Arizona Highways, June 1988

              CONTENTS
The Superconducting
Super Collider
by Tom Dollar
page4
Artist Hal Empie at 79
by Kay Mayer
page 10
The Old West
Photography of
Dane Coolidge
by Evelyn S. Cooper
page 16
The Little Colorado River
by Sam Lowe
page 22
Arizona's Shrine of
St.Joseph
by Alan Weisman
page 32
Architectural Treasures
of the Grand Canyon
by Maggie Wilson
page 38
DEPARTMENTS
EDITOR'S PAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
LETTERS .................. 3
ARIZONIQUES . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
BOOKSHELF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
ARIZON~
HIGHWAYS
JUNE 1988 Vol. 64, No. 6
On a saguaro-studded desert plain-if their
proposal is accepted-Arizona's leaders hope
to construct a vast elliptical laboratory of
particle physics that may shed light on how the
universe began .
Part of proposed site of the Super Co llider. FRED GRIFFIN~
No longer dividing his hours between painting
and pharmacy, a distinguished native son takes
all the time he wants to interpret the spirit of
Arizona through vivid works of art.
This distant cousin of Cal Coolidge was a
successful novelist. Ironically, however, his
legacy resides less in his books than in his
vintage photographs of the early West.
The capricious, part-time stream starts its
journey high in the White Mountains, cuts a
colorful course across the high plateau, and
finally joins "the big Colorado" within the
Grand Canyon.
Boating on the Little Colorado. GARY !ADD ~
In the little mountain town ofYarnell, where
tumbled boulders brood near the edge of a
dramatic escarpment, a wooded retreat
encourages quiet contemplation by residents
and travelers alike.
Upstaged by their surroundings, some
remarkable structures exist on both north and
south rims and in the depths of the Grand
Canyon. Their story is an important part of the
lore of the famous national park.
Grand Canyon Lodge, North Rim. RICHARD MAACK ~
(FRONT COVER) Idyllic scene near the headwaters of the Little Colorado River in
the Mount Baldy Wilderness of eastern Arizona. For more about this historic
watercourse, see page 22. WIUARD ClAY
(OPPOSITE PAGE) The soft shades of twilight suffuse the ancient rocks of the
gorge of the Little Colorado River west of Cameron.JEFF GNASS
Arizona Highways 1
2 June 1988
EDITOR'S
p A G E
E VERY so OITEN one of our readers
raises a question about the fidelity
of a photographic reproduction in
Arizona Highways. If the individual has
never lived in or visited our state, he or
she may find the startling colors of a
Southwestern sunset suspect, or the blue
of an Arizona sky quite unbelievable. Or,
knowing that commercial photographs
and studio portraits are often retouched,
one may wonder if we have resorted to
air-brush techniques to amend an image.
I can state our policy quite simply. We
do not believe in altering photographs or
enhancing their color tones. Our photog­raphers
go to great pains to record a
scene or activity authentically. In turn, the
editorial and production staff, the techni­cians
who prepare our color separations,
and our printers all focus their efforts on
reproducing the original transparency as
exactly as their skills and the state of the
art will permit.
Recently a subscriber wrote, "I have
been disturbed by what I call an excessive
use of an air brush on photographs that
contain water." He will be relieved to
know that we do not even possess an air
brush. The blurred or sweeping appear­ance
of water in certain images- what he
interprets as air-brush alteration-results
from the movement of the water and the
length of the exposure of the film.
Air brushes and color "hyping" aside,
modern computer technology has made
it possible to alter photography in quite
remarkable ways. At Arizona Highways
we have accepted such a technological
assist only twice in my memory: once to
extend a fence railing a few inches to solve
a cropping problem, and once to lighten
a slightly underexposed photograph that
captured exactly the moment and compo­sition
we wanted. Beyond such rare
technical refinements, we anticipate no
other use of the new technology.
As journalists, we want Arizona High­ways
to be a reliable publication of record,
equally accurate in text and pictures.
- Merrill Windsor
These images accurately reproduce the
original transparencies. ( LEFT, ABOVE)
A Sonoran Desert sunset. AlAN MANLEY
(LEFT) Spring runoff in the Mount Baldy
Wilderness. DALE SCHICKETANZ
BREATHTAKING
I visited Arizona for the first time last
year and it was literally breathtaking­so
much splendor and beauty. I was
afraid to breathe deeply lest it all
disappear. Since that visit, a friend in
Arizona gave me a gift subscription to
your wonderful magazine and I look
forward to each beautiful issue. You
can be sure that I will not allow my
subcription to your premium quality
publication to expire.
Dot O'Briant
Laurinburg, NC
SHARING GOOD FORTIJNE
Last spring we had the good fortune
to have a hummingbird build her nest
on our wind chime. We remembered
your article on hummingbirds, "Dart­ing,
Hovering Jewels of the Air" which
appeared in the November 1987 issue,
and wanted to share our photograph
with your readers.
William and Laura Fields
Prescott, AZ
The hummingbird as music lover.
LETTERS
YOURS SINCERELY
LONG HAUL
thoroughly enjoyed the March
issue, especially the Oatman segment
in "Route 66." In 1936-37 I hauled gold
ore from Searchlight, Nevada, to the
Tom Reed Mine near there, a 200-mile
round-trip and dirt road all the way. I
also hauled to Chloride over Boulder
(Hoover) Dam, which had just opened.
The article brought back many
memories.
Albert Huff
Marysville, CA
CONTINUING EDUCATION
I am 93 years old, so one year is all
I am subscribing to for now. I have
visited Arizona three times. Grand
Canyon and San Xavier Mission are just
beautiful and so are many other points
of historical interest. Arizona is a
wonderful state and Arizona Highways
is the best magazine published. It's
easy to read and educational.
Mary Markstrom
Cedarville, MI
TRUTHFUL BRAGGING
My husband used to brag about
Arizona so much that I just knew no
place could be that great. Then we
went there and I instantly fe ll in love
with it. I'm always thrilled that you
have articles on places yve've been and
was really delighted by the March issue
with Oatman, London Bridge, and
Kingman.
Mrs. Dicia Barnhouse
Churubusco, IN
ARIZON~
HI G HWAYS®
JUNE 1988 VOL. 64, NO. 6
Publisher-Hugh Harelson
Editor-Merrill Windsor
Managing Editor-Richard G. Stahl
Ari Director-Gary Bennett
Picture Editor- Peter Ensenberger
Associate Editor-Robert J. Farrell
Associate Ari Director-Christine Rousso
Senior Contributing Editors-
George Collins, Esther Henderson, Ray Manley,
Josef Muench, Earl Petrott, Clara Lee Tanner
Contributing Editors-
Bill Ahrendt, John Annerino, Joan Baeza, Joe
Beeler, Bob Bradshaw, Duane Bryers, Don
Campbell, Willard Clay, Ed Cooper, Paul Dean,
Don Dedera, Dick Dietrich, Jack Dykinga, Carlos
Elmer, Bernard L. Fontana, Jett Gnass, Barry
Goldwater, Pam Hait, Jerry Jacka, Christine Keith,
Gill Kenny, Peter Kresan, Gary Ladd, Alan Manley,
Herb and Dorothy Mcl aughlin, J. Peter Mortimer,
David Muench, Charles Niehuis, Marguerite
Noble, Willis Peterson, Lawrence Clark Powell,
Allen C. Reed, Budge Ruttner, Jerry Sieve, Joe
Stocker, Jim Tallon, Larry Toschik, Marshall
Trimble, Larry Ulrich, Maggie Wilson
Finance Director-Paul Wenner
Circulation and Marketing Director­Sharon
Vogelsang
Managing Editor, Related Products­Wesley
Holden
Production Director-Diana Pollock
Fulfillment Director-Bethany Braley
Data Processing Manager-Richard Simpson
Promotion Manager- Colleen Hornung
Sales Manager-Norma Luthi
Governor of Arizona-Rose Mottord
Director,
Department ofTransportation­Charles
L. Miller
Arizona Transportation Board
Chairman: Jim Patterson. Chandler;
Members: Arthur C Atonna, Douglas;
Andrew M. Federhar, Tucson; Harold Gietz,
Sattord; Ronald R. Powers, Parker; Verne D.
Seidel, Jr., Flagstaff; Ernest J. Whiting, Mesa
Arizona Highways"' (ISSN 0004-1521) is published monthly by the Arizona Department of
Transportation. Subscription price $15 a year in U.S., $18 elsewhere: single copies $1.75 each. $2
e ~ c h outside U.S. Send subscription correspondence and change of address information to Arizona
Highways. 2039 W. Lewis Ave .. Phoenix, AZ 85009 or telephone (602) 258- 1000 or. toll- free with in
Arizona. 1 (800) 543-5432. Second class postage paid at Phoenix, AZ. Postmaster: Send address
ch.anges to Arizona Highways. 2039 W. Lewis Ave .. Phoenix. AZ 85009. ocopyright 1988 by the
A.r1 ~o na O e pa rt me ~t o ~ Transportation. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is pro­h1b1
ted. The magazine 1s not responsible for unsolicited materials provided for editorial considerat ion.
Arizona Highways 3
Arizona's a finalist in the competition for the
T E X T By T 0 M DOLLAR Superconducting
Super Collider PHOTOGRAPHS BY FRED GRIFFIN
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JIM CHERRY
From a few thousand feet up in a light
airplane or helicopter, it will look like a
small college campus nestled into the
foothills of a low mountain range: a large
administration building, a nearby cluster
of smaller structures, parking lots, a few
service roads, and landscaping that blends
into the surrounding desert terrain. An
alert eye, though, will notice other groups
of modest buildings, spaced every 2.5
miles, moving in line into the distance and
plotting a great arc as they march out of
sight to encircle the adjacent peaks and
rocky ridges.
From your moving eagle's-eye vantage,
(LEIT) The Sonoran Desert southwest of
Phoenix may soon become the designated
site for the Superconducting Super
Collider. When completed, the
underground accelerator will be the
world's largest scientific instrument.
Total cost of the project is estimated
at $4.5 billion to $6 billion.
you discern that the extended arc forms a
giant ellipse, 17 miles long, and that 14
miles across the ring from the "main cam­pus"
stands another group of buildings,
similar in configuration but somewhat
smaller than the main complex. And final­ly
the arc swings around to complete its
long circuit.
What you are observing from aloft are
the surface elements of the largest scien­tific
instrument on earth, the Supercon­ducting
Super Collider (SSC), as it will
appear if built on the Arizona site pro­posed
by the state's leading scientists, poli­ticians,
and civic and business leaders. The
elliptical location rings the southern range
of the Maricopa Mountains, about 35 miles
southwest of Phoenix.
