
this issue.
Gary Johnson was so impressed on his first visit to
the arboretum, he's returned several times, noting that
it's an excellent spot to photograph a surprising variety
of birds. He also contributed the photographs for the
Superstitions story in this issue.
parking areas, access routes/walkways,
rest rooms, water fountains; picnic areas.
Trails are rated
as usable to
inaccessible due to
slope and terrain.
For more
arboretum
information,
write 37615 U.S.
Highway 60,
Superior, AZ
85273-5100; telephone
(602) 689-2811. To inquire about
accommodations in the area, call the
Globe-Miami Chamber of Commerce,
(520) 425-4495; or the Apache Junction
Chamber of Commerce, (602) 982-3141.
Arizona Highways 17
T H E
A WILD HERD
OF SPANISH PONIES
LIKE THOSE
THAT CARRIED
EARLY-DAY
JESUIT EXPLORERS
IS FOUND
IN A REMOTE CANYON
NEAR THE
MEXICAN BORDER
􁪽􋵗 WAS A STIRRING
18 November 1995
HORSES
T EXT B Y LEO W. BAN K S
PHOTOGRAPHS BY EDWARD MCCAIN
DISCOVERY, ONE THAT EVEN
the most starry-eyed of Western
romantics would have difficulty
imagining.
A wild herd of Mexican-bred
Spanish horses, a strain thought to
have died out more than a century
before, was found living on the
Wilbur-Cruce Ranch near Arivaca.
These are the same small, tough,
and loyal mounts that carried
Jesuit Father Eusebio Francisco
Kino on his vast explorations of
northern Mexico and what was to
become southern Arizona.
They carried Spanish conquis­tadores
on their expeditions for
gold, Apache warriors on their
fearsome raids, and they helped
Mexican and American cowboys
tame some of the most unforgiv­ing
land on the continent.
But here it was 1989, some
300 years after Father Kino first
introduced his storied mustangs
to the region, and the horses were
found again, still running togeth­er,
wild and pure, concealed from
time by the remoteness of the
Wilbur-Cruce Ranch.
(ABOVE) A Spanish Colonial mare and filly graze on the former Wilbur-Cruce
Ranch near Arivaca. The horses were thought to have died out a century ago.
(LEFT) Blue eyes are common among the Wilbur-Cruce herd.
(RIGHT) Lehmann's love grass grows on a stretch of the Buenos Aires National
Wildlife Refuge, which now includes the onetime range of the Mexican-bred
Spanish mounts. The San Luis Mountains rise on the horizon.
THE W I L BUR F A MIL Y LET THE SPA N ISH BAR B S,
A S THE Y W ERE CAL LED, RUN F R E E, 0 N L Y P U L LIN G
HORSES FROM THE HERD AND BREAKING THEM
TO THE SADDLE WHEN THEY WERE NEEDED
FOR RANCH WORK.
How these beautiful horses got there,
and how they survived for nearly a century
in the brittle washes and cruel canyons of
this isolated border country, is history itself,
a true Arizona saga.
The story of the Wilbur-Cruce herd
began in the 1860s when Ruben
Augustine Wilbur, a Harvard-educated
doctor, came to this land and took a job as
physician for the Cerro Colorado Mining
Company. When the outfit failed, Wilbur
decided to homestead on 140 acres near
Arivaca Creek, establishing the first ranch
in the area. (See Arizona Highways, Febru­ary
'87.)
A decade later, a Mexican horse trader
named Juan Zepulveda rode north from
Mexico with 600 head of Spanish horses,
selling them off as he drove toward the
Kansas City stockyards.
The Spanish horse had been established
in Mexico centuries before, and the popu­lation
gradually spread north with the
march of the conquistadores and, later,
Catholic missionaries.
Father Kino was the most dedicated of
these. Over a 30-year period ending in
1 711, he explored vast areas of northern
Mexico and southern Arizona, establishing
a chain of missions and ranches throughout
the region.
20 November 1995
Kino stocked these outposts with thou­sands
of Spanish mustangs bred at his
headquarters at Rancho Delores, about 100
miles south of the present-day Mexican
border - the same area from which Juan
Zepulveda began his long journey.
Indeed, the story that Zepulveda told
Ruben Wilbur that day was handed down
through generations of Wilburs, eventually
becoming part of family lore: that the hors­es
were genuine descendants of Father
Kino's mustangs.
In large part because of Father Kino, the
Spanish horse became dominant in Amer­ica.
But that was short-lived. Taller, stronger
horses from the northeast and southeast
swept across the continent with expanding
Western settlement, and purdy Spanish
breeds mostly became a relic of the past.
But something different was happening
to the Wilbur-Cruce herd: it was carry­ing
on, in an isolation that kept its Spanish
blood pure, under circumstances almost
too harsh to imagine.
"It's amazing what those horses had to
endure over the years, and yet they kept
surviving everything that happened," said
Eva Wilbur-Cruce, Ruben Wilbur's 91-
year-old granddaughter, who worked the
ranch on the backs of Spanish horses for
more than 60 years. (Her marriage to
TH E HORSES OF HISTORY
A black stallion shows his form as he gallops across theformer
ranch:S land. Small and so tough that cowboys called them "rock horses," the
Spanish Colonial equines could easily climb rugged mountainsides.
Marshall Cruce resulted in the ranch's name.)
Threats to the herd's existence included
the land itself. The Arivaca area was a bru­tal
home: parched, mountainous, and un­forgiving
to the weak.
The Wilbur family let the Spanish Barbs,
as they were called, run free, only pulling
horses from the herd and breaking them to
the saddle when they were needed for
ranch work. This sparing use allowed the
process of natural selection to work on those
that continued to run wild, so that only the
toughest and most spirited survived.
So rugged were these mounts that ranch
hands nicknamed them "rock horses," for
their ability to scale jagged mountain
slopes. Eva recalled cowboys trying to shoe
the wild horses and watching in amaze­ment
as the nails bent against the hardness
of their rocklike hooves.
But threats to the herd came from man
as well. The most dramatic of these was in
1933, when a wealthy cow baron attempt­ed
to drive the Wilburs from their land.
Augustine Wilbur, Eva's father, had just
died in a fall from his horse, leaving Eva to
run the ranch on her own. But the mort­gage
had come due, and the baron himself
held the paper on it.
He demanded payment within days, giv­ing
Eva, then 28, only one option: selling
her beloved Spanish horses. "I didn't want
to do it because they had been our constant
companions, year in and year out," said
Eva. "But what choice did I have?"
She arranged a selling price and, accom­panied
by four Mexican cowboys, proceed­ed
to drive the herd to Amado, 30 miles
north. With the deal about to close, the
baron suddenly declared that he was will­ing
to pay only a fraction of the agreed­upon
amount.
Angry at the double cross, the strong­willed
Eva turned to one of her cowboys
and barked, "Turn the horses loose!" As
soon as they were free, the Barbs galloped
on their own back to the Wilbur ranch, the
only home they'd ever known.
The herd was saved - at least for the
time being. Still, Eva knew she had to find
another buyer or lose the ranch.
Miraculously, she was approached that
same day by a cowboy named Shepherd
with an offer of help. But Shepherd worked
for the baron, and Eva at first doubted that
anything good could come from whatever
he had in mind.
''I'll be at your ranch tomorrow morning
before the sun comes up," Shepherd told Eva.
Even though she was deeply suspicious,
Eva agreed. At the next dawn, Shepherd
made good on his word and galloped up to
the ranch. "The thing you should do is go
to town right away and payoff that mort­gage,"
insisted the cowboy.
Eva laughed bitterly. "How am I sup­posed
to do that with no money?" she
asked, wondering what trick he had up his
sleeve. Shepherd then handed her a rolled
cigarette paper and said: "I told you I was
going to help you, and I did."
Still suspicious, Eva dropped the strange
gift on the table and promptly received a
stern warning from Shepherd that this
seemingly worthless scrap of cigarette
paper must not be treated casually.
After he left, Eva unraveled the mysteri­ous
paper and, to her astonishment, found
a $1,000 bill rolled up inside. "I was flab­bergasted,"
she recalled. "I kept thinking,
something is wrong. Maybe the bill is a
fake. This must be a trick."
It wasn't. Shepherd, strictly from the
goodness of his heart, gave his own money
to pay the mortgage on Eva's ranch, thus
saving the horses for the second time in
24 hours.
But the herd still wasn't secure. That
same year a vicious range war erupted, an­other
attempt by the baron to frighten Eva
from her land. And once again the target
was the Spanish herd.
In one ugly incident, 30 of the horses
were driven into a canyon and machine­gunned.
So stunning was the slaughter that
it made news as far away as California. A
banner headline in the Los Angeles Exam­iner
declared: "Machine Gun Bands Bring
Reign of Terror in Arizona."
The paper reported that the Wilbur
ranch had been the target of numerous
night raids, during which countless horses
had either been driven off and butchered or
they simply disappeared.
A vigilante committee was formed, with
its leader publicly declaring that he intend­ed
to hang the thieves and horse killers if
need be. "No jury in Arizona would convict
a vigilante of murder if he used some con­temptible
desperado to stretch hemp," he
told reporters.
Fortunately the war didn't last long, and
law enforcement was able to regain control
before the Wilbur-Cruce herd was decimated.
Rrovidence intervened on behalf of the
horses once more in 1990. This time, in
addition to still more thieves, the herd had
acquired new foes: preying lions and a
fierce drought.
By then Wilbur-Cruce had sold the ranch
to The Nature Conservancy for eventual ad­dition
to the Buenos Aires National Wildlife
Refuge (which occurred in 1989). But offi­cials
ofD.S. Fish and Wildlife, which ran the
Arizona Highways 21
THE HORSES OF HISTORY
refuge, ordered the removal of the horses to
protect the area's sensitive habitats.
u.s. Fish and Wildlife biologist Steve
Dobrott and wife, janie, spent weeks hoof­ing
through the rugged San Luis Mountains
doing an inventory of the herd. What they
found was a battered group of animals fight­ing
to survive on scarce food and water.
The herd numbered 100 in the winter of
1989, but by the time the horses were
taken off the land some months later, their
number had dwindled to 77.
Steve Dobrott believed that some of the
23 missing animals were taken by thieves,
most likely drug runners using the animals
to haul their product up from Mexico. But
many more were being killed by lions.
Because of the drought, the horses had
gathered at the only watering hole remain­ing
on Arivaca Creek, making them easy
targets for the hungry cats.
