Arizona Highways, June 1998

              departments
2 LETTERS
3 ALONG THE WAY
Why am I, a non-swimmer who's deathly
afraid of water, cliff-diving into the frigid
Colorado Rive r ?
4 2 LEG E N D S 0 F T H E L 0 S T
A prospector's untimely demise and the
discovery of chunks of native silver make for
a curious ta le .
44 WIT STOP
There's a report going around that
roadrunners are fl ightless birds. What's
that do to their psyche 7
46 ARIZONA HUMOR
47 ROADSIDE RES T
If you were seriously ill in 19th century
Arizona, chances are you'd survive the
disease bu t maybe not the medications.
48 BACK ROAD ADVENTURE
View the Co lorado River and Grand Ca nyon
Natio n al Park from an unforgettable spot on
the Co lorado Plateau.
52 MILEPOSTS/EVENTS
Find ou t where to go airplane camping,
sa lute summer in St. johns, and tap your toes
to bluegrass tu nes in Prescott.
54 HIKE OF THE MONTH
Kanab Creek W ilderness Co u ntry is so vast
you may n ever see an yone else.
( LEFT) This time exposure
catches a midsummer
thunderstorm raking
Tucson . PETER NOEBELS
(F RONT COVE R) Rafters
on the Colorado River in
Grand Canyon West stop at
this Travertine Canyon
waterfa ll . For more on this
recently developed Grand
Canyon playground, see
stories beginning on page
4. RANDY PRENTICE
POINTS OF INTEREST
FEATUREO I N TH I S ISSUE
(BAC K CO VE R) Cathedral Rock at Red
Rock Crossing on Oak Cre ek remains Sedona's
quintessential scenic symbol. See the portfolio
on page 24. DAVID H . SMITH
l e t te r s
Contented Subscribers
As a new subscriber, I have
enj oyed each and every article
from the tales of Arizona's his­tory
to the present-day adven­tures
of people exploring your
beautiful state.
Your photos make me impa­tient
for a return trip to Arizona.
Marilyn Taylor's piece on her
snowboarding experience Qan­uary
'98) had me laughing all
the way through the article.
This magazine touches many
emotional spots and is thor­oughly
enjoyable.
Linda Kalbach
East Harwich , MA
I have not been a subscriber
as long as Adora E. Richard
("Letters," j anuary '98), but I
can truly say I look forward to
Arizona Highways each month.
I have subscribed to many
magazines over the years, and
there isn't a one that I ever read
from cover to cover as I do Ari­zona
Highways.
Bud Thomas
Baltimore, MD
My wife and I spent three
excellent years teaching in
Yuma. We left to move back
home to the Midwest, but did
not realize how "homesick" for
Arizona we would be.
I picked up your magazine
in a Lube-N-Go and have been
an avid reader ever since.
Tom Hermann
Burlington, WI
Three cheers for Lube-N-Co.
I receive Arizona Highways
on tape every month. Your sto­ries
are so full of description.
They are so real. I can see them
in every detail. I can see the
pictures by their descriptions
alone. You see, I am blind.
Thanks, Arizona Highways,
for being my eyes.
2 June 1998
Toby LongFace
Tombstone
Good Writer
I have to comment on the
fresh and vivid writing of au­thor
Lawrence W Cheek ("Van­ished
Arizona," j anuary '98).
Have I been overlooking him
in past issues, or is he new to
the magazine?
Murray Barnes
Garrison, NY
Larry Cheek, among the
Wests outstanding writers,
has a long history with the
magazine. His current
assignment for us is to write
a book about Sedona.
Apache Trail
The report on the Supersti­tion
Mountains ("On the Trail
of Hacksaw Tom in the Super­stition
Mountains," january '98)
reminded me and my wife of
last year's vacation when we
drove the fantastic Apache Trail.
On former business trips to
Phoenix, which sometimes for­tunately
included weekends, I
had done this trip before, but it
was most thrilling again to
drive down to Fish Creek.
Keep showing the beautiful
nature and landscape of Ari­zona.
There are sufficient other
publications showing the other
side of life: blood and tears.
Dr. Karl-Ferd Schultz
Oststeinbek, Germany
Vacation Transplant
After spending several sum­mer
vacations in Big Sur, Cali­fornia
, my husband came up
with the wild idea of going to
Scottsdale for vacation. I must
admit I wasn't crazy about the
idea, especially when I heard
about the 100°-plus "dry heat."
But I gave in, so off we went.
I found myself in love with
Arizona as soon as we hit the
state line. What scenery!
My husband found Scottsdale
to be the "golfer's paradise" he
had thought it would be, some­times
golfing twice in one day
Being an avid needlepointer,
I found my own paradise in a
shop called Arizona Knitting
& Needlepoint. In that shop, I
thought I'd died and gone to
heaven.
The kids loved tubing down
the Salt River, sliding on Slide
Rock, and we all loved Sedona.
The last highlight of our trip
was the Grand Canyon.
We've just spent our fourth
vacation in Arizona, and I found
myself, as I always do, crying all
the way home.
Rattlesnakes
Peggy Vigneau
Lawndale, CA
I can't believe there is a fine
for killing rattlesnakes. If the
people who made that rule love
them so much, why don't they
open a rattlesnake zoo?
After they get enough of the
ugly things for their zoo, have
a snake hunt.
Mary Fountain
Chicago, IL
There are 11 species of
rattlesnakes in Arizona,
includingfour species that are
protected. The others can be
hunted in season with a State
Game and Fish permit.
Random killing of snakes is
illegal. But, clearly, many,
many people have aversions
to snakes, probably the most
detested animal of all.
Dead or Nuts
I just finished reading the ex­cellent
january '98 issue and
must make these comments:
l ) "Arizona's First Picture
Show": Anyone who does not
enjoy this is dead.
2) "Challenging the Estrellas":
Bob Thomas [the author] is nuts.
Backpacking alone is asking for
a slow miserable death.
Lyle Burt
Sacramento, CA
Contents Page
I love your new format. Ev­ery
time I think you are perfect
just the way you are, you get
better.
Barbara Bocca
Redwood City, CA
ARIZON~
HIGHWAYS
JUNE 1998 VOL. 74. NO. 6
Publisher NINA M. LA FRANCE
Editor ROBERT]. EARLY
Senior Editor RICHARD G. STAHL
Managing Editor REBECCA MONG
Research Editor JEB STUART ROSEBROOK
Photography Di1~ctor PETER ENSENBERGER
Photography Editor RICHARD MAACK
Art Director MARY WINKELMAN VELGOS
Deputy Art Director BARBARA DENNEY
Associate Art Director VICKY SNOW
Map Designer KEVIN KIBSEY
Production Assistant ELLEN STRAINE
Production Director CINDY MACKEY
Circulation and Marketing Director
DEBBIE THOMPSON
Finance Director ROBERT M. STEELE
Governor Jane Dee Hull
Director, Department of 1i·ansportation
Mary E. Peters
ARIZONA TRANSPORTATION BOARD
Chairman Jack Husted, Springerville
Vice Chairman John l. Hudson, Yuma
Members F. Rockne Arnett, Mesa;
Katie Dusenberry, Tucson;
Burton Kruglick, Phoenix;
lngo Radicke, Globe;
Jerry C. Williams, Morenci
Toll-free nationwide number
for customer inquiries or to
order books and gifts:
(800) 543-5432
In the Phoenix area or outside
the U.S., call (602) 258-1000
Fax: (602) 254-4505
World Wide Web address:
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E-mail "Letters to the Editor":
editor@arizhwys.com
Regular Mail: Editor
2039 W Lewis Ave.
Phoenix, AZ 85009
International Regional Magazine
Association
IFM\
Best Regional & State Magazine
1997, 1995, 1993,1992, 1991
Western Publications Assn.
Best Monthly Travel Magazine
1996 Bronze Award, 1995 Silver
Award, 1994 Silver Award
Society of American
Travel Writers Foundation
Arizona Highways® (lSSN 0004-1521) is published
monthly by the Arizona Depanment of Transportation.
Subscription price: $19 a year in the U.S. , $29 else­where;
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@PRODUCED IN THE USA
I;m 43 Years Old and Afraid of Water-a
Ion g
th e w ay
So Why Am I Cliff-diving into the Colorado?
TE X T B Y L IND A OR V I S • IL LUSTR A TI ON BY F RANK Y B A R R A
Iran up the cliff. Walking
would have given me time
to think. I reached the edge,
panting.
I jumped.
The questions came. Why
had I done this? Who'd raise our
children? Was Elvis really dead?
The urge for survival jam­packs
the seconds before death
with random thoughts. Some
call it life-passing-before-your­eyes.
I had stood on the edge
of the Colorado River a few
days earlier thinking of Diana.
This was all her fault.
Camping along the
river upstream of Wil­low
Beach in the Lake
Mead Recreation Area
was an annual event for
our group of teenagers.
Two of our sons and
my husband, Vic, came
along. But why me7
I was a 4 3-year-old
mother of six, a bit over­weight,
with sensitive
skin , deathly afraid of
water, and a hater of
the outdoors.
Diana , leader of the
girls, not only loved hik­ing,
swimming, and ca­vorting
in din, but woke
early Everyone admired
her penchant for self-tor­ture
- even me.
With my macho sons
watching, I swore I'd
measure up to Diana. I
wou ld be a ru gge d , tough
cookie - no wimp.
As the days passed, I made
myself proud. I hiked, climbed,
and canoed. I woke early, ate
food seasoned with bugs, suf­fe
red the pranks of teenagers,
smeared on two bottles of sun
block, bathed in ice-cold water,
fou ght off mos quitoes, and
slept with mice. All without a
murmur.
On the third day, everyone
decided cliff-diving would be
the torturous activity I climbed
aboard the rubber boat satisfied
another success loomed ahead.
From our vessel, Vic and I
watched our group jump into
the clear river.
I gulped . "That cliff's one
high sucker."
"Only 30 feet ," Vic said.
Knowing that I panic in the
sh ower, he asked , "Are you
sure about this7"
The new, brave me nodded.
"''ll keep the boat close," he
promised.
We rowed to shore. I scaled
the hill like a mountain goat.
After I jumped, and my life
passed before my eyes, I hit the
icy water.
Shock surged through me.
I sank.
Sank more.
Was I drowning because I
was overweight, sinking farther
than my breath could last?
Slowly I began drifting up.
But the drifting-up took much
longer than the sinking-down.
Where was the tunnel - the
light7
I was dying.
"No you aren't," my logical
self said.
"Sure are!" emotions yelled
back. "You've a few seconds
then blamo! All over."
What awaited me on the
surface proved worse than
death.
I gasped. Not a feminine gasp,
but the sound a seal makes
when a trainer dangles a fish
over its head. I couldn't stifle
the indelicate noise. It bounced
off the canyon walls, echoing
my degradation clear to Bull­head
City
Vic rowed toward me. Our
group stood on the cliff watch­ing,
adding embarrassment to
my near-death experience.
I glared at my husband.
Where was the rescue - the
dive into the raging river to
save his woman - the knight­errant?
Instead of a lance, Vic
shoved an oar at me.
"Grab on ," he ordered.
Great! He was using it to help
me aboard.
Wrong.
I inched along the handle.
"Stay back," he warned. "You'll
capsize the boat."
An intense revulsion of my
spouse welled in me. He was in
the boat. I was not.
If given the chance, I knew
exactly what I'd do with that
detestable oar.
His face paled as he saw my
crazed expression, and he knew
drowning was the least of his
worries.
"Okay Grab the side."
