Arizona Highways, March 1991

              .AR~HIGHWAYS
(ABOVE) 1be elegance of this
19th century flute by C.
Peloubet is enhanced by the
graceful form of a small
green vine snake. 1be
imaginative quality of this
photograph is typical of the
work of Alexander Stricker,
who was commissioned to do
our cover illustration this
month. 1be cover was
created in a west Phoenix
studio using multiple
exposures that required the
model to remain perfectly still
through eight strobe flashes.
1be specter of bygone days
lingers in the ghost towns of
the Old Southwest, whether
they are popular tourist
attractions with re-created
ambiance (FRONT COVER) or
mere remnants, such as the
abandoned mining camp of
Swansea (LEFf) in the
Buckskin Mountains.
Story on page 4 .
(LEFf) RICK ODELL
(FRONT COVER) PHOTO
ILLUSTRATION, ALEXANDER
STRICKER; LOCATION , CJS FILM
STUDIOS; PROPS , ABBA'S ACRE OF
ANTIQUES; MODEL ARTHUR
LINDSEY, LEIGHTON AGENCY, INC.
(BACK COVER) Seep-spring
monkey flowers and
Franciscan bluebells hug the
banks of KP Creek in the Blue
Range Primitive Area .
Story on page 38.
JACK DYKINGA
MARCH 1 9 9 1
4 GHOST TOWNS
Silence in Swansea
Text by Philip Varney
Photographs by Rick Odell
Popular "Ghost Town" author
Varney brings us a tale about
a mining town on a financial
joyride that ends in chaos.
Set in the Buckskin Mountains,
Varney calls it "the best pure
ghost town" in the state .
10 Focus ON NATURE
A Snake Among the Cholla
Text and photographs
by Don Burgess
Among the needle-like
spines of a cholla cactus
lurks a life and death drama .
12 ARCHEOLOGY
Homolovi Ruins
Text by Rose Houk
Photographs
by Michael Collier
In the high country north of
Winslow, a Hopi elder seeks
his "roots" in a 14th century
pueblo. The site is one of
Arizona's newest state parks.
18 PROFILE
People of Arizona:
Pauline Mccleve
Text by William Hafford
Photograph by Reed Rahn
At 95 years of age, a
Holbrook pioneer recalls a
time when neighbors
depended on one another,
especially when trouble
beckoned.
VOLUME 67
2 0 PORTFOLIO
Exploring
Arizona's Night Sky
Text by Raymond Shubinski
Photographs by Frank Zullo
Yes , the stars are big and
bright in Arizona . And here's
proof. Come along on a tour
of our piece of the heavens.
26msTORY
Frontier Hotels
Text by Don G . Campbell
Photographs by Richard Maack
The chaste and the chased,
the notable and the
notorious a ll found rooms at
Arizona's fine o ld hotels .
3 2 EDUCATION
The Little Schoolhouse
at Eagle Creek
Text by Bruce D . Itule
Photographs
by Don B. Stevenson
Forty-five miles from any
store, telephone, or power
line, this one-room school
has been open since before
the turn of the century. Here
comfort is measured by a
good well , a full propane
tank, and a working
generator.
38 TRAVEL
Up on the Blue
Text by Charles Bowden
Photographs by jack Dykinga
At 6,000 feet under towering
fir-clad peaks , sits the hamlet
of Blue, a holdout from some
NUMBER 3
former time. It's a place to
get away from what we are
and hear the whispers of what
we were.·
48 HIKING
Our Hike of the Month:
Wild Horse Canyon
Text by Tom Dollar
Photographs by jack Dykinga
On the flank of the Rincon
Mountains , Wild Horse
Canyon offers low-elevation
desert hiking at its best,
particularly on a crisp spring
morning.
2
ALONG THE WAY
Expressions of love
sometimes come in most
unusual ways.
3
LETTERS
46
MILEPOSTS
A potpourri of travel tips ,
events, humor, folklore, and
miscellany .
I l HAGST AfF . HOM9LO:l
PRESCDTI • HOLBROOK
• SWANSEA I PHOEN IX * BLUE ·
\ EAGLE CREEK •
SAGUARO
TUCSON• •NA TIONAL
MONUMENT
Points of interest
featured in this issue
Arizona Highways 1
___ ALONG THE WAY _
S ometimes it takes a long
s pell to recognize an act of
love. Somewhere around 55
years in this particular case.
In the early ' 30s, my family
liv e d on a homestead in a
remote desert valley between
the Maricopa and Sand Tank
mountains, about 60 miles
so uthwest of Phoenix. The
nearest road was a dusty path
call e d the Vekol Trail. There
were no other children for
many miles, so Jack, a black
Australian sheepdog, was my
con stant companion.
Jack died just before my fifth
birthday on the day that the
scorpion stung me. I had been
playing in a tangle of loose
boards at the back of the
house. Sudde nly, I felt a sharp
jab of pain in m y hand. When
I pulled back, I saw the scorpi­on,
its tail curled over its back,
disappearing into the pile of
lumber. I started howling, and
J ack started barking. In a
moment, my mother raced
around the comer of the build­ing,
scooped me up , and car­ried
me inside.
As soon as I d escribed the
scorpion, Mother poured some
ammonia into a bowl a nd
began soaking the wound.
Soon the s pread of poiso n
caused my hand , th e n my
e ntire arm, to tingle . She
m oved me and the bowl of
ammonia to my bed and made
me li e down. "You must stay
the re until your father gets
back. " Dad had gone into Casa
Grande to get some s hotgun
sh e ll s because he and his hunt­ing
p al, Doc Gatterdam, were
going dove s hooting later in
the day.
I suppose I stayed in bed
a bout a n hour b efor e Dad
s howed up. Shortly after that
Doc arrived. The husky physi­cian
examined me and said it
would be all right if I got up.
As I was putting o n my sh oes,
I h ea rd Doc ask my dad,
"What's wrong with the dog? "
Dad gave him a puzzle d
loo k . "Nothing , as far as I
know."
"He's laying by the p orch .
2 March 1991
Didn ' t even get up when I
came in."
I s tood and
followed them
out with one
shoe off and
one shoe on.
When Doc knelt
down, onl y Jack 's
eyes moved . "It ' s
strychnine," Doc said.
My dad told Doc
that he heard that one
of the nearby ranchers
som e times put out poi­soned
meat for the coyotes.
"Should we drive him into
the vet? " Dad asked.
Doc shook his head slowly.
"Won't do any good." I stayed
with Jack, petting him softly
until he died.
The next morning, with Jack
wrapped in an o ld blanket, we
drove to Phoenix and then out
east of the city to a place of
wildly tossed re d conglomerate
rock. Today, the area is known
as Papago Park.
Dad parked the car on a
hill near a pyramid of white
s tone. While he dug in the red
soil , I wandered to the to p of
the hill and exam ined the
pyramid. It was about 15-feet
tall and had a bronze p laque
affixed to it.
When Dad finished digging,
Mother served sandwiches a nd
le monade. Then we gentl y
lowered Jack into the grave
and covered him with dirt.
Afte r Dad patted the soil down
with the shovel, h e turne d to
m e and said, "We 'll bury him
like the Apaches buried their
chiefs."
"How did they do that? " I
asked.
"It's an o ld Apache trick ," he
said. "They fixed the ground
just like it was before, so no
one, especiall y an e n emy,
could ever find the grave." He
took pebbles and bigger rocks
and began spreading the m
across th e disturbed soil. I
joined him. Then h e re trieved
some small plants he had un­earthed
and replanted them on
the grave.
When we were done, I
asked
my dad
about
the pyra-mid
a few
yards above
the pla ce
where we had buried Jac k .
"That's where the first gover­nor
of Arizona is buried.
Governor George W. P. Hunt. "
He put his hand on my small
shoulder. "Remember the pyra­mid,
and you will always
know where Jack is buried. "
After I grew up a nd had
graduated from the University
of Arizona, I left the state for a
g r ea t many years and only
recently returned.
Today, I li ve in Scottsdale,
east of Phoenix. Four or five
times a week I put my 10-
speed on the bike p a th that
runs the length of the green­belt
, and I ride south . At the
Sa lt River, the path swings to
the west and eventuall y curves
back to join the paths that run
through Papago Park. At one
point a long the way, there is a
very steep stre tch . Us u a lly, I
coast down the othe r s id e and
stop at the base to drink fr om
my water bottle.
About 75 ya rds directly to
the west is the small hill with
(LEFT)
Hafford
and his
dog jack
in the
'30s.
the
white
pyramid on
top. Of course ,
every time I stop, I
am aware that m y dog lies
buried on that hill.
One day recently, while I
paused to drink, I asked
myself a question I had never
considered before. Why , I
wondered, did my father drive
60 miles to bury my dog on
the governor's hill? I thought of
my father 's words, spoken to
me more th a n h a lf a century
ago . After that , the answer
came easy. "Re member the
pyramid, and you will a lways
know where Jack is buried."
What h e did that day was
not done out o f necessity . He
could have buried Jack any­where
in the lonely d esert
around the homestead. But h e
chose to put J ack in a place
where I could a lways locate
him. He did it as an act of love
- to comfort me in my child­hood
grief.
Today, I know where J ack is
burie d - and, now , so do
you. But you could not find
the exact spot. Neither could I.
That's because the o ld Apache
trick is working very well.
- William Hafford
_ ____ LETTERS ____ _
ARIZONI\
HIGHWAYS
MARCH 1991 VOL. 67 , NO . 3
Publisher-Hugh Harelson
Editor-Robert J. Early
Managing Editor-Rich ard G. Stahl
Art Director-Chri stine Mitchell
Picture Editor-Peter En sen berger
Associate Editor-Rebecca Mong
Associate Art Director-Mary W. Velgo s
Business Director-Robert M. Steele
Production Director-Cind y Mack ey
Marketing Director-Coll een Hornung
Creative Director-Gary Bennett
Fulfillment Director-La wrence E. Husband
Data Processing Manager- Richard Simpson
Related Products
Managing Editor-W esley Holden
Associate Editor-R obert J. Farrell
Associate Art Director-Lynne M. Hamilton
Acting Director, Department of Transportation
James S. Creedon
Arizona Transportation Board
Chairman: Andre w M. Federhar, Tucson:
Members : Linda Brock-Nelson, Paradi se Valley :
Larry Chavez , Phoenix: Donald D. Denton, Park er:
Harold Gietz, Safford : Verne D. Seidel, Jr.,
Flag staff: Jame s A. Soto , Nogales
Toll-free nationwide number
for customer inquiries and
orders:
1 (8DD) 543-5432
In the Phoenix area, call
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POS TM ASTER : Send address cha ng es to
Arilona Highways, 2039 W. Lewis Ave., Phoenix,
AZ 85009 . Copyright © 1991 by the Ar izona
Department of Transportation . Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibit­ed
. The magazine is not responsible for unsolicit­ed
mate rials provided for editoria l consideration .
LIGHTNING STRIKES
In a word, the photographs
of lightning s t orms (A ugu st
1990) a re awesome .
Arthur Ro hrbacher
Berlin, NH
The cover of your August
issu e is, without a doubt, the
greatest picture I have seen in
your fine m agazine.
Alex Cinamon
Bronx, NY
judging by the mail and
phone calls, the fu ry of a
thunderstorm evokes a
fascination that borders on
reverence.
HIDDEN BEAR FACE
I wonder just h ow many
Arizona Highways readers saw
the ghostly face of a bear in
the water on p age 23 of the
August 1990 issu e (lower right­hand
corne r)?
Frank McCune
Newport Beach, CA
I must admit I didn 't, and
I can 't find it now even with
your hint about where to
look . Does anyone else see it?
MOTORIZED FISHING
I was sa dd e n ed to see
anglers fishing o n Big Lake from
a gas-powered boat in your
April 1990 issue. I hope this was
a mistake. If not, may the boat
capsi ze befo re reaching shore .
Al Faver
Pine Blu ff, AR
It was a gas-powered boat.
Inf act, you can rent th em
from th e concessionaires at
th e lake .
PITCHING BOTTLE CAPS
I was intrigued by the articl e
o n vintage g lass bottles in the
August 1990 iss ue. lhis was the
first pl ace I h ave eve r rea d
about the game of "bottle caps"
we played when I was grow­ing
up in Mesa , Arizona, about
1943- 44. I have asked people
from many places whether
they played it as a kid . They
never heard of it .
Charles L. Sellers
Knoxville, TN
Apparently there were
various skill levels and cap­collecting
techniques invo lved
in the game of bottle-cap
pitching. See th e following
letter.
By very carefull y prying off
the ca p w ith the point of a
knife , the cap could be used
for games with out the tab
s ti c king up to spoil things.
Bill Pickford
Lake Havasu City
POINTS OF VIEW
What beautiful, fascinating
photography in each issue of
Arizona High ways. Also inte r­esting
articles and stories that
whet th e imagination. And
what a terrific way to tour
Arizona without leaving the
comfort of my recliner.
Margaret Fetty
Grants Pass, OR
You show o nl y the beauty
of Arizona, but you don't take
pictures of the ugliness brought
o n b y too many deve lopers
a nd too ma n y thoughtless
huma ns.
Jack Smith White, Sr.
Rim rock
lf you can paint like Manet,
why settle for a blob of glup?
THE PERILS OF PAULINE
Your fin e magaz ine h as
occas io n a l r efere n ces t o
"Pauline Weaver," a b lood rel­ative
o f mine , a n early inhabi­ta
nt o f Arizona w h o le ft hi s
n a m e on five locat ions, includ­in
g Weave rs Need le a nd the
Weaver Mo untai n s. H is name
is Powell Weaver, and the fam­il
y bridles wh e n it sees this
anc ient and illi terate joke per­petu
a ted in d ea thl ess print.
Most of his associates were
Latinos, and they d o not know
the g iv e n n ame Powell , so
they ca ll ed him by a common
Spanish name, Paulino .
A m a le n amed Pauline is
co ns id e red a terr ibly funn y
joke to g rin gos, but after 150
years the joke has worn thin .
Allen Pendergraft
Alamos , So n o ra, Mexico
LET THEM BURN
Virtually all fo rest research in
recent yea rs has come to the
inescap;;ib le co nclusion that
period ic wildfires are a vital and
necessa1y adjunct to the health
of the forest 's fl ora and fauna.
Suppress ing fires ultima t e ly
leads to lo ng- term damage .