The action will be underground. Some
80 feet beneath the surface will lie a
concrete-lined tunnel, 10 feet in diameter
and extending 53 miles in its elliptical
course. Inside, encased in narrow pipes
wrapped in supercooled magnets, minute
bunches of protons-propelled by the
magnets- will race in opposite directions
at nearly the speed of light. At intervals
along the way, in buildings called collision
halls, the magnets will guide the speeding
beams into head-on smashups of stupen­dous
force, releasing energy measuring 40
trillion electron volts-20 times that
achieved by the Tevatron at the Fermi
National Accelerator laboratory (Fermilab)
in Batavia, Illinois, at present the world's
largest atom smasher.
Although the batches of protons are so
thin that, each time the beams are aimed at
each other, only a relatively few particles
will actually collide, still 100 million colli­sions
will occur every second. Physicists
monitoring the subatomic debris created
by these collisions believe that the Super
Collider will help them understand what
happeried during the biggest high-energy
physics event of all time- the "big bang"
at the moment the universe came into
existence, some 15 billion years ago.
Ever since 1930 when the first particle
accelerator, a cyclotron, was built by Ernest
0 . lawrence at what is now the lawrence
Berkeley laboratory in California, particle
Arizona Highways 5
(ABOVE) Th e SSC plan calls for a 10-joot-diameter,
53-mile-long tunnel following an elliptical course. Inside,
two smaller tubes lined with supercooled magnets propel
protons in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light. Where
the two paths cross at intervals along the tunne~ the collision
of protons will produce subatomic particles that physicists PHOENIX *
will study to learn more about the creation of th e universe. OGENERAL SITE AREA
(OPPOSITE PAGE) A portion 0 f the proposed SSC tunnel will be • TUCSON
constructed under the Maricopa Mountains of south-ce ntral Arizona.
acceleration has been the vanguard of
high -e nergy physics researc h. Thus the
state that wins the competition for the SSC
will become the acknowledged mecca for
particle physics researchers worldwide,
and that state's stock in the scientific and
intellectual community will soar.
"Having the SSC would raise the general
level of scientific activity at our universi ­ties
," says Dr. Peter Carruthers, chairman of
the Arizona SSC Task Force's Technical
Committee. "And inevitably it will pull
along all other fields. High -energy physics
is an elegant field that has always attracted
some of the finest minds in science. And if
you are the best in this field , then the
general perception ofoverall quality goes
up, so that even better people come in
other disciplines as well. The poets will
6 June 1988
profit from a more vigorous university. "
last September, 25 states formally pro­posed
to the United States Department of
Energy 45 different sites for DOE's con­struction
and operation of the SSC. Arizona
submitted proposals for two locations­the
Mari copa County site and another
encircling th e Sierrita Mountains south of
Tu cson. A select committee appointed by
the National Aca demy of Sciences and the
National Academy o fEngineering was com­missioned
by DOE to evaluate the propos­als
and to pare the list to an unranked
group of best-qualified sites. In late De­cember,
the committee chose eight for its
Best Qualified List (BQL). Arizona's Mari ­copa
County site was among them ; the
other seven were in New York, North
Carolina, Te nnessee, Illinois, Michigan,
Colorado, and Texas. New York has since
withdrawn its site from consideration.
The Department of Energy expects to
announce a preferred site in November or
December of this year. If the preferred
choice clears the hurdles of further techni­cal
studies and a final environmental­impact
review , it will be declared the
winner in early 1989. Assuming adequate
funding is provided, construction is sched­duled
to begin later in 1989 , with comple­tion
targeted for 1995.
Merely to be eligible for DOE considera­tion,
proposed sites had to pass basic qual ­ifi
cation screening on things like the pro­posing
state's ability to provide clear title
to the 16,000 acres ofland required for the
SSC; the ability to meet minimum water
and power requirements ; a nd the ability to
__________________________________ Superconducting
Super Collider
build the SSC without damaging the
environment.
The survivors of the " first cut" were next
judged by a rigorous set of technical crite­ria.
Arizona and the other BQL sites passed
this second screening. Th e selection of the
preferred site will largely depend on a
number of technical factors and on the
site's compliance with the National En­vironmental
Policy Act as evidenced by a
thoroughgoing impact study.
Arizona's chances appear to be excel­lent.
In certain technical categories, name­ly
geology, geotechnical engineering, and
a re cord of achievement on grand-scale
construction projects, Arizona is unsur­passed.
And in a catchall category called
"regional resources ," encompassing such
features as climate , natural beauty, recrea­tional
opportunities, culture and the arts,
institutions of higher learning and research ,
transportation, housing, and schools-in
short, "quality of life "-Arizona has much
to o ffer, as anyone who lives here will
readily attest.
The distinctiveness of the Arizona site
begins with its geology. For two -thirds of
its 53 -mile path, the SSC ring would pass
through a material called fanglomerate , a
composition of cemented sediments re­sulting
from coalescing alluvial fans. Be­cause
of its stability, fanglomerate can be
excavated safely and rapidly using either of
two well-established tunnel construction
techniques. The first is cut -and-fill , which
involves cutting a trench, laying in pre­formed
tunnel sections, then covering; the
second is mechanical tunneling with a tun­nel
boring machine, or IBM.
The remaining third of the SSC ring will
burrow through bedrock using IBM meth­ods
exclusively. Arizona construction and
mining firms lead the field in tunnel con­struction
technology, having refined both
cut -a nd-fill and tunnel boring meth­ods
on major projects such as the Papago
Freeway drainage tunnels and the Central
Arizona Project's 337 -mile -long aqueduct
from the Colorado River. Tests by geolo­gists,
hydrologists, and project engineers
show that problems that can delay or stop
construction, such as groundwater inflows ,
collapsing soils, and underground gases ,
are extremely unlikely at the Arizona site .
The dry, stable geologic structure, com­bined
with the Arizona construction indus­try's
specialized experience; an industrial
supply and support system that includes
concrete and aggregate materials, reinforc­ing
and structural steel, heavy equipment,
and machine repair; a skilled and available
work force; and the benign climate, all
indicate that the SSC can be built in Arizona
faster than elsewhere, for less money, and
with virtually no uncertainties about con­struction
conditions and weather delays .
Although it is difficult to pin down exact
numbers for costs and scheduling on a
project of the SSC's magnitude, computer
models des igned by Arizona SSC Project
engineers show that constructi on at the
Maricopa sit e can be completed two years
earlier than DOE scheduling models pre­dict,
possibly saving as mu ch as a billion
dollars.
Such savings in time and money suggest
for the Arizon a site a great advantage over
the competiti o n. If construct io n were de­layed
for lac k of funds, for in stan ce, or if
DOE decided to defer construction a year
or two w hil e developing the technology
for the vital superconductin g magnets,
on ly in Arizona cou ld the project st ill be
completed by the target date.
Not to be overlooked is the flexibility to
solve the un foreseen d iffi culties bound to
plague any huge construction project: tech­nical
difficulties , equipment breakdowns,
labor-management problems, or even bad
weather. The ability to anticipate and con ­tain
or adapt to these factors is ca ll ed risk
management. With two years' margin at the
Arizona site, DOE can construct a number
of "fall -back" risk -management positi ons
for problem-solving .
In selecting the Maricopa site for the
Best Qualified List , the blue-ribbon panel
pointed in particular to the responsiveness
Arizona Highways 7
(ABOVE) Easily accessible to both Arizona State University and the University of Arizona,
the proposed SSC site covers 16,000 acres of desert land north of Interstate 8 and east of the town of Gila Bend.
of the Arizona proposal to environmental
questions. Indeed, one of the strongest
arguments for bringing the Super Collider
to Arizona is that environmental studies
thus far indicate that building the Super
Collider here will have no negative impact
on the environment. No watercourses will
be interrupted by construction of the SSC,
soil disturbances will be minimal, and
there are no known federally listed threat­ened
or endangered species of plants or
animals living in SSC's path.
In fact, after prolonged cattle grazing,
vehicular traffic, and cactus poaching, the
environment at the Arizona site is already
degraded. The SSC project thus has a
unique opportunity to enhance the natural
setting after construction, by salvaging and
replanting native plants and by hydro­seeding-
a revegetation process by which
a slurry of mulch mixed with the seeds of
native annuals and perennials is sprayed
over the landscape. The Arizona site pro­posal
also details plans for creating new
riparian habitats with wastewater and
runoff.
The question of water use is, of course,
8 June 1988
critical in an arid environment. SSC Project
hydrologist Steve Brooks reports that
nearby sources of groundwater are more
than adequate to meet the modest needs
of the SSC for the next 175 years. SSC water
use will be about the same as for a
medium-sized Arizona cotton farm, ap­proximately
4,000 acre-feet a year.
The most obvious general benefit for
the state that wins the SSC is economic.
DOE has estimated that the Superconduct­ing
Super Colliderwill cost more than $4.4
billion to build, with total project costs,
including research and development, ap­proaching
$6 billion. Construction alone
will create 4,000 jobs for a period of at least
five years. State firms will receive construc­tion
and installation contracts; heavy equip­ment
will be leased locally; cement, steel,
and aggregate materials will be purchased
from nearby sources; and service contracts
for repair and maintenance will be awarded
to in-state companies.
Once the SSC is in full swing, operating
on an annual budget approaching $300
million, more than 3,000 people will staff
the facility-scientists, engineers, techni-cians,
computer programmers, mainte­nance
workers, and support personnel.
Add others involved in on-site ancillary
efforts-graduate students, for example,
and hundreds of visiting scientists and
technicians-and the SSC site will be
humming with activity.
High-tech support industries will settle
near the collider to build and maintain its
equipment. New technologies in sensing
equipment, computers, superconducting
materials, and magnets will develop, plant­ing
the seeds of new industries.
The boost to the winning state's econ­omy
will be enormous. The Division of
Business and Economic Research at the
University of Arizona estimates that be­tween
1988 and the year 2000-if the SSC
comes here-state personal income will
increase by $8.4 billion, employment in­creases
will average 12,000 annually, and
increases in state and local government
revenues will be in the hundreds of mil­lions
of dollars.
But the state that walks off with the prize
will of necessity offer as much to the scien­tific
community and to the SSC as it stands
___________________________________ Superconducting
Super Collider
to gain. In addition to the technical qualifi­cations
discussed earlier, the winning state
must offer an impressive catalog of fea­tures
that fall under "quality of life." The
chosen site, in short, will be a preferred
place to live and work
Here again, Arizona's position is strong.
"The thing that will make this project so
successful in Arizona," says Dr. Carruthers,
"is that the finest minds in the world will
want to come here, grow up with their
families, develop their careers, make their
discoveries in an environment that's pleas­ant,
stimulating, and culturally diverse."