I dug my fin gers into the
rubber. Safe.
Now to stop the ear-wrench­ing
gasps. A handy tube
stretched along the side
of the boat. Perfect. My
· teeth chomped down.
"Stop!" Vic screamed.
'That's the gas line."
So what7 He had oars.
I bit harder.
"You'll sever the line,"
he warned.
Snatching the oar, I
pushed and shoved him
with it.
He knew I wanted his
company in the freezing
river - knew he was a
dead man - pictured
the gas floating in the
water.
"Hold on ," he said .
"We'll go ashore."
He paddled to a near­by
cave. I staggered onto
cherished ground. ·
I've analyzed why this
experience proved monumen­tal
to me, determining several
things, one of which is that my
husband is no lifeguard.
I've learned it's okay not to
master everything in life.
I don ' t swim. I gasp just
drinking water too fas t. I'm a
mom and not my kids' con­temporary
Oh yes, one last thing I've
learned.
I'll never, no matter what,
jump off a cliff into water
again. ~
Alizona Highways 3
"Take off your hat ," the guide said as we approached
the helicopter. "They tend to get swept up in the rotor."
I not only took off my cap, but I ducked low.
I didn't want my head to get swept up in the rotor, either.
On that September day, we had risen
with the sun and traveled some 92 miles
through a diorama of desolate desert and
spectacular joshua tree forest to reach the
Terminal Building at Grand Canyon West
on the Hualapai Indian Reservation. This is
the only place you can take a sight -seeing
helicopter ride into the Canyon.
Five of us plus the pilot and the guide
crammed into the flying machine. They
knew how much we all weighed, so I as­sumed
we were not overloaded. Each of us
had headphones to mute .the noise of the
craft, but no mikes. I figured this was so
the pilot wouldn't hear us screaming as we
slipped over the edge and plunged into the
Canyon.
At lift -off we stayed close to the groun<;l,
maybe no higher than 15 feet. I felt reas­sured.
Then we crossed over the edge, and
suddenly the ground dropped several thou­sand
feet below Scream number one.
But, surprisingly, no other yells pulsed
from my gullet. The flight quickly became
routine, and we soon landed at the base of
Quartermaster Canyon about 600 feet
above the Colorado River and some 3,000
feet below where we started.
As we emerged from the chopper, the
Canyon huffed its fevered breath, the heat
pouring over us like melting wax. Because
the helicopter had left to pick up another
load , I put my hat back on to protect
against the sun. But the hat afforded no
help from the searing Canyon walls, which
distribute heat like giant electric irons.
The helicopter had deposited us on a
rolling terrace called the Esplanade, which
was formed on the west end of the Canyon
by the erosion of Hermit shale. Between the
terrace and the river were sheer walls of
limestone, blocking any descent to the wa­ter.
All around us lived snakes, scorpions,
lizards, and mountain sheep, but ants were
all we saw
We meandered through desert scrub,
barrel cactuses, and the agaves that the
Hualapais call "yont" and "mescal." If we
had been in Ireland, those rolling hills
would have been green grassy areas, but
at the west end of the Canyon, the lime­stone
floor and the desert varnish cast a
(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 4 AND 5)
Among the vistas from the western end of
the Grand Canyon is this late afternoon
view looking north along the Colorado
River from Guano Point.
(LEFT) Primroses and the yellow buds of
the creosote bush f estoon the Lower Grand
Gorge near the confluence of the Colorado
River and Diamond Creek, where
raft trips to Pearce Ferry commence.
(RIGHT) Sandstone cliffs line the way to
the Colorado in this view from Eagle Point.
The trees lining the river are tamarisks,
sometimes called salt cedars.
gray-green hue, accentuating the dark-red
barrel cactuses. Stubby and erect beside the
squat agaves, the barrels looked as out of
place as top hats at a rodeo.
The perspective from inside the Grand
Canyon contrasts sharply with that of the
Rim views. You simply cannot appreciate
the immensity of the chasm - a mile deep
in some places- from on top. You have to
get into it. Geologists figure some parts of
the Canyon, the vishnu schist, date back
1.8 billion years. That schist, looking like
polished coal-black iron, lies exposed just
a few miles east of the Esplanade.
After hiking around for 15 minutes or
so, we saw our helicopter returning. Going
up proved to be less stomach-turning. We
stayed in the air awhile touring Quarter­master
Canyon and getting close-up views
of the rock-ribbed cliff walls.
From the air, you can see trails along
the foothills, trails you don't notice on the
Text continued on page 1 0
Arizona Highways 7
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8 june 1998
· ..
H U A L A P 'A I I . N D ., A N .
R. e: · S E R. V A T I . · 0 N
. PEACH SPRINGS
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WHEN YOU GO
GETTING THERE
To reach Peach Springs from Flagstaff,
travel west on Interstate 40 to Seligman.
Then take State Route 66 (old U.S. Route
66) we s t to Peach Springs . The tiny
community has a grocery store, but the
only place to eat or s hop for so uvenirs
is the n ew Hualapai Lod ge . Befor e
wandering around the area on your own,
check to find out if tribal permiss ion
is required. And always res pec t the
Y . . · A
o'
. .
.. .
privacy and traditions of your hosts.
To continue to the Grand Canyon
West Terminal Building , travel west from
Hualapai Lodge on State 66. Five miles
west of Hackberry, turn right onto
unpaved Antares Road for 32.8 miles,
then turn right onto paved Pearce Ferry
Road for 6 .9 miles. Take another right
onto unpaved Diamond Bar Road for
14.1 miles. When the pavement begins
again, yo u are on the Hualapai Indian
Reservation . The Terminal Building is
6. 6 miles farther.
ACCOMMO D AT I ONS
Hualapai Lodge in Peach Springs
offers 60 rooms year-round
at $75 to $80 per night,
single or double
occupancy,
children under 18 free . The restaurant
serves three meals daily To inquire
contact Hualapai Lodge, 900 N .
Highway 66, Peach Springs, AZ 86434-
0538 or call toll-free (888) 255-9550, or
(52 0) 769-2230. Other accommodations
are available at Grand Canyon Caverns
Inn, 13 miles east of Peach Springs on
State 66: (520) 422-3223.
RAFTING TR IPS
Hualapai River Runners offers rafting
trips on the Colorado River for anyone
age eight or older. Cost for a one-day trip
is $221 per person; two-day trips are
$321 per person . The 64-mile trip
departs Diamond Creek and ends at
Pearce Ferry Round-trip transportation
from Hualapai Lodge , appropriate meals,
and beverages are included. Information :
toll-free (888) 255-9550. on BUS TOURS
The Hualapai Indian Nation
operates guided bus tours from
the Grand Canyon West
Terminal Building. Narrated by
a Hualapai guide, the 4.5-mile
tour includes a barbecue lunch.
C 0 C 0. • N . . ·•
..
• I 0 . ,
. '
. .
;/ •. . ·•
P : A ·
. · .. ..•
. •. · . .... .
Prices range from $22 to
$2 7 .50. Information :
toll-free (888) 255-9550.
~ ·.
SELF · GUIDED TOURS
Quartermaster Point
can be reached b y
private vehicle from
the Terminal
Building, about
one and a half
miles north.
. ..
i ·• . '
• . . · . .
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--~~-· ~· · --------·-~· ~--~--~-~------~----~----~~--------~-------
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Sight-seeing p ermits cos t $7 and can be
obtained at the terminal.
HELICOPTER TOURS
Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopters
operates flights from the Grand Canyon
West Terminal Building to th e bottom of
the Canyon . Prices range from $79 to
$99 depending on the length of the tour.
Information: Papillon Grand Canyon
Helicopters, toll-free (800) 528-2418 , or
(602) 967-6150.
NEARBY ATTRACTIONS
joshua trees , which typically bloom
in April, dot the landscape along Pearce
Ferry Road in Hualapai Valley just
beyond the northwest corne r of the
Hualapai reservation.
Located on the Havasupai reservation
northeast of Peach Springs on Indian
Route 18, the Hualapai Hilltop hiking
area is the trailhead to Havasu Canyon.
Information and permits for hiking and
camping can be obtained from the
Havasupai Nation . Information:
(520) 448-2121.
BEST TIMES TO GO
Grand Canyon West is open
year-round . Summertime temperatures
(Fahrenheit) remain in the lOOs while
winters are mild, with daytime temps in
the 50s and 60s , and little snow. Fall and
spring are ideal.
RESTRICTIONS AND PERM I TS
The Hualapai Indian Na tion governs
all activities on the reservation. Camping ,
hiking , and sight-seeing require permits.
For information on permits , contact
Hualapai River Runners , toll-free
(80 0) 622-4409.
Hunting for bighorn sheep, deer,
and other game also is allowed on the
reservation by permit only, but it is
limited and expensive. Hunters
should contact the Hualapai Wildlife
Conservation Office at (520) 769-2227.
OTHER
Be sure to tak e a hat, sunscreen,
and plenty of water for outdoor
activities. In summer wear shorts or
quick-drying cotton shirts and pants on
the river, but for hiking, j eans might be
more appropriate. Novices can enjoy the
UJ river trips, but hiking can be moderate to
~ strenuous. Alcohol is prohibited on the
a: reservation .
<i
0
<!
Arizona Highways 9
(LEFT) Abandoned
wickiups withstand
the wind at
Eagle Point.
(BELOW)
The enigmatic
Delmar Honga,
a Hualapai who
goes by the name
Soto, serves as
guide, bus dri ver,
and storyteller.
AN AGELESS HUALAPAI STOOD NEXT TO THE VEHICLE.
AROUND HIS NEcK COILED A YELLOW AND RED COLLAR
FORMED IN PART FROM EAGLE BONES.
HE WAS OUR DRIVER.
Continued f rom page 7
ground. They are paths taken by bighorn
sheep and used so often they have defined
boundaries.
Finally we landed at the Terminal Build­ing,
the airborne segment of our adventure
at an end. Next came the tour along the top
of the Canyon.
So there we were, gathered at the west
end of the Grand Canyon on the Hualapai
reservation about to board a school bus
that would take us along the Rim. The bus,
they said, symbolized the rustic experience
ahead of us.
An ageless Hualapai stood next to the ve­hicle,
his head covered with a turquoise
and copper bandana tied at the back. He
wore a black shirt splashed with white, yel­low,
and red designs , denim pants, and
Nikes. Around his neck coiled a yellow and
red collar formed in part from eagle bones.
He was our driver.
Everyone called him Soto, but his name
was Delmar Honga. He would become an
indispensable component of our Grand
Canyon experience.
This part of the Grand Canyon is seldom
seen by the nearly 5 million visitors to
Grand Canyon National Park each year.
The Hualapais opened Grand Canyon
West to tourists in 1988. Last year the New
Hualapai Lodge began operating on his­toric
U.S. Route 66 (now State Route 66) in
10 june 1998
Peach Springs, the main reservation town.
Pulling away from the Terminal Building,
we embarked on the first leg of our journey
Destination: Guano Point, which got its
name from a cave that contained so much
bat waste a company mined it for fertilizer
in the 1950s. Some 10,000 tons of guano
made its way onto gardens and fields.
To remove the bat droppings, crews erect­ed
three massive steel towers, one by the
river, one by the cave, and one at Guano
Point. Cables connected the three towers,
and cable cars then ferried men and guano
back and forth. The cables have long since
been disconnected, but two of the towers
remain. Only remnants of the bat cave tower
are visible.