Shame o n Arizona Hig h ­ways,
therefore , fo r the cas u a l
refere nces to "combatting" nat­ural
wildfires in your (Augus t
1990) articl e o n lightnin g. The
forest-fire myth - not the fire
- needs combatting.
Peter Wilson
Phoenix
Un less, of course, your
h ome and family are in th e
path of th e fi1 ·e.
PROFESSOR FOUND
In t h e ea rl y 1960s , I was
grad u ated from w h at is now
Northwest Missouri State
U ni versity at Maryville , MO .
111ere, I was privileged to have
classes under a nd to know Dr.
H . Guy Bensusan , who is a
ve1y personable and crea ti ve
in st ru c tor in the a rea of
huma ni ties .
Ove r th e yea rs , I h a d los t
touc h w ith him . Im agi n e my
surprise to see Dr . Bensusan
s till t eaching in tha t fi e ld
through a photograph in the
November 1990 issue. It was
excitin g to lea rn the where­about
s of th is fa ntastic teache r
who is n ow working at
No rth e rn Ari zo na U niv e rs it y ,
Flags taff.
Bob Cobb
Publisher, Tri-Coun~y News
King City , MO
A rizo na Highways 3
Silence
TEXT BY PHILIP VARNEY
• In
PHOTOGRAPHS BY RICK ODELL
Swansea
w. decide to 'et up homdeeping in
George Mitchell's garage. I am bertain he
won't mind; he's been dead for the better
part of a half-century. And so has his
dream and his town.
We are camped at Swansea, perhaps
Arizona 's best pure ghost town. It is the
antithesis of the popular spots - Jerome,
Tombstone, Bisbee - the sites that strain
the term "ghost town" to the limit and
make us wonder what a ghost town truly
is . I remember a sign at the Queen Mine
tour in Bisbee indignantly proclaiming
"Bisbee Is Not A Ghost Town. " No prob­lem
here in Swansea: there's nobody to
put up the sign.
Actually, that 's not quite true. A fellow
who was here the last time I stayed is here
again, or perhaps is still here . I waved to
him earlier, and he acknowledged me from
his campsite, but I wouldn't dream of
intruding on his privacy. He has squatter's
rights, so if he wants company, he can see
our fire. The captain speaks to the swabby
on the deck, not the other way around.
We ' re not really in George Mitchell's
garage; we are on it. Or rather on the old
4 March 1991
concrete pad it sat on. Mitchell 's was the
premier house in Swansea, and now all
that remains of his two-story adobe - a
3,600-square-foot statement of opulence
- is an outline, two standing adobe cor­ners,
a hole for the basement, and lots of
crumbled earth .
The concrete slab , ideal for setting up a
tent, is the most artificial thing in the yard,
a yard slowly returning to the desert. The
palm trees that once surrounded the house
have withered and disappeared. Some
rocks still mark the path of the sidewalk,
and scattered cedar shakes on the ground
still resemble roofing, but that's because
only a wink of time has passed - a mere
five decades.
People who expect to see a Virginia
City, Nevada, are going to be disappointed
with Swansea, but not the true ghost-town
seeker or the desert rat. I am both. The
closest town is Bouse , some 24 miles
away. Even that doesn't help most
Arizonans, so I'll add that Swansea sits
amidst the Buckskin Mountains, south of
the Bill Williams River as it heads west
toward the Colorado River. If you were to
fly on a straight course from Wickenburg
to Parker, you would come very close to
passing over Swansea. Your landmark from
the air would be the 2,395-foot thrust
known originally as Black Butte but
changed by the Clara Consolidated Gold
and Copper Mining Company, which laid
out Swansea, to Clara Peak.
By land you get to Swansea by taking
Plomosa Road, the only main street that
(LEFT) Early day miners spent a 12-hour
shift in holes similar to this shaft, in
which safety measures were virtually
nonexistent.
(RIGHD Mining superintendent George
Mitchell lived in the biggest house in
Swansea, but little of it remains today.
crosses the railroad tracks in Bouse, north
out of town. Note your mileage before
crossing the tracks. The pavement ends as
you leave the outskirts of Bouse, and you'll
be on a very good graded road, but it is
one that could present problems during
the rainy season. Even though the road is
good, I'd recommend taking a truck to
Swansea. And here's an important note:
this is not a summer trip, as Parker, the
nearest town of size, occasionally has the
"honor" of being the hottest place in the
United States.
Plomosa Road becomes the Swansea
Road. Along the way, you'll cross the Great
Anomaly Of The Desert - The Central Ari­zona
Project Canal. Miners from the early
part of the century would have thought the
sight of all this cool water to be a sure sign
of brain fever - perhaps it still is.
The plants along your route do not
know about the water in the canal. They
are among Arizona's best arid-land sur­vivors:
creosote, ocotillo, cholla, saguaro.
6 March 1991
At 13 miles from Bouse, you'll come to
the site of Midway, once a water stop for
the railroad that connected Bouse and
Swansea. In fact, you can see the old rail­road
grade many times along your route,
and sometimes you will be driving on it.
From Midway, take the left fork. You'll
almost immediately see a water tank on
your left, and then you'll cross under a
power line .3 miles from the junction.
Follow this road until you come to a
fork, 18.5 miles from Bouse, and take the
route to your right (the main road goes off
to the northwest to the mining ghost town
of Planet and the Planet Ranch, the latter
the property of the City of Scottsdale,
which plans to mine the ranch's water).
At this point, you are seven miles from
Swansea. You'll know you're on the right
road when, 1.5 miles from the last junction,
you drive across a small aboveground
pipeline and cross it a second time about
one mile beyond. You'll dip into some
small canyons, climb a couple of rises, and
finally see the foundations of Swansea in
the distance, just as you begin a twisting
descent into a wide valley. Keep your eye
out for a jutting natural arch on the right
side of the road one-half mile before the
townsite. If you miss it going in, look again
as you leave.
As you enter Swansea, you'll be greeted
by a sign that gives you a brief, mostly
accurate history of the place, along with the
command not to disturb, deface, or remove
anything. That is important etiquette for
anyone on the back roads; unfortunately,
there's widespread evidence in Swansea
that this simple command has not always
been obeyed.
This is a spread-out ghost town. (When
you pass the historical sign, you will have
already missed a tiny cemetery on the
south side of the road. Make a note to see
it on the way out.) You'll see large con­crete
foundations, adobe walls, a gray-plas­ter
group of single-men's quarters, tailings
of a mill that was long ago removed for
(ABOVE) Swansea sits below the Rawhide
Mountains, so named because of their
rough terrain. Unlike some mining
towns, Swansea had a reputation as a
rather quiet place, giving the local
newspaper few shooting incidents to
write about. Today it is the best preserved
ghost town in the Parker area.
scrap, and, up on a hill to the south,
Swansea's most dramatic building: the
imposing brick smelter.
Vanished from the town are its most civ­ilized
elements, such as its restaurants, the­aters,
saloons, and barber shops. When
you survey the landscape, it does not seem
possible that all those buildings could have
ever been here. The place even had an
automobile dealership.
As was the case in most mining camps,
it was not equally civilized for all. The men
who worked in the mines, many of them
MeXicans and Colorado River Indians, lived
in slums conveniently out of view of the
town's luxuries.
The best way to see Swansea, I have
decided after four visits, is by mountain
bike. If you're not a cyclist, then hike
around. A truck is the least desirable
method to get around here for two rea­sons.
First, the lesser roads can't always be
trusted; I have digging and timbering expe­rience
to prove it. Second, and more
importantly, you don't want to be in a
truck because in your confined space,
engine chugging and air-conditioner hum­ming,
you will miss Swansea's best fea­tures:
the sky, the panoramic views of the
mountains, and the silence.
The man-made features, dwarfed by the
natural, continue after your ftrst view of the
town. The road heading northeast across
the tailings dumps takes you to the classy
part of town, where George Mitchell, min­ing
superintendent and our absentee host
for the night, lived. His is the large founda­tion
with crumbling adobe walls up on the
left. Next to his house was the garage
where he once parked a car, purchased in
France in 1908, that was supposed to be
bullet- and bomb-proof. He liked its four
cigar lighters and locomotive headlight.
Tonight the only light near the garage is
from our campfire.
In daylight, beyond Mitchell's house,
you can see the ruins of the six adobe
houses of the mining company's managers.
These had central breezeways, running
water, electricity, and even telephones.
To the north of the row houses stands
Swansea's saddest sight: the cemetery. It no
longer has the prominence it once did.
Vandals have thoroughly desecrated it. The
broken markers, the scattered fences are
bad enough, but each grave has been dug
up, probably by those looking for buttons,
rings, and so forth. It is more than ghoulish;
it is downright insulting to the people who
endured this harsh desert in the early part
of the century.
If you return to the row houses, off in
Arizona Highways 7
the distance to the southeast, you can spot
the solitary adobe walls of the train depot,
the link between one of Arizona's most
remote mining camps and the towns of
Congress, Salome, and Parker.
Earlier today my friend Darryl and I
spent the better part of the afternoon trying
to follow the old railroad bed out of
Swansea. We left the depot and rode our
mountain bikes atop the railroad grade,
but the old trestles that crossed and re­crossed
a major wash are long gone. As a
result, we started out riding the grade,
dropped down into the wash, fought the
sand, climbed back up, and began again.
After five or six such forays, we gave up
and returned, somewhat sheepishly, to the
comforts of George Mitchell's backyard for
dinner and a night's rest. The desert has
begun to reclaim the old route into
Swansea, and we could only retreat. The
more I think about that, the better I feel.
Swansea came into being in 1908 and
was dead by 1937. In between lived a
camp fueled by a financial joyride that
careened wildly from steady payrolls to
strikes, from tentative solvency to hopeless
bankruptcy - and in the forefront of
much of it was our missing host for the
night, George Mitchell.
Swansea was first prospected in 1886 by
three men who found silver but also real­ized
that what lay mainly in the veins was
merely copper, then virtually worthless, so
they moved on.
One of those original three, John W.
Johnson, returned 10 years later with two
new partners because copper was becom­ing
well worth mining. They staked claims
and did assessment work, but little else.
In 1904 a rail line was begun from the
Santa Fe route that already connected
Phoenix and Prescott to the main line
8 March 1991
across the northern part of Arizona. This
new route, built by a Santa Fe subsidiary,
the Arizona and California Railroad, was
to head west across the desert from
north of Wickenburg to Parker and on
into California. This railroad sparked new
interest in the mines in the Swansea area
because reduced transportation costs
would make mining feasible.
When the Arizona and California
reached Parker in 1907, George Mitchell
entered Swansea's history. Welsh by birth
and a metallurgist by profession, George
and his brother Robert had worked for
Sen. William Clark at the tremendously
successful copper workings at Jerome.
George Mitchell became the prime pro­moter
for the investors of the Clara Gold
and Copper Mining Company, which held
the claims near Black Butte (Clara Peak).
Mitchell named the place for his home
town of Swansea, brought in investors
from all over (principally from France),
and was the guiding hand in leading
Swansea to become a boom camp and,
later, a financial disaster.
The principal problem with Swansea
. was not that it didn't have a solid body of
copper ore. It was primarily that Mitchell
was less a metallurgist and more a promot­er,
who wanted things done on a
grandiose scale. For example, the smelter,
the huge brick ruin that still dominates the
town, was so large and inefficient that it
cost three cents more to produce a pound
of copper than it could be sold for.
The amenities that made Swansea a
more tolerable place to live were mostly
showpieces to convince investors that their
money was in good hands. Harvey Weed,
in his 1913 Mines Handbook, wrote that
Mitchell's operation was "an example of
enthusiasm run wild, coupled with reckless
stock selling, and the foolish construction
of surface works before the development
of enough ore to keep them busy."
Mitchell left Swansea in 1916 to join the
Jerome-Superior Copper Company, which
went bankrupt by 1920 amid claims of
mismanagement.
After his departure, prosperity did come
to Swansea, at least for a while . The
demand for copper during World War I
caused a price rise, making mining the ore
much more practical. Between 1917 and
1919, approximately one million dollars'
worth of copper ore was shipped from
Swansea. Ironically, the large inefficient
smelter sat idle; the ore was sent to
smelters at Clarkdale (near Jerome),
Humboldt (near Prescott) , and Sasco
(northwest of Tucson).
After World War I, copper prices
declined, and so did Swansea. Several
attempts were made to bring it back to life,
but, by 1937, the railroad, most of the
machinery, and virtually anything portable
of value was gone.
But what remains has more than mon­etary
value. Here in the ruins of Swansea,
I have found an elusive quality missing in
CLEFT) These billets offered miners
little beyond shelter from the
elements, but Swansea itself was a
different story. There, workers
could pick up the local newspaper,
the Swansea Times, spend their
wages in several stores, have their
choice of saloons, and avail
themselves of the seroices of a
justice of the peace.
CLEFT, BELOW) Ibis folk art suggests
that Swansea miners, although
rough and hard-working, had
some appreciation for the
finer things.
(RIGHT) What remains of the town '.5
huge smelter has been badly
vandalized, and its heavy roof is
falling down in pieces.
so much of present-day society: solitude. I
am sitting on a folding chair at the end of
a remarkably satisfying day of back roads
bicycle exploring. My friend Darryl -
cyclist, backpacker, ghost towner, desert rat
- is working on dinner while I reread an
excellent article on Swansea by Robert 1..
Spude in the Winter, 1976, issue of 1be
journal of Arizona History. Our only other
company is a hummingbird that makes
repeated kamikaze attacks on us until it
apparently begrudgingly accepts these
interlopers.
My job, Darryl says, is to get into the
mood, to be able to transmit to all who
wish they had been with us, our last hours
in Swansea. Tell them what the place
looks like, what happened here years ago,
what it feels like to be here, and, wnlle
you're at it, he adds, describe those clouds
and that sky (which will be our entertain­ment
until a while after sunset).
I can relate the events of the day and
describe the townsite, and I can probably
hone Spude's article for more casual con­sumption
(you've just read the result), but
I am at a loss to do justice to the eastern
clouds that echo the pink of the declining
sun. I also feel a bit guilty because I defi­nitely
have the easier task - reading
rather than cooking. On the other hand,
Darryl has led hundreds of Boy Scouts
through cookouts, and probably that
would be easier than having me trying to
assist him.