Scientists in considerable numbers are
already drawn to Arizona from all over the
world by Kitt Peak National Observatory,
the Environmental Research Laboratory,
and the Smithsonian National Observatory,
all major scientific and research institu­tions.
In Tucson, the University of Arizona,
one of the "top-20" research universities in
the nation, has earned special distinction
in astronomy, optical sciences, arid lands
studies, lunar and planetary studies, and
applied mathematics. And its College of
Medicine is internationally acclaimed for
cardiac research and surgery and for re­search
in cancer and gerontology.
At Arizona State University in Tempe, the
sixth largest university in the United States,
outstanding research continues in high­resolution
electron microscopy, medium­energy
nuclear physics, environmental
studies, automated engineering and robo­tics,
solid state science, and energy systems.
The UofA has moved to expand its high­energy
physics program by appointing
Carruthers to head the department and by
creating 16 new positions to be filled with­in
five years. ASU has similarly committed
to upgrading its high-energy physics pro­gram
by the addition of eight new posi­tions,
according to Dr. Richard Jacob,
chairman of the Physics Department and
deputy chairman of the Arizona SSC Tech­nical
Committee.
When it comes to "regional resources"
or quality of life, it may be the lure of
Arizona's most attractive features-its won­derfully
diverse natural beauty, recreation­al
opportunities, cultural richness, and
economic vibrancy-that will bring the
SSC to the state.
Only Arizona can boast 22 units of the
National Park Service, the Arizona-Sonora
Desert Museum, Mission San Xavier de!
Bae, such fabled Western towns as Tomb­stone,
Jerome, Yuma, and Bisbee, and
countless other places of historic interest
or natural splendor within a half-day's
drive or less of the proposed SSC site.
Where else can you wander the Sonoran
Desert in your shirtsleeves on a sunny win­ter
morning and ski through aspen and
pine forests that afternoon?
Resident symphony and chamber or­chestras
perform in Phoenix and Tucson,
as well as opera, ballet, and theater com­panies.
The dozens of museums and gal­leries
in the two metropolitan areas in­clude
the renowned Heard Museum of An­thropology
and Primitive Arts, the Arizona
State Museum, several major art collections,
and the Center for Creative Photography.
Arizona, sixth largest of the United States
in area and 25th in population, is growing
in number of residents at almost 4 percent
annually as high-tech industries, construc­tion,
and tourism replace cotton, cattle,
copper, and citrus as the foundations of the
state's economy. The Superconducting
Super Collider fits with Arizona's image as
a center for important scientific research
and its record of accomplishment on
grand-scale projects.
With its distinctive physical, environ­mental,
economic, social, and intellectual
climate, Arizona is the ideal location for
that scientific instrument of the 21st century,
the Superconducting Super Collider. ~
Tom Dollar is editor f or the Arizona SSC Project.
Arizona Highways
Note Cards
Box A: Rivoli's hummingbird is a summer visitor
to the mountains of southeastern Arizona. Anna's
hummingbird is a resident of the Phoenix and
Tucson areas. #NOTSS
Arizona Highways wildlife note
cards are a colorful way to enhance
your personal correspondence.
The front of each card features
a full-color wildlife photograph,
while the inside is reserved for your
personal note-writing. The cards
measure 4114 by 51/2 inches, folded.
Each box contains 10 cards featuring
two different photographs,
plus 10 envelopes.
$4.75 per box.
Order these Arizona Highways
products through the attached
order card or by writing or visiting
Arizona Highways, 2039 W. Lewis
Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85009.
· Phone orders may be placed
by calling (602) 258-1000
or dialing toll-free within Arizona
1 (800) 543-5432.
Box B: A young and quizzical Arizona burrowing
owl. A nuzzling family of Arizona burrowing
owls. #NOTS7
Arizona Highways 9
r·r: -- --:a,·
- _).
10 June 1988
~· ,
Hal Empie at 79
BY KAY MAYER
T he red hair is white now, but the sidelong look as he waits for a laugh at the end of a
story is as elfin as it ever was.
In his old "Norman Rockwell" eyeshade and painter's apron, he returns to the easel in
his new studio in Tubae. He moves like a young man, and the years between our
conversations drop away.
Perhaps only through clues in his paintings-or in his own bemused comments­might
you guess that Hart Haller "Hal" Empie counted 79 birthday candles last March.
"I've been around so long, ever'body looks familiar to me,'' he says with a laugh. "I think
I've met ever'body at least once."
Certainly he's met almost everyone in his earlier, longtime haunts of Graham and
Greenlee counties in eastern Arizona. Possibly most of the travelers, too, on U.S. Route 70
between Globe and the New Mexico border, because for 50 years Hal Empie combined
his profession of painting with his profession of pharmacy in Safford, in Solomonville
(now called Solomon), and later in Duncan in his Art Gallery Drug Store.
His light and spacious studio in Tubae is more than just miles distant from his first-a
small square in the back of a drugstore-where he painted in 10- and 15-minute intervals
between customers. Working seven days a week as he did, there was no other spare time.
Concentration came early. "Sometimes I'd have the picture clearly in mind, my brush
all loaded, and here comes a prescription to be filled." He'd go out into another world, a
realm of toothaches and ice-cream cones and hot-water bottles, and it might be the next
day before he could return to his easel.
As Hal Empie speaks, he daubs at the oil painting before him, changing the position of
the legs ofa running horse, still making use of minutes though his interruptions now can
be as many or as few as he wishes.
Earlier his wife, Louise, had been invited into the studio for a look at this painting he
calls "Making an Honest Dollar,'' and commented that one of the horses in the scene was
not running fast enough. "She was right. She helps me a lot," Empie says, "always has. I
don't always agree, but much of the time she's right."
He mentions that they were kids together, had married young. He still remembers
when her family, "the Reinhardts from Texas," moved in down the road. His home at the
(ABOVE) Artist Hal Empie at work in his Tubae studio. JACK w. DYKINGA
(LEFT) "The Man from Guthrie"; oil on board, 10 by 8 inches.
Arizona Highways 11
•c-- r
12 June 1988
Illustrations and cartoons
began Empie's artistic career, and
his early Western-theme postcards
(LEIT) were a commercial success.
(BELOW) "The Stragglers";
oil on board, 14 by 30 inches.
time was a one-room adobe house near
Safford. It shows up now and then in an
Empie painting. "The floor was dirt, packed
hard as concrete." The water source was an
outside well his father had dug.
His father, Hart Dewitt Empie, who
moved from New York State for medical
reasons, had recovered his health by the
time his son Hal was born in 1909. It was a
quiet, happy time. The Indian troubles
were past, and though Arizona was still a
territory, statehood was to come in 1912.
Mostly self-taught, Empie began polish­ing
his artistic skills at an early age. He
didn't realize it at the time, but with his
constant drawing, he was feeding a prodi-gious
visual memory. That process con­tinues.
He still makes regular field trips
and returns with sketches. Yet he rarely
refers to them. His paintings are all from
memory or imagination. He says there's
a scroll in his head he can unreel at will.
"I can even look at faces up close, if I
want to."
Through his on-the-spot drawings, the
anatomy of his subjects is etched in his
visual memory, and when he paints, he
puts them "where the painting needs them.
Besides," he adds, "I found out early that
there is no creative satisfaction in copying.
So I don't do it."
He turns from his painting, pushes back
-;;
his eyeshade, and looks out his stu?~~ I
windows through the golden light into the
past. His memories are many and include
watching the local militia when they en­trained
to counter Pancho Villa; crinkling
his first one-dollar bill; riding with his fam-ily
in his father's 1913 Model T Ford in the
big parade on Armistice Day, 1918. "When
the news broke that the war had ended,
people left their homes to come together.
They were rattling pans, tooting horns,
laughing, crying; some were walking,
some riding. They just kept coming until
that parade stretched more than 20 miles,
from Solomonville to Fort Thomas."
His first "serious" painting was done at
Arizona Highways 13
f;: 14 when he w.is working for Amos
Cook in the Best Drug Store in Safford. Hal
used poster paint and drew palm trees
("They were awful!") on the backbar mir­ror
of the soda fountain. He added blue
water and a sign, "Banana split 15 cents."
"I wasn't very good, but I wanted to be."
He says he kept on painting signs and
doodling animals all through high school
and well past the time he took his Arizona
Board of Pharmacy exams.
It was while doodling in Duncan in the
mid-1930s that he created his first Empie
Kartoon Kard. "I made a drawing in the
proportions of a postcard- a man running
across the desert. Hooked to the back of
his pants was a rattlesnake. My caption
read, 'Duncan, Arizona. Just rattlin'
through.'"
He had 100 postcards printed, put them
on the rack with the other nickel cards,
"and the tourists just hauled them off."
One night after the store closed, he drew
another, showing a dog running across a
flat desert, not a thing in sight except dis­tant
low hills. "I captioned that, 'I think that
I shall never see anything as lovely as a
tree. ' " Again he gives me that sidelong
look, and we laugh.
His cartoon business grew through the
1930s, '40s, and into the '50s, the drawings
turning up in magazines, on war posters,
and in fund-raising pleas. An Empie Kar­toon
Kard was discovered in a hayloft in
Italy during World War II, another under
glass at the registration desk of a Tokyo
hotel. "I ended with about 127 copyrights."
The Empie Kartoon Kards supported all
three of the Empie children- Halene,
Joel, and Ann-and put them through col­lege.
His youngest, who is now Ann Groves
and his business manager, recently revived
the cards. She said the original drawings
have been divided between two archives:
the Carnegie Library at Syracuse University,
New York, and the Empie Collection at the
Arizona Historical Foundation, Hayden
Memorial Library, Arizona State University
in Tempe.
Commissions began to come to the
artist-who-was-also-a-pharmacist. In 1952
there was one for a mural in the Duncan
High School cafeteria, in which he painted
people of Greenlee County, the familiar
land, and its historic procession of Indians,
Spaniards, miners, farmers, and ranchers.
"I painted on linen, a single piece that I
stretched by myself," Hal remembers.
"The painting measures 8 feet high, 27 feet
long. Local people modeled for me. In the
background are familiar landmarks like
Vanderbilt Mountain and Steeple Rock
Took about 580 hours of work" He adds
that when he saw it last, the mural still
~·
looked fresh, and teachers continue using 1 it as a visual aid.
Through the years, commissions and
honors increased. His paintings are in­cluded
in the permanent collection of the
Carnegie Library at Syracuse University.
The Arizona Historical Foundation has its
special Hal Empie Collection at Arizona
State University's Hayden Library. The Tuc­son
Museum of Art includes several Empie
paintings in its permanent collection, as
does the George Phippen Museum in Pres­cott.