At Guano Point, nearly 5,000 feet above
the muddy brown Colorado, the river looked
serene, nothing like the raging torrent that
spent eons ripping apart volcanic rock and
limestone to form the Grand Canyon.
As we watched, an occasional speedboat
or pontoon boat headed down the river
toward Lake Mead. Salt cedars, some 20 or
more feet high , line both sides of the river
and at spots creep out into the middle of
the stream.
From the mining tower, we hiked around
a Redwalllimestone butte, down along the
Rim to a wide ledge, and then clambered
through rocky crevices to a still-lower stra­tum
for more expansive views.
Suddenly the word spread. Lunch was
ready And like cattle before the prod, we
climbed back through the crevices and
maneuvered around the butte to the cook
house. Barbecued beef, beans, corn, rice ,
and tortillas awaited. We ate on a covered
patio overlooking the Grand Canyon.
After lunch we reboarded the bus, and
Soto drove us to Eagle Point, another spec­tacular
overlook, but this one with a twist.
At Eagle Point, rock formations mimic real­life
objects. Seeking them out reminded me
of finding hidden items in a complex draw­ing
in a kid's book. The most impressive of
these rock-wall images depicts a massive
eagle with outstretched wings. Perspective
sometimes gets distorted in the Canyon,
but the stone bird looked to be maybe 100
stories high or more.
Soto told a story of an orphan boy be­fr
iended by villagers who found him in
the Canyon. The boy had learned to talk
to the eagles, and the eagles had taught
him songs to make the corn grow faster.
Whole crops would emerge in days, the
songs worked so well.
Then one day one of the eagles died, and
the other great birds gave the boy some of
the eagle's bones to wear around his neck.
They also taught him a song that would
transform him into an eagle.
The boy chose to stay with the villagers,
growing crops for them. But the peace did
not endure. The village was raided, and the
boy was captured.
The raiders wanted the boy to grow corn
for his new masters, but he refused. So they
threw him off the cliff. But as the boy plung­ed
into the Canyon, he sang the song the
eagles taught him and turned into an eagle.
Finishing the story, Soto dangled the
eagle bones he wore around his neck, as if
he half-expected to fly away. Then he
smiled and began looking for agaves, off on
another venture.
Other rock formations at Eagle Point
portray a cat, a mouse, a man and woman,
and a battleship. Soto had a drawing of the
formations in his bus just to make them
easier to spot. Still it took me a while to
find them. I was trying too hard. The for­mations
are obvious.
As we crammed back into the bus to
head to Quartermaster Point, Soto asked
me to save some water from my canteen for
him. He had harvested some agaves.
Quartermaster Point is not normally a
tour bus destination, but you can drive
there in your own car if you choose. From
the point, we climbed down a quarter-mile
or so to an overlook where the view of the
river becomes panoramic. The hike gave a
little feel for what trudging through the
Canyon can be like. But the viewpoint is so
high, everything, especially the boats on the
river, appears miniaturized.
By the time we returned to the top, Soto
had gathered two forms of agave and had
sliced one open to form a small brush. It
looked like a mini whisk broom, the kind
that was popular before plastic came into
vogue. From another agave, he made strips
as tough as leather to tie the brush together.
Now the need for my water became
apparent. As I poured it onto the brush,
Soto rubbed the fibers, oozing out a milky
The lushest stand of joshua
trees in the state lies along the
Grand Wash Cliffs about 23 miles
south of Pearce Feny on Lahe Mead.
sap. We repeated this procedure several
times until all the sap was removed. Then
Soto trimmed the bristles with a knife and
scissors. Finally he added a red cloth band
and some beads, and we had a Hualapai
hairbrush.
I surmised that when I took off my hat to
keep it from being sucked into the heli­copter
rotor; Soto noticed that the blades
also tried to suck the hair off my head. I
needed a brush.
More likely, he was just being his enter­taining
self. ~
TLtcson-based Randy Prentice loved the swwy at
Grand Canyon West, bLLt his favorite subject was "Soto."
Arizona Highways 11
Diamond Creek Rapids churned and swirled
like a thou sa nd circular saws melting into
liquid stee l. At 8 :1 5A.M. I had b een in the raft
less than five minutes wh en su d denly
the chilly wa ters of the Colora do River slammed
against my face and left me drenched from head to foot. The
raft pitched forward into a wave and rapidly swung into the
air then flopped down like a rhino dropped from a waterfall.
"Hold on! Hold on!" shouted Drake Havatone, the Hualapai
Indian who was operating the motorized raft. "If yo u're wear­ing
false eyelashes, hol d on to 'e m now! "
Ab out an h our earlier, I stood at Peach Springs, headquar­ters
of th e H ualapai Indian Reservation , part of a group wait­ing
for a van to take us down to Diamond Creek. This june
morning came on warm and dry, and we set out for a da y on
the river that wou ld carry us through nine rapids and 64 miles
of the Co lorado River through the west end of the Grand Can­yon
to Lake Mead .
After the van arrived, we began snaking our way along the
d irt road that descends 21 miles to the b ell y of the Canyon.
Knowing the river was below us , cold and hidden, we were
eager and slightl y jumpy W h at had we let ourselves in for?
Ch iseled cliffs, frac tured limestone and sandstone fanned be­fore
the first mammals appeared on the planet, towered on
both sides of the road like granite bookends for a world where
only giants can read .
Before we reached the river, we ran out of road . Diamond
Creek suddenly slithered toward us , and if there was an actual
road under the tires it concealed itself below several inches of
( LEFT) The walls of th e Grand Canyon tow er
3,000 f ee t above the Colorado Riv er at this
spot near the Diamond Creek laun ch area.
(ABOVE) Raft ers get an early morning
wake-up ca ll as they start th eir tlip through
the liver's rapids .
Alizona Highways 13
SOMEHOW IT DOES SOMETHING
FOR THEM SPIRITUALLY, AND
GO BACK FEELING RENEWED
THEY
AND READY TO START OVER .
(RIGHT) Hualapai
River Runners'
motorized rafts are
powerful enough to
turn back upriver
to repeat the most
exciting rapids.
(OPPOSITE PAGE)
The Canyon dwarfs
the rafts as they
make their way
downriver.
RICHARD MAACK
running water and smooth stones reflecting
the early morning sunlight. As a group , we
were not a sampling of anything resem­bling
physical fitness, but we lurch ed
through the creek in good spirits. Our
group included three young adults who
were speaking Russian, two retired farmers
from Pennsylvania, a couple of lovebirds
from Florida, and a retired lawyer from San
Francisco who was wearing operating room
scrubs.
I got my first glimpse of the river and
began thinking about my aversion to any­thing
cold. The June air covered us like a
warm coat, but that cozy feeling would
prove misleading. The water, I knew, would
be anything but warm. The last time I
made this raft trip it was October, but the
water temperature doesn't change much
year-round. Water in the Colorado River
comes from the bottom of Lake Powell,
above Glen Canyon Dam, and doesn't see
much sunlight. As a result, it never gets
much warmer than 4Y F
At 8:10 A.M., with our life preservers
snapped in place, we launched our rafts.
Harley Spitler, the retired lawyer, was mak­ing
the trip for the fifth year and knew that
a frigid wake-up call was just around the
corner. Havatone, one of two boatmen on
board our craft, pushed us off the red mud
bank at the bottom of Diamond Creek, and
14 june 1998
a hundred fee t ahead we saw the alarm
clock: the first of the white water we would
splash through on the trip.
Within a few minutes we had slammed
into Diamond Creek Rapids, twisting into
a swell. A wave washed over the comer of
the raft and tumbled over my shoulder. I
ducked, thinking I could protect myself.
But one of the holes in the deck was right
next to my foot, and as I leaned forward,
water gushed up from below and drenched
everything that hadn't been soaked by the
water coming from above. Later in the day,
I learned these rafts are self-baling, and
that's why there are holes in the deck.
Great idea, I thought, but I was wearing
shorts and a T-shirt and sneakers, all of
which were drenched in frigid water, and
the breeze through that rocky defile turned
my outfit into an evaporative cooler. About
the only smart thing I'd done was to wear
a river hat made of an oily material. Water
rolled off the brim, and my head stayed dry
Spitler knew the thin scrubs he wore would
dry quickly in the dry air and sunshine.
Boyd and Peggy Wolff, the Pennsylvania
farmers, were a lot more practical. They
had bought some inexpensive plastic rain
gear and slipped the pants and hooded
jackets over their outer clothing before we
hit the first rapids. Spitler thought this was
practical but somehow not in the spirit of
the thing and gave the couple some good­natured
ribbing.
Soon after leaving Diamond Creek Rapids,
we pitched through Travertine Rapids and
came to a stop at the bottom of Travertine
Canyon. About 50 feet off the bank and be­hind
some tall boulders, a warm water
creek tumbled off the cliffs. On the cliffside
30 feet above the creek, the mouth of a
cave yawned, and pale blue water cascaded
over a natural stone trough below it.
Havatone climbed the rocks alongside
the creek , anchored a heavy rope to a
boulder, and tossed the other end to the
bottom of the stone sluice. Cole Powskey,
the second Hualapai boatman on our craft,
caught the rope at the bottom. With the
rope anchored top and bottom, each of us
was told to climb the smooth rock toward
the cave, planting one foot on each side of
the small waterfall. The entrance to the
cave was about six feet above us, and after
climbing to a flat spot, the boatmen helped
each hiker scale the rock wall into theca­pacious
cavern.
"Put your left foot there," Havatone
said, pointing to a granite toehold, "and
grab that rock just above your head in
front of you." I did as I was told. Havatone
had made this trip for 16 years, and he
knew each crevice in that particular wall
as though he had a map of it in his brain.
After the icy waters of the Colorado
River, the soothing warmth of the water
on the floor of the cave surprised us. But
where was it coming from7 The cave itself
was remarkable, high walls stippled and
cracked and sanded by wind and age, and
in the light of the morning, bathed in a
harvest gold.
The best, however, was yet to come. I
walked back some 40 feet to where the
cave jogged to the left, and there before me
a bluish-white waterfall tumbled from a
wide skylight in the rocks above. Dropping
some 20 fee t, it emitted a steamy roar that
echoed off the walls where the gold light
deepened to honey
After about 45 minutes in this balmy
Shangri-la, we reluctantly descended the
rope and returned to the beach where the
rafts waited. Before noon we had covered
10 river miles and nine rapids. Somehow,
even Rapid No. 234, the most turbulent of
the ones we rode, seemed less intense than
I remembered from an earlier trip. I asked
Havatone if it was just my imagination.
"No," he said. "The river is high right
now, and we're at least 14 feet above the big
rocks. When you went through the last
time, the river was probably lower and
closer to the rocks. The closer the water is
to the rocks , the stronger the rapids are."
Rapids are described on a scale of one to
10, with 10 being the strongest. They're
formed by rocks washed into the river from
side canyon creeks and by jagged fingers or
ledges extending into the water from the
bottom of the vertical cliffs. Rapid No. 234
was somewhere between a five and a six
that day, which meant it was turbulent but
not the maelstrom it might have been had
the water been lower.
Fortunately the Hualapais know the rap­ids
the way most people know the way
around their kitchens. We tumbled through
the chaotic waves of 234 like a beach ball in
a hurricane and, because photographer
Randy Prentice wanted to take more photos,
Havatone swung the raft and gunned the
outboard, sawing the flashing waves upriver
so that we could run the rapids again.
By the time we left 234, we had crushed
through the same rapids three times, and
only the snacks and drinks in a picnic
cooler and gear stored in waterproof bags
remained dry However, because of the ex­tremely
low humidity, we didn't stay wet
fo r long. By the time we ambled through
Separation Rapids, the last of the white
water above Lake Mead, we were practical­ly
dry and ready for lunch.