"The lions were especially tough on the
foals," said Dobrott. "We have photographs
of horses that we took during the inventory
that were never removed from the ranch.
They just disappeared between the inven­tory
and the rescue."
Ironically; the same factors that killed so
many horses also contributed to their sur­vival.
By keeping the population down,
enough food and water remained for the
strongest to carryon.
"It's natural selection again," said Dobrott.
"It's no exaggeration to say that the thieves
and the lions helped save the herd."
Here the long saga of these horses took
a final fantastic twist.
When the Dobrotts began inventorying
the herd in preparation for their removal,
they knew nothing of the origin of the hors­es.
The herd's oral history had gained little
currency beyond the Wilbur-Cruce family
As far as Steve and janie Dobrott knew,
this was an ordinary herd of wild horses.
That changed three months into the in­ventory
when Steve happened to read A
Beautiful, Cruel Country, Eva's 1987 book
about life on the ranch.
In it she discussed the Spanish Barbs that
her family used and their area of origin near
Rancho Delores in Sonora. Could these be
descendants of the same horses, the
Dobrotts wondered?
Experts from the Spanish Mustang Reg­istry
and the American Minor Breeds Con­servancy
(AMBC) were summoned to
examine the horses, and blood was drawn
to determine if it contained the genetic
traits of the Spanish breed. The results were
positive, scientific confirmation of the tale
22 November 1995
(ABOVE) The Wilbur-Cruce spread's brand
was the unique Flying E, Flying W stacked
brand.
(LEFT, BELOW) A filly named Cucurpe runs
free on the refuge. Sparing use of the horses
on the Wilbur-Cruce ranch allowed natural
selection to ensure a hardy strain.
(RIGHT)janie Dobrott, outfitted in Spanish
Colonial period dress, helped her husband,
Steve, inventory the herd before its ''final
rescue.
"
juan Zepulveda told Ruben Wilbur more
than a hundred years earlier.
But it was only through the chance read­ing
of a book that the historical and genetic
significance of the horses was rediscovered.
Said Steve Dobrott: "They probably would
have been sold off to anyone who was in­terested,
and the strain would've gradually
died out. That would've been the end."
The removal of the Wilbur-Cruce herd
lfrom land they'd roamed for five gener­ations
took place in june of 1990. For this
seemingly star-crossed herd, probably the
last purely Spanish horses remaining in the
U.S., it was the final rescue.
Because of their historical importance,
Eva agreed to donate the horses to AMBC
for placement with breeders pledged to
keeping the strain alive. The herd has since
been dispersed to breeders in California,
Texas, Oklahoma, and Arizona with a
group of 13 living at the Pioneer Arizona
Living History Museum north of Phoenix.
For those involved in the rescue project,
it was a labor of love in preservation of a
glorious past.
"Every time I look at these horses I see
history," said janie Dobrott. "They're the
very same horses that were used here 300
years ago. Imagine what they must've seen
in that time. just imagine." 􁪽􋵔
Tucson-based Leo W Banks says that every horse he's
ever ridden has instinctively known that he is an utter
greenhorn.
Edward McCain, also oj Tucson, was amazed that the
Spanish horses survived, and he calls them among the
most beautiful he's ever seen.
My introductory view of the Santa Rita Mountains was from the heights of
the Chiricahuas in the southeast comer of the state. To the west, the Santa
Ritas lay flanked by mesquite- and oak-studded grasslands. The range's highest
peak, Mount Wrightson, rose regally on the east side of the Santa Cruz Valley
to 9,453 feet.
My first night on the Santa Ritas, I camped in the midst of a thunderstorm
and enjoyed a brilliant lightning show, which lasted into the wee hours of the
morning.
Since then I've returned in all seasons to hike, stargaze, and explore the
boundless photographic possibilities, each trip a fresh experience to be savored.
Please sit a spell and enjoy.
itas
FOLIO
B Y B R u c E G R I F F I N
$UMMER
(LEFT) A rainbow above Mount
Wrightson augurs the end of
a summer storm.
(ABOVE) Elephant Head rock sits on
the west end of the Santa Ritas
beneath a stormy sunset.
Arizona Highways 25
CjALL
(ABOVE) Autumn brings its colorful
touch to Arizona white oak,
sycamore, and willow trees in
lower Madera Canyon.
(RIGHT) The Super Trail offers
a view of the western face
of rugged Mount Wrightson.
(FOLLOWING PANEL,
PAGES 28 AND 29) Winter's
light caress leaves a
dusting of snow
on the Santa Rita slopes
south of Tucson.
26 November 1995 Arizona Highways 27
$PRING
(ABOVE) Desert mariposa
blossoms welcome a spring
morning on a grassy slope
below Madera Canyon.
(RIGHT) Mimosa flowers
share the foothills below
Florida Saddle with a stand
of blooming ocotillos.
30 November 1995 Arizona Highways 31
THE
D EAT H
o F
THE
APACHE < I D
... Io MY FATHER, DAN GENUNG SR.,
HE WAS A BOYHOOD FRIEND, A
YOUNG INDIAN WITH WHOM HE'D
PLAYED AND HUNTED SMALL GAME.
BUT TO EVERY-ONE
ELSE ON
THE FRONTIER, IN THOSE LATTER
YEARS OF THE 19TH CENTURY, HE
WAS ONE OF THE WORST OUTLAWS IN THE TERRITORY.
Now, in 1895, the Apache
Kid was mortally wound­ed
and on the run from
the troopers of seven
Army posts and the sher­iffs
of five counties. Some­how
he found strength
enough to return once
more to the home of his
youth, Peeples
Valley in Yavapai
I 11 u s t rat ion s b y M IKE BEN N Y County; and the
ranch belonging
to my grand­father,
Charley Genung.
The story of The Kid's
tragic end has never been
told. It's been locked away
in the pages of Charley'S
yellowed and withering
journals for 80 years ...
until now.
The year was 1888,
and Al Sieber, chief of
scouts at the San Carlos
Indian Reservation, had
32 November 1995
T EXT
stepped in to rip apart his
life forever.
A large group of Apa­ches
had obtained a quan­tity
of liquor, and they
were having a rowdy time
of it. The Kid was ordered
to take some scouts to
their camp and head off
any trouble. But something
went awry; and the scouts,
including The Kid, joined
the merrymakers. When
the scouts failed to return,
Sieber sent troopers to
bring them in. Arriving
back at the agency office,
where an outraged Sieber
was waiting for them, the
miscreants reeled drunk­enly
in their saddles.
A noisy argument broke
out, and, as a crowd gath­ered,
two shots were fired,
one of them striking the
old scout in the ankle.
Who did the shooting
B Y Dan B. G e nun g J r.
just appointed a young
Indian, thought to be a
Yavapai and called The Kid,
to the rank of sergeant.
The Kid dressed neatly
in white man's clothes­boots,
jacket, and broad­brimmed
hat - with no
emblems to confirm his
tribal identity His scouting
skills were unequalled,
proved on many a pursuit
of renegades, including
Geronimo.
"Kid, you're chief of
scouts while I'm gone,"
Sieber told him as he left
on an inspection tour that
spring. The post command­er
questioned Sieber's de­cision,
but the old scout
was adamant. "He's the
man for the job," he said.
During the months
ahead, The Kid's scouting
tasks were routine. Then
in the summer of '88, Fate
By November 2, 1889, every
APACH E kiD sheriff's office in Arizona was
notified of the incident by tele­graph,
and troops from forts Thomas,
Grant, Lowell, Apache, McDowell, Hua­chuca,
and the San Carlos reservation were
ordered into the field. The great manhunt
had begun.
Four months later, all the escapees were
dead except one: The Kid.
From that time on, every crime commit­ted
in the territory was blamed on him. But
The Kid was never spotted. He'd simply
disappeared.
Was he dead? It was true that during the
manhunt, Hualapai Clark, a scout and pros­pector,
had shot at an Indian he thought
was one of the outlaws. Blood splattered on
the trail showed the man had been wound­ed,
perhaps fatally
Another explanation for The Kid's disap­pearance
came in]une, 1890, when]ames
G. Blaine, U.S. secretary of state, mailed
Arizona Governor Lew Wolfley an em­bossed
watch that had belonged to Sheriff
Reynolds. It had been taken from the body
of one of three Indians who had attacked a
troop of Mexican rurales.
No frontiersman believed The Kid would
have engaged in such a stupid assault. But
on February 27, 1893, the Territorial Legis­lature
increased the reward money for his
capture from $1,000 to $6,000. Still, no
Apache Kid.
An item in the Phoenix Republican in
1895 stated the Apache Kid and an Indian
woman had been spotted in Gila Bend. But
the folks in Peeples Valley regarded this as
just another wild rumor. Unbeknownst to
Grandpa Charley, however, he was about to
stumble over The Kid's true hideout.
When questioning
some Yavapai wood­cutters
he'd hired about
the signal fires appearing
nightly in the Harqua­hala
Mountains, Charley
learned the Apache Kid
had returned. The Yava-pais
said he was very ill
and had come back from Mexico to die near
his boyhood home.
Returning to the ranch, Charley sent off
son Dan to Gov. Sam Hughes in Phoenix to
find out if the reward offer still stood. Dan
returned with an affirmative answer and a
photograph of the lO prisoners taken be­fore
the doomed departure for Yuma.
Charley, who was thinking about going
after the reward, did nothing until Al
Marsh, who had been prospecting in the
Bradshaws, stopped at the ranch and in­quired
about the signal fires.
would never be clear, but The
Kid was arrested on the spot
and charged with assault with
intent to kill. The three other scouts with
him were charged with aiding and abetting
the crime. Ten years in an Ohio prison was
their sentence.
One year later, the U.S. Supreme Court
decreed the scouts had been tried falsely,
and The Kid and the members of his patrol
were released.
Furious, Al Sieber ignored the Supreme
Court's decision and swore out warrants
against the scouts. Within two days, they
were back in irons.
At the second trial, Sieber spat venom,
flatly naming The Kid as the one who had
fired the shots. The Kid's denial, and the
fact the four were unarmed, failed to move
the jury despite support from a number of
witnesses. The court's decision was guilty
as charged.
The next stop for the former scouts was
the Yuma Territorial Prison, for them, a sen­tence
of death since it was well known that
Indians jailed in the caves soon died of tu­berculosis.