He also has completed a series of
religious paintings that are now in various
churches.
Yes, he feels at home in Tubae, he says,
because he's still in Arizona; but he does
need to visit his beloved Gila Valley from
time to time.
Asked about his plans for the future, Hal
Empie says, "Every picture I do is one
more inch toward my goal. Some day I'm
going to do a really good picture-if the
Almighty gives me time!" He pauses, looks
around him and, as he gives me his side­long
look, adds: "Right now I'm as close to
heaven as I want to be." ~
Free-lance writer Kay Mayer has written
numerous articles on Southwestern artists and other
topics for Arizona Highways.
(ABOVE) "Making an Honest Dollar"; oil on board, 24 by 40 inches.
(RIGHT) ''.A Day in August"; oil on board, 36 by 24 inches.
14 June 1988
;' 1·, ..
/ '
Arizona Highways 15
THE OLD WEST
PHOTOGRAPHY OF
Xmed with a camera as well as a pen,
author Dane Coolidge spent years
trying to supplant the myth of the
West that wasn'twith the reality of
the West that was. In a career spanning
nearly half a century, he produced 40 nov­els,
five nonfiction books, countless arti­cles,
and an indeterminate number of pho­tographs
portraying an Old West in which
historic realism takes precedence over ro­mantic
illusion.
His allegiance to the true West came as a
by-product of personal experience. Born
in Natick, Massachusetts, on March 24,
1873, Coolidge was four years old when
his family relocated to Riverside, Califor­nia.
The second son of a farmer and a third
cousin of the future U.S. President Calvin
Coolidge, he spent his boyhood working
on the family's small citrus ranch. When his
mother died in 1892, he became the family
bookkeeper, leaving most of the manual
labor to his father and older brother.
Coolidge's new duties left him time to
cultivate such hobbies as reading (he was
an avid connoisseur of Western "dime
novels") and collecting specimens of flora
and fauna. The latter experience provided,
after he enrolled in Stanford University in
1894, a means for earning a livelihood.
During leisure hours and summer vaca­tions,
he collected mammal and reptile
samples for the natural history collections
at his alma mater, the British Museum, and
the National Zoological Park. His travels
took him to isolated reaches of southern
California, Nevada, Arizona, and northern
Mexico. In the process he developed other
skills, among them photography.
Edward Maslin Hulme was both a fan of
Coolidge's photographs and an early seer
of the camera's ability to serve as a conduit
for literary realism. The relationship be­tween
the two men was originally that of
professor and student. Hulme, a renowned
classical scholar and longtime chairman of
the medieval and Renaissance history de­partment
at Stanford, taught Coolidge the
historical value oflore and the importance
of separating fact from fantasy in any re­search
endeavor.
After graduating in 1898, Coolidge ac­cepted
a contract to study and collect fauna
indigenous to western Europe. But his
London base soon proved stultifying to the
young man weaned on the open hospital­ity
of the Far West. He then entered gradu­ate
school at Harvard, where he studied
biology for a year; but this too became
stifling, and he packed up his belongings
and camera and headed west.
In 1906, Coolidge married Mary Eliza­beth
Burroughs Roberts, whom he had
known in college. At the time of their mar­riage,
she was an associate professor in
sociology at Stanford, and would later chair
the sociology department at Mills College.
Berkeley, California, served as home base
for the Coolidges, but they also owned a
home in Superior, Arizona. The couple had
no children, but enjoyed a close personal
and professional relationship.
Coolidge's exodus from the East marked
the beginning of his career as a profes­sional
writer. For the next four decades, he
averaged better than a book a year, all cen­tered
upon activities, events, and people
peculiar to the frontier. The information he
acquired during his travels as a naturalist
gave him an edge in re-creating the physi­cal
aspects of his setting, but his characters
at first seemed to lack flesh and blood. So
Coolidge set out to fill the gaps in his
knowledge and understanding of human
BY EVELYN S. COOPER PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY DANE COOLIDGE PHOTO COLLECTION, ARIZONA HISTORICAL FOUNDATION
16 June 1988
Shipping cattle at Diamond
Bar Ranch, Hackberry,
1918
Arizona Highways 17
nature and behavior, establishing a pattern
that became his modus operandi as a writer:
research through direct experience rather
than secondary sources; compilation of
objective facts instead of imaginative tales;
and photography in advance of any at­tempt
to recapture an experience in words.
Arizona seemed a practical and intrigu­ing
place to start. After all, it was a tradi­tional
home of the cowboy, who epito­mized
(Coolidge felt) the traits and virtues
that made the American West unique. He
determined to share the cowboy's world.
As a photographer, he joined roundups on
18 June 1988
The Duncan girls, Diamond
Bar Ranch, 1918
the massive Chiricahua Ranch along the
Mexican border, the Diamond Bar Ranch
to the north, the La Osa and Arivaca spreads
southwest of Tucson, and several smaller
outfits throughout the state. During the
off-season, he journeyed to Payson, Pres­cott,
and Tucson to watch stockmen dem­onstrate
their skills at rodeos; along the
way he talked to saddlemakers, frontier
merchants, and ranchers.
A large measure of Coolidge's impact
rests upon the fact that there were no other
photographers concentrating on cattlemen
in the West prior to World War I. Alexander
Forbes and a few itinerants around the turn
of the century took pictures of drovers, but
these images were little more than visual
equivalents of the legendary heroes popu­larized
by "gunsmoke" novels. Because
Coolidge pursued the historic cowboy, his
characters came in a variety of sizes, were
proficient in a number of skills, and were
not always glued to their gun belts. Their
lives were inextricably tied to cattle, with
boredom and isolation more common to
their experience than dramatic adventures.
What Coolidge captured through the
lens of his camera spilled over into his
Arizona Rangers with
Capt. Hany Wheeler,
Willcox, 1907
Arizona Highways 19
20 June 1988
Navajo portrait, Kayenta
Trading Post, 1913
writing. Roughly three-quarters of his
works center upon some aspect of the
stockman's life. The plots in his novels are
various-wars between cattlemen and
sheepmen, ranchers fighting poachers,
drovers on roundups, and rugged individ­uals
suffering the ravages of nature to carve
out a place in the wilderness. Men fight
more with curses than gunfire, and the
hero does not always emerge victorious.
But Coolidge's interest in the cowboy
did not deter him from studying other as­pects
of the West. During the early decades
of this century, large-scale mining was
replacing the individual prospector in lay­ing
claim to the earth's riches. Coolidge
photographed mines in both Arizona and
New Mexico, but his real focus was on
prospectors. He traveled throughout the
Southwest and braved Death Valley to re­cord
their faces and life-styles on film. The
stories he heard, along with the photo­graphs
he captured, supplied material for
three novels he penned lamenting the
death of an old and worthy profession.
Another subject that did not escape his
notice was military life on the frontier. He
carried his camera to Texas, New Mexico,
and Arizona to capture the daily routine of
the soldier. Not surprisingly, the troopers,
too, appeared in the pages of some of
his novels.
There were times when Coolidge simply
took pictures. During the Mexican Revolu­tion,
he made a powerful series of photo­graphs
of troop movements, military units,
and civilian supporters. During a visit to
the 12th Infantry camp at Nogales in 1912,
he achieved a unique set of candid shots of
Pancho Villa.
Throughout his career, Coolidge visited
Indian reservations in both Arizona and
Mexico. His photographs of Hopi snake
dancers and priests, Navajo sheepherders,
and Yaqui families are among his best. A
number of Native Americans subsequently
appeared in his novels, in situations differ­ent
from prevailing stereotypes. During
the 1930s, Coolidge collaborated with his
wife, Mary, on in-depth studies of the
Navajo and Seri tribes.
The scholarly side of his nature found
expression in three other nonfiction books,
this time about cowboys. Written during
the last decade of his life, these works
convey Coolidge's wealth of knowledge
about his favorite subject and illustrate the
extent to which he relied upon photog­raphy
to spur his memory. All of the photo­graphs
used for illustrations and many of
the stories he recounted came from sub­ject
matter he had preserved on film 30
years before. At the time of his death in
1940, he was working on a similar account
of the Mexican vaquero.
Coolidge was neither a literary genius
nor a master photographer. He was an
innovative realist who understood and
appreciated the cultural components of
the frontier West. With both words and
pictures, he bequeathed an honest account
of that West to posterity. ~
Editor's note: The Dane Coolidge
Photographic Exhibition will be touring
Arizona over the next 14 months. For
information on dates and locations, tele­phone
the Arizona Historical Foundation,
(602) 966-8331.
Evelyn S. Cooper is a doctoral candidate in his­tory
at Arizona State University.
Selected Reading
Three of Dane Coolidge's books, Arizona Cowboys,
California Cowboys, and Texas Cowboys, have
been reprinted by and are available from the
University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Apache portrait, 1913
Arizona Highways 21
(LEFT) Monkey
flowers, Mount
Baldy Wilderness.
Here the Little
Colorado begins
its 350-mile-long
journey.
LARRY ULRICH
In its
northwesterly
course, the river
cuts through
ancient rocks
(ABOVE) where
dinosaurs once
roamed.
TOM BEAN
BY SAM LOWE
Mountain stream, chocolate Niagara, scenic tributary .. . the
COLORADO
R v E R
The Little Colorado River has had several names. That is
fitting, because it's a river of many faces and many moods.
It begins as three mountain streams, and ends as a canyon­cutting
tributary of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon.
The inconsistent flow along its course ranges from a mere
trickle in late spring and early summer to a torrent of brown
after summer thunderstorms or drenching winter rains. It
has a drainage area of more than 20,000 square miles, but
most of the time runoff is slight and it's only an intermit­tent
stream.
The river originates on Mount Baldy in what used to be
known as the Sierra Blanca. Now that range is called the
White Mountains, and the three sources are known as the
stream's east, south, and west forks. They join at a point
south of Greer to form the river proper.
As the crow flies, it's about 200 miles from the river's
headwaters to its mouth in the Grand Canyon. But if the
crow walks along the riverbank, the distance is about 350
miles. As it winds its way toward the Colorado River, the Little Colorado gathers water
from the Zuni River, flowing out of New Mexico, and from Arizona's Rio Puerco and
Lithodendron Creek, along with a variety of other tributar­ies,
mostly washes and small streams. On its twisting, turn­ing
journey, the river touches or passes near a number of
Arizona communities, including Greer, Eagar, Springer­ville,
St. Johns, Woodruff, Holbrook, Joseph City, Winslow,
Leupp, Sunrise, and Cameron.