Mystery writer Tony Hillerman has one of
his two heroes, Navajo policeman Jim Chee,
comment upon the essential social differ­ence
between the Navajo and the Hopi.
Chee observes that the Hopi people cluster
together, while the Navajo deliberately sep­arate
into sparse areas. Although I admire
both cultures, I must admit that Darryl and
I must be Navajo at heart. Here we are,
some 24 miles from the nearest town, and
I am a bit annoyed that someone else was
here before us today, and I can hear him
chopping wood. And I'll bet he's annoyed
that we are here, even if we're a quarter­mile
away. None of us at this remote spot
is a cluster person by nature.
If you ever wondered why people
would purposely choose to do what we
have done all day, to be this far removed
from our fellow creatures, here is one
answer: often it's not for the day at all -
it's for the night. We sit near the campfire
as the cool breeze brings the last smell of
a distant rain.
The bats that crisscrossed the sky at sun­set
have long since headed off, and the
heavens simply shimmer. I don't try to
make order out of the stars; usually I forget
their names soon after I've been reminded.
But that does not diminish their impor­tance
to my well-being. A long, silent
examination of the star show is a critical
part of the solitude and peace I seek -
and find here.
Darryl and I, the non-cluster people,
probably speak less than a dozen words
after dinner. At one point, I rise from my
chair which makes a grating noise in the
dirt, for which I quickly whisper an apol­ogy.
That's the kind of night it is.
George Mitchell built a dream house
here and made plans for a city, plans that
collapsed upon him. He died a broken
man in Los Angeles. But the dream, I
think, is not altogether dead. In some
cases, perhaps dreams do not die; perhaps
they just evolve. I'd like to think that
George Mitchell's version of the dream for
Swansea merely changed to mine: for in
the silence that is Swansea, I could not be
more content. ~
Editor's Note: The ruins of Swansea are
located on public land administered by the
U. S. Bureau of Land Management's Yuma
District Office, which is concerned about
the gradual destruction of the ghost town
by collectors and other vandals. According
to District Archeologist Barna Johnson, "To
effect any quality preservation of Swansea
would require more resources than we
now have. Perhaps if the public had some
interest and made it known to us, we could
find the resources to do justice to this site."
If you are interested in preserving Swansea,
contact Barna Johnson at the BLM's Yuma
District Office, 3150 Winsor Avenue, Yuma,
AZ 85365; telephone (602) 726-6300.
Photo Tour: Philip Varney accompanies
photographer Tom Weiwandt on the
Friends of Arizona Highways photo tour of
southeastern Arizona, October 27-Novem­ber
3. Call the Friends' travel desk, (602)
271-5904 for a detailed itinerary and reser­vations.
Travel Guide: For a travel guide to
Arizona's hinterlands, we recommend
Travel Arizona: The Back Roads, an
Arizona Highways book that describes in
detail, and maps and pictures, 20 great
trips for the whole family. To order, call
toll-free 1 (800) 543-5432. In the Phoenix
area, telephone 258-1000.
Philip Varney, chairman of the English
Department at Rincon High School in Tucson,
taught a course called "Ghost Towns of the West" at
the University of Arizona. He has written three
books about ghost towns in the Southwest.
Rick Odell is a Phoenix-based free-lance
photographer who does both editorial and
commercial work. But he derives his greatest
pleasure sleeping on the roof of his jeep in the
Arizona outback.
Arizona Highways 9
NATURE
S N A K E A M 0 N G T H E C H 0 L L A v
was working in my home one warm afternoon when I heard cactus wrens mak­ing
an unusual racket outside. They sounded angry. Curious, I picked up my camera
and stealthily made my way to the front of the house.
The noise was coming from a cholla cactus bursting with needle-like spines where
I knew a family of wrens had a nest. But I couldn't see who or what they were
scolding until I crept closer. Then I saw it: a five-foot-long bull snake was slithering
toward the birds' nest and the unprotected eggs within.
The wrens would light within a foot or two of the reptile, spread their wings, open
their beaks, and make all sorts of noise to distract the snake. But never did they actu­ally
strike it. And the snake seemed little bothered by their antics as it maneuvered
slowly through the saber-sharp spines.
Other birds soon arrived to provide support. A cardinal and a curved bill thrasher
hopped around in nearby bushes but came no closer than a few feet. After about
15 minutes, they gave up and left while the wrens continued their efforts, which
were becoming less and less energetic as the minutes passed.
When at last its goal had been reached, the snake stuck its head inside the nest
and feasted, swallowing the tiny eggs one at a time.
Then sated, it slowly retreated.
A nest in a cholla cactus usually is safe from predators, but not from a bull snake.
Don Burgess is an ardent nature obseroer and a linguist-translator who has worked for the
past 25 years preparing books f or the Tarahumara Indians of Chihuahua, Mexico. He
presently resides in Catalina, just north of Tucson.
TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY DON BURGESS
Arizona H ighways 11
did not exactly fit my preconception of
what a Hopi elder should look like.
Though Nevayaktewa said little, his eyes
spoke volumes. He listened intently while
his nephew told us the significance of this
ancient habitation. "Our elders say always
to look back to Homolovi," he related.
"1his is the place where Hopi comes from,
and it is important to verify this .... We
want the whole world to know of the
importance of the place to the Hopi." An
administrator for the village of Sipaulovi,
Kuwaninvaya is trying to perpetuate his
tribe's history, a daunting task in a time
when young people more often want to
watch television than listen to the stories of
their elders.
When we arrived at the trail to
Homolovi, it seemed like a homecoming of
sorts to Nevayaktewa. He bounded out of
the van and hurried up the hillside, pausing
only to study pictographs on the boulders,
to examine a rock or a piece of pottery.
Obviously there was much here that was
important and familiar. As he saw various
things, he explained: this
kind of stone was fash­ioned
into pipes; that
grass is called "wheat­grass,"
used to make
bread. A charred corn­cob
led him to tell of the
four colors of corn and
their relationship to the
four cardinal directions:
yellow is north, white is
east, red is south, and
blue is west.
What caused the peo­ple
to leave Homolovi?
Nevayaktewa and his
nephew belong to the
Sun Forehead Clan, so they told us their
clan's version of the story. Mosquitoes car­ried
a disease to the children at Homolovi,
they said, so the people deci<jled to look
for a better place to live. One woman,
pregnant with twins, stayed behind and
promised that, wherever they were going,
she would hold their place so they could
always return. When the people finally got
to the Hopi mesas, they asked the leader
of the Bear Clan, who was already there,
if they could settle. They received permis­sion,
and because they arrived just as the
sun was coming over the horizon, they
were named the Sun Forehead Clan.
Set aside by the Arizona legislature in
1986, Homolovi Ruins State Park pro­vides
an important link between prehis­toric
and historic pueblo people of the
Southwest. Within the park's 10,000 acres
are six major 14th century pueblos:
Homolovi I and II on the east side of the
Little Colorado, III and N on the west side,
and the two satellite ruins, at Cottonwood
14 March 1991
Creek (Muwavt) and at Chevelon Creek
(Sakwavaya). All are within a 15-mile
radius of Winslow.
Travelers streaming by on Interstate
Route 40, however, are hard-pressed to
identify anything spectacular in the way of
archeology here. The flat windy country
appears almost featureless from that per­spective,
and most of the ruins are buried
under sand and mud. But at Homolovi II,
where we had gone with Nevayaktewa
and his nephew, a small roomblock has
been excavated, and a trail winding
through the site interprets part of the story.
Homolovi first became known to arche­ologists
in the 1890s when Jesse Walter
Fewkes of the Smithsonian's Bureau of
American Ethnology visited the Hopi
mesas and heard the migration legends.
Seeking substantiation,
Fewkes returned to
Winslow in the summer
of 1896, and some local
Hopis led him to the
place that Fewkes called
"Homolobi." "The site of
Homolobi," he reported,
"was found to be exactly
where the Hopi stories
placed it."
Though Fewkes investi­gated
all four of the sites
at Homolovi, and nearby
Chevelon as well, he
wrote that his "knowledge
of the character of prehis­toric
culture at Homolovi
is drawn mainly from facts
obtained at the first ruin."
His excavations at Homol­ovi
I, which he consid­ered
"true Homolobi,"
yielded the best results.
In Fewkes' eyes, "re­sults"
closely equated
with quantity of artifacts
collected. His primary aim
that summer was to gather as many prehis­toric
objects as possible. He succeeded,
mostly by digging in burial grounds, a prac­tice
now opposed by Native Americans.
During those three months, some 2,500
pieces were catalogued and shipped to the
National Museum in Washington, D.C.
For nearly a century after Jesse Walter
Fewkes left Homolovi, little systematic
archeological research had taken place.
Meanwhile, the ruins were being vandal­ized
and pillaged by pothunters. The dam­age
they caused is much in evidence
today. The scavenging of these artifacts
had gone beyond the shovel to bulldozers
and backhoes. Finally, concerned individ­uals,
government agencies, and the Hopi
Tribe took steps to protect what remained
of the sites.
After a tour of Homolovi in 1980, then­Gov.
Bruce Babbitt appointed a group to
advise him on site preservation.
The planners decided that a state park
would be the best option. In 1986 the state
parks department was put in charge with
the task of making Homolovi into a
regional archeological "theme park."
Designation of the park was the first
step. Karen Berggren, formerly with the
National Park Service, was hired to man­age
the fledgling park. Doug Johnson,
park archeologist, was the only other
employee initially. The next order of busi­ness
was to make the place attractive as a
destination for visitors. Toward that end, a
visitors center was constructed and is
scheduled to open this month. Located
between Homolovi I and II, it will offer
(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 12 AND 13)
This petroglyph of a human figure is in
Homolovi JV. Most petroglyphs in the
park are small, six to twelve inches high,
but some are as large as two feet.
(LEFD Hopi elder Austin Nevayaktewa,
philosophical guide to Homolovi, pauses
on the bank of the Little Colorado River.
(TOP) Homolovi 's lack of fuel needed to
fire pottery indicates that this Tuwivca
black-on-orange bowl probably was
acquired through trade.
(ABOVE) This prehistoric corn cob may
have been preserved by the intense heat
of a storeroom fire that occurred at
Homolovi II.
(RIG HD Homolovi II, the largest of the
park's major areas, is easily reached by
visitors.
Arizona Highways 15
16 March 1991
information, orientation, and exhibits about
the park. A nearby interpretive trail leads
through a prehistoric pit house village.
Plans include expanding the visitors center
to house an auditorium, a library, a work­ing
archeological laboratory for public
viewing, and possibly a small restaurant.
Existing ranch roads may become walking
and equestrian trails to connect the sites. In
addition, a campground with tent spaces
and recreational vehicle hookups is under
construction at the park. Other overnight
accommodations are available in Winslow.
Homolovi II, believed to contain more
than 700 rooms, is the focus of activity for
several reasons. It is located away from the
distraction of the interstate highway, has
good research and recreation potential,
and is a scenic spot. The new road into
CLEFT) Chevelon Canyon, site of a satellite
ruin, in some spots is up to 150-feet deep
and 50- to 60-yards across.
(TOP) Most of the projectile points found
at Homolovi are composed of chert (a
form of flint) or petrified wood.
(ABOVE) This masonry wall at Homolovi
If is made of
stone and mud.
(ABOVE, RIGHT)
This petroglyph
represents the
Kokopelli
kachina, which
generally is seen
as a fertility
figure with a
seed pouch on
his back.
H.AGSf AfF• ~OMOLOVI
WINSLOW
{ PHOENIX*
~
the park off State Route 87 (the road to
Second Mesa) makes it readily accessible.
Homolovi also has become the object of
an ambitious 10-year archeological
research project of the Arizona State
Museum in Tucson. Dr. E. Charles Adams
heads the operation.
The strength of his labor force has been
in the form of volunteers from Earthwatch,
an organization that offers persons an
opportunity to take educational vacations
by working on various scientific projects,
such as archeological excavations. Earth­watchers
have endured the hot sun and
relentless wind to shovel, sift, sweep, and
measure artifact locations.
They also reenact prehistory by making
and using their own tools to grind corn,
shape beads, and work bone and wood.
Their efforts are helping to
answer some of the central
questions that guide the research
project: why and how did so
many people group together at
Homolovi; how did they main­tain
their community, and what
were the consequences of the
population concentration?
Immigrants came into the
area sometime after A.D. 1275
and founded Homolovi III and
N , according to Adams. Homo­lovi
III, which has been studied
in detail, was a pueblo hamlet
of some 40 rooms in the flood­plain
of the Little Colorado
River. It was occupied initially
by farmers who found the land
suitable for crops. About 1300 it
was abandoned, and the peo­ple
apparently moved across
the river to the larger pueblos
at Homolovi I and II. But they
returned to their former hamlet
seasonally to raise crops.
The east side of the river had
been used for farming for a long
time, probably as early as the 700s. The big­three
crops - corn, beans, and squash -
were being grown, but as the population
increased during the peak years between
1300 and 1400, cotton gained in impor­tance.
More than a hundred stone hoes
have been found, giving the name Hoe
Valley to a large area east of the river. The
abundance of hoes indicates to archeologist
Richard Lange that there was an "explosion"
in land use during the later years.
Also as population increased, the people
began trading with their neighbors, evi­dence
of which is the marked increase in
the amount of obsidian and the appear­ance
of a particular pottery type. Obsidian,
a black volcanic glass, was a desirable com­modity
because it made excellent arrow
points. It does not occur naturally at
Homolovi. Tests have shown that most of
it came from Government Mountain, north­west
of Flagstaff.
The appearance of Jeddito Yellow Ware,
a prehistoric pottery type made on the
Hopi mesas, was also a strong clue that
trading was taking place. Some pottery
was made locally, but the scarcity of fuel­wood
around Homolovi, needed for firing
pots, led to the importation of the yellow
wares. Adams believes that cotton grown
by Homolovians was probably the medi­um
of exchange.
A significant clue to maintaining the
growing population at Homolovi was the
development of beliefs about kachinas,
which are the spiritual beings the Hopi
beseech during religious ceremonies and
dances to bring rain and prosperity.
Kachina images pecked onto patinated
boulders can be found all around Homol­ovi.
Adams theorizes that the kachina rit­uals
were part of an open, public system
used to enhance cooperation among the
many groups that came together here.