Enlisting a deputy, Hunky Dory Holmes,
and a freighter named Gene Middleton,
Sheriff Glenn Reynolds set out for Yuma
with 10 prisoners: the four ex-scouts,
five other Indians, and a Mexican em­bezzler.
They would never reach their
destination.
On the second day of the journey, eight
handcuffed prisoners were ordered to ease
the load on the horses by getting out of the
wagon and walking up a steep sandy hill.
The Kid and a scout named Hoscalte, con­sidered
the most dangerous of the group,
remained shackled in the freight wagon.
FROM THAT TIME ON, EVERY CRIME COMMITTED
IN THE TERRITORY WAS BLAMED ON HIM.
BUT THE KID WAS NEVER SPOTTED.
HE'D SIMPLY DISAPPEARED.
Near the top of the rise, an unseen signal
passed between the prisoners walking be­side
the wagon. Quickly they overpowered
and killed Sheriff Reynolds and Deputy
Holmes and wounded Middleton, the driv­er.
Then the killers freed the two scouts still
in the wagon. One of the killers, Elcahn,
shoved the sheriff's .45 against Middleton's
head and would have pulled the trigger had
The Kid not snatched the weapon and blurt­ed
out an order. Middleton, who survived to
tell the story, said that The Kid's words
sounded like, "This one already dead."
34 November 1995
"What's wrong with you, Charley?" Marsh
asked when he'd learned about The Kid's
return. "You know these mountain trails;
let's go after the reward."
Charley resisted at first, but Marsh's per­sistence
finally won out. The next day, at a
seldom used trail inland from the Hassa­yampa
River, the two men came across a
young Indian man and woman making a
cold camp. As they visited with the pair,
Charley and Marsh became aware of a shad­owy
figure concealed nearby The Indian
man then said that The Kid was with them.
Uncertain and fearful about being easy
targets for a hidden marksman, the two
white men rode off, Marsh muttering under
his breath.
At the Genung ranch the next evening,
the family was butchering a beef when two
Indian men and a woman quietly walked up.
One of the young Indian men did all the
talking, saying that the other was too deaf
to hear and was very sick. This was obvious
to the Genungs, who gave the three the
beef entrails and the heart, then continued
butchering as their unexpected visitors
walked away
The next morning, the three approached
afoot once more as the Genungs were slic­ing
the meat for jerky, while sons Frank
and Dan and the other children were sitting
on the porch cracking black walnuts and
digging out the meats with horseshoe nails.
The sick man walked slowly to the end
of the porch, gripped the rail, and sank
next to Frank and Dan, who recognized
him immediately as their boyhood play­mate,
the Apache Kid. He selected two
metate stones from a pile and began to
crack nuts. Dan handed him a nail, which
he accepted gravely, as he studied the two
boys with a half smile on his lips. They
thought he was on the verge of speaking.
Daughter May, 20, recognized him also,
from the photo Dan had brought back from
Phoenix. She could stand the suspense no
longer and rushed into the house, found
the photo, and returned to the doorway,
waving it at Charley
Deep in conversation with the other
young Indian man, he signalled her to keep
quiet. Lengthy silences came after each
question. Then Charley asked, "How long
you be here?"
Before the youth could say a word, The
Kid turned toward Charley and snapped,
"Tell him tomorrow."
The "deaf' man could hear after all. Then
he rose, gazed at Frank and Dan with that
same half smile and led his two followers
away toward the creek.
"Pa, don't you know ... ," May started
to caution. But Charley cut her off again.
Then to Dan and Frank he said, "You two
climb Arrowpoint Hill. See where they go."
A short while later, the two returned to
report that the Indians had taken the trail
to Congress.
May exploded, "What's the matter? Why
didn't you ....
"
"Couldn't you see The Kid is dying?"
Charley countered. "Quick consumption,
probably, brought on by Hualapai Clark's
bullet."
"He doesn't have long to live," May con­cluded
quietly
Then Frank broke in, "Are you going to
try to capture him?"
"No," Charley said, the word dragging
out slowly "The Kid came to say goodbye.
He trusted us. And if he's Yavapai, the tribe
would think we betrayed their trust in telling
me the meaning of the signal fires. We can't
afford to turn any of them against us."
Three weeks later, one of the Indians from
Congress was cutting wood with Charley and
Dan. Charley asked, "Did The Kid come by?"
"Yes, he come by," the Indian said.
"Where is he now?"
"Oh, he died."
"What did you do with him?"
"Covered him up."
"You buried him. Where?"
"About a foots," was the puzzling reply
That was all the information my grand-father
gained about the death of the Apache
Kid, who, it turns out, was a Yavapai, not
an Apache, and whose Indian name,
Haskaybaynayntayl, when translated was in
itself a dire prediction: "brave, tall, a mys­terious
end." n
Claremont, California-based Dan B. Genung]r., a
retired clergyman, was born in Prescott, a third-generation
Arizonan. His book, Death in His Saddlebags, is the
story of his grandparents' life in Yavapai County from
1863 to 1916.
Mike Benny, of Sacramento, California, also contlibuted
the illustrations for the story about "The Battle at Bloody
Tanks," in the July 1995 issue.
Arizona Highways 35
IT TAKES SOME FANCY FOOTWORK
TO BE A GIANT CENTIPEDE
•.... .................................... . ........................... .. .............. . ................
T E X T B Y T 0 M 0 0 L L A R
P H 0 T 0 G R A P H S B Y M A R T Y C 0 R 0 A N 0
..................•
aissez-faire best describes the attitude at my
desert home toward most flying and crawling
creatures that enter uninvited. I love the fragile
beauty of moths and their instinct for camou-
.._􁪽􋵦 flage. And no one kills a spider in my
house, certainly not one of the crab or wolf
spiders that perform yeoman's service each
night intercepting and eating kissing bugs .􁪽􋵡 and other such noxious bloodsucking ,􁪽􋴬, varmints before they can prey on us. .
Some creatures we stay out of the way
of - the black widow, for instance,
whose scrambly web occupies a dark re­cess
in an unused room. We don't go in there
at night without flipping on a light. And then there are scorpions
and a few other stinging arthropods that we capture and remove.
Our motto, as you can see, is pretty much live and let live.
But there's one visitor, whose occasional appearance raises the
hackles on my neck, not so much out of fear but in recognition of
the presence of an arch predator, a model of hunting and killing
efficiency
Late one night, I glanced up from a book I was drowsing over
and spotted a seven-inch many-jointed creature crawling swiftly
-on more legs than I dared get close enough to count-across a
narrow wall between two windows. To and fro it went, pausing
from time to time to probe cracks beneath strips of framing, search­ing,
it seemed, every square inch of brick. When it reached the ceil­ing,
it searched the space above the windows in the same eerily
methodical way, raising its bluish head now and then to wave a pair
of orange antennae in the air.
Drowsy no more, I snatched from beside my chair a shoe­box.
I waited for the wall-crawler to come
within reach, and scraped it off the stucco
into the box. Then I put the box 􁪽􋴧'􁪽􋴭-'-' ... "'"
into the refrigerator. Several
hours at 40° F or so, and my
cold-blooded specimen would
be sufficiently immobilized for safe inspection.
I pulled several field guides from my book-shelf.
Insistently the word "myriapod"
flashed through my mind, for although I
had never before encountered anything as big as the
monster in the box, I'd seen plenty of millipedes (thou-sand
feet) and centipedes (hundred feet), and so figured my cap­tive
fell into the category of animals known collectively as
myriapods (countless feet). Sure enough, in one of my guides to
arthropods, there he was, Scolopendra heros, the giant desert
centipede.
In the morning, I removed the shoebox from the fridge. Then,
carefully, very carefully, I lifted a comer of the lid and peeked inside.
There it was, stretched full length, not so much as a twitch from
one of its many legs.
Its long flattened body consisted of 24
segments with a pair of jointed yellow legs
attached to each - a fraction under eight inches.
Ringed in black where they connect, the segments
of the giant desert centipede are amber to light
brown over its entire length except for the head
and tail, which have a dark-blue cast.
At first it's hard to tell head from tail, and there's
a reason for that. The tail of the giant centipede is
a pseudohead that mimics the head in shape,
movement, and color, though the head is slightly
more rounded and its antennae longer and more
delicate than the tail appendages. If a predator,
such as a bird, reptile, or ringtail, mistakenly grabs
the tail, the centipede's head is free to turn and bite its attacker.
It's a mean bite. The upper jaw of the giant desert centipede
is actually a modified pair of legs, called gnathopods, that
contain poison glands. This bite kills small prey - spiders,
beetles, ticks, moths - and stuns larger prey, usually
small lizards, birds, mice, or shrews.
Anyone bitten by a giant desert centipede should
call the local poison control center or seek first aid.
Although not lethal in hu­mans,
the bite is toxic and can
cause swelling, soreness, and slow healing.
By day the giant desert centipede hides
under large
rocks,
in woodpiles, or beneath ground
litter or loose bark, becoming active after dark. Although it has
only a single pair of simple eyes, the giant centipede is a
formidable night stalker, and most prey are no match for its speed.
Giant desert centipedes, which add body segments as they molt,
are long-lived and take several years to mature.
Inside the box, my handsome specimen slowly came out of its
torpor and crawled onto a small piece of wood I'd placed in the
shoebox. Folding itself, it turned its head all the way down to its pos­terior
segment, cleaned the legs on both sides, then moved on to the
next segment, and the next, until it had covered its whole length.
I won't say I felt kinship, but somehow that act of "grooming" made
me feel tender toward the animal. Later, after dark, I took the shoe­box
into the desert and gently tipped it out into the night. 􁪽􋴨
(LEFT AND ABOVE) The leggy giant desert centipede shuns the
daylight, stalking its prey at night. Tiny beetles and spiders are no
match for the critter, which will even take on mice and birds.
One of Tom Dollar􁪽􋵦 favorite things about his Tucson-area home is the continual parade
of wildlife he encounters.
Bisbee-based Marty Cordano, a former wildlife biologist for the Bureau of Land
Management, speCializes in photographing Nature and environmental subjects.
36 November 1995 Arizona Highways 37
When
TRAIL RIDES
and
PHOTOGRAPHY
Combine in the
SUPERSTITION MOUNTAINS
You Can Hang
the
MEMENTOS
Ina
GALLERY
Text by Peter Aleshire Photographs by Gary Johnson
Westood around awkwardly in
clumps, greenhorns festooned with
camera bags, eyeing one another
with friendly uncertainty The smell
f horses hung in the air, and the
jagged outline of the famed Superstition
Mountains stood as
backdrop while we ex­changed
small talk,
self-consciously adjust­ed
the brims of our
brand new uncreased
cowboy hats, and scuf­fed
our polished cow­boy
boots.