Its ancestry probably dates back to the Cenozoic era
some 70 million years ago, when a great river drained the
western Rockies, dropping downhill through what is now
the Four Corners area. That prehistoric river used much of
the channel of the present Little Colorado, but then it
flowed toward the Rio Grande. Something, perhaps geo­logic
upheaval or a massive lava flow, dammed the ancient
river and created a huge lake over much of what is now the
Te:xt continued on page 31
(FOLLOWING PANELS, PAGES 24 AND 25, 26 AND 27, 28 AND 29) Luxuriant
wildflowers brighten grassy banks along the West Fork of the Little
Colorado. On the way to join its mighty namesake, the river gambols past conifer-covered mountain
slopes, crosses high desert, spills over the cliffs of Grand Falls, Arizona 's Niagara, and cuts its own
dramatic chasm before linking with the Colorado in Grand Canyon National Park.
LARRY ULRICH / DICK DIETRICH /JACK W. DYKINGA
(BELOW) Along the
old salt trail to the
Little Colorado,
ancestors of the
modern Hopis left
their mark.
TOM BEAN
Arizona Highways 23
(ABOVE) Gorge of
the Little Colorado
near its
confluence with
the Colorado River.
PETER KRESAN
Text continued from page 23
Navajo Indian Reservation. When the lake
waters finally receded, the channel re­mained,
later to become that unusual phe­nomenon,
a northerly flowing river.
It's not known who gave the river its first
name, but the Navajos once called it Toi
Chaco (Red Stream), suggested by its mud­dy
floodwaters. Don Juan de Oiiate, the first
governor of New Mexico, came upon it in
1604 and dubbed it Colorado, the Spanish
word for red. Later, in 1776, Father Francisco
Garces encountered the river and referred to
it as Rio Jaquesila (Unruly River) and also
Rio San Pedro (River of St. Peter). Farfan
named it Rio de la Alameda (Tree-lined
River). Lt. Amie! W. Whipple in 1854 reported that it had been called the Flax River and
was "lately known as the Colorado Chiquito" (Little Colorado), in obvious deference to
the by-then-famous Colorado River itself.
The potential of the Little Colorado as a source of irriga­tion
water was first explored by settlers in the 1880s. Heroic
attempts were made to create a darn at Salado Springs near
St. Johns, but it was washed out by a flood in 1905. Later
another dam was built 12 miles upstream, but it too proved
faulty and in 1915 "poured down death and destruction,"
causing a dam at Woodruff to burst. In 1917 a storage
project once again was undertaken, and in 1923 the first
water was delivered from Lyman Dam and its reservoir,
now the site of a state park. Today there are five dams in use
on the Little Colorado's main stream and five on its
tributaries.
Despite its capricious ways, the Little Colorado also har­bors
places of beauty. Its canyon system is somewhat sim­ilar
to parts of the Grand Canyon, much less extensive or
massive but imposing enough to gratify modern-day
explorers.
Perhaps its most impressive sight is at its very end: the
view from Cape Solitude, 3,400 feet above the junction of
the rivers. When not muddied by recent rains and runoff, the
Little Colorado is a lovely pale blue where it meets the dark
green of the Colorado, and the contrast is dramatic.
Southeast of Grand Canyon National Park, near Sunrise on the Navajo reservation, is
another Little Colorado River spectacle: Grand Falls, where the channel abruptly drops
185 feet. Centuries ago when molten basalt blocked a
canyon the river had cut through the plateau, the
diverted water wore a second gorge nearly 60 miles
long around the tongue of lava, then plunged over a
high rim of its former canyon into its old course.
Viewing the falls in all their splendor, however, is '
only a once-in-a-while opportunity, for a full channel
of water occurs infrequently. But after a heavy rain­storm
upstream, the usually dry river roars to life
bearing a turbulent, muddy flood, and the Grand
Falls become a chocolate Niagara.
That's the Little Colorado- often engaging, poten­tially
exciting, but somewhat fickle. ~
Sam Lowe is a daily columnist f or The Phoenix Gazette and
a long-time contributor to Arizona Highways.
(OPPOSITE PAGE AND RIGHT) The Little Colorado joins the Colo­rado
deep in the Grand Canyon. The brilliant turquoise of the
smaller river-stained muddy brown after heavy rains-is
created by mineral deposits along its course. About four miles
upstream from the junction is the sacred formation Hopis call
the Sipapu, a travertine mound through which their ancestors
emerged into a new world. LARRY ULRICH /TOM BEAN
(ABOVE) In the
wake of a fierce
ra instorm,
sparkling runoff
waters cascade
from the mesas,
creating flash
floods in the
channel below.
TOM BEAN
Arizona Highways 31
Then there was the matter of convincing
him to undertake what the Wassons had in
mind. Lucero, a wiry descendant of Mayo
Indians and a native of a Spanish-speaking
town in southern Colorado, was terse and
stubborn in English. "It's cold in Yarnell,"
he muttered at one point.
"Then we'll come for you when it's
warm." An offer of room and board, plus
more money then he was making as a dish­washer,
finally persuaded him. So in June,
Mary and William Wasson returned to Tuc­son
and took Felix Lucero into the moun­tains
of central Arizona. For years they'd
had a vision, and they believed that the
little sculptor was now going to fulfill it.
The community of Yarnell squats amidst
colossal boulders heaped at the edge of an
escarpment that rises above one of the
broadest vistas in the American Southwest.
Here the world suddenly plummets, drop­ping
nearly 2,000 feet from high, grassy
rangeland to flat Sonoran Desert. At the
bottom, the vast plain appears in motion, a
tan sea lapping against the granite, as layers
of heat from the desert floor collide with
the cliff and roll back on themselves.
Up top it is cooler; red-tailed hawks take
free glides on thermals, and frequent gusts
kick brush along U.S. Route 89, Yarnell's
main street. A gold mine, now depleted,
created the town; today, barely a thousand
people live here in houses squeezed into
the complicated terrain, and the sound of
rising wind is more prominent than that of
civilization.
But half a mile away from the center of
town, beginning in a glade of cottonwoods
and black walnut trees, even the wind
stills. The leaves settle, and the earth
catches its breath. Calls of mockingbirds,
cardinals, and quail blend to a choir's hum.
Owing to some gentle mystery, here nature
collaborates with humans who come to
immerse themselves in a juniper sweet­ness,
to transmute worldly tensions into
prayer.
This is Arizona's Shrine of St.Joseph. His
34 June 1988
tall image, as Felix Lucero eventually con­ceived
him, stands at the base of a winding,
ascending stone stairway, greeting visitors
who come for undistracted contemplation
of the redemption symbolized by the life
of Christ. The son whom Joseph hoists in
his arms is still a boy, the cross he holds a
visual echo of his earthly father's hammer
and framing square. Along the path set into
the oak and acacia-covered hillside that
rises above them, gleaming white repre­sentations
of the adult Jesus portray the
journey from the Garden of Gethsemane
to Calvary.
The shrine was conceived during the
Great Depression as a symbol of reassur­ance,
personified by Joseph, head of the
Holy Family. But in response to a world
war, it expanded far beyond its original
concept, growing straight up the moun­tain.
And recently it has spread below,
across the tiny stream its founders dubbed
the Brook of Cedron, on a mission to
extend its blessing from Arizona to the
Third World.
William and Mary Wasson, who donated
the land, belonged to the Catholic Action
League, a group organized in the 1930s to
aid the poor. William Wasson had worked
in banking and real estate and had once
been approached to run for mayor of Phoe­nix.
Instead, he and Mary, a pianist and
published composer, dedicated them­selves
to charity, housing many homeless
unfortunates undertheir own roof. In 1937,
they and other league members decided to
build a retreat away from the urban trauma
of the Depression. Because Joseph was a
(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 32 AND 33) Rays of sunlight penetrate Christ's tomb,
illuminating the sculpture of the Sorrowing Mary and Jesus in repose.
(BELOW) Statue of St.Joseph, symbol of reassurance, stands among boulders and acacia
trees at the base of a stone stairway leading up a Yarnell hillside.
workingman, he was chosen as a symbol
with whom all classes could identify.
That summer they camped out in Yar­nell
and held a box social, raising $32
toward a statue. That was hardly enough
for alabaster; so they engaged a retired
plasterer from Phoenix to try an economi­cal
shortcut. He poured a large block of
concrete, which he chipped until an image
emerged. It was, recalled Mary Wasson,
"not perfect, perhaps, but very strong and
appealing." Phoenix artist John Coghlan
softened whatever imperfections there
may have been by painting it, and it was set
in place alongside a thicket of mountain
mahogany.
By 1938, when they held their first pil­grimage,
their concerns had grown beyond
economic woes, and the people who came
to meditate and sleep outdoors prayed for
peace in Europe and Asia. Eventually, the
league decided that the shrine must also
memorialize the sacrifice of the soldiers
who were giving their lives to purify the
world.
William and Mary Wasson pondered over
what would be appropriate. With their teen­age
sons, Bill and Barney, they tramped up
the hillside behind the statue of St.Joseph.
Wasson, who had studied commercial art,
began to sketch an idea. The boys, long
accustomed to sharing their bedroom with
a stream of needy strangers, watched and
accurately foresaw the formidable quan­tity
of rocks and underbrush their sum­mers
would henceforth be dedicated to
removing.
The memorial to the ultimate sacrifice
the soldiers were making would replicate
the Stations of the Cross. The Last Supper,
the Vigil in Gethsemane, the Crucifixion,
the fallen Jesus in the arms of the Sorrow­ing
Mother, and-Christ laid in the tomb
would be portrayed by life-sized statues.
Wooden crosses would line the path, bear­ing
plaques and Gospel verses to depict
scenes along Jesus' journey to glory. Mary
Wasson pored over the Scriptures, choos­ing
wording from the King James version
and avoiding references that might cast
blame onJews. The message of the shrine,
she insisted, must transcend sectarianism.
And the sculptures had to be exquisite.
But how could they afford a professional
artist when donations arrived at the rate of
a sack of cement at a time? The cost of
marble was prohibitive; the blue granite of
Yarnell was far too hard to carve, and no
one had neard of any lesser material that
was sufficiently durable. They had to find
someone versatile, ingenious, and willing
to create beauty out of whatever their
transparent budget could sustain.
Enter Felix Lucero, who had labored for
(ABOVE) Yarnell's Stations of the Cross, conceived as a memorial to
'servicemen killed in World War II, were fashioned by sculptor Felix Lucero from slabs
of concrete. The high-relief panels were mounted on wooden crosses that line a
path at the Shrine of St. Joseph.
holy wages all his life. When he was just an
infant, his mother had died. He was a sickly
child, and his grandparents vowed in
church that if he were healed he would
become a priest. But Felix decided early
that art, not the cloth, was his calling.