As we left Homolovi
at dusk that De­cember
day, the full
moon was ballooning
over Ives Mesa. The
Hopi call it Kyamuya,
signaling the time to
make prayer feathers in
the kivas so that all liv­ing
things will prosper
and have a long, healthy
life. I thought of Neva­yaktewa,
the farmer,
who every day walks
eight miles to his corn­fields.
Certainly, prayers
for prosperity would
hold great importance to him. I remem­bered,
too, that winter is the time when
the Hopi elders traditionally tell stories to
their young people; when Austin
Nevayaktewa will tell his grandchildren
those things they need to know. ~
Author's Note: The dedication of
Homolovi Ruins State Park is scheduled for
March 9, 1991, to coincide with observa­tion
of Arizona Archaeology Week. For
more information on dates and planned
events, contact the Arizona State Parks
Department at (602) 542-4174 or Homolovi
Ruins State Park at (602) 289-4106.
Flagstajf-based author Rose Houk is a former
newspaper reporter and editor who also spent some
time as a naturalist at Grand Canyon National
Park. She writes primarily about archeology and
natural history.
Michael Collier, a Flagstaff physician, is also a
pilot, write1; and photographer. His aerial
photography illustrated "Arizona from a
Thousand Feet" in the December 1990 issue of
Arizona Highways.
Arizona Highways 17
auline McCleve's quick, energetic stride has
slowed. Her back is no longer ramrod straight. She
walks with a cane. She is 95. But the twinkle is still in
her eyes. She charms with her smile. And she is, as she has
always been, an accomplished conversationalist with wide-ranging
interests and an absolutely amazing mental storehouse of facts.
"We could sit here," she says, indicating the dining room table
of her pleasant Tempe town house. "This is where I work."
It looks like a worktable, and, indeed, it is. Piled high with files,
folders, and reference documents. She is working on a history of
the pioneering Kempe family from which she is descended.
"Well," I say, "this is the first visit we've had in nearly 45 years."
"Oh," she replies, "we visited
in 1978."
She is correct. A short visit
after attending her husband's
funeral. I had forgotten about
that; she hadn't. "I meant," I clar­ify,
"a long visit where we could
reminisce about those days
when I used to hang around
your house so much that you
named me 'Ubiquitous Bill."'
She laughs and the twinkle
intensifies. "You know I was
only kidding. We always enjoyed
having you there."
In 1944, when I was 15, my
family moved to Holbrook,
Arizona, where my father began
surveying for a highway across
the Navajo Indian Reservation. I
was a stranger in a strange town,
thrown off-balance by the bar­ren
red-rock geography of the
small town that straddled U.S.
Route 66 in the high plateau
country of northeastern Arizona.
But not for long.
On the first day of school, I
met young Donnie McCleve,
who, like myself, was a trout­fishing
fanatic. We struck up a
quick friendship, and before
long I had installed myself as an
almost full-time after-school res­ident
at Donnie's house. Mrs.
McCleve, with her pleasant
voice , winning smile, and
boundless exuberance, became
my "home-away-from-home"
mother.
I realize today that I liked the
McCleve house because it reflected a very healthy family life-style.
Cyrus McCleve, Holbrook's city manager, was always away during
the day. So Mrs. Mccleve was the captain of this slightly disorga­nized
but always happy ship.
I moved away from Holbrook after a year, but today, across a
45-year gulf of time, I have a strong recollection of the Mccleve
home: the living room was actually a music room with a big
upright piano, various other instruments lying about, stands with
sheet music on them, stacks of sheet music on sofa and chairs, a
violin case in a corner. And once, for a time, a large tuba.
An adjoining front room was Mrs. McCleve's beauty shop. She
started it in the early '20s after only two weeks of formal training
18 March 1991
and kept it operating successfully for more than 40 years. Behind
the two front rooms was a large dining room and beyond that a
kitchen.
This is a typical segment from a typical day, as I recall it: Mrs.
McCleve moves briskly out of the beauty shop, carrying a brush
or comb. She breaks stride to close an instrument case in the living
room and picks up plates as she passes through the dining room.
In the kitchen, she pops open the oven, removes a roast, places
it on a platter, and delivers it to the dining table. Then returns to
the beauty shop. In a matter of minutes, she is back again. This
time she quickly spreads frosting on an angel-food cake and adds
it to an ever changing, never entirely diminished smorgasbord.
Food, as far as I know, was
always on the table for anyone
who wanted to eat. It was not
uncommon for me to pass
through the dining room and
find a lady in curlers downing a
hearty meal. And, of course, I
was a continuing nonpaying
diner myself.
Mrs . McCleve was a true
Arizona pioneer, born in St.
Johns in 1895. Her mother was a
Kempe, her father a Greer. While
she was still a toddler, the family
moved to a remote ranch
between St. Johns and Holbrook.
She was the sixth of 11 children,
two of whom died in infancy.
"The winters were sometimes
bitterly cold," she tells me. (St.
Johns is nearly 6,000 feet above
sea level.) "The dirt roads were
very poor, and we had to ford
the icy streams. I can remember
one wagon trip in weather so
bad that we were in real danger
of freezing. When we finally
arrived at the house, Father
made all of the children run in a
circle until he got a roaring fire
going."
I ask her to tell me more
about her ranch life in those
early days . She smiles, and I
know that her memories are
pleasant ones. "My father was a
stern but fair disciplinarian. I
never heard my mother raise her
voice to anyone. There was lots
of love in the family and never a
quarrel."
She tells me that ranch people had to be self-sufficient back
then. Her family had an orchard, a garden, raised their own cattle,
and had milk cows and chickens. "We made our own cheese, our
own soap. We made shampoo by pounding yucca roots," she tells
me. "We had no phones, of course, or any other form of fast com­munication.
I remember a time when my older brother Riley rode
a galloping horse for many miles to warn the people downstream
of an approaching flood. Our entertainment was very simple.
When we went to town, Mother would give us a couple of fresh
eggs, and we would race to the local store where we could trade
them for candy."
When Pauline was eight, the family moved into Holbrook, and
it was there her formal schooling began. "There was no high
school in Holbrook," she informs me. "When we started reaching
high school age, Father rented quarters in Snowflake, 35 miles
away, and my mother and the children wintered there so we could
attend school."
After high school graduation, she married Cyrus McCleve, a
young man she had met in the Snowflake school. He became a
bookkeeper for A. B. Schuster & Company, the leading mercantile
store in Holbrook. Later he served as its city manager. They lived
in Holbrook for the next 50 years, contributing to the community
and raising five children, all of whom were born at home.
I change the subject. "We used to have a lot of fun on our fish­ing
trips ," I remark. Her eyes
light up. She smiles broadly, and
I know I've hit a hot button. Mrs.
Mccleve was as crazy about fish­ing
as Donnie and I were.
PEOPLE 0 F
Throughout her lifetime she was devoted to the community and
numerous civic causes. In 1971 she and her husband were hon­ored
as Holbrook's "Man And Woman Of The Year."
But I remember her on a more personal basis: as a good friend.
And, as we talk, I am mentally recalling one particular incident.
While in Holbrook, I contracted a severe mastoid infection. I spent
two weeks in the local hospital. But shortly after my release, the
infection struck again. The local doctor told my parents that I must
be taken to Phoenix where specialists were available.
In the '40s there were no commuter aircraft in Holbrook, no
helicopter ambulances. The only practical way to get to Phoenix,
which was more than 200 miles away, was by auto or bus. I was
too sick to go on a bus, and the
tires on our car were bald. The
ARIZONA war was on, and replacement
tires were nearly nonexistent.
The local rationing board was
sympathetic but unable to locate
any tires that would fit our car.
One evening my father came
into my room. I was so ill I
could hardly raise my eyelids.
"We'll be leaving for Phoenix in
the morning," he said. "Mr. and
Mrs. McCleve put their car up on
blocks and brought their tires
over."
I remind her of the incident.
She shrugs it off as though it
were nothing, but it may have
saved my life.
"We certainly did have some
good times," she replies as she
recounts some of our fishing
excursions. She speaks of the
huge trout in Big Lake and
Becker Lake, the frisky stream
trout in White River and the
Little Colorado. From time to
time, she holds up her hands to
indicate the sizes of some that
were caught, some that got
away. "I took up marlin fishing
when I was 83," she tells me.
"I've caught five marlin in the
Sea of Cortez. The biggest was
over 120 pounds and took me
40 minutes to boat." She tells me
about journeying into Alaska to
catch the elusive salmon.
HOLBROOK FLOURISHED I ask her about her present
activities. She gestures toward the
stack of materials and mentions
the book she is working on. But
modesty prevents her from giv­ing
me many details. Later, I find
out from others she is doing
research, providing historical
material, and assisting in the edit­ing
of the heavy volume. She
serves as "Birthday Lady" for her
BECAUSE OF PIONEERS LIKE
THE "FLOWER LADY "
When she mentions Alaska, '
I'm prompted to ask more about
her travels. She tells me that,
until she was 68, she left the
Holbrook area only once. "But
I've made up for that in my later
years ," she says. "I've been to
WHOSE GENEROSITY -
AND LOVE OF FISHING -
ARE LEGEND
church, keeping more than 500
the South Pacific, Australia, the
Holy Land. I've traveled every
continent except Antarctica."
.%x/
birth dates on file and personally
calling each member on his or
her birthday. I am told she also
keeps up steady correspondence
with friends and family members
everywhere. Not easy with 28
grandchildren and 38 great­grandchildren.
She does all of
She is modest about her own
accomplishments, but from rela­tives
and friends I find that the
musical mood of the McCleve
home was the outgrowth of her
influence. She had less than a
~·//~:ane- Yf& a//o-Pd
9£o-/o-p-Paft£
~? ~eed ~a£/b
year of formal training, but her
native talent was such that she became the first organist in
Holbrook's Mormon church and continued in this capacity for
many years. She also worked at the Holbrook movie theater in the
days before sound, composing and playing the accompaniments
for silent films. After her husband's retirement, they moved to
Tempe, and she again became a church organist until a broken
wrist at the age of 75 forced her to resign.
While living in Holbrook, Mrs. Mccleve maintained an impres­sive
flower garden, and throughout the community she was known
as the "Flower Lady." Holbrook had no florist shop in those days,
and, for many years, her garden provided flowers for weddings,
funerals, and other occasions. The flowers were always free.
her own housework and bakes
for neighbors and relatives.
After our three-hour visit, she seems as fresh as when we start­ed.
She walks me to the door. I give her a hug and tell her how
good it is to see her. "Well," she replies, "I have a lot more wrin­kles
than when you saw me last, but I still have my marbles." Then
she holds up a finger as she qualifies the statement. "Not all of
them," she says, "but I've got enough to stay in the game ." ~
Scottsdale-based free-lance writer William Hafford is a frequent contributor
to Arizona Highways. He wrote about another Arizona pioneer, L. Earl
Matteson, for the magazine's Febniary 1991 issue.
Phoenix-based free-lance photographer Reed Rahn specializes in
photographing people f or national magazines and Fortune 500 companies.
Arizona Highways 19
Arizona
H i g h W a y S'
LATEST
B 0 0 K
DISCOVER
ARIZONA'S
T he ni ght sky in Ar izon a is unbe li ev­a
bl e . With th e un a ided eye , yo u can
see countl ess s ta rs a nd a t least fi ve
pl a ne ts. Yo u n o t onl y see the Bi g Dippe r
in Ursa Ma jo r a nd it s littl e counte rpart ,
but also Bootes, th e he rdsm a n; Leo, the
li on ; Corvus, the raven , and o n and o n .
20 March 1991
(AB OVE) Tb e low angle of sunlight
on a waxing gibbous moon sh ows
th e top og raphy of its craters and
m ountains in great reli ef
(OPPOSITE PAGE) From Arcturus,
th e f ourth-brightest star, you ca n
trace th e shape of an upright
co n e i n th e B ootes con stellati on,
pictu red here over Sed ona
at dusk.
NI G Hl
SKY
With the h e lp of binoc ul a rs, mo re
com es into vi ew: th e tw in s ta rs in the
handle of the Big Dipper, a cluste r of tens
of th o usa nds of sta rs th at a ppears as a
small cotto ny object o f incre di ble beau ty ,
a nd o ne of the most dis tant things seen
by the unaid e d eye: Andromeda Ga laxy,
2.2 milli o n light- yea rs away.
What Ari zo na ns ta ke fo r gra nted in the
clear ni ght s k y, people in places like New Yo rk C it y , De troit ,
Chicago, and Phila delphia never see b ecause of the gla re o f urban
li ghts , w eather p att e rns, a nd the gau zy blindfo ld of air po lluti o n .
So attrac tive is the starry Ari zon a s ky , that it does no t ta k e lo ng
to get caug ht up in it. Find Sa turn. Find Ve nus. The re 's Ta urus, the
bull . Now wh e re 's Orio n , th e hunte r? Studying the sky for man y
p eopl e is peacefull y re laxi ng. For o the rs it is info rmative . And fo r
still o the rs, it is e nte rtaining.
For all those e nthra ll e d b y the nig ht sky - as well as fo r those
w ho live elsewhere and d on 't yet know w h at t hey're mi ss ing -
A rizona Highways h as publish e d a new book: Discove r A rizona's
Nig ht Sky. Wherever yo u live , Ea st Coast o r West, it w ill help you
find your way around the galaxy .
The book is di vided into the four seasons and has star charts and
full- color pho togra phs of the ni ght ski es visibl e at those times. Some
sta rs in each pho togra ph a re labeled to get you start ed. The re a re
d e tail e d charts o f ma ny indi vidua l conste ll a ti on s to help you trans­late
w hat you see in th e s ky . There's info rmatio n o n pla nets , the
moon , and e ve n a sectio n o n m eteor s howers a nd w he n to expect
the m. The b ook is a g reat layman 's guid e to the heaven s.
Discover A rizona 's Nig ht Sky w as writte n b y Raymo nd Shubinski,
w ho h as directed two o f th e natio n 's la rgest pl a neta riums and has
writte n exte nsive ly o n astro nomy. He curre ntly is executive directo r
o f a natural hi sto ry museum in Illin ois. The pictures, as unbelie vable
as the Arizon a s ky its e lf, are b y Mesa's Frank Zull o, the West's pre ­mi
e r photographer of the nig ht sky whose wo rk has been publish ed
w ide ly in the b est m agazin es in the country .