I hadn't seen a table on either of the rafts,
but as soon as we berthed on the sandy
beach at Separation Canyon, a folding table
emerged, and our guides set about mixing
tuna fish salad and laying out cold cuts,
fresh fruit, cookies, and soft drinks.
A bronze plaque embedded in a rock
wall above the beach explained that Sep­aration
Canyon was the spot where broth­ers
Oramel and Seneca Howland, and Bill
Dunn, all members of Maj . John Wesley
Powell's first expedition down the Col­orado
in 1869, had separated from the
rest of the party and climbed out of the
canyon to the Grand Wash Cliffs.
At that time no one knew what lay be­low
Separation Canyon, but the Howlands
and Dunn were convinced the rapids would
swallow them whole if they continued.
Powell thought otherwise and tried unsuc­cessfully
to convince them to remain. Ac­cording
to one version of the story, the men
struggled out of the canyon only to be
killed by Shivwits Indians who mistook
them for three prospectors who had abused
one of their women.
After lunch , we boarded the rafts for
the leisurely second half of our journey,
a time fo r relaxing and enj oying a light
and refreshing spray as the river flattened
out. Later we made our final stop for the
afternoon at Spencer Canyon , a place the
Hualapais consider sacred because it's
where their ancestors lived. The Hualapai
creation story says their gods came down
from Spirit Mountain (known now as New­berry
Mountain, 10 miles east of Laugh­lin,
Nevada) and created the Hualapais
from reeds placed in the river. They lived
in Madwika Canyon just above Spencer.
Traditional Hualapai boatmen tell visitors
they can walk in Spencer, but they must
not remove any stones or plants. Every­thing
there is holy, they say, because it's
all connected to Madwika Canyon above.
As we left Spen cer; Drake Havatone
and I talked about the journey we had
just made.
"''ve been a boatmen on these trips for
16 years ," he said, "and I never get tired of
seeing this country It does something for
me inside. For some people who make this
trip, this is a spiritual experience, and I can
sure understand that. They may come
down here feeling depressed or just feeling
bad from being in a city, and they have no
idea something this wild still exists in the
world . Somehow it does something for
them spiritually, and they go back feeling
renewed and ready to start over."
I couldn't agree more. ~
Tu cson-based Sam Negti roams the state looking for
adventure, and almost always finds it. He also wmte the
Marble Canyon "Back Road Adventure" in this issue.
Randy Prentice also conttibuted the photographs for the
preceding Grand Canyon West story.
Arizona Highways 15
U~-· ~~,H-· _.;.>.".' E. ; .
TOP HAND OF THE HASHKNIFE
TEXT BY BOB THOMAS
(LEFT) Three
generations of the
Hughes family
gather at the
Diamond 2 Ranch
west of Crown King
in this photograph
from 1984. From
the right: Mack
Hughes, son
Skeeter Hughes,
and grandson
Bill Hughes.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAY DUSARD
Mack Hughes was fidgety, as always. He twisted his bowed legs one way as
he slumped into his chair, then he rolled
over on the opposite hip and straightened
his bent body as much as he could.
"Sure a man wears out if he's used hard.
A horse wears out, so I don't see why a
man don't, too," Mack said.
He was speaking of his father, Pat Hughes,
who Mack said died because, at 77, "He
was just worn out."
Between Pat and Mack Hughes, you
could just about write the history of north­ern
Arizona cowboys and ranches, includ­ing
the great Hashknife outfit, the biggest
ranch in the state.
Hard work and a hard life hammered
and tempered both father and son. It was
all part of being rough string cowboys, the
top hands who rode the rankest horses,
roped and threw 1,200-pound wild cattle,
and worked and slept outdoors in freezing
winter storms and blistering summers.
They spent their entire lives working "for
the other man," giving their unflinching
loyalty to the foreman or the ranch owner
in exchange for danger, hardship, and
bacon and beans wages.
And neither Mack nor his father would
have had it any other way.
Mack, in his 80s, is getting pretty worn
out, too. The rough life he spent on the
Winslow prairies and the timbered canyons
along the Mogollon Rim and San Carlos
Indian Reservation is telling on him, al­though
you won't hear him complain ex­cept
for a grimace now and then when an
arthritic shoulder or hip bothers him.
But if he feels a little frazzled, he has
plenty of reasons.
He broke the same leg twice at the age of
l3 in two separate spills while trying to
round up the family cow for milking; broke
his neck in another horse wreck; lost parts
of two fingers on his right hand when he
got tangled in his lariat while roping a wild
horse; caught a mule's hoof with his face,
breaking his jaw and teeth; and, in other
horse accidents, cracked his collar bone
and smashed a knee.
But the worst hurt was the tirrie on the
San Carlos reservation. While Mack was
checking the water level in a steel tank, his
rickety wooden ladder broke, sending him
crashing through the rungs and pulling
loose and breaking all his ribs on one side
as well as his breastbone.
Yet he's still working as a cowboy, manag­ing
a neighboring cattle ranch in the remote,
rugged Eagle Creek area of eastern Arizona.
Now, as I faced him across the living room
of his home, Mack squirmed and jerked
about, unable to sit still after a lifetime of
18 june 1998
feeding cookfires and doing camp chores.
He bounced to his feet and clumped out,
his worn black cowboy boots rumpling the
Navajo rugs on the floor. In minutes he was
back, his 145-pound frame of rawhide
muscle bent under the weight of firewood
he cut and split himself.
Mack threw another log into the fireplace,
nudged at the wood with a soot-stained
poker that could double as a branding iron,
and then sagged back into his chair.
"Mack's pretty tough, as you can see,"
said his wife, Stella. "Why, the way that
man has had to work, hard work, all his
life, you'd think he'd sit still for a while.
"But he's always been like that. Up be­fore
4 A.M. and in the saddle, riding up that
mountain across the road to Point of Pines.
He'd be in the saddle all day, often till it was
too dark to see, and he'd be on the range
every day for weeks at a time," she said.
Mack was the boss of the Indian Depart­ment
tribal herd of the San Carlos Apaches
for 29 years. It was a job right out of West­ern
history.
Every year Mack led two roundups: a
fairly easy one in spring when newborn
calves were branded on the 225,000-acre
ranch; and the other in the fall when after
weeks of hard riding in the rugged high
country, they gathered up the adult cattle
and trailed them for 80 miles to the corrals
and railhead at Calva along U.S. Route 70.
It was an epic trail ride , five to seven
days of dusty, sometimes hazardous work
as Mack and his Indian cowboys moved a
restless, bawling herd of thousands of cattle
across wild, roadless terrain stretching from
the high mountains to the desert.
You won't see its likes again. That was
the last of the long cattle drives to take
place in the West. (See Arizona Highways,
April '95.)
When Mack quit the job in 1974, the
tribe never repeated the drive, preferring to
truck the cattle over newly paved roads.
While not nearly as long as the early
cattle drives like those of the 1870s and
1880s, the San Carlos drive had its share of
dangers and hardships.
"There were bears and mountain lions to
contend with," said Mack. "We lost a lot of
cattle and horses, especially colts, to them.
And when I first started managing the herd
for the Apaches, there were still some
wolves around."
But the biggest danger for man and
horse was wild cattle, eight- to 12-year-old
mavericks that had never felt a rope or
branding iron.
'They'd hide, just like wild animals," said
Stella. "Once I was riding with Mack and
he said, 'Shhh, look over there.'
"I looked and there in the brush was this
big maverick bull, stretched out with its
head on the ground, looking at us. A reg­ular
cow would get up and try to run off
when she saw riders. But not wild bulls.
They stayed hid, and not even our cow
dogs were able to smell them," she said.
Big mavericks were dangerous to horses
and riders because they had no fear of hu­mans
and would charge at close quarters.
"We had lots of horses gored and disem­boweled,"
said Stella. "Mack would doctor
those he could, sew up their stomachs with
a needle and thread."
Talking with Mack and Stella, I found,
was an adventure.
Mack was quiet. He doesn't like to talk
and will not talk unless he has something
he wants to say. It is, he said, the way his
father brought him up: A man kept his
mouth shut and his thoughts to himself.
Stella, on the other hand, will talk your
head off. Like a lot of long-married couples,
they know each other's mind. Ask Mack a
question, and Stella will give you the answer.
Sometimes they speak at the same time,
each telling a different story that is equally
interesting while I, trying to follow both
conversations and still take notes, want
desperately to yell, 'Whoa, just one person
talk at a time I'
Stella wrote Hashhnife Cowboy, Mack's
story of his early life around Winslow, by
putting a tape recorder behind Mack's chair
and asking him questions. The book (Uni­versity
of Arizona Press, 1984), with illus­trations
by Western artist joe Beeler, is a
classic and now in its fourth printing.
Mack started cowboying for the Hash­knife,
a million-acre ranch that stretched
from Flagstaff to the New Mexico line and
from the Mogollon Rim to the Navajo In­dian
Reservation, in 1922 when he was 12
years old.
He drew an adult's wages - $30 a month
-and it went to support the large Hughes
family of eight kids. There was never enough
money, and all seven boys had to work as
soon as they were able. Even Pat Hughes,
restless and footloose, never made more
than $65 a month although drawing top
wages as a bronc peeler, or horse breaker.
Death and injury were always close com­panions.
In Stella's book, Mack tells how a boyhood
friend was killed when his horse fell on
him. Mack almost lost his life near West
Sunset Pass when, chasing a wild horse at
a full gallop, he suddenly came to a great
crack in the ground. His horse made a gal­lant
try at leaping the chasm, landing on
the other side with its front legs on the level
ground, but its hind quarters hanging in
space. Mack was thrown over the horse's
head to safety.
Mack said he tried to save the horse by
pulling on the reins, but was unable to
hold on as the animal slipped backward
and fell to its death.
When Mack had the roping accident,
part of one finger was completely severed,
and hung by a shred of skin. A cattle dog
rushed up and ate the severed finger, much
to the amusement of its owner, one of
Mack's cowboy friends .
Then, trying to use some moonshine
whiskey on the injured hand as an antisep­tic
and in the stomach as a painkiller, the
two cowboys drunkenly and slowly made
their way to Winslow to see a doctor.
The doctor snipped off the finger hang­ing
by the sliver of skin and put it on a tray.
Immediately the doctor's cat, a castrated
tomcat called Romeo, pounced on the fin­ger
and ate that part, too.
The doctor laughed and said, "Heck,
Mack. You'd be surprised at how many dif­ferent
cuts of meat that old cat gets in a day"
Mack and Stella were married in 1938.
She was 22 and he was 29. She came from
a Southern California horse ranching family
and met Mack when her father took her to
Arizona on a horse-buying trip.
Stella and her father stayed in Babe
Haught's house, which was next to the
Zane Grey cabin northeast of Payson. The
Haughts, a large and important family in
pioneer Arizona, were related by marriage
to the Hughes clan and friends introduced
Stella to Mack.
By coincidence, Pat Hughes was the orig­inal
owner of the homestead where Zane
Grey built his cabin. In 1922 Grey, who
wanted to live in Arizona while writing his
Western novels, gave Mack's dad $1,000
for the spread.
Much to the dismay of Mack's mother,
Oneta, the family pulled up stakes once more
and moved to Winslow, where Pat had an
offer of a job with the Hashknife outfit.
Both the Haught home and the Zane
Grey cabin burned in the huge Dude forest
fire that claimed six lives in 1990.