Ostensibly, we had
been attracted to this
three-day trail ride to
pick up photographic
techniques from Arizona Highways free­lance
photographer Gary Johnson. In truth,
we shared an unspoken yearning to escape
our own century into the mythic West, al­ready
worn smooth in the retelling.
"You're going to have a great time,"
boomed Johnson, a towering bearded bear
of a man with a weathered cowboy hat, a
zest for a good story, and an affection for
bad jokes.
"That's right," interjected Terry Grinstead,
a cowboy, bull rider, and head wrangler for
our upcoming journey
"We hardly ever lose
anyone."
Johnson guffawed.
The greenhorns ex­changed
weak smiles.
Someone's beeper
went off. Smiling apol­ogetically,
a young fel­low
who was built like
a running back turned
off the beeper, checked
the number, pulled a
cellular telephone out of his pack, and
dialed a number. I stared toward the Super­stitions,
past the power lines, beyond the
end of the blacktop, beneath parallel jet
contrails, and wondered whether we could
ever escape the coils of the 20th century
(ABOVE AND RIGHT) A horseback photo tour to a scenic and fabled mountain range guarding
lost gold, vanished dreams, and prospectors who went in but never came out offers a
saddlebag of picture opportunities, including cowboy singer Roger Young savoring
a stunning sunset atop his horse, Punch.
38 November 1995
A20-minutedrive later, we found our hors­es
waiting at the edge of the 124,000-
acre Superstition Wilderness, a barbed,
blistered, splintered expanse of glorious
desolation haunted by legends, massacres,
treasures lost, and bodies never found.
Formed in an unimaginable volcanic
contortion some 30 million years ago, the
Superstitions harbored lost civilizations,
sheltered renegade Apache raiders, and
provided the setting for some of the West's
most fabled treasure hunts and blood
feuds. Our packs loaded with film and
camera lenses, we hoped to brush up
against the ghosts of the Superstitions -
and to somehow ride far enough from the
pavement's end to at least imagine our­selves
stumbling across the Lost Dutchman.
We rode all day, gradually discovering
whole new complexes of muscles. We trot­ted
into our base camp late in the after­noon,
sore, loose-jointed, and drunk with
the scenery
We could nearly imagine ourselves vet­erans
of the cavalry's long and mostly fruit­less
pursuit of the Apaches through these
same mountains, so stark and angular and
unsoftened by water's caress. But the illu­sion
was largely dispelled by the discovery
of camp: rows of tautly staked tents, a huge
cook trailer, and even a shower trailer with
warm pump-squirted water.
We washed up, walked the kinks out of
our legs, then assembled for photographic
discourse on the qualities of late light.
Meanwhile, cooks Jim Siefert and Chuck
Aldrich labored over an elaborate dinner.
Siefert attended a nationally ranked culi­nary
school and now specializes in Dutch­oven
cooking, providing yet another dis­concerting
blending of centuries.
The sunset proved disappointing, a
cloudless flash of metallic yellow light be­hind
the stark vanes of a windmill pump­ing
water for a stock tank.
Darkness descended rapidly, and we as­sembled
in weary contentment around the
campfire, where a guitar-strumming Roger
Young regaled us with a seemingly endless
succession of cowboy songs. We drifted on
his roiling stream of ballads: the plucky
cowboy trampled in the stampede, the
wordless Arizona Ranger with the big iron
on his hip, the lonesome rider singing his
restless cattle to sleep.
Young spent about 25 years on the road
with bands playing rugged rock and rowdy
country music, somehow surviving all the
excesses of that life. He'd just about burned
himself out when he discovered cowboy
music. Now he's a happy fanatic, ceaseless­ly
researching old cowboy tunes, begging
songs from every old-time rancher and
40 November 1995
SUPERSTITION MOUNTAINS
(ABOVE) The photo tour includes dude comforts like roomy tents and even hot showers,
but the first long day out on the trail into Fraser Canyon
leaves less-experienced riders walking with care. While they recover,
thoughts turn to dinner, and with good reason as it turns out.
(TOP) Jim Siefert, one of the camp cooks, specializes in Dutch-oven cuisine,
dishing up delectable entrees, old-fashioned biscuits, and from-scratch cinnamon rolls.
(ABOVE) Mark Gluckman focuses on Marion Perkin, a cowboy reminiscent of the characters
Jimmy Stewart played in Westerns, courtly and modest, but tough and self-reliant, too.
cowpuncher he encounters, and searching
through tapes in archives for long-forgot­ten
songs.
Surrendering myself to his enthusiasm,
I could feel the chains of my century loos­ening
their grip ever so slightly, as the stars
formed a brightening band overhead. Light
lingered on the horizon, although it was
hours past sunset.
spent most of the past 50 years on horse­back.
He'd ridden in rodeos, worked cattle
drives, and run his own ranch. Now he'd
bought his own string of horses for trail
rides in the Verde Valley and the Williams
area. He'd come along on this ride for the
scenery and a chance to watch Don
Donnelly's crew in action.
Perkin seemed fused to his horse, an
extension of the saddle horn at an age
when other men might be looking to nurs­ing
home insurance policies. He laughed
easily with a shy self-deprecating chuckle.
Courtly and soft -spokeri, he personified
that endearing mixture of deference and
tough self-reliance Jimmy Stewart captured
whenever he donned chaps in front of a
movie camera.
"I can't believe it's still light over there,"
I whispered to Johnson.
He glanced toward the horizon, looked
back at me, and shook his head pityingly
"That's Phoenix," he said.
"Oh," said I, jerked unceremoniously
into my own time. "Of course."
The next day, I rode mostly alongside
Marion Perkin, a native-born cowboy who'd
Except Perkin was the real thing, a quiet,
unassuming man who'd survived rattlers
and thunderstorms and everything a horse
could think to do. I kept at him until I
broke down his enormous reserves of
modesty So he told me about the time his
horse fell at a run and rolled over him
while he lay on the ground, watching that
enormous bulk blot out the sky like a
slow-motion avalanche. He told me about
the times he'd been kicked in the ribs,
thrown into boulders, and otherwise bro­ken
in a dozen places.
He told these stories on himself since it
would never occur to him to blame a horse
for deviltry or malice. He built up ranches,
lost them, signed on as a cattle hand, built
up spreads, and lost them again - all the
while watching the hypnotic line of the
horizon until the distance had been burned
into his face.
He quit ranching a while back after a
stint with an investment rancher deter­mined
to experiment with the artificial in­semination
of cattle. The rancher hired a
bunch of specialists to mix eggs and sperm
in test tubes in hopes of breeding super
cattle and cattle-buffalo hybrids. Perkin
didn't object to the technology - in fact
he spoke with nonchalant technical detail.
But the cattle weren't in good enough
shape, and the hybrids sometimes came
out stillborn and mutated. Somehow the
experience made him feel out of place on
a cattle ranch, so he decided to herd green­horns
instead.
We returned to the base camp as the
shadows lengthened, surprised to find our­selves
less saddle sore than at the end of the
first day We'd broken through the barriers
by then - a New York photographer, a
Michigan florist, a Phoenix psychologist, a
photography student, a repairer of Xerox
machines, a social worker and her gentle
eye-rolling teenage son - all for the mo­ment
redefined by our relationships to
horses, our supply of film, and our immer­sion
in the scenery
We gathered for sunset, eager to take
advantage of what happens to light when
it passes through several thousand miles
of dusty atmosphere before flooding the
foreground of our composition. We pre­vailed
upon Young, the singer, to don his
authentic cowboy clothes, climb into the
saddle, and pose on a hilltop, silhouetted
by the setting sun. We burned through
film with great sighs and gasps, glimpsing
in our viewfinders the illusion we so ear­nestly
sought.
Then we piled into a truck and raced up
the road to a mountaintop with a stunning
view to the south, ridge lines marching into
Arizona Highways 41
SUPERSTITION MOUNTAINS
the dim distance immolated by the setting
sun. We photographed in a kind of frenzy,
thinking that if we only took enough pic­tures,
used enough filters, and bracketed
enough exposures, we'd end up with at
least one image that felt a little like the ac­tual
moment the orange orb of the sun
sank into its own gaudy glow.
We woke on that last day with a sense of
impending loss. I felt dogged by a feeling of
failure. I'd never quite trapped the moment
I'd sought, deflected always by the glow of
the city, ranching by artificial insemination,
or the beep of the cellular phone. I felt like
a butterfly collector with just a dusting of
wing powder on his clumsy fingers.
We rode through the day toward Roger's
Canyon in the heart of the Superstitions.
I've spent years wandering about on the
margins of the Superstitions, climbing peaks
an easy walk from the road, surprising
javelinas in prickly pear decorated canyons,
or scrambling over boulders for a glimpse
of an agile herd of bighorns. The mountains
have always turned to me a rugged, desolate
face, albeit graced by great bursts of yellow,
red, and purple wildflowers in the spring.
But after we survived a harrowing de­scent
down a sheer rocky trail, we discov­ered
a lush meadow and a burbling stream
lined with lofty green cottonwoods and sin­uous
bone-white sycamores.
A thousand years ago, the cliff-dwelling,
42 November 1995
irrigation-ditching, com-growing Salado
lived in this Wilderness canyon and farmed
this clearing. Outriders of a sprawling civ­ilization,
the Salado built a complex, re­sourceful,
wide-ranging culture on the
efficient use of desert plants, irrigated agri­culture,
and hoarded stores of food in
solidly constructed multistory pueblos.
They traded beautifully decorated pottery
in networks that imported turquoise from
present-day New Mexico, seashells from
California, and parrots from the depths of
Mexico. But they dispersed to other lands
in the 1400s, leaving only shattered pots
and empty ruins.
We halted for lunch just up the stream
from the meadow. Grinstead secured the
horses and lifted the ice chest full of sodas
off the pack horse. He caught my eye and
gestured with a nod of his head toward a
gigantic alcove eroded in the canyon wall.
"There's a ruin up there," he said.
I looked up the slope and noticed the
stone walls built across nooks in the erod­ed
overhang. "Thanks," I said. "I'll take a
look." I clambered up the canyon to the
cliff dwelling.