Thi s is a book to have fun w ith. Here a re some excerpts :
BDDTEI, THE HERDSMAN
Fo r reasons n ow lost, Bootes re presents a man purs uing Ursa
Ma jo r, the Great Bea r, ab o ut the sk y . Imag ine the brig ht s ta r
Arcturus (fourth brig htest in the ni g ht s ky) as the tip of a con e . Le t
y our eyes mo ve toward the n orth, and yo u can trace the shape of
the body o f the cone. Finally , you'll come to a group of s tars tha t
round off the to p , ma king a ve ry beli e vable ice-cream cone . If you
look earl y in th e evening in April o r May, you will find the con e
tipped on its side. Just below it, you 'll see a deli cate curve d cluste r
of stars calle d Coro na Bo reali s, the Northern Crown . This is actu all y
the second scoop of ice c re am that fe ll o ff of Bootes .
LYRA, THE HARP
Summer is a great time to stargaze in Arizona, if only because
the sky is banded by the Milky Way. But in addition, we enjoy
looking for Lyra, the Harp. The harp once belonged to the
musician Orpheus, according to legend, who could tame any
creature by playing his instrument. One of the three constel­lations
of the summer triangle, Lyra forms a distinct but small
rhombus-shaped group of four stars capped on one side by
the brilliant star Vega, the fifth-brightest star in the sky. By
the beginning of July, Lyra is well up from the eastern hori­zon
at 9:00 P.M.
Vega is the most beautiful aspect of this constellation. It's
a mere 27 light-years from Earth. It would outshine our sun
58 times and appears a dazzling blue-white in most optical
instruments.
THE BIG DIPPER IN URSA MAJOR
The Big Dipper (FOLLOWING PANEL, PAGES 24 AND 25) is so promi­nent
that most ancient cultures envisioned some imaginary figure
using these seven bright stars. The Egyptians saw the leg of a bull,
while several thousand years later, the English made a plow or
wagon from them.
Another reason the Big Dipper has always been such an important
grouping is its association with the North Star, or Polaris. The two
stars at the end of the bowl, named Merak and Dubhe, point to the
North Star. If you simply extend a line from Merak through Dubhe
away from the bowl, the next bright star you come to will be Polaris.
The Big Dipper contains a number of marvelous objects. The star
in the middle of the curved handle is named Mizar. If your eyes are
like mine, you'll need to use binoculars to split this pair. Even though
Mizar and Alcor lie approximately 550 trillion miles away, they
are still very near the Earth compared to most stars.
THE LITTLE DIPPER IN URSA MINOR
The Little Dipper (FOLLOWING PANEL, PAGES 24 AND 25) con­tains
three bright stars and four rather faint ones. The two z
stars at the end of the dipper's bowl are bright enough to 2
be seen from most cities. They're known as the Guardians ~
(Kochab and Pherkad) of the pole because of their proxim- ~
ity to the celestial pole. The third star of this trio is perhaps ffi
I-­the
most famous star in the sky. It is Polaris, the North Star, ~
the only star that always appears in the same spot in the sky, ui
very near the north celestial pole.
Polaris was not always the North Star. During the days of
Egyptian pyramid building, 5,000 years ago, a star named
Thuban, in the constellation Draco, the Dragon, reigned
supreme in the northern sky. The gradual change occurred not
because the stars are moving around, but because the Earth wobbles
very slowly like a top. This wobble will eventually cause Polaris to
move away, too, until it is no longer useful as the North Star. ~
To Order: Discover Arizona'.5 Night
Sky, usable for stargazing throughout
the continental United States, is $7.95
Softcover. Write to Arizona Highways,
2039 W. Lewis Ave., Phoenix, AZ
85009, or call toll-free 1 (800) 543-
5432. In the Phoenix area, 258-1000.
Photo Tour: Frank Zullo will direct
cameras to the night skies on the
Superstition Mountains Photo Tour
April 17-19. Call the Friends of Ari­zona
Highways Travel Desk at (602)
271-5904 for additional information
and reservations.
NORTHERN HORIZON
Star Brightness:
•• 10 • ·2 • :3
• .4
: . _Open cluster
o _Globular cluster
o Galaxy
0 Nebula
SOUTHERN HORIZON
(ABOVE) Use the chart to find constellations
in the Milky Way, pictured in the top circle.
Milky Way
POLAR PROJECTION, ROBERT D. MILLER, 1990
(OPPOSITE PAGE) Above Chiricahua National
Monument glitters the constellation Lyra. Binoculars
reveal Epsilon to be a double star. A small telescope
shows each of those stars has a very close
companion, making Epsilon a double-double.
(FOLLOWING PANEL, PAGES 24 AND 25) The Big Dipper
and Little Dipper are seen over Monument Valley.
Arizona Highways 23
z
0
N a:
0
:i::
z
a:
UJ
tii UJ ;::
ARIZONA'S
HISTORIC HOTELS
TEXT BY DONG. CAMPBELL PHOTOGRAPHS BY RICHARD MAACK
N either on the economic horizon, nor in the azure
blue skies hanging over Prescott, Arizona, was
there a cloud to be seen. It was 1927 and the auto­mobile
and an improving intrastate highway system
had made Prescott, hovering at 6,000 in population, a practical
day's drive from sweltering Phoenix. More and more it was
the summer retreat to which businessmen, trapped in the
desert heat of the Salt River Valley, sent their families, joining
them only for the weekends.
Hospitable by nature, but increasingly restive in their role
- in the eyes of Phoenicians - as rustics, the civic-conscious
residents of Prescott made the bold decision in 1927 to erect
a magnificent hotel as a magnet for
their increasingly popular summer
tourist business. Through public
subscription, money was raised for
the Hassayampa Inn, a four-story,
76-room hotel that Prescott's finest
predicted would soon be the talk
of the state.
Aiming for the best, Prescott's
planners plucked the Southwest's
most distinguished architect at the
time for the job. He was Henry
Trost of El Paso, whose Franciscan
Hotel in Albuquerque had won
renown for that city in New
Mexico, and whose Gadsden Hotel
in Douglas had given the Arizona
border town its own flavor.
"But Trost's original design," says
Prescott architect Bill Otwell, "bor­rowed
heavily from Albuquerque's
Franciscan in the Pueblo revival
mode. The foundation was
poured, but the Prescott people
were uneasy with the Southwestern
design. Being almost entirely
Midwestern in origin, they were
more comfortable with brick."
26 March 1991
Brick they got, and with the Hassayampa's spacious lobby,
cupolaed bell tower, and porte cochere, the hotel quickly
became Prescott's social center as well as the tourist magnet
that had been its raison d 'etre.
The hotel moved through a series of owners as its fortunes
declined beginning in the '50s. However, a full-scale refurbish­ing
of the Hassayampa under then-owner George Lee was
completed in 1986 - a Herculean job in many respects
because it entailed installation of a completely new heating
and air-conditioning plant and ductwork for the hotel as well
as new plumbing fixtures.
The ornate ceiling artwork in the lobby was redone by
Phoenix artist Rich Smith, Otwell
said. The result is a Hassayampa
that, in some respects, makes the
Grand Dame of downtown Pres­cott
even more glamorous than she
was at her unveiling.
FLAGSTAFF'S HOTEL MONTE VISTA
Just as Prescott sensed the need
in 1927 to cater to the tourist traffic
with an impressive downtown
hotel, so did the citizens of
Flagstaff - a key jump-off place,
(LEFT) When Prescott's
Hassayampa Inn was built, it
was the only hotel in the state
to offer guests the luxury of a
porte cochere.
(RIGHn Chuck and Debbie
Wood of Page relax in the
Hassayampa Inn's lobby,
which, despite the
townspeople's insistence that
the hotel reflect a Midwestern
design, has a decidedly
territorial ambience.
Arizona Highways 27
HISTORIC
28 March 1991
CLEFT) Back in the '20s, Flagstaff's
swank new Hotel Monte Vista, with its
running water, flush toilets,
telephones, and food service,
advertised itself as the first full-service
hotel in Arizona.
(ABOVE) The restored San Carlos Hotel
once was the only major hotel in
downtown Phoenix to have air cooling.
then and now, for the Grand Canyon.
When, as in Prescott, promoters in Flagstaff
also turned to public subscription to raise
$200,000 to build the Hotel Monte Vista
they had an "angel" waiting in the wings
- a single contributor who put up half the
money. The contributor was novelist Zane
Grey, a longtime fan of northern Arizona
and Flagstaff. The Monte Vista - originally
named the Flagstaff Community Hotel -
was to turn up in several of Grey's novels
simply as "the Community Hotel."
Restored to its 1927 splendor in 1985
and '86, today's Monte Vista has its original
front desk, antique reproductions, ceiling
fans, brass, and plush carpeting in all
rooms and hallways.
It has 41 rooms, including 11 suites and
HOTELS
two "petite" suites. A walk down the hall­ways
is a nostalgic trip past rooms that
bear the names of notables who have trod
those same passages. While the largest
suite, rightly enough, is the "Zane Grey,"
the "Humphrey Bogart" suite is almost as
spacious. Other Hollywood stars who have
signed in at the Monte Vista include Clark
Gable, John Wayne, Walter Brennan, and
Alan Ladd.
PHOENIX'S SAN CARLOS HOTEL
Like both the Hassayampa and the
Monte Vista, the San Carlos in Phoenix also
dates from 1927. Due to the vagaries of the
city's downtown economy, it has seen
good times and bad as a hub of the com­munity.
Built on the site of Phoenix's first
adobe elementary school, the seven-story
San Carlos was floundering between
absentee owners when the locally based
Gregory Melikian family acquired it in 1973
and began a renovation program. In 1979
it was purchased by out-of-state owners.
Original bathtubs, basins, and period fur­niture
were retained in the rooms. And in
the lobby, manager Owen Khatoonian
says, "Everything is very much as it was 63
years ago with the addition of a later
acquisition, the beautiful crystal chandeliers
that were imported from Austria in 1957."
Last year, the Melikian family's Great
Western Realty Corp., re-acquired the hotel
and, in the words of longtime restoration
expert Gregory Melikian, "picked up the
goal, once again, of bringing back a bit of
the charm and character of the heart of
downtown Phoenix as it was in the 1930s
to '50s."
To complement the hotel's 113 sleeping
rooms and three suites, the Melikians have
brought back the once-popular bistro in
the lobby of the San Carlos, the Palm
Room, where a late afternoon tea and light
snacks are served, and reinstituted the
hotel's long-gone bar. One of the largest
hotels on the National Register of Historic
Places, the San Carlos has fared better than
many of its downtown counterparts in
other Arizona cities by virtue of its proxim­ity
- and availability as an overflow lodg­ing
- to newer, nearby hotels, and its
walking-distance accessibility to the
Convention Center, downtown corporate
and financial headquarters, and to the
county's court buildings.
The restored San Carlos is making its
mark as an oasis amid the downtown bustle.
Arizona Highways 29
T UCSON'S HOTEL C ONGRESS
Tucked away and low-key, Tucson 's li t­tle
( 4 1-room) Hotel Congress sits across the
street from the city's Amtrak station and
may be better known to touring studen ts
from Europe and Japan than it is to Tucson
natives. It is listed prominently in Youth
Hostel Association directories abroad as a
low-cost and dean hostelry.
Dating to 1919, the Congress's Tap
Room quickly became a favorite hangout
for Tucson's movers and shakers in the
flapper era of the '20s and '30s. It was the
result of a fire that swept the top floor of
the three-story Congress on the night of
January 22 , 1934 , however, that brought
the hotel national fame. Trapped on the
third flCX>r by the raging flames, four men
and three women guests had to be res­cued
by Tucson firemen using aerial lad­ders.
The guests insisted, however, that
firemen return to the burning building to
retrieve their expensive luggage.
Recogni2ed from magazine pictures sev­eral
days later as members of John
Dillinger's gang, the men walked into an
ambush by Tucson police, and their reluc­tance
to abandon the luggage became
30 March 1991
HISTORIC
clear: inside were handcuffs, bullet-proof
vests, machine guns, and a flour sack con­taining
$6,000 in currency . A few days
later, Dillinger himself walked into a sec­ond
trap laid by Tucson police.
Now just two stories - the fire-gutted
third floor was never restored - the
Congress is the scene of an ongoing ren­ovation
that b egan with electrical upgrad­ing,
replacing a luminu m with wood
around doorways, a nd reconstructing the
leaded-gla ss transoms and white marble
facades . The Tap Room remains a focal
point, and a former dining room on the
first floor that was closed for 15 years has
been refurbished and reopened as a
weekend discotheque. The rooms are
being restored with furnishings from
the '20s.
Big, little, downtown or no-town,
Arizona 's historic hotels have had their
days of s pl endor and their days of
despair as tastes a nd traffic patterns
have shifted. Financially, a few of them
are hanging by their fingertips, but all a re
dug in , polishing the o ld copperware and
their turn-of-the-century furniture - and
waiting. n
(ABOVE) Tucson artist Larry Boyce
created the Indian-inspire d
motif in the lobby of Tucson 's
Hotel Congress.
(RIGHT) The Hotel Congress, which
attracts mostly budget-minded
travelers, features replicas of
1940-style radios in its guest
rooms.
Author's Note: This article completes the
series on the history and present-day real­ities
of early Arizona hotels . Last month,
we discussed the Gads den , Copper
Queen , Cochise, St. Michael, and the
Vendome. In a future issue, we will cover
the Tonto Natural Bridge Lodge, which
also is on the National Register of His­toric
Pl aces.
Don G . Campbell, whose distinguished career
includes working on newspapers from Los
Angeles to New York , writing books, and
authoring a syndicated newspaper col umn, is a
longtime residen t of Phoenix.
Richard Maack of Phoenix specializes in
architectural, landscape, and fine art
photography.
HOTELS
Arizona Highways 31
32 March 1991
EAGLE CREEK'S ONE-ROOM
SCHOOLHOUSE
Text by Bruce D. ltule
Photographs by Don B. Stevenson " w e're about to start," teacher Jim Hazzard says, looking at
his watch, realizing it already is 8:00 A.M. "We're 30 sec­onds
late. Let's go." He rings a six-inch brass bell, and the
children of Eagle Creek Elementary School rush into their
classroom. "Catherine, will you lead us in the Pledge of
Allegiance?"
"Let's talk about anything new," the teacher tells his pupils
after the pledge. "Anything new happen on the creek?"
Hands jump.
"Bobby."
"I heard a bird call last night. It was real loud."
"Keith."