After leaving the Apaches' tribal herd in
the mid-'70s, Mack and Stella used their
meager savings to make a down payment
on their home beside Eagle Creek, a com­munity
of eight households and 22 reg­istered
voters between the San Carlos
reservation and the New Mexico state line.
It's a beautiful place, but so isolated there
are no telephones or electricity.
Mack continued working, getting cow­boy
jobs at nearby ranches. Stella said she
haunted cattle auctions, buying orphan
calves, bottle-feeding them until they could
graze, and then selling them when grown.
"We didn't have enough to retire on.
Mack had to keep on working, and with
(ABOVE) In a current portrait, Mach and
Stella Hughes are flanked by photographs of
his fath er, Pat Hughes, taken by cowboy
writer and photographer Dane Coolidge in
the 1930s. On the floor sit two oil paintings
of Mach by Tim Cox, and a pen and ink
sketch of Pat Hughes and 12-year-old Mach
by joe Beeler. Stella holds a copy of her
biography of Mach, Hashknife Cowboy.
the money I made writing and raising or­phan
calves, that's how we paid for this
place," she said.
Mack and Stella's two children, a boy
and girl, plus an Apache girl they raised,
are all grown, married, and with children
of their own.
Mack, however, hasn't much time to en­joy
the grandkids. The next morning, after
a breakfast of bacon, fried eggs, and sour­dough
pancakes, he bid me good-bye and
left to check on the cattle.
There's an Old West term for a man like
Mack. He's called "a rimmer," a man who
gets out on the range early, comes home
late, and is a "pure-dee" cowboy. ~
Author's Note: Mack Hughes, now 88 years
old, and Stella recently retired to the tiny
community of Wikieup in western Arizona.
Phoenix-based Bob Thomas holds a lifelong admiration
for Alizona:S real cowboys.
DoLtglas-based jay Dusard has known the Hughes
family since 1981. While he hasn't had the pleasure of
saddling up with Mach, he has punched cows with Skeeter
and Bill Hughes many times.
Arizona Highways 19
ollie Monroe died a loneson1e and dissolute wrecb in
Arizona's Territorial Insane Asylu~, near Pl1oEmix,
put there by l1eartache, revenge, and whisl<ey.
From the time she was about age 20 on, tl1is unhappy triad
colored every choice sl1e n1ade and darl<ened every circun1stance
of her life untJ it was forgone that tl1e end would not be pretty.
Her story is a kind of morality play about
the self- fulfillment of celebrity, human
weakness, and the clash between a wom­an's
choices and the expectations of a fron­tier
town.
Maybe the disgust Mollie generated
among solid pioneer women stemmed from
her penchant for tobacco and dressing like
a man, or the way she acquired and shed
"husbands" with the same fealty another
might show toward a worn-out coat. Or
maybe the disdain Prescott's ladies showed
Cowboy Mollie traces to the fact that she'd
once been one of them.
When she arrived in town, around 1864,
Mollie was said to be the proper wife of an
Army officer at Fort Whipple, well-bred and
well-mannered, a young woman of con­siderable
charm. But when her husband
was transferred, Mollie stayed behind, and
an inexplicable transformation occurred.
She took up the look, and it seemed, the
life of a man.
Newspaper accounts describe her riding
through town wearing a hinged and beaded
buckskin jacket and broad-brimmed hat.
She carried a Henry rifle across her saddle,
a big knife under her belt, and had a brace
of six-shooters bouncing on her hips.
"Strangers to Prescott would invariably
take her for a boy dressed in the height
of fashion," said the Arizona Enterp1ise for
july 25, 1877, "but would be surprised
at the ease and sang-froid with which the
supposed boy would call for his whis­key
straight, and complacently smoke his
Havana."
Folks were so used to seeing Mollie in
pants that in 1872, the Prescott newspaper
considered it newsworthy that she ap ­peared
in town in a dress, the first time
that had happened in seven years.
What drove Mollie's eccentricities, and
seeded her downfall , was most likely a
busted love affair. But much of her early
life is unknowable, and rife with folklore.
Even the place of her birth is difficult to
confirm. Some sources say New York,
others New Hampshire. The 1870 Terri­torial
census for Wickenburg says that
Mary Monroe, a cook, then 24 and the wife
of George Monroe, was born in Mississippi
in 1846.
The most often-told story of how Mary
E. Sawyer, Mollie's birth name, came west
begins with a teenage romance that drew
protes ts from both se ts of parents. The
young man was reportedly sent away in
the hope, according to Mollie's obituary,
that "a long journey would gradually poi­son
the matrimonial dart among each."
But headstrong Mollie, slightly-built,
red-haired, and , according to some ac­counts,
the product of a swank finishing
school, had other ideas. Two months after
her beau's departure, she threw on a set of
men's clothes and stole away from her par­ents'
home to track down her love.
She traveled under the name Sam Brewer,
moving from town to town, at times work­ing
with a prospecting party. In Santa Fe
she learned that her man was dead, killed
in a barroom brawl only two weeks earlier.
Various accounts state that Mollie then
swore allegiance to her Eastern lover's
memory, and vowing to take a life for a life,
recklessly pursued the fugitives in various
disguises from scout to stage driver. She
reportedly rode from Salt Lake City to the
Mexican border without success.
But the thought of the killers, and what
they'd taken away, tortured her. "While
under the influence of liquor," wrote the
Arizona j ournal-Miner, "time and again,
[she] had been heard to give utterance to
her thoughts that carried her back to the
days when she was pursuing the object of
her hatred."
Mollie met George Monroe sometime
prior to 1870. He was a well-known pioneer
and miner who came to Arizona as a soldier
in the early 1860s. He and Mollie spent
much of their time mining in the Bradshaw
Mountains and around Wickenburg.
In 1874 he discovered a warm spring
south of Prescott and named it Monroe
Springs . It was later called Castle Hot
Springs. A resort by that name operated at
the site until1976, drawing tourists from
around the country.
George found some success as a miner,
and so did Mollie. Press accounts say she
discovered two rich gold mines and suc­ceeded
in selling an interest in one of them
for $2,500. But within 10 days, she'd gam­bled
and boozed her way clear of that for­tune.
"She was an inveterate gambler," said
the Arizona Enterprise.
The same paper, picking up a wild story
originally published in the San Francisco
Mail , recounted some of her adventures un­der
the headline: "Fighting Mollie Monroe,
the Amazon of Arizona."
The report told of her supposed fond­ness
for riding with Army scouts in their
hunts for hostile Indians, and on one occa­sion,
her "cool nerve and dauntless cour­age"
in saving the lives of 20 scouts:
"After a long day's march through the
Pinal Mountains, on a fresh trail, we went
into a camp on Clear Creek about sun­down,
and had no more than turned our
horses loose and commenced preparing
supper, than all at once our camp was sur­rounded
by yelling Indians.
"Already two of our number had bit the
dust, and the rest were in a fair way to die
or take the alternative of surrendering and
being burned at the stake, when Mollie and
Texas johnson, who had lagged a few miles
to gather some mescal, appeared on a neigh­boring
hill and began shooting, and at the
same time beckoning to another party.
"The ruse had the desired effect, for it
threw them [the Indians] into confusion,
and gave us a chance to gain the shelter of
some bluffs close by. Texas Johnson and
Mollie, after some hard fighting, succeeded
in reaching us. They had to abandon their
horses and fight their way on foot."
Mollie's status as an oddity, almost a cir­cus
set piece, made her a favorite of the
press. The more newspapers reported her
eccentricities, the louder were the demands
to rein her in on charges of indecent dress,
foul language, and drunkenness.
It might've been that rebel Mollie was
flattered by the attention, craving fame as
much as a good belt of red top rye. Polish­ing
her clippings and defying her tormen­tors
was hard work. But she was up to it.
According to one story, she was on a
prospecting trip with a male companion
when the two stopped at a ranch. After her
friend went inside, the woman who lived
there came out to invite Mollie to dismount
and join them.
She did. When the buckskin-clad vis­itor
answered honestly that her name was
Mollie Monroe, revealing her gender for the
first time, the hostess became indignant.
No self-respecting woman dresses in men's
clothing, she sniffed.
With a gleam in her eye, Mollie report­edly
remarked that she couldn't prospect
in a woman's clothes. The hostess wasn't
swayed, and Mollie was promptly shown
the door.
But the buckskin lady won admiration in
many quarters, too. She was big-hearted,
often taking up collections to help miners
and prostitutes in the camps around Pres­cott
and Wickenburg, where she was a vis­iting
angel.
"She had been known to ride miles to
reach the afflicted," reported the Arizona
journal-Miner, "and with her own means
has generously extended help, and without
any solicitation whatever."
Mollie once heard of a woman living in
desperation with her two children in a min­ing
camp near Wickenburg. Her husband
had gone to town to buy supplies, and he
spent the next three days in a saloon while
his children went hungry.
Mollie and three men found the derelict
miner, roped him to a horse, and forced
him back to his family. As the story goes,
the four spent the night to make sure the
man stayed put.
But those who wished for her downfall
eventually got it. Both before and after her
time with George Monroe, she went through
a string of men without getting near a cler­gyman,
and according to the journal-Miner,
eventually "became addicted to liquor and
. morals that are dissolute."
In 1877 she was discovered wandering
aimlessly in Peeples Valley. Lawman Ed
Bowers brought her back to Prescott where
the court, on May 9 of that year, declared
her insane. She was shipped to an asylum
in Stockton, California.
But Mollie was incapable of making a
quiet exit. The stage carrying her and Bowers
was a few miles outside Wickenburg when
it was waylaid by four masked men. Bowers
lost $450 in gold coins and a fine watch,
but he got Mollie safely to the sanitarium.
After some violent outbursts, including
trying to burn the Stockton asylum to the
ground, she was reportedly packed off to
incarceration at San Quentin. A year later
she was back at Stockton, and taking visits
from the likes of A.PK. Safford, Arizona's
ex-governor.
She swore to him that her desire to drink
was gone, and if freed she'd never tip an­other
bottle.
A different Mollie emerged two years
later, one who, according to the Arizona
Weekly Miner, would still "resort to any
stratagem to obtain a bottle." In the same
story, published j anuary 30, 1880, she pro­tested
that what doctors were calling her
craziness was in fact meanness.
"She said that she was the meanest thing
on Earth," reported the Weekly Miner, "and
intended to be so until she was turned out
and allowed to live as she pleased."
Early in i 887, Mollie was sent to the
newly built Arizona Territorial asylum. Eight
years later she escaped and managed to
outrun pursuers for four days, again giving
the press a sensational story.
Maricopa County Sheriff Lindley Orme
was unable to find her and had to offer a
reward to entice Indian trackers to join the
search. After a couple of days on the loose,
Mollie was spotted leaving a trading post
on the Salt River Indian Reservation, head­ing
into the desert near Telegraph Pass.
As she had with her only some crackers
and a bottle of water, it was assumed that
Mollie would be found dead. But she walked
another 15 miles, barefoot, over rocky ter­rain
and through a cactus forest. She was
found with her fee t torn and bleeding, and
her shoes dangling from her wrist.
Newspapers described Mollie's shocking
appearance - snow-white hair above the
face of a much younger woman - and her
elation at escaping, which she expressed
with unprintable profanity. "If I'd a only
had my breeches and my gun I'd a been all
right," she boasted to the Arizona Republican.
But it was her last hurrah. The woman
whose consuming desire for revenge made
her life a public spectacle was returned to
the asylum, and she died there in 1902 at
age 56, wretched, after a quarter-century of
confinement. ~
Tucson-based Leo W Banks relishes wri ting stolies
about Arizona ~ fronti er characters.