Inside the giant cave, invisible from the
canyon floor, I discovered a ruin in aston­ishingly
good condition. The main building
consisted of an outer roofless chamber with
a mortared, smoothly curving wall, and a
single outer door so small you had to stoop
EVE N T o F
•.. ..........•
Toe-tapping
Fiddle Scores
Resound
at Wickenburg'S
Bluegrass Fest
T.I:el􁪽􋵹yhecWomeest from throughout ... two or three
thousand of them. They come
to hear professional and ama­teur
bands play The amateurs
play for $6,500 in prizes. They
come to visit with each other
because this is sort of a fraterni­ty'
a family And they come to
play in jam sessions that go on
half the night around campfires
among the parked RVs at the
Wickenburg rodeo grounds.
What we're talking about is
the Wickenburg Bluegrass Fes­tival.
It's a kind of desert Wood­stock,
taking place the second
weekend in November. This
year's happening, in that really­rather-
Western town 50-odd
miles northwest of Phoenix, is
one of many such festivals oc­curring
around the Southwest.
Bluegrass, not quite as noisy
as rock 'n' roll or country and
not quite as popular either, has,
nevertheless, a legion of devo­tees.
They dote on its pure
acoustic (meaning non­amplified,
nonelectrified)
"high lonesome" twang:
fiddle, guitar, mandolin,
banjo, and upright bass,
with, sometimes, a Ha­waiian-
style slide guitar
known as the "dobro."
(So called, supposed-ly,
because it was in­vented
by two Czech
brothers whose last
name began with
the letters "Do. ")
Bluegrass has
its own lan­guage.
Those
who come
(ABOVE AND LEFT) Stopping for lunch at
Roger's Canyon, our author discovers there's
a remarkably well-preserved Indian ruin in
a nearby canyon nook. A low stone structure,
left, was used by the ruin's inhabitants to
protect food from weather and animals.
sharply to enter. The inner chamber still
had most of its roof, mud-plastered reeds
in a framework of sticks last patched per­haps
600 years ago. Hushed by the sudden
rush of centuries, I sat in the fine dust by
the back wall. Light filtered in through the
doorway and a tiny window in one wall, a
silent benediction. Gradually my eyes ad­justed
to the dim interior. Studying the
adobe-plastered rock wall beside me, I dis­covered
the distinct hand and fingerprints
of its makers. I placed my index finger in
one print. It fit perfectly
I sat a long while in the dark, listening to
the whispers of ghosts, lost, finally, some­where
in time. 􁪽􋵁
Author's Note: Begin your trip at Lost
Dutchman State Park outside of Apache
Junction. The state park has a visitors center
to introduce you to these storied mountains,
an easily accessible Nature hike, covered pic­nic
tables and fresh water, campsites, and trails
into the rugged desert hills. For more informa­tion
on horseback riding and visiting Lost
Dutchman State Park, call (602) 982-4485.
Editor's Note: To find out more about
Photo Workshops and other trips sponsored
by the Friends of Arizona Highways, see
page 45.
Peter Aleshire also wrote about the Boyce Thompson
Southwestern Arboretum in this issue.
Gary Johnson also contributed the arboretum
photographs in this issue.
T H E MONTH
....•
T EXT B Y J 0 S E PHS Toe K E R
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ERROL ZIMMERMAN
to play are "pickers." Those
who come just to listen are
"grinners. "
And the music itself? Talk to
the bluegrass junkies, as I did
at last year's festival, and you
get pretty much the same story
Julie Brooks, executive director
of the Wickenburg Chamber of
Commerce, which sponsors the
festival: "It's simple music ...
music of the country"
Ben Sandoval, who organized
the '94 festival: "It's primarily
mountain music, about the
homes that folks have left be­hind
... the loves they've lost."
Dave Marts, a Fort Huachuca
engineer-draftsman who plays
guitar and banj 0 in a Sierra
Vista bluegrass band: "It's music
from the heart ... just ballads
about life ... just things that
happen."
Catch a few of the bluegrass
titles, and you'll see what those
folks mean: "Little Cabin Home
on the Hill," "Blue Ridge Moun­tain
Blues," "Sweetheart, You've
Done Me Wrong," "If I Could
Hear My Mother Pray Again."
Bluegrass may come from
the hills, but it isn't as old as
the hills. A Kentuckian named
Bill Monroe is widely acknowl­edged
to be its creator and pa­tron
saint. He and his "Blue
Grass Boys" (he spelled it
out in two words] started
playing it along about the
1940s, and it caught on,
especially with Southern
clear-channel radio sta-tions
and the Grand
Ole Opry Then it
went bigtime with
a television series
called 'The Beverly
Hillbillies. "
It languished
some with the
coming of
Elvis Presley
and rock 'n'
roll, but it's
making a
(ABOVE AND BELOW) Talented musicians from throughout the
Southwest pick up fiddles, guitars, and other instruments to dazzle
audiences, and win big prizes, at theWickenburg Bluegrass Festival.
nice comeback now. And one
of the reasons it's returning is
festivals like the one at Wick­enburg
(there are some 400
held every year all around the
U.S.) and the music and the
SOCializing. The socializing, es­pecially
People drive zillions
of miles to pick and grin and
just plain visit with each other.
At Wickenburg I heard of a re­tired
computer technician who
doesn't play or sing but goes in
his van to 40 bluegrass festivals
a year. "It's a fun thing," said
Julie Brooks. "When we're just
setting up the festival, folks will
already be here, and they'll
come and give us big hugs."
There's really no explaining
it, although people have tried.
People like Bob Artis, a festival
promoter, teacher, and man­dolin
player who wrote a book
on the subject. "There's some­thing
about it," he said, "that
makes me feel I really belong
on the Earth, that I have found
something of myself in blue­grass."
􁪽􋵗
WHEN YOU GO
This year's Wickenburg fiddle and steel festival is Friday
through Sunday, November 10-12. Wickenburg is 58 miles
northwest of Phoenix. To get to the festival site, turn off U.S.
Route 60 just east of the Hassayampa River Bridge onto
EI Recreo Drive, then onto Constellation. This year the
decade-old three-day event is highlighted by the Four Corners
championship contests for fiddle, flat-pick guitar, banjo, and
mandolin. Admission for adults on Friday is $6; seniors, $5;
and children 12 and under, $3. On Saturday and Sunday, adults
are $8; seniors, $7; and children 12 and under, $5. There also
are special two-day and three-day individual and family
packages. For more information, contact the Wickenburg
Chamber of Commerce, PO. Drawer CC, Wickenburg, AZ
85358; (520) 684-5479.
Arizona Highways 43
WIT S TOP
•... . .
A Barkley Wannabe
Mourns
His Cruel Fate
A .ITmerica has its president; Great Britain, her queen;
japan, an emperor. Arizona,
though, has Sir Charles Barkley,
a dribbling, shooting, rebound­ing,
slam-dunking, trash-talk­ing
amalgam of all of those.
I like the Phoenix Suns' Sir
Charles even though I have
good reason not to. He holds
the position in life that I once
thought was reserved for me.
Collegiate all-star, Olympic
gold medalist, NBA super­achiever
- those are the goals
I sought in life. I was well on
my way to acquiring them, too,
until fate dealt me a cruel, ca­reer-
ending blow. It happened
in the second grade.
Our elementary school an­nounced
tryouts for the basket­ball
team, and I was a shoo-in
to make the starting five. My
brother was the team coach.
Normally, of course, only sev­enth-
and eighth-graders made
the squad, but I would be the
historic second-grader who
would break that tradition be­cause
my brother was the team
coach.
But there was one consid­erable
obstacle that stood
in my way: my brother
was the team coach.
"I can't let you tryout
for the team," he said.
I said, "Frank, you have to.
Basketball is my life."
"You're nothing but a little
snot-nosed, whining, crybaby,
second-grade pest."
He exposed his fraternal af­fection
by prefacing his pet
names for me with the word
"little."
I said, "But Frank, I'll make
44 November 1995
FRIENDS TRAVEL
. . •
T EXT B Y G ENE PER RET
ILLUSTRATION BY Russ WALL
you proud of me. I'm quick.
I'm a good ball-handler, an ac­curate
passer, a heady team
player, and I can follow orders
from the bench." Quite an im­pressive
resume for a kid who
had never actually played bas­ketball.
My brother said, "This is stu­pid.
Give me one good reason
why I should let you tryout."
I said, "Because if you don't,
I'll tell Mom where you and
Mary Beth McCarthy really
went when you were supposed
to take her to the Thanksgiving
Day football game."
That problem overcome, I
now had to figure out what to
wear. The sporting goods stores
didn't sell basketball uniforms
small enough to fit me. Mom
and her reliable sewing ma­chine
provided the answer. She
cut down a pair of my torn
knickers into a basketball tank
top complete with the num­ber
"one" sewn onto the
front and back. My
chest wasn't wide
enough for two
numbers.
The shorts were a problem,
though, on tryout day. They
were corduroy. When I ran
down the court they whistled.
Everyone kept looking around
thinking a tornado was begin­ning
to form. A few of the
other players were annoyed at
the noise, but I was delighted.
Only on the court for two or
three minutes, and already I
was the center of attention.
Besides, I thought it was in­spired.
Our team could wear
corduroy uniforms and change
our nickname to the "Torna­does."
To me, that sounded
much more aggressive than:
"St. jude's the Patron Saint of
Hopeless Causes." (The nuns
made up our nickname.)
Brother Frank - oops, excuse
me - Coach Frank decided
that the first test of our basket­ball
skills would be foul shoot­ing.
Each aspirant would take
lO shots from the foul line, and
Frank would record how many
were made or missed. When
my tum came, I stood behind the
foul line, which is 15 feet from
the basket, and concentrated on
form, on keeping my mechanics
smooth and relaxed. My first
shot fell short - by 12 feet.
I threw my next shot as hard
as I could. It fell 10 feet short.
Some players chuckled; others
got impatient. "Get this kid
outta here!" Coach Frank just
glared at me.
One kindly eighth-grader
suggested that I shoot the foul
shots underhanded. "You might
be able to reach the basket that
way," he said. I thought it was
good advice because reaching
the basket is prerequisite to
making a foul shot.
So I held the ball in both
hands and hurled it as hard as I
could toward the basket ... I
thought. The ball went straight
up into the air. It thwacked
against one of the rafters and
ricocheted straight down,
clunking me on the head.