"I saw six cats and five dogs."
Hazzard changes the subject. "Let's have a little humor.
"Catherine."
"What's worse than a 300-pound witch?"
No response.
"Being a broom."
The pupils snicker as Hazzard calls on Jake.
"Why did the boy ghost whistle at the girl ghost?"
No answer.
"Because she was so boooo-tiful."
And so starts another day for the eight boys and one girl at
the school on Eagle Creek in eastern Arizona, one of the eight
one-room public schools operating in Arizona. The people of
Eagle Creek are cattle ranchers, for the most part, living on iso­lated,
bushy land at 5,000 feet elevation, 45 miles from the
nearest store, telephone, or power line. Since before the tum
of the century, when they had children of school age, they
often sent them to Eagle Creek School. The number of pupils
at the school fluctuates as cowpunchers come and go. Locals
"Catherine,
will you
lead us
in the
Pledge of
Alle~ance ?"
say that at one time there were more than 60.
There have been as few as five . For 31 years,
from 1954 to 1985, the school was closed.
Hazzard, who has taught in Eagle Creek since
the beginning of the 1989-90 school year, starts
his workday at about 7:00 A.M. By then he is in
the schoolhouse, vacuuming the floors and emp­tying
garbage cans. While the swallows nesting
just beneath the eaves chirp wildly, and one of
the school's two Kohler generators hums in the
background, Hazzard writes assignments on the
blackboard. A propane heater provides warmth.
There is indoor plumbing in the white stucco­covered
adobe schoolhouse, but until several
Arizona Highways 33
years ago, teacher and children had to use
the outhouse 50 yards west of the school
and across the half-mile-long runway main­tained
by one of the area ranchers. "You
have to look both ways and up when you
walk to the outhouse," Hazzard says with
a smile. "We still have to use it when our
water lines freeze."
Hazzard finishes what he calls his
"domestic chores" just in time to greet the
children as their mothers bring them to
school. There are no school buses or meal
programs in Eagle Creek. Mothers load
their children, along with snacks and
lunches, in their pickups and bring them to
school. Some of the youngsters live on
ranches as far as 10 miles away and must
cross the flowing creek three times to get
to the school.
By 8:15 A.M. the pupils are at their desks,
working on daily assignments, but it
doesn't take much to get them talking . "It's
so borrrrrrring being the only girl,"
Catherine Smith says, looking up from her
textbook. "They tease me all the time."
Keith Cannon, whose father manages a
nearby ranch, discusses his future. "I have
to catch up on all my work so I can get an
A," he says, pushing his baseball cap up
on his forehead. "I want to be a cowboy
like my dad when I grow up. I also want
to be the world 's best baseball player. Also,
I want to be a lawyer. So if I don't get
34 March 1991
money from baseball I can get my lawyer
money and buy a ranch."
Hazzard, who has a Ph.D . in educational
psychology from the University of Arizona ,
works with each child. If the pupils are
studying social studies, for example, he
will call one, two, or three of them to his
desk to read from their textbooks while
the others work quietly at their desks. All
of the pupils generally work on the same
subject at the same time. Their textbooks,
assignments , and tests are based on their
grade levels. Pupils work at the grade level
they have achieved, which means some
are studying grade-higher material.
"Everything is individualized , and I stress
reading, " Hazzard says .
Hazzard's eyes are never still. While he
follows along in his instructor's manual as
Jacob Cannon reads from a social studies
book, his eyes dart to the other children.
Occasionally he disciplines them, telling
them to get back to their reading.
"Answer this question," he tells Jacob
Cannon, an incredible reader who slices
through a reading assignment as if he were
a television anchorman reading the news.
"What are the countries that border
Switzerland?"
Jacob answers quickly: "France, Italy,
Austria, a nd Germany?" Jacob also has no
problem defining landlock, avalanche,
neutral, and glacier.
To the right of Hazzard, Jake Cox is
working on one of the sc hool 's three
Apple computers. The children have been
told that the one who solves a problem the
quickest on the computer will win an ice­cream
sundae. "I'm trying to pick up a
load of hogs and take it to Norfolk,
Virginia," Jake says, peering from under his
black felt cowboy hat. "I have 30 minutes
to do it. "
In the back of the classroom, Marlene
Ruprecht, the full -time teacher's aide
hired by Eagle Creek's three- member
school board to help Hazzard, is working
with pupil Michael Goodwin . Besides
grading papers, Ruprecht teaches art and
music. She also handles special-education
duties .
(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 32 AND 33) Every
day begins with a salute to the flag in this
tiny rural school.
(BELOW, LEFD]im Hazzard's teaching
philosophy is reflected in his willingness
to visit with students outside of class .
(BELOW, RIGHT) Although his school has
just one room, Michael Goodwin finds a
quiet spot to read away from other
students.
(RIGHT) High technology has come to
rural schools, too , allowing fake Cox and
his classmates to become computer
literate .
___________________ ONE-ROOM SCHOOLHOUSE
By noon the children are fidgety, await­ing
the half-hour lunch period that begins
in just 15 minutes. Promptly at 12:15 P.M.,
pupils and teacher take their lunch boxes
or sacks outside. They eat together at a
picnic table .
During the break, Hazzard explains why
he took the job at Eagle Creek after years
as a counselor, teacher, and school admin­istrator.
"I considered this to be a chal­lenge
, to teach nine grades at the same
time," he says as he eats a sandwich on a
T-shirt-warm but windy day. "I also like to
shoot and bow hunt. This year I got a deer
and a javelina with a bow. I can step out
the back door and target practice."
Hazzard is a typical one-room school­house
teacher. His rewards are not based
on quantity. They come from serving a
limited number of people who live far
away from a town but still demand quality
education. The other one-room schools in
Arizona also serve remote rural areas. One
is in Blue, which, like Eagle Creek, is in
Greenlee County . There are two one­roomers
in Pima County, San Fernando
Elementary in Sasabe, close to the Mexican
border, and Zimmerman
full propane tank, and a working generator.
"It's an hour and a half to Morenci when
the roads are passable, " Hazzard says as his
pupils finish their lunches and rush toward
the playground next to the school. ''That's
the reason the school is here. This area is
Accommodation near the
top of Mount Lemmon
north of Tucson. There's
Apache Elementary in
Cochise County, Hack­berry
Elementary and
Yucca Elementary in
Mohave County, and
Crown King Elementary
in Yavapai County.
None, though, is as iso­lated
as Eagle Creek
where comfort is mea­sured
by a good well, a
"I'm trying
to pick up
a load of hogs
and take it
to Norfolk, Virginia.
I have 30 minutes
to do it."
so isolated . We keep a
two-day food supply and
an extra set of clothes for
the kids in a storage room
in case of bad weather.
The creek next to the
school can rise pretty fast,
or there can be quite a bit
of snow."
Because travel time is
lengthy, school is held
only Monday through
Thursday. The day is
lengthened to get in the
required hours. All of the
Arizona Highways 35
classes begin promptly at 8:00 A.M. The
lower grades are dismissed at 2:15 P.M., the
middle grades at 3:15 P.M., and the upper
grades at 4:15 P.M.
pupils to write unedited prose, tell jokes,
and draw pictures. The children write in
longhand, cut out their material , and
paste it onto a blank sheet of paper divid-
After lunch, the children
head back to their books.
Depending on the day,
they are taught art, music,
and drug education or
library skills in the after­noon.
The children in the
upper grades study litera­ture.
Afternoon also is a
good time for the chil­dren
to work on the
Eagle Creek Review, the
weekly newspaper that
Hazzard helped them
start during his first year
at the school. The paper,
which is reproduced on a
copy machine, allows the
36 March 1991
"Get your bat ready.
Open your stance
a little.
Watch the ball.
Good, now run.
Fair ball.
Jacob, let's get
out of the tree and
around the bases."
ed into two columns.
People living along the
creek who get the publi­cation
each week find out
such tidbits as:
SPECIAL REPORT
by Brad
Today Jacob Cannon
saw an Aircraft carrier
floating down Eagle
Creek. But their was
skeletons on it. I don't
know if it is true though.
I am going to ask my
dad if I can ride Buck this
weekend. I want to prac­tice
roping dead limbs.
The reason I want to
practice, is because when we was brand­ing
last weakend I axedentily roped a cow
instead of a calf.
NEWS
by Keith
- Brad Smith
Their is going to be a fair this week in
Safford AZ. There are going to be lots of
rides, games, exibits, and contest.
I might get in the greased pig contest.
And I migt go on some rides but I am
not sure I will.
We are going down to Morenci to get
are pictures taken.
Even though the cattle business fuels
Eagle Creek, not all of the children are
from ranching families. Jake Cox is the son
of Western artist Tim Cox. Jake's mother,
Suzie, is president of the school board.
Three of the other children are in Eagle
Creek because their fathers maintain the
pumping stations that Phelps Dodge Corp.
has in the area.
At 1:30 P.M. everyone breaks for a half­hour
recess. Pupils and teacher head for
the wildflower-dotted softball diamond on
the edge of the creek. The four-seat swing
CLEFT) Jake Cox agrees with his teacher
that recess is a time for Jun.
(BELOW) Teacher 's aide Marlene
Ruprecht, measuring Catherine Smith 's
height, pitches in wherever she's needed.
(BELOW, RIGHT) Studying and playing in
close quarters instills a cooperative spirit
among Eagle Creek students.
___________________ ONE-ROOM SCHOOLHOUSE
set next to it doubles as bleachers. The
children split into two teams. Hazzard is
the umpire and occasionally has to shag
balls that are thrown past the 15-foot-long
chain-link fence that tries to be a backstop.
"Can I spin it sideways?" asks pitcher
Larry Smith.
"Anyway you can, just so you get it
across the plate," Hazzard responds. He
looks at his spectators. "We have a rule. If
they hit it down the creek, they lose their
turn. It's not an out, but they lose their
turn. There's also a liability there. A child
chasing a foul ball down the creek could
get bitten by a snake."
The children never quit yelling.
"Catch it! Catch it!"
"He got it! Three away!"
"I pitch! I pitch! I called it last inning."
"You hit last!"
"No I didn't. I wasn't the last out."
"Run, run, Keith!"
"Stay, Keith, stay!"
Through it all, Hazzard gets in a little
coaching.
"Get your bat ready. Open your stance
a little. Watch the ball. Good, now run. Fair
ball. Jacob, let's get out of the tree and
around the bases."
After the afternoon recess, Hazzard dis­misses
the youngest pupils. Immediately,
Catherine Smith takes off her shoes and
socks in the coatroom and walks back into
the classroom. "I always take my shoes off
after school," she exclaims, wiggling her
toes.
Meanwhile, Hazzard calls three boys to
his desk to prepare for a social studies test.
"Tell us about the Industrial Revolution,"
he says to Bobby Goodwin, who begins
reading. Hazzard stops him occasionally to
correct mispronounced words. Then he
turns to another pupil.
"Read to us, Jake, about some of the
important inventions at this time."
He interrupts his pupil to ask, "What is
a vacuum tube for in a television?"
"It's what we clean our 1Vs with," Jake
responds.
The other children laugh.
Hazzard smiles. He explains what a vac­uum
tube is and tells the children that it
has been replaced by transistors and com­puter
chips.
Shortly after 4:00 P.M., mothers begin
arriving to pick up their children. "This
teacher is fantastic," says Robin Cannon,
whose two sons attend Eagl.e school. "He
has to be super-organized because he has
so many grades. The children do better
here because he gives them a lot of one­on-
one, and the younger children pick up
things from the older ones. This is a good
set-up for children. Clothes are not a status
symbol here. All ages play together. My
husband went to a one-room schoolhouse,
and he wanted that for his children. He's
a cowboy who has lived on ranches all of
his life."
Even after the children have left for the
day, Hazzard still has hours of work to do.
Like any public schoolteacher in Arizona,
he must fill out state education reports and
keep precise records. His school receives
state funding based on the same formulas
as big-city schools, and must follow the
same educational guidelines. It would be
a mistake to think the three Rs here mean
ridin', ropin', and rattlesnake skinnin'.
By 8:00 P.M., Hazzard, a bachelor, can
relax in the double-wide trailer turned
teacherage, which is steps from the school­house
and comes with the job. "My posi­tion
is enjoyable," he says, sipping a cup of
coffee and trying to get decent reception
on his generator-driven television set. "But
it does get lonely. Still, there are advan­tages.
There is no traffic or crime here. No
vandalism. No thievery. No graffiti. It's
beautiful here. You just need to be some­what
of a mechanic and willing to put in
a lot of hours. And you really have to love
teaching."
So ends another day at Eagle Creek. By
the time Hazzard retires for the night, he'll
have less time to sleep than he spends in
the classroom each day. He'll be up before
dawn, set for his daily keep-in-shape jog
along the banks of the creek. He's uncer­tain
if there will be enough children to
keep the school open in the coming years.
One thing is certain, however: as long as
Hazzard is at Eagle Creek Elementary, the
schoolhouse will be clean and ready to be­gin
another day promptly at 8:00 A.M. n
Bruce D. Itule is a native Arizonan who teaches
journalism at a very large school, Arizona State
University. He contributed "Wonders of the
Superstitions" to the February 1991 issue of Arizona
Highways.
Photographer Don B. Stevenson is a 19-year
resident of Tempe, but his roots remain deep in
rural Iowa where he attended kindergarten through
the twelfth grade at a small two-story school.
Arizona Highways 37
:'(;,,,
.•· :(. ~} 1-
'" ";,.-i;'
,....
~~~;~r.4i'~~~~~~ ;
BLUE RIVER COUNTRY ______________________ ____._
polite outlaws, as it happened, and would
inquire of Harold's brand, take careful
note, and never rustle his stock. Harold,
now 80 years old and a Blue Riverman
since age five, thinks the world has gone
to Hell since those sterling days. The peo­ple
of the Blue River have never been big
on change: as early as 1870, Arizona pio­neer
Sylvester Mowry was complaining
about the name change from the Spanish
Rio Azul to the English Blue River, and his
resistance to newfangled things set the
tone for the place. The small river heads
up near Alpine and sputters down the
eastern border of Arizona until it flows into
the San Francisco , which courses by Clifton
and Morenci, then finds the Gila, and
snakes across the state to the Colorado. Or
so the maps say.