Gary Bennett is a Jor·mer art director at Arizona
Highways. He lives in Black Canyon City.
Arizona Highways 23
A
Sedona. Born of a
vast eroded tableland.
Alternately swept by
the silicate dunes of an
ancient Permian desert
then buried by the
coral sands of a great
inland sea. Deposits
of fiery ocher and
alabaster white etched
through millennia
by Oak Creek and
its tributaries.
A breathtaking
SEDONXS
HIDDEN
PLACES
PORTFOLIO B y DAVID H. SMITH
panorama composed
of red sandstone
buttes and spires,
soaring cliffs, and
towering mesas.
Sedona. Visited
by almost four million
people annually
Familiar to many
millions more from
hundreds of movies
and thousands
upon thousands of
published photographs.
Scenes, like Red Rock
Crossing (see back
cover) , so recognizable
that they become
visual icons, part of a
collective Western
subconscious.
But these scenes,
extraordinary though
they may be, only
hint at wonders not
revealed. Some want
to see farther. They
want to know what
lies beyond the
obvious. What hidden
places, some small,
some grand, beckon to
those who stray from
the known and into
the heart of the rocks.
Photographer
David Smith took
this challenge and
journeyed with his
camera to places
not secret but hidden
from the casual visitor.
Places less known -
into the very center
of Cathedral Rocks,
to Palatki Ruins, into
the Red Rock-Secret
Mountain Wilderness
... to Sedona's
Hidden Places.
(PRECEDI NG PANEL ,
PAGE 24) Concealed in
Red Cany on, Palatki
Ruins, a Sinaguan
dw elling built circa
A.D. 1150-1300, catches
th e la st warm rays of
the se tting sun .
(PRECE DING PANEL,
PAGE 25) A wind -sculpted
sa ndston e overhang
dominates a view of
Bea r Mountain in th e
Red Rock-Secret
Mountain Wild erness.
PORTFOLIO
(OPPOSITE PAGE) Sunset
crea tes a fiery glow
in the gall ery of
Cathedral Ro cks.
(ABOVE) Ocotillos dot
th e slopes at th e base of
Mescal Mountain in
Boynton Canyon.
Arizona Highways 27
PORTFO
(PRECE DI NG PANEL,
PAG ES 28 AN D 29)
Sunri se illuminates th e
red rock s of th e Mund s
Mountain Wild ern ess
in thi s vi ew from th e
Brok en Arrow Trail.
(OPPOSITE PAGE)
A pri ckly pear ca ctu s
with spin es aglow
provid es a spiky
co unt erpoint to th e
wind- soft ened an gles
of th e red sandstone
"Coc ksco mb. "
PORTFOLIO
(ABOVE) Swirlin g
cirru s cloud s and a
so lita ry agav e in bl oo m
decora te thi s vi ew on
th e wes tern edge of
the Red Roc k- Sec ret
Mo un tain Wild ern ess .
A1izona Highways 31
efore the first ball had even been teed
up, swung at, and cussed at, an inci­dent
occurred that made me painfully
aware of a major difference between
regular golf and cowboy golf: My
caddy stepped on my foot.
This is worth mentioning because my
caddy was a horse.
As the day progressed, I would discover
other idiosyncrasies common to cowboy
golf. One is that cowboy golfers use cows
as greenskeepers. Another is the size of the
holes. One of them on this particular course
was eight feet in diameter.
But such variances are acceptable when
you're competing in the Cowboy Cow Pas­ture
Golf Association (CCPGA) tourna­ment,
an annual event held on a lumpy,
rocky, merciless, hilly course carved out of
grazing land near Eagar in eastern Arizona.
The tournament originated in 1995 on
the X Diamond Ranch on the South Fork
of the Little Colorado River a few miles east
of Eagar.
Russell Houston, an Eagar artist, inadver­tently
became its sire when he saw a photo
of cowboys playing golf in an old copy of
Arizona Highways. He developed a series of
oil paintings on the subject. Residents of
this area in the White Mountains looked at
the paintings of the cowboys hitting golf
balls off rocks and cliff overhangs and said
(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 32 AND 33)
Armed with three garage sale golf clubs
and a sach of golf balls he's not afraid
to lose, a tournament player prepares to
start his round.
(TOP AND ABOVE, RIGHT) Over the pasture
to the woods, a cowboy golfer negotiates
the par 3 third hole.
(OPPOSITE PAGE) The course's "signature"
hole is the ninth, where the golfers tee off
from a cliff, aiming for the stock tanh "hole."
34 june 1998
something to the effect, "Well, goshdam,
we got places that look just like that. Why
don't we have our own golf tournament?"
And so it began.
Only about 30 golfers showed up for the
first event, but word spread rapidly so the
1996 field swelled to 60, and 80 showed
up for last year's gallop to the greens.
The rules are similar to non-cowboy golf,
Their purpose is to act as four-legged golf
carts. They carry the golf clubs in the leg of
a pair of blue jeans that has been cut off
and sewn shut on one end. It's not much of
a load because each golfer gets to carry only
three clubs, most of them manufactured
when Sam Snead was still in kindergarten.
Because they do not watch much televi­sion,
horses are not up to date on golf, and
they don't understand the subtle nuances
of the game, becoming easily bored. So in­stead
of giving advice, they wander off in
search of something edible. And they don't
have to select the proper clubs for their
golfer because the golfer dismounts before
hitting a shot. This, and the difference in at­tire,
sets cowboy golf apart from polo.
The other four in our group -jim Foster
of Prescott, Tod Bosen of Eagar, Chris Udall
of Mesa, and myself- teed up and tried
to follow Sam Udall's example. One by
one, we placed our golf balls on a cow pie
and took a healthy swing. When a golf
club hits a ball that has been teed up on a
cow pie, the impact doesn't go "whack!"
Instead, it's more of a "smooshl"
This not only gives an entirely different
but best explained
by Sam Udall , an
Eagar resident and
a member of my
group.
"They ain't much
to it," he said before
teeing off. "You just
swang hard, holler
'shucks,' and hope
you can find your
ball afterward."
Thi~ maij ne the onlij ~our~e
in the wor 1~ where ~olfers
~an lo~e a nall while ~uttinij.
meaning to whiffing,
but also demands an
extremely delicate
touch when replac­ing
a divot.
None of that both­ered
jim Foster, the
1996 champion. He
smacked his tee shot
to within a couple
feet of the cup then
sank the putt for a
Then he gave a birdie 2.
demonstration, tak­ing
a mighty swing
which tore up a large
chunk of congealed
cow pie, several small
rocks, and enough
dust to cause a big­city
smog alert. The ball arched toward the
green 127 yards away and came to rest in
a hoofprint. Udall watched it descend, said
"shucks,'' got on his horse, and rode off.
For those unfamiliar with such cowboy
golfing terms as "hoofprint," "cow pie,"
"swang," and "shucks," they mean, in order:
"a large indentation left on the ground by a
bovine animal," "something else left on the
ground by a bovine animal," "the past per­fect
of 'swing' with john Wayne overtones,"
and "a euphemism used by gentlemen cow­boy
golfers when in the presence of ladies,
small children, and horses."
Also, a few words of explanation about
the function of horses in a golf tournament:
It was a difficult
2, however, because
the greens were ex­ceptionally
tough.
There is no bent
grass or tiff grass
on any of them. It's
cow grass, and some of it is six inches or
more high. This may be the only course in
the world where golfers can lose a ball
while putting. And, because cows don't
know the difference between greens and
fairways, they trample both areas with
equal enthusiasm. This makes it very dif­ficult
to read the breaks.
But the course designers weren't abso­lutely
unsympathetic. To make some atone­ment
for the aforementioned hazards, they
made the holes substantially larger by sink­ing
coffee cans into the ground and mark­ing
them with flag sticks that only days
earlier had been tree branches and plastic
irrigation pipe.
The second hole was a par 4 which start­ed,
in the words of Sam Udall, "on this hill
over here, and you ain't done until you get
clear over there." It was 430 yards long and
made even tougher because a batch of golf­loving
spectators in a horse-drawn carriage
kept riding up and down along the fairway
shouting "you-da-man" after every shot,
spooking the caddies, some of whom ex­pressed
a deep interest in returning to the
barn even though there were still seven
holes to play.
By the time we reached the third tee, it
was apparent that my caddy and I were not
compatible. Because he'd stepped on my
foot, three of my toes were doing a pass­able
imitation of eggplants. Then, after I
shanked my tee shot into some knee-high
grass, he refused to cooperate when I asked
him to eat some of the foliage so I could get
a swing at my ball.
After two hits, I was within striking dis­tance
of the green so I took out (excuse the
terminology here) a chipping iron and ac­cidentally
hit the ball way too hard, launch­ing
it into orbit far over the surface of the
green. Alarmed, I resorted to common golf
terminology and yelled, "Bitel" But Udall,
a cowboy golf veteran, saw my predica­ment,
realized a cowboy golf ball doesn't
comprehend city golf language, and came
to my rescue with the proper phrasing:
"Whoa back, there, you dang little var­mint!"
he hollered. It didn't do any good.
The ball proceeded on its chosen course.
The next five holes were up in the rock­strewn
hills that guard the valley below.
None of them were very long, averaging
about 145 yards, and we played them well,
except for the fifth where we took a w.rong
tum while en route to the tee and almost
got lost. It was very embarrassing.
There was a major breakthrough on the
sixth hole. My caddy and I reached an agree­ment.
If I'd quit sitting on his back, he'd
quit trying to knock me off his back by
walking under low-hanging tree branches.
This is an occupational hazard that Tiger
Woods has never experienced.
We arrived at the ninth hole weary and
badly in need of some 19th-hole refresh­ments.
The ninth was the final hole of the
tournament because on a course like this,
playing 18 holes would have required over­night
accommodations and a personal
masseuse. However, the ninth was the most
challenging hole on the course. Although
the distance was only 205 yards, the tee
was about a quarter-mile higher than the
green, which was guarded by a stream and
a forest of pine trees.
But once again, the course designers
showed they were not without pity because
the green wasn't really a green. lt was a
stock watering tank about eight feet in di­ameter.
However, it wasn't sunk into the
ground like the coffee cans. A chip shot
had to rise over a three-foot steel circle,
then descend with a clank into the tank. As
some sort of reward for finishing the tour­nament
without radioing for help, we were
allowed to take five shots at the tank, and
if we still didn't get the ball inside, we
could pick up and take a 5. Foster made it
in 3; everyone else in our group took a 5
and was thankful.
Foster made it two titles in a row, shoot­ing
a nine-hole total of 35. Second place
went to Tom Finch of Eagar; Bob Pollock of
Greer took third. Shackled with purple toes
and a reluctant caddy, I shot 46.
Tournament proceeds were split between
a youth charity started by the late actor Ben
johnson and the White Mountain Com­munity
Hospital in Springerville
And my caddy and I parted friends. He
never criticized my chipping, didn't whinny
dming my backswing, and, after 1 agreed to
walk the final few holes, quit trying to dis­lodge
me.
But the toe incident cost him. I gave his
tip to charity. ~
Author's Note: The 1998 cowboy golf tour­nament
will take place Saturday, june 6.
For more information, call the X Diamond
Ranch Charity Golf Tournament, (520)
333-2286.
Phoenix-based Sam Lowe, c1 coiL1111nist for The Arizona
Republic, says his toes have hea led, but he sUI/ can't
brea l1 90 on a regulation golf course.