I not only didn't make the
team, but I was carried off the
court while the rest of my
teammates rolled around the
hardwood, guffawing. Even
Coach Frank was convulsed.
I've grown up since then,
but only to a height of about 5
feet 7. I have a vertical leap of
% of an inch, and my heels
swell up if I run on hard sur­faces.
So I never made my
mark in basketball.
However, if you're ever in
downtown Phoenix, stop by
the America West Arena and
watch the Suns play. As you
marvel at Barkley's graceful
moves, accurate outside shoot­ing'
and fierce slam dunks, re­member:
there but for God's
sense of humor go 1. n
Next Years
Photo Workshops:
Tips from the Pros
It's about 4:30 A.M. and
you're up preparing for the
break of dawn. The crisp
morning air bites at your face
and hands as you bundle your
camera gear and head out.
It's February and a light
snow covers the desert floor.
Your destination is Monument
Valley. Your mission, to catch
the red glow of first light illu­minating
the red rocks of the
Mittens at Monument Valley.
You're one of about 20 per­sons
from throughout the coun­try
attending a Friends of
Arizona Highways Photo Work­shop
with contributing photog­rapher
jerry Sieve. Before this
day is over, you'll know a lot
more about taking landscape
pictures. You'll have some pho­tographs
that you'll show over
and over again. And you'll have
experiences you'll remember for
a lifetime.
Sieve's February workshop
in Monument Valley and Can­yon
de Chelly is just one of the
1996 schedule of Photo Work­shops
conducted by Arizona
Highways contributing photog­raphers.
At the workshops, you'll learn
the techniques they use. Land­scape
photographers like Gary
Ladd, Randy Prentice, and
Michael Fatali will discuss light­ing'
composition, and other as­pects
of successful photographing.
Representatives of Nikon,
Hasselblad, Fuji, and Image
Craft also will be there to dis­cuss
film, cameras, lenses, and
other technical details.
But it will be the Arizona
scenes you will remember the
A GRAND HOLIDAY GIFT
FROM THE
GRAND CANYON STATE
Arizona HIghways
Gift Subscriptions
-ns year give your family and friends a gift they'll enjoy
I throughout the year. A gift that celebrates the wonders
of Arizona and explores its diverse landscape, magnificent
wildlife, fascinating history, and more.
Gift subscriptions to Arizona Highways are convenient for
you and are an exceptional value. Your first one-year gift (or
your own subscription order) is just $19. Then each additional
one-year gift ordered at the same time is only $17 - saving
you more than 40% off the cover price! (For international
subscriptions, add $10 per year for postage and handlinq.)
Unless otherwise requested, announcement cards will be sent
directly to your recipients to arrive in time for the holidays.
To order, use the attached card or call toll'-free nationwide, 1-800-543-5432. In the Phoenix area or outside the U.S., call 602- 258-1000. Or fax your gift list to 602-254-4505.
ADVENTURES
......................................................................................................
The Friends' 1996 Photo Workshop schedule includes:
Lake Powell Houseboating; February 13-17; Gary Ladd.
Monument Valley & Canyon de Chelly; February 20-24;
Jerry Sieve.
Ghost Towns and Missions; March 6-9;]. Peter Mortimer.
Secrets of the Sonoran Desert; March 27-30; Randy Prentice.
Monument Valley; April 10-13; John Drew.
Canyon de Chelly; April 17 -20; Jay Dusard.
Slot Canyons; May 1-4; Michael Fatali.
Grand Canyon River Rafting; May 19-26; Edward McCain.
most - the red and purple
mountains, the cool alpine for­ests,
the pull of the desert.
If you're interested in scenic
and Nature photography and if
you love the Arizona outback,
these Photo Workshops are de­Signed
for you. They are small
enough so that they can be use­ful
to photographers of all skill
levels. There are field sessions
in the daytime and critique ses­sions
at night.
The first part of the 1996
workshop schedule is listed
above. More trips will be cov­ered
in December.
Next month's column also
will contain the schedule of
Friends' scenic back-packing
tours, and will introduce a new
tour combining the best of sight­seeing
and photo instructions.
To obtain a brochure listing
all of the trips, contact the
Friends of Arizona Highways,
2039 W Lewis Ave., Phoenix,
AZ 85009; (602) 271-5904.
ARIZON􁪽􋵈
HIGHWAYS
Exploring the wonders ofArizona
Arizona Highways 45
LEG
................
The Hassayampa
May Still Hold
a IOS-year-old
Flood's Hidden
Treasures
Before you read of the
treasures buried in the
sands of the Hassayampa River,
you need to know that I have
drunk the waters of that fabled
stream.
The Hassayampa has a spe­cial
place in the lore of Arizona.
Legend says that anyone who
drinks from the river will never
tell the truth again. The legend
spawned several bits of dogger­el
in the days of Arizona Terri­tory.
I like this verse:
You've heard about the
Wondrous stream
They call the Hassayamp.
They say it turns a
Truthful guy
Into a lying scamp.
And if you quaff its
Waters once,
It's sure to prove your bane.
You'll ne'er forsake the
Blasted stream
Or tell the truth again.
Mind you, it isn't always easy
to drink from the Hassayampa.
The river begins in the Bradshaw
Mountains south of Prescott,
exits the mountains through
Jesus Canyon a few miles north
of the old mining town of
Wickenburg, then meanders
across the desert to flow into the
Gila River southwest of Phoenix.
"Flow" is a figurative term.
For most of its 7S-mile length,
the Hassayampa is dry, or
seems so. The stream actually
goes underground, flowing
sluggishly beneath the broad,
sandy surface. In places the
stream widens and looks like a
misplaced beach. A whimsical
46 November 1995
E N D S 0 F T H E L 0 S T
.................. . ................. .................. ....................... .... .... ...•
T E X T B Y J A M E S E. C 0 0 K
L L U S T R A T I 0 N B Y K A T E R I W E I S S
sign on a bridge in the town of
Wickenburg warns: No Fishing
From Bridge.
But as with any of Arizona's
seemingly dry rivers, the mel­low,
whimsical Hassayampa can
become, sometimes unexpect­edly,
a raging torrent following
a heavy rain or snowmelt on
the watersheds above.
In the early days of Arizona
Territory, from 1863 through
1890, a lot of gold mining oc­curred
within spitting distance
of the Hassayampa. Prospectors
and miners were called "Hassa­yampers,"
and the term spread
to include liars, high-rollers,
and Arizonans who were proud
of where they lived. (See Ari­zona
Highways, December '94.)
I sipped its waters in the
Bradshaw Mountains between
Walnut Grove and Wagoner.
There the Hassayampa is a
small clear creek meandering
through the gentle hills. And it
was there that began a well­documented
story of missing
treasures.
The ill-fated Walnut Grove
Dam was actually nearer Wag­oner
than Walnut Grove. The
earthen dam was built in 1886
and 1887 to provide water for
sluicing gold downstream, a
mining technique common to
California but rarely used in
Arizona. A diversion dam was
built below in the foothills of
the Bradshaws, and a construc­tion
and mining camp sprang
up. From the diversion dam,
water would be delivered to
mining claims through wooden
flumes.
The owners of the dam were
New York entrepreneurs more
interested in selling stock than
in the details of dam-building.
They fired one set of engineers
during construction and hired
others more willing to take
risks. The dam was not
founded on bedrock, and in
midconstruction its engineers
increased its height from 60 to
110 feet. A 900-acre lake
formed behind the finished
dam, and old photos exist
showing sailboats skimming
across it. Water was released
through outlet pipes to the pond
behind the downstream diver­sion
dam.
In the spring of 1889, the
dam was threatened by heavy
rains and a logjam in the over­flow
spillway Work was begun
to enlarge the spillway
The winter of 1889-90 was a
wet one in central Arizona. The
lake was already dangerously
full in mid-February when a
heavy storm moved in from
California. The rains began Feb­ruary
18, and within a couple of
days flash flooding was a prob­lem
over much of the Territory.
On the third day, the water
behind Walnut Grove Dam
rose an alarming 18 inches per
hour. Superintendent Thomas
H. Brown put 15 men to work
trying to widen the spillway
with dynamite.
Brown sent blacksmith Dan
Burke downstream on horse­back
to warn people below that
the dam might break. There are
several theories about why
Burke didn't deliver the mes­sage.
One story says that he
stopped in a tent saloon where
the customers laughed at his
warning, so Burke stayed and
drank with them.
It probably didn't matter
much, anyhow. At 2 A.M. Feb­ruary
22, the Walnut Grove
Dam burst with a terrible roar.
A wall of water estimated at
100 feet high boomed down
through Jesus Canyon. The few
witnesses who survived the
flood said the water was lighted
by a weird fluorescence in an
otherwise pitch-black and
stormy night.
The construction and mining
. .
camps were obliterated instant­ly.
Noone knows how many
people were killed in those
camps and the communities
below, but at least 83 bodies
were found. The wall of water
roared on through the town of
Wickenburg, heavily damaging
the farm of founder Henry
Wickenburg.
Twelve miles below Wicken­burg,
the water washed away
the tiny community of Seymour,
built too close to the channel of
the Hassayampa. Why worry
about a river that looked dry
most of the time?
The flood damaged farms in
the Buckeye area, west of Phoe­nix,
before it finally rolled into the
larger channel of the Gila River.
Rescuers from Phoenix and
Prescott scoured the river for
days, finding a few survivors
and many bodies stripped of
their clothes by the terrible
force of the water. Years later
skeletons were still found along
the banks of the Hassayampa.
The Phoenix Daily Herald re­ported
on what one search
party found: "They say the
Hassayampa is swept clean
from the upper dam to its
mouth. Its canyon walls are
ground smooth. Debris of all
kinds, animals, provisions,
buildings and trees are scat­tered
everywhere. For the first
two miles the water wall must
have been 100 feet high. Thirty
bodies were seen by the party
Our Phoenix delegation met
parties from Prescott, Congress
and other localities, all united
in the sad work of identifying
the dead. In one grave six miles
from Wickenburg, 18 victims
sleep peacefully awaiting God's
Judgment Day"
The roaring waters carried
away at least two treasures, and
buried them in the sands of the
Hassayampa. As far as anyone
knows, they are still there.
The first was the safe in the
store operated by Pat Browl at
the lower construction camp.
Browl, who somehow survived
the flood, said the safe had
$ 7 ,500 in it, mostly gold and
cash entrusted to him by min­ers.
Presumably, the safe lies
deep in the sandy bed of the
Hassayampa.