He made an instant spiritual compro­mise
the day he found his World War I
battalion surrounded by Germans. Within
minutes, all but 10 were wiped out. Their
officers were dead, and Felix was chosen
to lead. His promise under fire to the Al­mighty
was to devote the next 20 years to
sculpturing images of the Savior if the sol­diers
somehow got out alive. They lay
among bushes, waiting until dark to begin
crawling back toward headquarters. At one
point, Lucero slept, dreaming that the
artillery glow had coalesced into a brilliant
vision of Jesus. When he awoke, the
shimmering light remained. In an illumi­nated
rapture, he followed it, leading his
men to safety.
He passed the next 19 years roaming
Europe, re-creating his battlefield image of
Christ from media ranging from marble to
wax. The 20th year found him back in the
United States, fulfilling his promise with
the group sculpture, "The Last Supper," in
the Tucson riverbed. But God, he learned,
wasn't through with him yet.
He had never tried reinforced concrete
before, the material league members had
concluded they could afford. His first ef­forts
cracked or simply crumbled. "Not go­ing
to work," the moody artist grumbled.
Mary Wasson consulted a concrete ex­pert.
"It's impossible," he agreed. "Con­crete
dries too fast. You'll never get the
parts to stick to each other."
"Let's assume," she countered, "that it's
impossible, but you were going to do it
anyway. Suppose you were building a
bridge and the cement ran out. How could
you fix it so you could add on more bridge
later?"
Arizona Highways 35
The expert supposed that he would
drive steel reinforcing rods into the soft
cement and somehow keep the exposed
end moist, perhaps by covering it with wet
blankets, so the concrete wouldn't set and
new portions could be tied on with less
danger of cracking. Thus ensued many
journeys to the Phoenix dump, from which
were rescued tangles of wire, former car
parts, bolts, and nails. Eventually, the
statues Lucero formed from white Portland
cement were nearly solid scrap metal in­side.
He laid wet gunnysacks over the un­finished
portions and soaked them through
the night. The Wasson boys hauled cement
and water by pack burro up the path that
was climbing ever higher.
Lucero became obsessed, wielding his
trowel like a scalpel, letting his beard grow
until he resembled an apostle. As he com­pleted
sculptures, he painted them with
white cement-hide, but often he broke up
his work and started over. The image had
to be exactly what he'd seen on the battle­field.
Midway through the Way of the
Cross, he paused to redo St. Joseph (the
original is buried near its base). Inspired
by Lucero's passion, young Barney Wasson
wired some steel together and began shap­ing
a statue of Our Lady of Fatima for the
family garden.
Lucero completed the Sorrowing Mary
andJesus in the tomb, for which the work­ers
dug a cave into the hillside. Some claim
that the death-form he created is neither
dead nor a statue, as it appears to breathe.
He saved the Crucifixion for last. Twice
he destroyed it before it was finished-on
a Good Friday. Complaining of the cold, he
returned to his Tucson riverbed. Shortly
thereafter his tent caught fire and Felix
Lucero died, never seeing the work he con­sidered
his masterpiece set into place
among the massive granite boulders of
Yarnell.
More than 40 years later, the statues re­main,
testament to what faith can create
from humble materials. Seasons have
passed. Barney Wasson became a profes­sional
artist devoted to the liturgy, design­ing
church interiors and baptismal fonts
throughout Arizona and beyond. His
brother, Bill, became a priest, pastor to a
marketplace parish in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
When an orphan was caught one day steal­ing
from the poor box, he remembered his
family's example and took the boy in.
Word got around; more homeless ur­chins
arrived, coming off the streets to live
with the gringo priest who was adopting
orphans. Over the last 33 years, more than
(BELOW) Lone figure of Jesus at the Last Supper sits surrounded by natural beauty.
(RIGHT) Years ago Father William WasS'On took in a family of eight orphaned Mexican
children. Today one of them, Carlos Ayala, has come to Yarnell to create a new
statue for the shrine.
36 June 1988
7,000 formerly abandoned children of Mex­ico
and Central America have been reared
by Father William Wasson. His family,
Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos (Our Little
Brothers and Sisters), is considered the
largest orphanage in the world.
A few years ago, he decided that there
was something more he could do, and
subsequently he established a school for
his orphaned Latin American children at
the shrine in Yarnell.
Every year, 36 of the youngsters arrive
for intensive English language studies to
enhance their chances of finding jobs in
their home countries. They helped to
build their school and dormitories, and
now take care of the shrine. Some work in
the gift shop, which features artifacts from
Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti;
proceeds go to needy children in those
countries. Early mornings, they worship in
the outdoor sanctuary, accompanied by
the mockingbirds, often encountering
deer and javelina. At times they are joined
by their American priest father, who passes
on a legacy of sharing to them.
For decades, thousands of visitors of all
creeds have come to reflect along the quiet
paths of the Shrine of St.Joseph; now, they
are invited to linger and share a meal with
children of the Third World. "The shrine,"
Barney Wasson observes, "began during a
time of need. Then it became a war memo­rial.
And now it has returned to its original
emphasis: charity."
Below the tomb of the fallen Jesus is a
small garden. As the meaning of the shrine
has come full circle, so, too, will its symbol­ism
be completed. Carlos Ayala, one of a
family of eight orphaned children from the
village ofTilzapotla in central Mexico, was
seven years old when he and his brothers
and sisters came to Father Wasson. Eventu­ally
he received scholarships in painting
and sculpture, graduating with honors
from Mexico's Instituto de Bellas Artes.
Now he is in residence in Yarnell, design­ing
a statue to represent the Resurrection.
It will portray Christ as a gardener, sur­rounded
by examples of life continually
being reborn.
"Faith," explains Father Wasson, "grows
from simple pleasures: from the consoling
company of nature and God's creatures,
from clouds floating like prayers through
sunlight. From children. The shrine offers
an opportunity to share such faith. It tran­scends
the borders we construct within
and without; it brings us, and God, closer
together." ~
Alan Weisman teaches at Prescott College. He
and jay Dusard are author and photographer of
I.a Frontera: The United States Border With Mexico,
published in 1986 by Harcourt Bracejovanovich.
Arizona Highways 3 7
U ntil statehood mived in 1912,
Arizona was a sparsely populated territory
perceived by the outside world as 114,000
square miles of creosote and caliche. It has
come a long way since then. But as a result
of its late-breaking development, much to ­day
has an aura of newness. So it is easy to
understand why what remains to be seen
Not all the attractions at this
Wonder of the World come to you
by courtesy of Mother Nature ...
Architectural
Treasures
of the
Grand Canyon
of the romantic past, such as a scattering of
old structures, is held in high regard .
Yet many of these are almost unknown
or unacknowledged by the general public.
Such a group of historic buildings (defined
in this case as those 50 years old or more)
exist in northern Arizona, all but ignored
because of their location: at the edge of the
Grand Canyon. In this, the most extraordi ­nary
environment on earth, any building
must take a backseat to the surrounding
scenery. Yet just one of them-El Tovar
Hotel-iflocated in Phoenix would be the
city's showplace, a testament to gracious
living in the early days . Or if in Prescott,
another Canyon legacy-Buckey O'Neill's
Overshadowed by the grandeur of the surroundings, some un­usual
and impressive architecture graces the Grand Canyon.
( LEFT ) Lookout Studio, perched on the South Rim, once housed the
photographic enterprise of Ellsworth and Emery Kolb , early
residents and explorers of th e Canyon.
(BELOW) Described as "the most expensively constructed and
appointed log house in America, " El Tovar Hotel, the architectural
crown jewel of th e Grand Canyon, was completed by the Fred
Harvey Company in 1905. Designed to be attractive but not
imposing, distinguished but not distracting, El Tovar was built of
native stone and Douglas fir logs shipped by rail from Oregon.
TEXT BY MAGGIE WILSON • PHOTOGRAPHS BY RICHARD MAACK
Arizona Highways 39
The lobby sets the tone of rustic elegance at El Tovar. Architect Charles F Whittlesey
included roof gardens, a "great hall" dining room overlooking the Canyon, art galleries,
a solarium, numerous fireplaces, and hot and cold running water.
Cabin- would be a highlight of guide­historian
Melissa Ruffner Weiner's walking
tours into Arizona's past.
Other old Canyon edifices-Phantom
Ranch, Bright Angel Lodge, Grand Canyon
Lodge, for instance-would also be traffic
stoppers and objects of school tours, were
they located anywhere else in the state.
Singly and together, such buildings are
elements of an important chapter of hu­man
history in the Grand Canyon region,
a drama enacted on an incomparable
stage. And the stage itself, never a mere
setting for the story, is a compelling par­ticipant
capable of molding and coloring
the human cast of characters. The Grand
40 June 1988
Canyon itself, in the classic tradition of
Greek theater, is the true protagonist of
the drama.
When President Theodore Roosevelt vis­ited
the Grand Canyon in 1903, he con­cluded,
"I hope you will not have a build­ing
of any kind, not a summer cottage, a
hotel, or anything else to mar the wonder­ful
grandeur, the sublimity, the great love­liness
and beauty of the Canyon. Leave it as
it is .. .. Man can only mar it."
But his "no buildings" hope was not to
be. Two years before his visit, the first Santa
Fe Railroad train had chugged around the
head of Bright Angel Trail on the South
Rim, and a new period in the history of the
Grand Canyon had begun. The railroad
brought visitors; visitors needed food and
accommodations. Grand Canyon Village
sprang up near the railroad depot, and
many of its buildings are now part of a
historic preservation district administered
by the National Park Service. Among them:
El Tovar Hotel, completed in 1905 by the
associates of Fred Harvey, who had opened
Harvey House restaurants at intervals of
almost every hundred miles along the
Santa Fe's main line from Kansas westward.
Old-timers have said Teddy Roosevelt used
his influence to assure that Harvey would
erect something attractive but not impos­ing,
distinguished but not distracting.
Harvey's architect, Charles F. Whittlesey,
designed the structure to combine the
qualities of "Swiss chateaux and castles of
the Rhine." But he used native boulders
and huge Douglas fir logs and timbers
imported by rail from Oregon to do it. The
building extends 325 feet from north to
south, 218 feet from east to west, and rises
four stories on the south end, three stories
on the north.
The handsome hotel looked old and
dignified the day it was completed; it still
does. Its construction cost $250,000, and
Whittlesey used part of the money to stain
exterior walls and shingles, blending them
into the surroundings.
El Tovar was a marvel of 100 sleeping
rooms ( 42 had baths), wide porches, and
roof gardens; a huge dining room styled
after a Norwegian great hall, which over­looked
the Canyon (and was staffed by the
famed Harvey Girl waitresses); a small
15th-century dining room; several art gal­leries
where works of such landscape paint­ers
as Thomas Moran, W. R. Leigh, and I. E.