Arizona Highways 35
T~HNIN~
TIM~~H
TEXT BY
UD WILKINSON
b~
~ ~ -
~~PHOTOGRAPHS BY :! TOM STORY - ~
tf>JJ
36 june 1998
~ ~ENTRY ~T~ND~ GU~RD IN~IDE THE G~TE
to Ralph Gallagher's house - an Indian dressed in buck­skins,
his left hand wrapped around the barrel of a Win­chester
Modell873 rifle that's steadied in an approximation
of the parade rest position.
His stern expression never changes, and the rifle never
moves as he rigidly keeps watch , despite the noisy sound
of a chain saw carving into an aspen log a few yards away
and the occasional curious sniffing of one of Gallagher's
three sleepy dogs.
Standing on a thick, soft cushion of wood chips under
a canopy, Gallagher's at work, expertly wielding one of the
five chain saws he uses for his business. "''ve raised my kids
right here on this place," he says of his home and outdoor
shop, tucked up a gully off State Route 60 between Mor­ristown
and Wickenburg. "We've been here about 35 years."
Inside his studio, other Indians adorned with colorful
headdresses wait patiently for word of their dispersal. Some
stand five feet tall, others six, and many grip a small bundle
of cigars.
Turning timber into totems and Indian sculptures -just
like the silent outdoor sentry and the cigar store Indians inside
- is what Gallagher has done for a living for more than 50
years. "A lot of sawdust has been hauled out of here - and
wood carvings," he notes wryly.
The 71-year-old Gallagher learned wood carving from his
father, who learned it from his father. "We figure there might
have been somebody doing a little whittling back further, but
we're not sure about it."
Not surprisingly, his home and shop have the feel of a small
lumber mill. A trailer loaded with logs sits on one side of the
house, while other logs spread into an alluvial fan on the
ground in front of the open woodshed.
The air's filled with the rich, moist smell of freshly cut wood.
And wood chips, sawdust, and shavings are everywhere, even
on the fluffy golden retriever napping nearby.
Aspen wood from Colorado is the preferred raw material
for the creations of Gallagher and his two sons, 32-year-old
John and 27 -year-old Frank. (Their two sons, ll -year-old
Andrew and 13-year-old Anthony, respectively, are already
learning the craft.)
"The hardest work is getting your logs. It usually is cold and
wet and there's snow on the ground," says Gallagher.
"That would be the hardest part, but it isn't tough. It's re­ally
kind of nice. We drive 50,000 to 60,000 miles a year
getting logs, going back and forth, and delivering." Wood
is both harvested from national forest land and purchased
from sawmills.
John, who turns out an Indian sculpture roughly every
two days, explains, "We've made 'em out of everything.
We've made 'em out of pine or cottonwood, but now just
about the only thing we use is aspen because it doesn't
chip like other wood. The bugs don't seem to like it. It's
real soft wood."
It's also lighter, an important factor
considering that a five-foot statue can
weigh 70 to 80 pounds and a six-footer
from 130 to 140 pounds. Promotional lit­erature
from R. Gallagher & Sons explains
that such "wood carvings were first created
after Native Americans introduced English
settlers to tobacco in Virginia during the
1600s. Later, merchants put the sculp­tures
outside their stores to show cus­tomers
that they sold tobacco products."
John first picked up a wood chisel
nearly 400 years later - when he was
four years old. "People ask me how long
I've been doing it, and I'll tell 'em, 'Since
I was 18,' because a lot of people don't
believe I've been doing it that long. That's
easiest sometimes ."
The Indian sculptures provide the
bread and butter of the business, Frank says, noting that brother
John is "the most versatile carver" in the family.
Not only does John do Indians, he also sculpts caricatures of
lawyers, dentists, police officers, and judges - complete with pow­dered
wigs - as well as snakes, pigs, chickens, giraffes, and Gila
monsters. He also did a life-size Ronald McDonald for the Mc­Donald's
restaurant in Wickenburg.
Who buys the finished pieces? "No typical buyer. We sell a lot
of ours to repeat customers who come back again and again," says
the family' s patriarch. "For the larger pieces we get $500. The
stores, they all double [the price] when they get 'em."
Among the buyers are movie actors Daniel Stern and Arnold
Schwarzenegger, who, Gallagher reports, "likes big ones - seven
feet tall."
For the Gallagher family, it's a pressure-free exis.tence. "None
at all. I've been at it 51 years, and I've never got rich , if anyone
wants to know," he reports, laughing at the thought. Or perhaps
at the thought of others trying his profession because, "It takes
about 10 or 15 years for a man to be able to make a living at
wood carving."
The term "wood carving" doesn't adequately describe the pro­cess,
either. After the figures are roughed out with a chain saw and
detailed with hand tools, they must be painted. That responsibility
goes to Ralph's wife, Mary.
Gallagher keeps her busy, and vice-versa. "''ve got a bad case
of 'no work, no eat.' And Mary says if you want that steak in the
evening, you've got to get out and hustle."
Consequently, Gallagher does about 300 pieces a year for sales
in this country and Europe, adapting each piece of wood. "You
just got to adjust to that, make it a little different or a little smaller,
or tough it out over those bad places in the wood like the knots
and crooked grains. Nothing's perfect. It just takes a little longer
when you get a bad log."
Gallagher also must somewhat sublimate the urge to be freely
creative. "There are a lot of things I'd like to do, but I have to stick
with what sells and what I have orders for. Yeah , every once in a
(ABOVE) Three
generations of
Gallaghers
participate in
making the Indian
sculptures and
totem poles in
vmioLts stages of
progress. Clockwise
from front : john,
Anthony, Frank,
Andrew, and Ralph.
(LEFT) The noise of
the saw doesn't faze
Lady the poodle;
she's stone deaf.
Lady basks in
the morning sun
on a cushion of
wood chips while
Ralph chain saws
an Indian sculpture.
while I'll make a carousel horse, a carousel pig once in a while,
a little cowboy."
Gallagher and his sons, who are just as proli fic and talented,
may never get rich, but they'll never fall victim to job stress, either.
"This is a nice, gentle way to make a living," Ralph Gallagher con­fides.
"Nobody hates the wood-carver." ~
Phoenix-based Bud Wilkin son, a veteran newspaperman and broadcastet; took shop in
junior high school, where he discove red he had no talent at all for wood ca rving.
Tempe-based Tom Stoty has tra veled the West as a newspaper photogmplw; bLtt
never considered the chain saw as an artist's tool wllil he watched tl1e chips flying south
of Wickenbw·g.
Arizona Highways 37
OlD MINES AND
GHOST TOWNS AWAIT
AlONG CROWN KING'S
AlMOST FORGOTTEN
S I E V E
MOST VISITORS
TO CROWN KING,
the tiny tourist town on the ram­parts
of the southern Bradshaw
Mountains, stop for a cool drink
and a hamburger after the dusty,
bumpy ride up the mountai11
from Interstate l 7.
Then they tum around and
go back down. After all, they
temporize, what else is there
to see?
Well, besides the matchless
scenery with views of Black Can­yon
City, Lake Pleasant, and Wickenburg, there's a marvelous back road
long ignored by tourists and residents alike. Called the Wagoner Road for
the long-gone post office beside the Hassayampa River, the 45-mile-long
dirt road (Forest Service Roads 52 and 362) crosses the roof of the Brad­shaws
and wends its way downward from Crown King to Kirkland junction.
The wagon road dates from 1871 when construction began on a five­mile
stretch through the mountains to the newly discovered gold and
silver mines. The road was necessary to bring supplies and mining equip­ment
from California, most of which was shipped by steamship around
the Baja California peninsula and then up the Colorado River to the La
Paz landing.
(ABOVE) The drive along the old Wagoner Road begins at Crown King, and
the center of activity in the hamlet carved out of the piney woods is the
Crown King Saloon.
(RIGHT) Thick stands of manzanita, foreground, and ponderosa pine add a
lush undertone to the Forest Service Road 52 section of the back road about
five miles west of Crown King. The mountain range in the background is the
Harquahalas, some 50 miles to the southwest.
38 june 1998
From the river, wagons carried the freight
eastward across the open desert and then up
Date Creek to Walnut Grove , the jumping
off p l ace for the sca ttered mines in the
southern part of the mountainous interior.
"This place is loaded with history," said
Grant "Butch" Van Tilborg, a Prescott Na­tional
Forest employee. "There's remains of
old ghost towns, gold and s il ver mines that
produced millions of dollars of ore , stage sta­tions,
Indian battle sites, and old graves."
As our truck climbed through the pines
on the dusty up and down stretch of Senator
Highway out of Bradshaw Basin , Butch, who
was born and raised in Crown King, pointed
out the site ofMa Reed's cabin and the gulch
named for her. "Pretty popular place in its
day," said the rangy 4 7 year o ld whose fore­bears
ranched and mined throughout the
Bradshaws. "She had a bunch of little cabins
where her 'daughters ' stayed. Each one had
a little red light above the door."
Two miles from Crown King, we came
on the site of Bradshaw City, once a rip­roaring
boomtown known as the "capital"
of the southern Bradshaws.
"They say Bradshaw City had a popula­tion
of 5,000, but I find that hard to be­lieve,"
said Butch. "There were log cabins
and other buildings , but I think most of it
was a tent city The cemetery had a lot of in­teresting
old headboards, but between the
weather and graveyard vandals , all the
graves are unmarked now. "
Most of Bradshaw C it y ' s prosperity
ste mmed from the 1870 discovery of the
Del Pasco Mine. One of the mine owners,
Jackson McCracken, was a member of the
original1863 party that discovered gold in
the Bradshaws after crossing the desert
from California. McCracken's desert trek
apparently impressed on him the need to
conserve water, for he never bathed.
McCracken was elected to the First
40 jun e 1998
'THERE NEVER WAS A TOWN
HERE, JUST THAT BUilDING .
ED WAGGONER BUilT THE
STORE TO SERVE THE
SURROUNDING RANCHES, AND
IN 1893 A POST OFFICE
WAS ESTABliSHED, GIVING THE
PlACE AN OFFICIAl NAME.'
Territorial Legislature in Prescott , but he
smelled so bad his fellow legislators would
not allow him to take his seat. When he
still refused to bathe, they jumped on him,
hauled him to nearby Granite Creek, and
forcibly washed him and cut his hair and
beard.
McCracken later discovered another rich
mine, became fabulously wealthy, and re­tired
to a large ranch in California where all
the rich, powerful, and intellectual giants of
the day shared his hospitality. Which goes
to prove that money smells sweetest of all.
After Bradshaw City, we climb up Towers
Mountain to reach
the road to Wagoner.
Up and over Towers
Mountain was the site
of the Peck Mine,
named after Ed Peck,
an Army scout and
Indian fighter. The
mine was extremely
rich with three paral­lel
silver l edges as
high as 20 feet above
the ground, one bear­ing
a vein of silver
two feet wide .
Unfortunately, a dis­pute
among the four
owners of the Peck led to years of lawsuits.
The turmoil was caused, the story goes, by
one partner - who claimed to have a
(LEFT) A century ago, this building served as
a schoolhouse for the sma ll community of
Minnehaha Flat, whose residents placer
mined along Ash and South Pine creeks.
(TOP) Grant "Butch" Van Tilborg, a
Prescott National Forest ranger, is a
living encyclopedia of iriformation about
the Crown King mining district.
(ABOVE) With the discovery of gold in the
Bradshaw Mountains in 1863, a boomtown
ca ll ed Bradshaw City soon blossomed. Today
little remains, save for a historical marker.