Browl spent much of the rest
of his life as a bartender at an
establishment on Prescott's fa­mous
Whiskey Row, telling the
story of the vanished safe to
anyone who would listen. And
plenty of folks are interested in
the missing safe and its con­tents.
The late Nel Cooper, who
owned a ranch just above the
damsite, told me that every
time someone wrote about the
missing safe, treasure hunters
swarmed along the Hassa­yampa
from Wagoner to Wick­enburg.
The other missing treasure,
or treasures, was from Sey­mour.
A merchant identified
only as Mother Conger was
found naked and shivering in
the trees alongside the Hassa­yampa.
She told rescuers she
had lost $1,500 in gold coins
hidden in the ceiling of her
store. And her safe was miss­ing,
but I find no reports of
what it may have contained.
The Hassayampa still floods
from time to time. Maybe some
lucky treasure hunter will find
that the latest torrent unearthed
Pat Browl's safe or Mother
Conger's gold coins.
Or maybe the stories are
made up. Remember the repu­tation
of the Hassayampa, post­ed
in a Wickenburg museum:
Hassayampa is its name,
And the title to its fame
Is a wondrous quality known
Today from sea to sea.
Those who drink its waters
Bright,
Red man, white man,
Boor or knight,
Girls or women, boys
Or men,
Never tell the truth again. 􁪽􋴮
...........................................................................................................................•
Arizona Highways 47
ARIZONA HUMOR ROADSIDE RES T
.......................................• •........... . ........................................................................................................................................• . •............
TEXT BY DON DEDERA
managed to sort his junk so ILLUSTRATION BY DOUG HORNE
well, he said he got the idea
from the Bible: "Smashes to
smashes and rust to rust."
Ruth Burke
Plainview, TX
and I took our daughter on her
first horseback ride to see the
wonderful petroglyphs in Mon­ument
Valley.
She watched intently as the
Indian guide saddled our horses,
complete with saddlebags, then
looked up and said, "Daddy, I
didn't know horses had pockets."
janice Perez
Poteet, TX
to visit me, and they brought
their Scottish terrier puppy,
Rosie, along with them. Despite
his mother's warnings, little
Charlie left his crayons on the
floor one day, and Rosie ate the
purple, green, and orange ones.
When Charlie's mother asked
him what he had to say for
himself, he replied coolly; "Well,
I guess Rosie only likes sec­ondary
colors."
Virginia Ellingen
Scottsdale
More than Forgotten
In the mid 1920s, our family
was traveling by automobile
from Tempe to visit relatives in
Illinois.
After driving through Texas
for hours and seeing little but
dust devils, scrub growth, and
a few rabbits, my brother
leaned forward and asked,
"Dad, if Arizona is the land that
God forgot, then what's Texas?"
Nancy jaco bs
DeKalb,IL
Captain Wheeler
and the Mystic
Power of the
Human Spirit
community. It will continue to
be a place for play and ceremo­ny
where our hero is the host."
Another fighter pilot with
Vietnam time delivers a tender
eulogy. Stan Usinowicz, now
editor of the Lake Havasu City
Daily News, declares, 'To under­stand
what Captain Wheeler
was doing in Vietnam, you have
to remember the conflict as we
understood it in 1964, not lO
years later or 30 years later.
"
... United States foreign
policy experts talked of the
domino theory: if South Viet­nam
fell, Laos would be next,
and Thailand would follow.
Then Burma. Maybe India.
Southeast Asia would be lost."
Editor Usinowicz reminds the
gathering that jim Wheeler held
no doubts that his nation was
in the right, and that his role in
the conflict was worth the risk."
The festivities completed, the
crowd rushes forward to touch
and talk with a platoon of Cap­tain
Wheeler's family. Aging
brothers, gray and craggy Strap­ping
sons in their 30s and 40s,
who as Texas construction su­pervisors
erect high-rise build­ings
and commercial centers.
Handsome wives and mothers.
Bright, healthy grandchildren.
And in the midst of it all,
Demeris.
"Oh, it's been a struggle,"
she says to an old friend. "One
boy nearly died but was saved
by a miracle drug. There were
times I'd look up and scream,
Jim, how dare you not be here
when I have to face this crisis?'
"I had to work, sure. I ran a
little decorating business, which
became just too much to han­dle.
So I went back to being a
secretary. We've managed."
What is she most proud of?
"I do adore my grandchildren,"
says she, "but what I am most
proud of is that my married
sons have become such won­derful
fathers." n
Special Directions
Some years ago, one of my
husband's friends, the war­den
at the Arizona State Prison
at Florence, invited us over for
a weekend.
On the way, we stopped at a
filling station in Gila Bend to
check our directions.
"How do you get to the state
prison?" I inquired.
The attendant replied, with­out
hesitation, "Rob a bank."
Lorna M. Murt
San Diego, CA
􁪽􋵥e original ceremony was .1􁪽􋵯ore in the nature of a
mournful funeral. Now, 30
years later on the same ground,
the assemblage took on an
air of celebration. Such is the
magical, mystical power of the
human spirit.
It was as if Capt. james A.
Wheeler, U.S. Air Force, finally
came home to his people, to
his family, to his native soil.
In 1965, America was esca­lating
its military operations in
South Vietnam. Captain Wheeler
was Arizona's first airman fatal­ity.
He died on Easter Sunday
when his Skyraider exploded
during a combat mission.
My newspaper editor asked
me to go to Vietnam and chron­icle
the activities of Arizonans
engaged in that difficult, danger­ous,
and soon to be controver­sial
venture. So in preparation,
I attended the dedication of a
park memorializing Captain
Wheeler in the Colorado River
town of Lake Havasu City.
Nearly all of Havasu's popu­lation
of 1,000 turned out on a
chill mid-December afternoon.
Our highest public officials
spoke of patriotism and sacri­fice
and freedom.
Attending also was a young
widow: misty, poised, dutiful.
Far more than any speech of
the high and mighty, Mrs.
Wheeler's disciplined presence
ennobled the moment.
Some days later, I visited
Demeris Wheeler and her
three small sons.james, Ray, and
Stewart, at their home in Tucson.
Setting aside her grief, Demeris
described her fun-filled jim.
By the Book
A faithful churchgoer also
.L\. kept a wrecking yard in
the Phoenix area, and he had
everything in perfect order.
When I asked him how he
Monument Valley Trail Ride
Two Tribes
"\ X Thile visiting Arizona one
V V summer, my husband My wife and I have enjoyed
many Arizona winters in
the Bullhead City area, which
has two Indian tribes: the
Mohaves and (after they've been
unlucky in the casinos across the
Colorado River) the Mohavenots.
Dave MacPherson
Monticello, UT
Growing up, jim enlivened
Tucson with his monkeyshines.
And he was crazy about cars.
By the time he was graduated
from high school, he could dis­assemble
a hot rod down to the
speedometer gears and put it all
back together again. His ambi­tion
to fly interrupted his years
at the University of Arizona.
Then for a decade in the Air
Force, he logged more than
5,000 hours in single-engine
aircraft from propeller-driven
trainers to Century series jets.
While stationed at Lubbock,
Texas, he met blond, green­eyed
Demeris, receptionist for
an oil-exploration company. He
proposed on their second date.
Off duty in Tucson, he served
as organizer of activities for
neighborhood children. Devout
Christians, the Wheelers regu­larly
contributed 10 percent of
their income to their church.
During an assignment in japan,
they adopted an orphan girl
and put her through school.
They were planning to do the
same for a Vietnamese child.
Those who had assumed that
atomic missiles would make pi­lots
like jim obsolete did not
foresee Vietnam. The war
caught America short of airmen
skilled in close support of
ground troops. For such work,
there was no better available
tool than the old reciprocating
engine, World War II vintage
Skyraider.
"He volunteered," Demeris
said. "He was needed. For him,
that was always reason enough."
Of course, she had saved his
letters, to be read nearly to tatters.
He wrote to his eldest son, 'The
American Revolutionary War was
our first down payment on free­dom.
To keep it, we have had to
make payments through history;
and we will have to make some
more." And he wrote, "I find great
strength and courage from God's
word and through my prayers."
So fragile, so vulnerable, so
overwhelmingly burdened, that
is what I thought of Demeris at
that time: "What will become
of her and her little boys?"
On this bright and breezy
1995 afternoon, Lake Ha­vasu
City is festooned with
streaming bunting and snap­ping
flags. Music by the smart­ly
uniformed high school band
echoes from transplanted Lon­don
Bridge to the desert foot­hills.
The town of 30,000 res­idents,
recreationists, and entre­preneurs
has engulfed Wheeler
Park, now redesigned and
freshly landscaped.
From a decorated stage, the
master of ceremonies says:
"Through the years, all manner
of special events have occurred
at this site. It has come to rep­resent
the beating heart of this
Phenomenon
"\ X Then I was growing up,
V V my parents ran a gas
station halfway between Wick­enburg
and the California bor­der.
One day when I was about
lO years old, a vacationing fam­ily
stopped in to fill up with
gas. The driver stepped out into
the 115° F heat and gazed at a
cloud in the distance.
'Think it will rain?" he asked.
"I sure hope so," replied my
father. "Not so much for myself
as for my son here. You see, I
􁪽􋵨 have already seen it rain."
g David E. Dickinson
§ Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
􁪽􋴚
􁪽􋵕 Unusual Flower ------------------------------------------------
You Want to Go Where?
A t the Kingman Chamber of
.L\.Commerce, our informa­tion
center is quite busy in the
summertime as tourists stop in
on their way to and from the
Grand Canyon.
One day a young German
couple came in. They were
headed to Las Vegas, and they
said that although they had en­joyed
Arizona immensly, their
visit wasn't quite complete.
As they headed west toward
Kingman, they had passed a
billboard advertising a beautiful
destination and wanted to see it
before leaving Arizona.
"But we can't find it on our
map," the young man said. "So
can you please tell us how to
get to Marlboro Country?"
Tina Fleetham
Kingman
"It gives me a sense of homeyness."
TO SUBMIT HUMOR "\ X T e were sitting quietly on
V V my friend Will's patio,
bird-watching, when he told us
that hummingbirds come up to
him when he wears a red shirt.
I commented that perhaps
the birds think he is a large
flower.
"Yes," chirped his wife, Kathy.
"A blooming idiot."
john R. Meyer
Sun City
Send us a short note about your humorous experiences in
Arizona, and we'll pay $75 for each one we publish.