The Blue always has been populated by
people trying to leave the maps. The ham­let
sits at around 6,000 feet, below the tow­ering
Douglas fir-clad peaks of the two­million-
acre Apache Sitgreaves National
Forest, and it always has attracted folks
bent on escaping the notice of the world.
Postmaster Leola Parks and her husband
John, for example, are refugees from
Phoenix. Some think Coronado wandered
through here looking for those seven cities
(BELOW) Seep-spring monkey flower bathes in the mist of cascading waterfalls along KP
Creek in the Blue Range Primitive Area. The best weather here for hikers and
backpackers usually is in April to early July and September to late October.
(OPPOSITE PAGE) Forest Service trails lead hikers to spots of incredible beauty in the Blue
Range forests. Here, New Mexican locust blooms in a stand of quaking aspens.
40 March 1991
of gold, but, when whites arrived in the
1880s, the valley was empty. Apparently,
Native Americans used it as a travel corri­dor
more than as a home.
The settlers were of three basic streams:
Mormons flowing down from the settle­ments
of the Little Colorado to the north,
Texans drifting west with cows from the
Staked Plains and Panhandle, and outlaws
coming from Hell , itself, and descending
on the Blue because it ran right against the
Arizona/ New Mexico border and offered
the possibility of bouncing back and forth
between two jurisdictions. What all three
found were a huge coniferous forest, deer,
elk, black bear, wild turkeys , mountain
lions, and the last stronghold of the grizzly
bear in the American Southwest.
The Blue has been more a state of mind
than a fixed point one can stab a finger at
on the map. People say Blue River, or Blue
River country as if the phrase contained all
that can be said. Last night we camped
above the river in groves of aspen and fir.
Deer cluttered the high meadows and cow
elk drifted through the grass at dusk.
The Forest Service posts warnings about
black bears at every trailhead - don't hike
at night, make lots of jolly noise when you
are walking around, and so forth. Of
course, most people never get to see a
bear. In 30 years of stomping around
Arizona, I've caught a glimpse of just one
of the secretive beasts. When I asked the
seasonal Forest Service workers , who
spend every day in the woods hacking out
trails or fighting fires , about the bears, they
all pined to see just one. When we broke
camp at first light and headed down the
trail of KP Cienega, what we did see were
two bull elk standing like statues in a sea
of ferns . A wild turkey nibbled at some­thing,
and trees stood around that were
about the size of a long elevator ride. The
New Mexican locust was in bloom with
lilac-like spikes of flowers, and the holes
along the creek sheltered cunning native
Apache trout. Penstemons fired up red
columns of blossoms, and Indian paint­brush
was about to burst forth . Wild straw­berries
carpeted the ground.
I lay under a big fir at the junction of KP
and its North Fork and listened to water
tumble down a 10-foot fall. I began to
understand what Blue River country
means. It is not a hard-edged concrete
thing but more like a bundle of different
colored yarns , and if you grab one strand
it twines into another that in turn leads to
another. All this was driven home to me
the next day when I watched Harold and
Hessie and Leola sorting mail down at the
hamlet of Blue.
Sitting on the porch with them by the
pots of petunias was Katherine Lee, widow
of Clell Lee, who, along with his brother
WHEN You Go
Getting there: There are several ways
to get to Blue River. From Phoenix
take State Route 87 to State 260 at
Payson to U .S. 60 at Show Low.
Continue on to Springerville. From I-40
take the U.S . 666 exit at Sanders,
Arizona, proceed 82 miles to Spring­erville
where you hook up with the
section of U.S. 666 called the
Coronado Trail, which takes you to
Alpine. Stock up on supplies at Spring­erville,
the last big town with a num­ber
of stores. At Alpine take U.S. 180
to Forest Service road 281 (graded
gravel with bridges), and for the next
30-odd miles you'll follow the Blue. At
the intersection of Forest Service road
567, you 'll hit Blue Crossing with a
campground. The Blue post office is
10 miles or so farther on.
There are no restaurants, stores, or
accommodations on the Blue.
What to see and do: The valley is dot­ted
with small ranch es, so help is
always nearby. If you exit by Forest
42 March 1991
Service road 567, you'll climb up to the
peaks along 666. Head south along that
road about 10 miles, and you 'll come to
Hannagan Meadow whe re deer and elk
graze.
Where to stay: The Hannagan Meadow
Lodge, more than 60 years old, has a
restaurant, store, cabins, and rooms ($50 to
$65). Telephone (602) 339-4370 or write
Hannagan Meadow Lodge, P.O. Box 335,
Alpine, AZ 85920 for reservations. There
are also accommodations in Alpine. In
Alpine stop at the Forest Service head­quarters
for a map detailing the many
fine roads into the forest and the 24
area lakes, 400 miles of streams, and
the numerous camping spots.
The trick to exploring the Blue is to
look for nothing in particular - it is all
around you. If you like to fish, be sure
and bring gear - the trout are biting.
In the winter, Hannagan Meadow is a
hotbed of cross-country skiing and
snowmobiling.
In the summer, figure 85° F. as the
absolute high with lows in the forties.
If you plan to go south, consider U.S.
666, one of the most beautiful and
lonely roads in the West. Along the 69
miles to Clifton/Morenci there are no
facilities, lots of
h airpins , and
breathtaking
views. When the
snows come,
U .S. 666 south
of Hannagan
is a ll owed to
drift shu t until
spring.
SPRINGERVIUE
ALPINE --.....\
HANNAGAN '\
PHOENIX* MEAOOW '-/••
BLUE
_______________________ BLUE RIVER COUNTRY
Dale, were the most famous lion and bear
hunters in the American Southwest.
Katherine arrived here in the mid-'30s, set­tled,
married three times, and kept to her
ranch . "I go with the ranch," she says . But
before the Lees ever followed a baying
hound, the Blue was home to yet another
hunter, Ben Lilly, the man considered by
some to be the greatest killer of lions and
grizzlies who ever lived. Harold knew Ben
Lilly - "a fme gentleman." Lilly was a little
peculiar. He never rode a horse; he ran on
foot with his dogs, and it was said that
mounted men could not keep up with
him. He never hunted on Sunday, and if
he treed a lion say at dusk Saturday, he'd
sit under that tree until Monday morning
and then shoot it.
Which leads us back to KP Cienega and
me laying under a Douglas fir listening to
water tumble down the falls . On April 3,
1913, Ben Lilly, then 58, struck fresh grizzly
tracks on Foote Creek at the western edge
of the Blue 's drainage. By his own
account, he caught up with the bear near
Paradise Park and Grant Creek and fired
three times, hitting the animal in the hip as
he ran. Lilly and his hounds roared up KP,
right where I was resting, and then raced
two miles uphill onto Hannagan Meadow.
Lilly was tired and very hungry; he had not
eaten in three days. (When he did eat he
tended toward parched corn.) On the
fourth day, he tumbled down into Fish
Creek and drove the big bear to its den. As
Lilly went up to the mouth of the den
through five feet of snow, the bear came
out to greet him, and Lilly put five rounds
from his Winchester .33 into the animal.
Then he reloaded. Still very much alive,
the grizzly crashed downhill through the
brush, and Lilly kept pouring lead into it,
but the bear did not stop. And then it
closed. The man stepped behind a small
pine, the bear came around, the rifle fired
once more into the animal's jaw, but still
the beast, though injured badly, stayed on
its feet. Just then one of the dogs grabbed
the bear's hind leg. The grizzly paused,
and its big jaws snapped shut on the
hound . Lilly , who valued his dogs, got
kind of mad. He dropped his rifle , which
had not been a lot of help up to this point,
and pulled out an 18-inch knife from the
scabbard on his back. The bear noticed
this shift in weaponry, dropped the dog,
and took a swing at Lilly, but missed. Lilly
plunged the blade into the bear's chest up
to the hilt. And then man and beast went
tumbling down the s lope in an embrace.
Lilly hugged the bear so as to avoid its
claws, and he kept twisting that blade hop­ing
he'd find some vital spot. Finally, they
came to rest, the bear made one last weak
effort at murdering its companion, then
quit and died.
(ABOVE) Postmaster Leola Parks (standing) and mail carrier Hessie Whitmer relax on
the porch of the Blue post office.
(FOil.OWING PAGE) A mule deer briefly abandons the safety of a spruce-fir forest in the
high country around Hannagan Meadow. Hikers also might see such endangered
birds as the American peregrine falcon, the spotted owl, the southern bald eagle, and
the olive warbler.
Lilly then hiked 25 miles to get his pack
horses. A government hunter, he recorded
the kill. "I took careful measurements of
this bear," he noted. "He measured 9 feet
from nose to tail, 96 inches around the
chest, stood 5 feet 8 inches at the shoulder,
and his hind foot was 12 inches long and
7 inches wide. His claws were 5 inches
long and, at the base, were thicker than a
man's fmger. The skull was 18 inches long.
He was the largest bear and made the
largest tracks of any I know of having
been killed in the Rocky Mountains ."
As Lilly later explained the incident to a
friend: "That bear sure had his hump up,
but when he caught my best hound, I got
my hump up, too, but now everything is
mighty fine!"
And that is the Blue. The grizzly is gone,
of course , the last one slaughtered in the
'30s about the time Ben Lilly died in an old
folks home near Silver City, New Mexico.
There's talk from time to tim e of bringing
them back - one of those rare ideas that
terrifies both ranchers and backpackers. In
fact, grizzlies, setting aside their occasion­ally
testy personality, base 90 percent of
their diet on plants and would hardly
cause much trouble to the cattle industry.
But the idea of having them around does
raise the hair on the back of our necks.
Haro ld once spooked a grizzly up close,
and he recalls that he "sure was scared."
At the Blue post office, the mail is about
all sorted now, and Harold, sitting on the
porch with his brass-headed cane, is fired
up to go home. Leola Parks' husband John
comes by. He was a friend and fellow
hunter with Clell Lee, Ben Lilly's successor,
after a fashion . He leads me into his house,
which is filled with bear rugs and stuffed
mountain lions. He tells me that he once
spent 18 months here without going into
town. I don't ask why because the answer
is as obvious as a bull elk standing by a
stream at first light with a swirl of ferns
washing against its legs.
Katherine Lee, Clell 's widow, presses a
book on me: Down on the Blue, 1878-
1986 The text is a wonderful hodgepodge
of local people recalling and inventing their
past. An earlier settler remembers how the
Forest Service came in and ruined every­thing
with its rules and regulations. An old
man remembers his school days: how the
teacher whipped an unruly student, and
then the next time the teacher rode down
the Blue, the whipped boy s hot the teacher
Arizona Highways 43
______________ BLUE RIVER COUNTRY
dead. Clell Lee recalls the big flood ; ranch
ladies remember with pleasure beny-pick­ing
season. Harold's in there, too , explain­ing
how he almost lost a horse and the
mail to a flood. The Blue rides easily in the
book, a place without definition, a place
that is a kind of consciousness. It was the
Blue River country that prompted the great
conservationist Aldo Leopold to note in his
book, A Sand County Almanac, "It must be
a poor life that achieves freedom from
fear." It was also Leopold who noted the
extermination of the grizzly from Escudilla,
one of the neighboring mountains: "When
you see it, you no longer think of bear. It's
only a mountain now."
Today, Blue River fills one with quiet sat­isfaction
and vague unease. It is the place
to get away from what we are and hear the
whispers of what we were. The elk fill the
meadows, and at night the coyotes howl. A
big black bear track fills the path,
columbine blooms by the trail, and some of
the trees are older than our nation. Ben
Lilly's dead, and maybe the grizzly will
return to teach us we are not and never
can be the lords of these mountains . If you
go there , don 't look for some exact point.
It will be all around you, floating in the air.
As Katherine Lee once wrote, "This country
gives one such a sense of freedom and
being a part of nature. "
I remember walking down KP Creek
and coming upon a bull elk. It lifted its
head and just stared at me for a moment
as if I were out of place. I know the bull
was right, but I figured if I worked on the
matter, maybe I could belong, too. Then
the elk moved slowly up the slope and
disappeared into the forest. n
Additional Reading: Among the good
books about the area is Down on the
Blue, 1878-1986, $30.00, from Blue River
Cowbelles, Box 84, Blue , AZ , 85922, or at
the Blue post office.
Travel Guides: For those who want specific
guidebooks to places in Arizona, Arizona
Highways has published a series intended
to meet most traveler's needs. They include
Travel Arizona, a compendium of one- to
three-day tours throughout the state, A
Guide to Fishing and Hunting; A Guide to
Camping; A Guide to Hiking and
Backpacking, and The Back Roads. For
more information or to order, write Arizona
Highways, 2039 W. Lewis Ave ., Phoenix, AZ
85009 , or telephone toll-free 1 (800) 543-
5432. In the Phoenix area, call 258-1000.
Tucson author Charles Bowden has written three
books about Arizona, Frog Mountain Blues, Blue
Desert, and Red Line.
jack Dykinga is a Pulitzer Prize-winning
photographer who no w specializes in landscape
and environmental subjects.
Travel with the Friends of Arizona Highways
The Friends of Arizona Highways, the
magazine 's volunteer auxiliary, conducts
tours to exotic Arizona locations. Here is a
partial schedule of those trips :
Photo Tours
Top Arizona Highways photo contribu­tors
lead three- to five-day field workshops
for advanced amateur photographers.
Tours include :
March 8-10: Visit the cacti and desert wild­flowers
of Organ Pipe Cactus National
Monument with Jerry Sieve and Arizona
Highways Picture Editor Peter Ensenberger.
April 17-19: In the fabled Superstition
Mountains, star-stalker Frank Zullo demon­strates
techniques for photographing the
glittering nighttime skyscapes.
May 2-5: Share the expertise of photojour­nalist
Christine Keith on an 11-mile trek
through Aravaipa Canyon Wilderness, a
rare and beautiful desert riparian area.
July 25-28: The unique scenery of the Pet­rified
Forest National Park and the Painted
Desert is the backdrop for a photographic
seminar with Dale Schicketanz.
For complete information and reserva­tions,
telephone the Friends of Arizona
Highways Travel Desk (602) 271-5904.
Scenic Tours
Two- and three-day tours, held in con­junction
with the Arizona Automobile
Association, are scheduled regularly to the
Grand Canyon and Lake Powell. For addi­tional
information or to make reservations,
telephone the AAA at (602) 274-5805 in
Phoenix or 1 (800) 352-5382 statewide.