Couse were sold; a music room with a
decor of gold and old ivory; a ladies'
lounge, a club room, an amusement room;
a solarium and a grotto; the Rotunda and
the Rendezvous Room. And El Tovar of­fered
such rare turn-of-the-century ameni­ties
as hot and cold water, steam heat,
electric lights, and, in the office, tele­phones.
Furnishings of public rooms re­lied
heavily on oak and leather; there were
massive animal heads and a plenitude of
fireplaces.
El Tovar, named after a Spanish explorer,
became the proudest jewel of the Fred
Harvey chain, but Harvey himself never
saw the fulfillment of his vision of rustic
elegance on the South Rim; he died before
it was completed. Built to rival the great
resorts of Europe, El Tovar has been de­scribed
as "the most expensively con­structed
and appointed log house in
America."
Today, after several renovations and
compliance with stricter fire codes, the 83-
year-old structure maintains its comfort­able
country-house atmosphere. But its
room rates have risen from the original $4
to about $90 and up (view suites: $200).
Bright Angel Lodge (it was originally
called Bright Angel Camp and later Bright
Angel Hotel) was a single cabin surrounded
by tourist tents in 1895, when it was oper­ated
by]. Wilbur Thurber, self-styled "gen­tlemanly"
driver hired by a Grand Canyon
stagecoach line. The stages originated in
Flagstaff, Williams, or Ashfork; the trip to
the Canyon cost passengers $20, a fee they
often felt was owed to them after jouncing
over the rutted roads.
The coming of the railroad put Thurber
out of the stage business; the opening of El
Tovar put him out of the lodging business.
The Santa Fe Railroad bought the property,
and the Fred Harvey Company reopened
Bright Angel in 1905.
By 1910, Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter had
joined the Fred Harvey Company as archi­tectural
designer and interior decorator of
the firm's various developments across the
Southwest. At the Grand Canyon, she de­vised
a master plan for the firm's future
developments.
Colter is remembered by associates as a
small, chain-smoking woman "with pierc­ing
violet eyes and hair that was never
combed ... who was outspoken and some­times
even cruel." A dedicated career
woman during a time when such women
were oddities, she became steadily more
imperious during her 38 years with the
company and 20 projects of her creation.
Though she didn't win any "Miss Conge­niality"
titles from her male work crews,
she did earn their grudging respect. When
Text continued on page 44
Architectural Treasures
(ABOVE) At Bright Angel Lodge the main
fireplace, constructed of native stone
from the Canyon, throws welcome
warmth into the lobby.
(LEFT) Now part of Bright Angel Lodge,
Buckey O'Neill's Cabin is the oldest
Canyon structure extant. O'Neill, who
became a famous sheriff and mayor of
Prescott, used the cabin in his gold
prospecting days in this vicinity. He later
volunteered f or duty with Theodore
Roosevelt's Rough Riders in the Spanish­American
War and was killed by a
sniper's bullet at the age of 38.
Arizona Highways 41
42 June 1988
Architectural Treasures
Rising from a cliff of
Kaibab limestone amidst
the secluded serenity of
the North Rim, Grand
Canyon Lodge is
surrounded by 140 guest
cabins. Built in 1928,
then gutted by fire, the
lodge was rebuilt in
1936 At an elevation of
8,000 feet, the Kaibab
Plateau and North Rim
experience extreme
winter weather. The lodge
and surrounding area
are closed in mid-October
and reopen in mid-May.
Arizona Highways 43
Text continued from page 41
she died in 1958 at the age of88, her legacy
was the philosophy that buildings must be
in harmony with the history and environ­ment
in which they are placed.
While Colter is responsible for the de­signs
of Hopi House, Lookout Studio,
Hermit's Rest, Phantom Ranch, and the
spectacular Desert View Watchtower, it
was Bright Angel Lodge, completed in
1935 as a replacement for the original
Bright Angel , that became her ultimate
Grand Canyon achievement. (See Arizona
Highways, May, 1984 .)
Because the lodge was to be more mod­erately
priced than El Tovar, she called for
its main building to be constructed of
stone and logs in pioneer style. A fireplace
in the lobby bore a huge wooden thunder­bird,
an Indian symbol for powers of the
air; Colter viewed it as the "bright angel" of
the sky.
The main lodge was surrounded by indi­vidual
cabins of adobe, log, or stone.
Appointments included such memorabilia
as Pancho Villa's sombrero, pioneer stools
and chairs brought overland in covered
Exacting attention to detail is the hallmark of
Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter's full-scale replicas of
Indian architecture at the Grand Canyon.
wagons, a crude rocking horse once
owned by the first pioneer child born in
Arizona, a seven-foot-tall Jenny Lind wood­en
cigar-store figure, kerosene lamps with
opaque glass shades, bathtubs on legs, and
Indian arts and artifacts.
Colter also preserved and utilized two
modest buildings of historic import, Red
Horse Station and Buckey O 'Ne ill's Cabin,
both of hand-squared log construction.
The O'Neill cabin, oldest surviving struc­ture
on the South Rim and possibly the first
ever built there, was Buckey's base during
Hopi House (ABOVE) on the South Rim and Desert View Watchtower
(OPPOSITE PAGE ) on the East Rim Drive are typical of structures built by the
Hopi Indians and by Pueblo peoples along the Rio Grande River.
44 June 1988
his prospecting days in the 1890s. Later he
sold his claim and cabin to a subsidiary of
the Santa Fe Railroad.
Buckey, whose nickname came from the
gambling term "bucking the tiger" (bet­ting
recklessly in faro), had been a report­er,
editor, author, probate judge, superin­tendent
of schools, militia officer, business­man,
miner, sheriff of Yavapai County, and
mayor of Prescott before he went to Cuba
with Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders.
He lost his life to sniper fire the day before
the famous charge up San Juan Hill. At the
Grand Canyon, he is memorialized by
O'Neill Butte, which towers above the Kai­bab
Trail.
Phantom Ranch , at the bottom of the
Canyon, is reached only by legs-yours or
a mule's-via the Bright Angel or South
Kaibab trails from the South Rim or the
North Kaibab Trail from the North Rim.
The buildings of stone and wood were
built by the Fred Harvey Company in 1922
as an overnight lodging for hikers and
mule-train riders. Mules still transport all
supplies. The ranch nestles beneath a can­opy
of green cottonwood trees, a welcome
sight for eyes reddened by the austere rock
vistas.
Grand Canyon Lodge, built on the Can­yon's
North Rim by the Union Pacific Rail­road
in 1928, is a handsome structure of
Kaibab limestone that seems to rise out of
the cliff on which it stands. Gutted by fire, it
was rebuilt in 1936.
Because of the North Rim's isolation,
development there lagged behind that of
the South Rim, and its accommodations
are still much more limited. The higher
elevation and heavy snowfalls cause roads
and facilities to be closed from mid­October
to mid-May.
In 1987, in recognition of "their excep­tional
value to the Nation," several edifices
in Grand Canyon National Park were des­ignated
national historic landmarks: El
Tovar, Grand Canyon Depot, Grand Can­yon
Lodge (with its 140 surrounding cab­ins),
Grand Canyon Power House, Grand
Canyon Park Operations Building, Hopi
House, Lookout Studio, Hermit's Rest, and
Desert View Watchtower.
The edifices of the Grand Canyon are
major artifacts of human history in log and
stone. They were the products of railroads,
but the last train made its run to the South
Rim in 1968. One reaches the Canyon to­day
by car, bus, or airplane. For those who
get there, the quest for perspective goes
on-and the amazing Canyon keeps right
on upstaging the remarkable feats of con­struction
that have risen around it. ~
Maggie Wilson, now a Phoenix free- lance writer,
is a farmer columnist f or The Arizona Republic.
Architectural Treasures
The Overlooked Lookout
z
0 _, _,
<(
I­C/}
LU
::<
<( ....,
The Desert View Watchtower at the Grand Canyon, a structure that seems to
breathe antiquity, must surely be "the most looked from but least looked at"
architectural wonder around.
The product of Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, an architectural designer for the Fred
Harvey Company, the tower required three long years to build. It was finished in
1932 at a cost of $70,000.
Seventy feet high, 30 feet across at the base, 24 feet across at the roof line, the
watchtower originally was intended to provide an extraordinary rest stop for
tourists, where complimentary coffee, tea, and orange punch would be served
before the 26-mile return trip to Grand Canyon Village . Of course, it was also
designed to provide a climaxing view.
But the view-a 360-degree full -color panorama of the Canyon , Painted Desert,
Coconino and Kaibab forests, and the San Francisco Peaks-proved so overwhelm­ing
few visitors really rested. The coffee got cold, the tea got cold, and the punch
got warm.
The passage of more than half a century has changed very little: the sturdy old
structure continues to be overshadowed by the splendor of the surrounding
countryside, and only a rare few people give any thought to the tremendous
amount of effort and dedication poured into its creation .
In terms of basic research alone, Colter spent weeks scouring the Four Comers
country for ruins of ancient watchtowers, which she would carefully study before
selecting such features for her re-creation as tapered windows, ornamental designs,
and the T-shaped doors that were unique to these buildings.
As she explored site after site, she observed that a ceremonial chamber, or kiva,
was usually built adjacent to the Indian tower; so she made sure she added one to
her design, complete with the typical log roof.
Creating a structure that would accurately mirror those of the past meant also that
every stone used in building the tower must be hand-selected, just as the ancients
would have done; no stone's shape was allowed to be altered, for fear tool marks
would be apparent and break the historic illusion .
Once the tower was completed, the eminent Hopi artist Fred Kabotie was invited
to decorate the interior. His authentic paintings were criticized by some of his
fellow Hopis for "showing too much. "
The ancients who built the watchtowers of old were farmers, and some theorists
say the towers were used for storage, becoming citadels when the tribes were
threatened. Others suggest they were astronomical observatories, where seasons
for planting and harvesting could be accurately determined.
Today, there are several modem structures at Desert View, including a trading
post and a grocery store. But the watchtower and the kiva remain just as they were
when architect Colter stood back and "viewed with pride" in 1932 . ~
-fames Tallon
Arizona Highways 45
---------------------------
A Guide to Places, Events, and People
EXCAVATING
ELDEN PUEBLO
Tucked between U.S. Route 89 and
a trailer park on the outskirts of
Flagstaff, Elden Pueblo, a village
occupied seven centuries ago by the
Sinagua culture, sits in a partially
excavated condition. The ruin serves
as a public archeology project
overseen by Peter]. Pill es, Jr., of the
Coconino National Forest and
members of the educational staff of
the Museum of Northern Arizona. It
offers opportunities to laymen willing
to spend from a single day to two
weeks working beside professionals
to uncover Arizona's ancient past.