We're looking for short stories, no more than 200 words, that
deal with Arizona topics and have a humorous punch line.
Send them to Humor, Arizona Highways, 2039 W Lewis Ave.,
Phoenix, AZ 85009. Please enclose your name, address, and
telephone number with each submission.
We'll notify those whose stories we intend to publish,
but we cannot acknowledge or return unused submissions.
Doggone It
My daughter and 7-year-old
grandson, Charlie, came
48 November 1995 Arizona Highways 49
B A C K
•......................
Grasslands, Ghost
Towns, and Wineries
Create Indelible
Distractions
on the Patagonia
Circle Drive
I've stopped at the townsite
of Harshaw, a little over six
miles up Harshaw Canyon in
the Patagonia Mountains on
Forest Service Road 49. I'm
looking for peach trees. Planted
long ago by some itinerant
Jesuit padre perhaps, the trees
gave this ghost town its original
name, Durazno, "peach tree" in
Spanish. Years ago while riding
my mountain bike on these
back roads in springtime, I saw
peach trees in full bloom.
Now in fall I look for peach
boughs. I find none. Cotton­wood,
sycamore, oak, and mes­quite,
yes. But no peach trees.
Had I imagined peach blos­soms?
Had the trees died, ne­glected
and fallen to ruin along
with everything else here?
When one David Tecumseh
Harshaw acquired the Mina del
Padre silver mine in the late
1870s, he renamed both the
mine and the town after himself.
In its heyday, Harshaw extended
for a mile along this road. More
than 20 saloons prospered here,
and there was a livery stable, a
laundry, and a boardinghouse.
The town had a resident doctor,
a lawyer, a shoemaker, a butcher,
and even an apothecary
N ow, save for a small hillside
cemetery, its headstones bearing
Spanish surnames, carefully
tended and fenced to keep cat­tle
out, it's all gone. Bright scar­let
creeper trumpet flowers
twine among the burial markers
where urns of plastic flowers
50 November 1995
ROAD ADVENTURE
TEXT By TOM DOLLAR
P HOT 0 G RAP H S B Y J 0 H NOR E W
(TOP) On author Tom Dollar's trek along the Patagonia Circle Drive,
he visits the Chapel of Santa Maria in Elgin. The chapel is the
site of the Arizona wine country's BleSSing of the Vine Festival
in April and a harvest celebration in August.
(ABOVE, LEFT) A lonely remnant of Harshaw's past scarcely recalls
the lively mining town of 2,000 residents and numerous businesses.
(ABOVE, RIGHT) Arizona's wine industry began in 1979. Fourteen
years later, the state counted 380 acres of vineyards, seven
commercial wineries, and several celebrations of the grape.
(OPPOSITE PAGE) Sunrise generates the reflection of an old oak tree
in shallow water in the sweeping grasslands of the San Rafael Valley,
where the classic Hollywood musical Oklahoma! was filmed.
........................•
have been placed. A swift hum­mingbird
tries to siphon nectar
from each blossom in tum. Out­side
the fence, a steer and a few
cows chew placidly. Beyond
them the dirt road is empty
The four-mile sidetrip to
Harshaw is just one possi­ble
detour on the 55.5-mile
loop drive that begins in Pata­gonia.
The loop goes up into
the Patagonia Mountains south
of town, east into the San Rafael
Valley, across the northern por­tion
of the valley to the Canelo
Hills, up through Canelo Pass
and north to Arizona's wine
country at Elgin, on to Sonoita,
and then through the Sonoita
Valley back to Patagonia via
State Route 82.
From in front of the Stage
Stop Inn in Patagonia, travel
east on McKeown two blocks
past Third Avenue to where
McKeown bends south onto
Columbia Avenue. Follow Co­lumbia
Avenue 3.2 miles to
the fork of Harshaw Creek
Road and Harshaw Road. Take
Harshaw Road (paved road on
right side of fork) 2.8 miles to
the fork of FR 58 and FR 49.
Forest roads are dirt.
I give up on peach trees and
drive two miles back to the
junction of FR 49 and 58 where
I tum right (east) onto 58 to de­scend
into the San Rafael Valley
After a half mile the road forks.
I stay to the right, following FR
58 four miles into the valley
The vast sweep of the San
Rafael Valley opens before me
as I come over the crest of a low
hill. Spontaneously, I burst into
song: Oh, what a beautiful mom­ing/
Oh, what a beautiful day, re­membering
Gordon McRae's
opening scene in Oklahoma!
The movie was made some­where
near here.
San Rafael Valley is quintes­sential
grassland. And on this
day its essence seems distilled,
...
(LEFT) Grasses and wildflowers
embrace a pond
in the San Rafael Valley,
a bucolic landscape dotted
with windmills and log corrals.
(ABOVE) The Patagonia-Sonoita
Creek Sanctuary is home to
more than 200 species of birds,
including the liquid-voiced
pyrrhuloxia. JOHN CANCALOSI
(RIGHT) Tiny Elgin, on the
banks of the Babocomari River,
announces to visitors its status
in the state's wine industry.
soils, cool nights, and depend­able
seasonal rains provide ideal
conditions for wine grapes.
At State 83, I turn right four
miles to Sonoita and the inter­section
of State 82. Turning left
onto 82, I drive approximately
11 miles to Patagonia, arriving
in plenty of time for a late after­noon
visit to The Nature Con­servancy's
Patagonia-Sonoita
Creek Sanctuary, a 320-acre ri­parian
strip running through
town and home to more than
200 species of birds.
On a given day, you're likely
to run into bird enthusiasts from
almost anywhere in the world.
I wave to a group of binocular­necklaced
birders as I walk the
streamside path. Later, having
coffee and sweets at the Ovens
of Patagonia, I meet the same
bunch. They're from Oregon, it
turns out, and have been mak­ing
annual bird treks to south­ern
Arizona for years.
This spot is like the rest of
the loop drive-its attractions
just keep luring you back. 􁪽􋵦
frozen in place like a scene in a
diorama. Distant peaks seem
chiseled from stone. Oaks dot­ting
the landscape appear as
miniature pen-and-ink draw­ings.
Blankets of sunflowers
brighten entire fields. And
black horses, windmills, water
tanks, cattle, and log corrals are
rendered in still-life.
About halfway across the val­ley,
15.2 miles from Sonoita, FR
58 takes off to the right toward
Lochiel nine miles south, and
FR 799 continues straight ahead.
The springs that form the head­waters
of the Santa Cruz River
rise near here. The river, defined
by a line of green trees growing
along its margin, flows south into
Mexico, bends around the south­ern
terminus of the Patagonia
Mountains, and comes back into
the U.S. at Nogales. Only a thin
trickle flows across the roadway
where I ford the stream.
Beyond the river crossing, FR
799 rises gradually into the
Canelo Hills before climbing
steeply to Canelo Pass. At the
saddle, I pull over and step out
with my binoculars. On cue,
Mexican jays scold. Wading
through thickets of trumpet­shaped
lavender flowers, I find a
spot where I can look back
down through pinon and juniper
to the valley spreading east to the
Patagonia Mountains and south
beyond the Mexican border.
Not quite four miles from the
pass, FR 799 ends, merging
with State Route 83 at a stop
sign. I continue about one mile
straight ahead on State 83 to the
Canelo Hills Cienega, owned by
The Nature Conservancy Pro­tected
here is a unique wildlife
habitat where rare plants, in­cluding
wild orchids, survive.
Leaving the cienega, I drive
5.3 miles to where State 83
makes a sharp bend to the left,
then straight north on the Elgin­Canelo
Road (FR 634). Next
stop: lunch at Karen's Cafe, five
miles away in Elgin. On the
way, I detour into the Sonoita
Vineyards and Winery to taste a
few samples and purchase a
bottle of favorite red wine.
At the stop sign in Elgin, I
make a left tum onto Lower Elgin
Road and park in front of the
Chapel of Santa Maria, next door
to Karen's Cafe. Each year in April
the Blessing of the Vine Festival
is celebrated at the chapel, fol­lowed
by the harvest festival on
the first weekend of August.
West on Lower Elgin Road
are the Callaghan and Terra
Rossa vineyards. There are
several vineyards around Elgin,
and growers here believe that
the abundant sunshine, good
52 November 1995
BACK ROAD ADVENTURE
.................•
TIPS FOR TRAVELERS
Back road travel can
be hazardous if you are
not prepared for the
unexpected. Whether
traveling in the desert
or in the high
country, be aware
of weather and road
conditions, and make
sure you and your
vehicle are in top
shape and you have
plenty of water.
Don't travel
alone, and let
someone at
home know
where
you're
going
and when
you plan
to return.
z
>=
􁪽􋴚􁪽􋴭------􁪽􋴚􁪽􋴚􁪽􋴚􁪽􋵁
Arizona Highways 53
..... .
Day Trips Guide
A free booklet available from
r\. the Prescott Chamber of
Commerce recommends sever­al
side trips for visitors to the
picturesque mile-high commu­nity
known as "Everybody's
Hometown." After indulging in
Prescott's many attractions, vis­itors
can then head for a nearby
ghost-town- turned-artists'­haven
Gerome); a "city of the
future" (Arcosanti); an ancient
Sinagua ruin nestled high in a
cliff (Montezuma Castle); a
year-round recreation mecca
(Flagstaff); a fantasyland of red
rocks (Sedona); one of Nature's
greatest accomplishments (the
Grand Canyon); and an old
mining town with restored his­toric
buildings (Wickenburg).
To obtain the guide, contact the
chamber at po. Box 1147,
Prescott, AZ 86302-1147; (520)
445-2000 or toll-free (800)
266-7534. Y
Eagle Watch
More than 20 breeding pairs
of bald eagles can be seen
in the Verde Canyon from N0-
vember throughJune. Seen, that
is, by folks aboard the Verde
Canyon Railroad on one of its
20-mile excursions from Clark­dale
to Perkinsville. The stretch,
mostly privately and federally
owned, is otherwise inaccessible
to casual visitors. On a recent
four-hour train
ride through the
canyon, passen­gers
and crew
spotted 36 ea­gles
in the pro-tected
wilderness.
To ask about
excursions, contact
Verde Canyon Railroad,
300 N. Broadway, Clarkdale, AZ
85324; or toll-free (800) 293-
7245. Y
54 November 1995
􁪽􋵉 I L E P 0 S T S
EDITED BY REBECCA MONG
ILLUSTRATIONS BY