For information about longer scenic
tours, call the Friends ' Travel Desk at (602)
271-5904 . One such tour highlight will be:
May 6-10: Senior Arizona Highways
author and photographer Ray Manley will
escort a four-day exploration of northern
Arizona's fascinating Indian country, with
overnight st ays at historic Gouldings
Trading Post and Lodge in Monument
Valley and at Thunderbird Lodge in
Canyon de Chelly.
Shutterbug Safaris
For the casual s naps hooter, South­western
photographers lead o ne-day
excursions from Phoenix or Tucson to des­tinations
within a 125-mile radiu s of each
metropolitan area. Safari members aim
their cameras at such locations as the
Apache Trail, San Xavier Mission , and the
Catalina Mountains. For complete informa­tion
, telephone (602) 271-5904.
Travel with the Friends of Arizona Highways
Arizona Highway s 45
____ MILEPOSTS __ _
EDITED BY }ILL ELLEN WELCH
A BIG-BIRD BASH
C handler's annual
Ostrich Festival -
featuring daily races by
the big birds, a carnival,
and other activities -
will be held March 15-
17. This colorful
celebration
commemorates the
period from 1888 to
1916, when Chandler led
the nation in (yes!)
ostrich plume
production. The
expensive feathers
bedecked many a stylish
hat. In 1913, 80 percent
of the nation's 8,000
ostriches lived in
Maricopa County.
Chandler's founder, Dr.
A. ]. Chandler, raised the
exotic eight-foot-tall
birds on alfalfa fields
where the Sheraton San
Marcos Golf and Country
Club stands today. For
information, telephone
(602) 963-4571. •
How THE BABBITTS BECAME INDIAN TRADERS
Sa m Dittenhoffer, Indian
trader at Red Lake
northeast of Tuba City in
1891, looked forward to his
semiannual buying trips to
Flagstaff. There he could lift a
glass with friends, mingle for
a day or two with Anglos,
and perhaps enjoy some
feminine companionship.
One evening, after buying
several thousand dollars
worth of merchandise on
credit at Babbitt Brothers
Trading Company, he went
out on the town and got
gloriously inebriated. Before
the dawn of a new day,
Dittenhoffer found himself
embracing a female
companion, equally soused,
who had agreed to
accompany him back to his
lonely post in Navajo country.
Across the high desert in
his spring wagon they
traveled, stopping
occasionally to secure the
46 March 1991
clanking cargo of trade
goods. They had hardly
reached Red Lake when the
lady's irate boyfriend, one
Tom Collins, galloped up
brandishing a six-shooter.
After some heated name­calling
and an exchange of
blows, Collins fired a bullet
through Dittenhoffer's heart
and carried the woman back
to Flagstaff.
Dave and Charlie Babbitt,
who with their three brothers
were involved in various
businesses and looking for
more, decided to take over
the Red Lake post in
settlement of Dittenhoffer's
debt. Within a decade,
Babbitt trading posts had
blossomed across the Navajo
reservation. They're still
thriving. •
Excerpted from Brothers Five: The
Babbitts of Arizona, by Dean Smith,
published by the Arizona Historical
Foundation, 1989
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EASE THE SQUEEZE
Looking for ways to reduce
gasoline costs in these
days of rising prices? The
Arizona Energy Office has a
four-page guide, Arizona
Energy Facts, Ease the
Squeeze: Energy-Saving Ideas
for Arizona Drivers, filled
with tips to help drivers save
fuel and money. To obtain a
free copy, write the Arizona
Energy Office, 3800 N. Central
Ave., Ste. 1200, Phoenix, AZ.
85012; or telephone (602)
280-1402, or toll-free in
Arizona, 1 (800) 352-5499. •
How OuR GARDEN GRows
Visitors to the Phoenix
area often are surprised
by its variety of flora and
fauna, but a turn around the
Desert Botanical Garden is a
real eye-opener. The garden,
at 1201 N. Galvin Parkway in
Papago Park, is a showcase
of the thousands of varieties
of cacti, succulents,
wildflowers, trees, and
shrubs that thrive here. Many
species of birds also can be
seen at the garden year­round
or when they arrive
on their seasonal migrations.
For those who have a little
more time to spend, the
garden offers an ongoing
schedule of workshops,
seminars, and special events.
For information, call (602)
941-1225 .•
NAVAJO HERBAL GUIDE
A handsome guide to
northern Arizona flora,
full of precise line drawings
and detailed descriptions, has
been published by the Navajo
Community College Press.
Nanise': A Navajo Herbal, by
Vernon 0. Mayes and Barbara
Bayless Lacy, describes 100
plants from the Navajo
reservation and gives each
plant's medicinal, household,
and ceremonial uses. The
handsomely rendered and
accurate drawings are by Jack
Ahasteen and Jason Chee; the
book also includes a section
of color plates. As a
discussion of Navajo herbal
practices, this book is
fascinating; as an illustrated
description of Southwestern
plants, it's a valuable
reference. The book is
available for $27.00 through
Navajo Community College
Press, Tsaile, AZ 86556;
telephone (602) 724-3311. •
GRAND CANYON BOOK FOR YOUNGSTERS
L ynne Foster and illustrator
Margaret Sanfilippo have
published an excellent book
EXPLORING THE GRAND CANYON:
Adventures of Yesterday and Today
Lynne Foster
for preteens, Exploring the
Grand Canyon. It's a guide to
the geology, history,
prehistory, wildlife, and
plants of that fascinating
region, and it contains in-the­car
activities, a bibliography,
and an index. Available
through the Grand Canyon
Natural History Association
for $14.95, plus $3.00 for
postage and handling. Write
Box 399, Grand Canyon, AZ
86023; telephone (602) 638-
2481..
A COWBOY'S FIRST MOVIE
C owboys were not
generally known for
cultural pursuits, and
seldom did they grasp the
wonders of new
technology. But they did
have a lot of savvy on
practical matters. On the
rare occasions when they
came to town, their primary
interests were to have a bath,
purchase some new duds,
then head for the local saloon
to get fortified. Occasionally,
one might add a little culture
to his visit. Such was the case
around the tum of the century
when a cowhand came into
Flagstaff and decided to go
see one of those newfangled
motion pictures at the
Babbitt's Opera Hall.
On this particular evening, a
feature was playing that
showed a group of shapely
young ladies preparing to
disrobe and jump into a
swimming hole. Just about the
time they got down to the
bare essentials, a freight train
came roaring by and obscured
the view. By the time the train
passed, the ladies had
ARIZONA'S MANY DESERTS
A rizona is the only state
that has portions of all
four major American
deserts within its
boundaries. The Chihuahan
Desert is your host while
traveling in the Bisbee and
Douglas area. The Sonoran
Desert extends from
Phoenix and Tucson
westward to Parker and
Yuma and south into
Mexico. The Mojave Desert
is a cradle for the Colorado
River from above Lake
Havasu to Lake Mead,
while the Virgin Mountains
display representative flora
of the Great Basin Desert.
And, lest we forget, there's
another unofficial desert: the
Painted Desert, which
envelopes the Four Corners
area. •
undressed and were submerged
up to their pretty necks.
The cowboy quickly sized
up the situation and headed
for the ticket office where he
asked to purchase tickets for
the next six performances.
"What on earth do you want
with six more tickets?" the
cashier asked. "They will all
be for the same movie."
"Now ma'am," he replied
matter-of-factly, "I don't know
anything about these new
motion pictures. But I do
know something about
freight trains. Sooner or later
one of 'em's gonna be late,
and I aim to be there when it
happens. " •
A BLOOMING REMINDER
V elma and Ralph
Bodensteiner, two of our
subscribers in Webster, New
York, were thrilled to report
that their prickly pear cactus
had opened its first bloom -
in upstate New York - in
March - in their living room!
Say the Bodensteiners, "We've
seen the Canyon during a
A NEW PLAY BY SIMON GRAY
T he Arizona Theatre
Company has obtained
the rights to produce the
world premiere of Tbe Holy
Terror by playwright Simon
Gray. Says Robert Alpaugh,
managing director of ATC,
"This is truly an honor as well
as a stroke of luck for us. Our
audiences will have the
unique opportunity of being
present for the birth of a new
SHORTCUTS
On March 1, 1933, the
National Park Service
established Saguaro National
Monument near Tucson.
Happy Birthday! .... Catch the
33rd Annual Guild Indian Fair
and Market at The Heard
Museum in Phoenix on March
2-3, and enjoy the best of
Native American artwork,
dancing, and food. Telephone
(602) 252-8840 .... This year's
Iceberg U.S.A. Forumula One
Grand Prix, set for March 8-
10 in downtown Phoenix,
will feature a new route and a
host of new activities; for
information and tickets, call
blizzard, the Sonoran Desert
in bloom, Apache Trail with
all its delightful terrors, and
more. This simple bloom
helps to bring it all back:
Lake Powell, Monument
Valley, Canyon de Chelly, the
Painted Desert. Its all here,
wrapped up in one simple
bloom in our living room." •
play. We look forward to
having Mr. Gray in
residence." Gray, whose
previous works include Tbe
Common Pursuit, will direct
the production, which opens
at the Herberger Theater in
Phoenix on March 8. For
more information, telephone
(602) 252-8497 in Phoenix or,
for tickets only, call (602)
622-2823 in Tucson. •
(602) 253-RACE or, outside
Arizona, 1-800-GRAND PRIX ....
Join the celebration at the 14th
Annual Old Town Tempe
Spring Festival of the Arts,
one of the largest arts and
entertainment festivals in the
Southwest, on March 22-24
along Mill Avenue in Tempe.
Telephone (602) 967-4877 ....
From March 23 through May
ffi 12, the Phoenix Art Museum
~ exhibits the work of Keith
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~ noteworthy combination.
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0.. And for the lapidary-minded,
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the Mingus Gem and Mineral
Club sponsors the Verde Valley
Gem and Mineral Show at
Mingus Mountain High School
in Cottonwood on March 30-
31. Telephone (6o2) 646-6843. •
Contributors: David L. Eppele,
Budge Ruffner, Jim Schreier, and
Marshall Trimble. Cartoon by jack
Graham.
Arizona Highways 47
___ HIKE OF THE MONTH __ _
WILD HORSE CANYON IN THE RINCON MOUNTAINS W, TEXT BY TOM DOLLAR I PHOTOGRAPHS BY )ACK DYKINGA
ild Horse Canyon is a EAST SPEEDWAY BL VO . SIGN-IN~ A TI ON
great breakfast hike . The ,,----------::1,ri_l' ••• '[} .
canyon descends the northwest r
flank of the Rincon Mountains DOUGLAS SPRING
c::i TRAILHEAD
about 2.5 miles from the trail- o:::
head, just enough distance to ~
make for a brisk appetite-build- ~
ing walk. You meet your u..;
RIN CON ~
MOUNTAIN S 'e'
friends at dawn on a crisp
spring morning at the Douglas
Spring Trailhead where East
Speedway in Tucson deadends .
In your day pack, you carry a
small backpacker stove, freshly
ground coffee, yogurt, fruit,
maybe a couple of blueberry
muffins. You 're hungry already
LITTLE WILD
(HORSE TANK
and itching to go. The sooner
you move out, the sooner you'll
be sitting beside the small pool
at trail's end, the blue flame of
your stove shining brightly, the
aroma of coffee hanging sweet­ly
in the morning air.
Walk east about a quarter­mile
on the Douglas Spring
Trail to the sign-in station. A
few paces beyond it, a small
sign directs horseback riders
up the Douglas Spring Trail.
Another trail that comes in
from the south is your route.
Since a web of trails traverses
this area, you'll need a map.
Even with a map, though, you
have to be alert not to miss a
turn .
Located in the Rincon Unit
of the Saguaro National Monu­ment,
Wild Horse Canyon is
low-elevation desert hiking at
its finest. On the way in, we
saw Cooper's paper flower,
(ABOVE) Trailside scenery encompasses a variety of plants,
including this agave, or century plant, spiking upward from a
clump of ferns. Contrary to the popular belief that it blooms only
once every 100 years, the agave may produce its spectacular
flowers every 10 or 20 years - or never.
(OPPOSITE PAGE) At the base of the Rincon Mountains, hikers come
upon this water-sculpted pool called Little Wild Horse Tank.
48 March 1991
yellow head, desert dandelion,
verbena, Mojave aster, sticky
grass, ocotillo, brittle bush, and
cholla in bloom. A few giant
saguaros were coming into first
blossom, and we heard the
familiar cooing of a solitary
white-winged dove - the first
of the season, and a sure sign
that spring had arrived in the
desert.
The trail wends steadily
south, crossing a series of
small drainages before passing
through a gate in a fence and
descending to Wild Horse
Canyon. After coming through
the gate, look sharp to your
right. About 25 yards down the
path, you'll see a rare cristate
saguaro, a fine specimen. A
few more yards along and you
come to the stream. From here
it's just a short boulder hop up
to the pools, shown on the
map as Little Wild Horse Tank.
If you prefer trail walking,
cross the stream and take the
path up to the pools.
No water ran in the stream,
and it was very low in the
pools the morning some friends
and I hiked to the canyon early
last May . But we could see
where water coursing down­stream
after a spring thaw or a
summer thunderstorm had
smoothed the shoulders of
rocks the size of boxcars, or
had grooved channels in the
bedrock, cupping out little
pools where it had dropped
over falls and swirled before
rushing downstream. Running
water is a rare event in the
desert, a treat when it comes.
Then pools brim to overllowing
and long grasses and cattails
surge into photosynthetic high
gear to become a lively green.
Water means insects and
insects mean birds. Gnats and
lacewings swarmed above the
pools as we sipped our first
cups of coffee . Even a bum­bling
Arizona mosquito buzzed
into our midst. The rising sun
was just beginning to light the
canyon walls . On the quiet sur­face
of the pool we caught the
sepia-chrome reflection of an
ash-throated flycatcher as it sal­lied
forth from its perch on a
mesquite tree above the rim to
snatch breakfast on the wing .
My companions and I
smiled at each other and
promised to do this again
some fine morning. n
Hiking Guide: For a detailed
guide to hiking in Arizona , we
recommend Outdoors in
Arizona: A Guide to Hiking
and Backpacking, a collection
of 48 great hikes through
desert, mountain, and canyon
environments, including easy­to-
get-to trails in urban areas.
To order, call toll-free 1 (800)
543-5432 . In the Phoenix area,
telephone 258-1000.
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