Originally excavated in 1926, the
ARIZONIQUES ,,_,,,,,,
~
ILLUSTRATION BY
KEVIN MACPHERSON
site served as the impetus for the
founding of the museum. Flagstaff
residents cringed as they watched
hundreds of beautiful artifacts being
shipped off to the Smithsonian
Institution, and reacted by forming
the local Museum Foundation as a
repository for pieces of the area's
prehistory.
Since 1978, when re-excavation
began, volunteers have been
working to restore the ruin.
Opportunities to take part are -
expanding this year with programs
planned for schoolchildren,
families, and serious amateurs.
For a schedule of programs
and a list of nearby
accommodations, write to
Ann Walka, Director of Education,
Museum of Northern Arizona,
Rt. 4, Box 720,
Flagstaff, AZ 86001.
-Diane Nichols
Unique to Arizona and the Southwest.
COURTHOUSE
TRANSFORMATION
On the third floor of the Cobre
Valley Center for the Arts, Superior
Court judges once deliberated
matters civil and criminal. For the
new arts center in Globe, Arizona,
occupies the old Gila County
Courthouse at the corner of Broad
and Oak streets.
Recently a volunteer army of
craftspeople, artisans, and artists,
funded by block grants and -
donations, renovated the handsome
old building. They pulled down
partitions and removed false ceilings
to reveal Corinthian columns,
wainscoting, and stately vistas
through graceful arches. A wide
staircase marches to the upper floors,
its banister clad in copper from the
nearby Old Dominion Mine. The
result is a lovingly restored landmark
that now houses not only a
community arts center but also a
gallery and crafts shop, a bookstore,
Globe's Downtown Action Program
offices, and a performing arts theater.
"It's appropriate," remarks Bob
Hutchinson, manager of the .
Downtown Action Program. "Back in
the 1930s, when nobody had any
money, everyone in town would
come to the courtroom and listen to
trials as a form of entertainment."
For information on events,
activities, and hours at the Cobre
Valley Center for the Arts, telephone
Hutchinson at 425-9340. -Vicky Hay
BUGGING TUCSON
One day last fall, fire ants invaded
a new Tucson museum. They
were welcomed. ·
The museum is
Sonoran Arthropod
Studies, Inc., a
nonpfofit center
for the study,
exhibition, and
elucidation of
the bug world.
One morning
museum workers
arrived to find a _
line of Solenopsis
xyloni marching
into the wasps' exhibit
and stealing food. Rather_ than
destroying them, the staff supplied
the ants with glass cages, their own
food, and a path to their μest outside.
It was a lesson in creative
coexistence.
SASI is the creation of Steve
Prchal, a self-educated entomologist
who worries about our attitudes
toward insects and arachnids­which,
along with tasty crustaceans,
compose the phylum Arthropoda.
"Kids start out with a natural interest
·in arthropods," Prchal says. "They
develop negative attitudes after they
bring a bug into the house and an
adult says, 'Get that thing out of
here!' We're trying to do the oppo­site
with this museum. As people
acquire appreciation and respect for
arthropods' roles in the world, they
develop an improved environmental
and conservation ethic."
SASI currently offers a dozen
exhibits of live insects and
educational projects. This is just the
museum's larval stage. Prchal plans to
move his new enterprise to' the
Tucson Mountains. There it will also
have a garden designed to facilitate
visitors' observation of plants, insects,
spiders, and birds in their
interdependent relationships of
breeding, preyiqg, and pollinating.
Museum membership is $15 a year.
Write to Box 5624, Tucson, AZ 85703,
or telephone (602) 884-7274. The
museum, now located at 2437 N.
Stone Ave., is open noon to 5 P.M.,
Thursday through Saturday.
-Lawrence W Cheek
PSEUDO SAGUAROS
Don't be misled by tourist bro­chures
and Hollywood Westerns
that sprinkle saguaros through New
Mexico, California, and Texas. The
giant cactus that bears Arizona's
state flower is unique to the
Sonoran Desert and, with very few
exceptions, grows nowhere but in
Arizona and Sonora, Mexico.
The reason? Temperature, mostly.
As a subtropical plant, freezing
temperatures are the saguaro's great­est
natural enemy. These thorny
giants can't survive at higher eleva­tions,
preferring the warm desert.
. The saguaro's range extends from
the Hualapai Mountains near King­man
in the north, to the Gila
Mountains of Graham County on
the east, to the Cerro Masaica of
Sonora in the south. Only on
the western fringe of their
range do saguaros
'creep outside the
Arizona and
Sonora habitat.
There,
along
the
Colorado
River and
in the
Whipple
Mountains
southwest of
lake Havasu, a few
wayward saguaros
survive in California.
- David E Brown
JUNE CALENDAR
June 4 and 5, Prescott. Territorial
- Days and Folk Art Fair. The cele­brated
Shariat Hall Museum presents
the 15th annual gathering of weav­ers,
spinners, soapmakers, horse­shoers,
and other old-time crafts spe­cialists.
Telephi::me 445-3122.
June 17 through 19, Flagstaff. Pine
Country Rodeo. Top competitors of
the Professional Rodeo Cowboy
Association fill the Fort Tuthill rodeo
grounds with three days of action- .
packed Western entertainment. Tele­phone
774-4505.
June 24 through August 4, Flagstaff.
The Coconino Center for the Arts
hosts the annual Native American
Arts Invitational Exhibition, present­ing
the finest in Indian arts. The
opening weekend features Native
American cooking, crafts market, tra­ditional
dances, poetry, and music.
Telephone 779-6921.
June 25 and 26, Page. The sixth
annual Indian Market and Pow Wow
features more than 150 artists and
their works, traditional costumes and
dances, native foods, plus a number
of stars of network television. Com­panion
events include a mountain
man rendezvous June 24, 25, and 26,
and a chili cookoff June 26. Tele­phone
(602) 645-2404 Qr (818) 508·
1706.
June 25 and 26, Payson. Country
Music Festival. Outstanding fiddlers,
pickers, and buck dancers from all
over the Southwest perform beneath
the pines. Telephone 474-4515.
Edited by Robert j Farrell
For a more complete calendar of events, free
of charge, write to the Arizona Office of
Tourism, Department CE, 1480 E. Bethany
Home Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85014.
Unless otherwise noted, all
telephone numbers are
within area code 602.
BOOKSHELF
B y B U D G E RUFFNER
mE RIVER TIIAT FLOWS UP­HILL:
A JOURNEY FROM THE
BIG BANG TO mE BIG BRAIN,
by William H. Calvin . Macmillan
Publishing Company, 866 Third
Ave., New York, NY 10022. 1986
528 pages. $2650, hardcover, post­age
included. Sierra Club Books,
730 Polk St., San Francisco, C4
94109. 1986 528 pages. $15.95,
softcover, postage included.
Aglance at the title of this book
gives the prospective reader
only a vague idea that its contents
deal with one of Arizona's greatest
attractions-the Grand Canyon­and
with a most exciting scientific
and intellectual discussion of the
evolution of life . The River That
Flows Uphill is both a history of this
process and a journal ofa 225 -mile
the lives experienced by our an­cestors
and acquaints us with
those ... circumstances for which
evolution shaped us."
And so, as his boat carries him
through the geological ages, he
describes his voyage and what he
sees day by day throughout the
two -week trip-rock formations,
rapids, plant variations, lower life­forms
such as lizards, prehistoric
Indian ruins. This is accomplished
with some of the best descriptive
prose this river runner and book
reviewer has ever read about the
Colorado.
Interspersed with the record of
his voyage, Calvin in precise coun­terpoint
carries on a lucid conver­sation
with his fellow travelers
about the course of evolution-on
rowing trip down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon .
Author Calvin , a neurobiologist at the University ofWash­ington
in Seattle, writes cogently about many aspects of
biology, geology, anthropology, and scientific philosophy.
He begins with the "big bang" theory of the origin of the
universe, and then discusses the ascent oflife, culminating
in our own species. He also considers the future of our
planet, besieged as it is with complex environmental and
social problems. And he achieves this in the readable tradi­tion
of such scholars as Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan.
the unpredictability of the process, the gaps in the fossil
record, the specter of nuclear winter-as he, and we, think
about how we have come to be on that river of time.
The title? The back eddies of the Colorado River sweep
upstream, a metaphor for evolution "like a river that flows
uphill, hoisting itself by its own bootstraps to ever-fancier
innovations."
What makes the story come alive is not only Calvin 's style
but also his stage: the matchless evolutionary textbook of
the Grand Canyon. What better place than this great chasm
whose "wilderness setting," writes Calvin, "so epitomizes
Reading this powerful book reminds one of what Freder­ick
Dellenbaugh, artist and boatman of Maj. John Wesley
Powell 's 1871 voyage through Grand Canyon, wrote 80
years ago: "As for us, we appeared ridiculously inadequate.
We ought to have been at least 20 feet high to fit the hour
and the scene."
-Robert C. Euler
TRADITIONAL BASQUE
COOKING: HISTORY AND
PREPARATION, by Jose Baria Buska
Isusi. University of Nevada Press,
Reno, NV 89557. 1987. 205 pages.
$21 .45, hardcover, postage included.
T he well -regarded University of
Nevada Press has featured the
Basque Book Series among its other
distinguished publica tions. To be
complete, any series dealing with
these robust people must include
the culinary accomplishments they
have brought to tables far from their
homeland. The American West has
been the beneficiary of the Basques'
48 June 1988
work ethic and their renowned
hospitality. In our own Arizona , the
Basque families of Echeverria,
O'Haco, Charlebois, Manterolla , and
Poquette are but a few of the many
who have sustained our society with
the gifts of their own . Tiara (fish
stew), cordero al chilindron (lamb
in chilindron sauce), and sopa ·con
ajo a la vasca (garlic soup Basque
style) are some of the gastronomical
gifts within this handsome book.
Anthropologists tell us that all cul ­tures
offer food and drink to their
guests. None does it better than the
Basques.
(RIGHT) ''Mount Sinyala, Grand
Canyon #2, " by Cynthia Bennett;
acrylic on canvas, 24 by 18 inches.
Having lived at Grand Canyon, and
now a resident of Sedona, Bennett
has been inspired by the canyons of
Arizona for more than two decades.
A simplicity of style and effective use
of color and light make her work
immediately recognizable.
(BACK COVER) Pictureperf ect view
of Arizona's most visited landscape
from Grand Canyon Lodge, one of
the Canyon's "architectural
treasures. " See page 38.
RICHARD MAACK