(OPPOSITE PAGE) As the old Wagoner Road
winds toward Kirkland through the
Hassayampa River drainage, you come
unexpectedly upon several "showcase"
ranches, lik e the Diamond 2 .
tapeworm in his stomach that "eternally
wanted whiskey" - going on a Prescott
drinking binge and signing over portions
of his interest in the mine "to
lewd women of the town."
Past Towers Mountain, you
reach the crossroad of Senator
Highway and the road to Wag­oner;
turn right for Prescott, left
to Wagoner. Our road, follow­ing
Ash Creek and then South
Pine Creek drainages, passes the
burned-out si te of the hamlet of
Marion at the head of Minne­haha
Flat. A few old foundations
and some old apple and peach
trees are all that's left.
"This was a little community
in Minneha," said Butch, using
the abbreviated name favored by
locals. "They worked some placer claims in
the creek. There was a store, a sawmill, and
a lot of business from teamsters traveling
from Walnut Grove to the mines.
"There's the Lapham Place . He was an old
h e rmit who probably had known hunger.
H e was found d ead one day, and in his
house he had bags of beans and rice and
cases of canned milk stacked up against the
walls three to four feet high to tide him over
when times were tough. He's buried out
back. There's another grave there, but no­body
knows who's in that one," Butch said.
Lapham figured in an 1896 robbery and
murder of a Minnehaha Flat storekeeper.
Lapham and the murder victim, a man
named Smith, were in the store one night
when two masked men burst in waving re­volvers.
Smith made a run for it and was
shot and killed. Lapham was pistol-whipped
into unconsciousness. The bandits then es­caped
after emp tying the cash drawer.
We passed a little building resting in the
shade of some old trees.
"That's an old schoolhouse . It's very
small, but this was a very small community
Probably was a church, community center,
and everything else, too," Butch mused.
"Over there is the Bleadsoe Place. Mary
Bleadsoe, I think that was h er name, ran off
two husbands with her .30-.30. She also shot
one guy. He was prowling around, so she
shot to scare him. He made the mistake of
shooting back , and she wounded him in the
leg. That was in the late 1950s, so you see all
the violence didn' t happen in the old days ."
The road dipped through a grove of pine
trees on Johnson Flat. These were the last
pines we'd see as we continued to drop to
lower country. Butch pointed out L.f Ridge
where the old wagon road once climbed.
Then we were out of the mountains and
crossing Cherry Creek, marked by an in­credibly
twisted cottonwood tree so big and
old that its limbs sag to the ground. A short
distance from the tree is an old corral made
out of huge rocks where teamste rs using
the road secured their animals at night.
Next we passed the Cooper Ranch, where
gunplay a few years ago took the life of a
miner.
"Some guys were placer mining for gold
in the creek bottom and the Coopers, two
brothers and their wives, thought they
shouldn't be there, " recalled Butch. "Well,
there was an argument , guns were drawn,
and one man was killed, and the Coopers
were shot up pretty bad before it was over."
On the left, just before the road dips into
the Hassayampa riverbottom at Walnut
Grove, is a fortified hill. This, said Butch,
was the site of a one-sided Indian fight.
"Some cavalry troopers found a large
number of Indians on the hill hiding be­hind
the rocks. Their officer, who was just
out of West Point and very gung ho, or­dered
his men to charge the hill. Most of
his troopers were veterans who knew trou­ble
when they saw it. They held back while
the officer charged the hill alone and was
shot to pieces," said Butch.
Later, after the Indians left , the men re­trieved
the body and buried it at the base
of the hill overlooking the river.
"Somebody put up a nice headstone on
the grave," said Butch. "Bu t it's gone now,
thanks to these graverobbers we've got
nowadays. "
The road here skirts the edge of the Has­sa
yampa River at Walnut Grove, where an
1887 dam held a lake 60 feet deep and a
mile and a half long. The site of the rock
and earth-fill dam is just downstream in the
narrow gorge that is visible from the road .
Walnut Grove Lake, stocked with fish and
equipped with row boats, quickly became
a tourist attraction, especially for desert res­idents
of Phoenix and Wickenburg.
But in February, 1890, nine straight days
of rain inundated the area, and the resul­tant
flood washed out the dam, sending a
wall of water down the Hassayampa River
toward Wickenburg. Between 50 and 60
lives were lost in one of the worst natural
disasters to strike the state.
We passed Wagoner but didn't stop. There
are no road signs and the only building, the
store-post office-living quarters, is a ruin of
collapsed lumber.
"There never was a town here, just that
building," said Butch. "Ed Waggoner built
the store to serve the surrounding ranches ,
and in 1893 a post office was established,
giving the place an official name . Trouble
was, the Post Office changed the spelling of
Waggoner to Wagoner."
At Blind Indian Creek, we turned right
onto a ranch road that leads to Bains
Spring, scene of a sensational early-day
murder. A Mrs . Bain ran a little roadhouse
for teamsters traveling the old road over
L.F. Ridge to Minnehaha . Because she
never left her place and spent little, it was
rumored that she had a secret stash of
gold. Some bandits showed up one day,
tied her up, and horribly tortured her to
make her tell where her money was hid­den.
When she didn't, or couldn' t, they
killed her, said Butch.
The ruins of the roadhouse and the ex­tensive
system of rock walls that enclosed
the corral and vegetable garden rest amid
giant cottonwood and sycamore trees. The
old wagon road is still visible as it winds
past the ruins at the edge of the creek.
The road from here to KirklandJunction
is partially paved and runs through open
graz ing land marked by showcase ranch­es
. Visitors can turn left onto U.S. 89 for
Yarnell, Wickenburg, and Phoenix, or turn
right and continue to Prescott.
There 's plenty to see- and remember
- along the old Wagoner Road, for those
who take the time . ~
Phoe nix -based Bob Th omas has t ra ve rsed th e back
road s around Crown Kin g man y tim es.
Carefree-based jerry Sieve says Wago ner Road offers
one of the bes t ba ckco untl y treks in Arizona .
WHEN Y OU GO
T here are no facilities of any kind
l_ between Crown King and Kirkland
Junction. Fill your gas tank in Crown
King, take drinking water, some extra
food, and a Prescott National Forest map .
Wagoner Road is passable by a family
sedan, but a pickup truck or
high-clearance vehicle is best. Always
contact the Prescott National Forest' s
Bradshaw Ranger District, (520)
445-7253, for current road, forest, and
weather conditions. Weather can change
quickly in the Bradshaws , making roads
impassable and the dangers from lightning
and flash floods frighteningly real.
Arizona Highways 41
l eo· en d s 0
of t h e lo st
The Legendary Silver Lode on Carrizo Creek
Has Eluded Searchers for a Century
TE XT BY JAM E S E . COOK • IL LUSTRATIONS BY KA TERI WE I SS
he silver seemed to be
ree for the taking. Pros­pectors
just picked it up
off the ground where it had
been eroded out of surround­ing
outcroppings. With a little
digging, the find would surely
be even richer.
But there was a problem:
Demon rum had killed the
only man who knew the loca­tion
of The Lost Silver Mine of
Carrizo Creek, also known as
The Lost Native Silver Mine.
The mine's legend is related to
some of the richest (literally)
history of early Arizona.
Today the thriving cities of
Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales,
Sonora, sit in a narrow valley,
sharing the boundary fence
that separates the United States
and Mexico. In the spirit of
brotherhood, they sometimes
call themselves Ambos Nogales
- "both Nogales."
Nogales is Spanish
for "walnut ," the
kind of tree that
42 june 1998
grew there when Los Nogales
was a waystop on the rou te
from one Spanish outpost to
another. The land belonged to
Spain, then Mexico, before the
U.S. Senate ratified the Gads­den
Purchase in 1854 and ac­quired
what is today southern
Arizona. Later the U.S. Bound­ary
Commission set up a camp
at Los Nogales, and a little set­tlement
began.
Early in the 1880s, an old
prospector came to the Arizona
town and walked into the gam­bling
house and saloon owned
by John Connors. The old man
laid a large piece of native, or
"free," silver on the bar.
Connors had been a miner
before he saved enough to buy
a bar, and he recognized the
metal for what it was: silver
that occurred naturally and oc­casionally
was freed from the
surrounding earth by water
and wind.
Just such a find had played a
big part in the history of the
border region. Back in 1736,
when the entire area be­longed
to Spain, a Yaqui
prospector named Antonio
Siraumea had found some
chunks of silver lying close to
the surface in an area between
the Spanish mission at Guevavi
and an Opata Indian village
called Arissona.
Miners rushed to the area
and found many chunks and
balls of native silver, some of
them weighing several hundred
pounds. It is said that one
chunk was so large it had to be
carried in a sling between two
burros. The mine was called
Planchas de Plata, which trans­lates
as "plates of silver."
The area became known as
the Real (mining district) de
Arissona. Although the site re­mained
in Mexico after 1854, it
is the area from which the Ter­ritory
(and the state) of Arizona
would eventually take its name.
The Spanish commandante
in the region was Capt. Juan
Bautista de Anza, father of the
Spanish captain of the same
name who would later trek to
the site of San Francisco, Cali­fornia.
The elder De Anza went
to the scene to collect the quin­to,
or "king's fifth ," demanded
by the Crown. But by that
time most of the treasure
had been carried
away and could not be traced.
Officials closed the mines in
l 7 41, when most of the silver
had already disappeared.
Silver was again reported in
the area near the middle of the
19th century. Opata Indians
used to appear at Tubac, the
oldest European settlement in
the area, or at the store of the
Cerro Colorado silver mine,
west of Tubac, to sell large
chunks of native silver. Only
they knew where the silver
came from.
Soon, Apache warriors be­gan
raiding in the area, and the
Opatas didn't show up any­more.
Then the U.S. Civil War
broke out. Federal troops were
withdrawn from the Territory
to fight in the East, so they
could no longer protect the
mines from the Apaches. The
mines ceased to operate, as did
most commerce.
Given that history, saloon­keeper
John Connors was not
surprised when the old pros­pector
showed up with the sil­ver,
looking for a grubstake.
The prospector said he had
bought the nugget from an old
Opata living up on the Santa
Cruz River near Tubac, the
Spanish presidio that became
an Arizona
town (part of it is
now a state historic
park). The Indian said he
had picked up the silver nug­get
while he was hunting deer
along Carrizo Creek, northwest
of Nogales and just north of the
U.S.-Mexico border. (Although
the name Carrizo, meaning
"cattails" in Spanish, is com­mon
in Arizona, I do not find a
Carrizo Creek in that area on
modern topographical maps. A
map from an old treasure hunt­ing
book shows it to be west of
the modern community of Rio
Rico , draining the hills to the
west and feeding into the Santa
Cruz River.)
The Opata said there was
much more silver where the
nugget came from - chunks
of it just lying on the ground.
The Opata was a farmer not a
miner, and he apparently did
not know the worth of the sil­ver.
He sold the nugget to the
prospector for just a few dollars.
The prospector sold the
nugget to Connors for consid­erably
more money and asked
for financial backing to look
for more silver. The barkeep
agreed to
grubstake the prospector's trip
along Carrizo Creek. Apaches
were still raiding occasionally,
and Connors didn't want the
elderly man going out alone, so
he persuaded him to take a
younger man along.
The two men set out, carry­ing
their supplies and camping
gear aboard a string of burros.
After several weeks, the young
man, tired of the search, re­turned
to Nogales alone . He
said the old man was still out
there looking for the silver.
Months passed and
Connors didn't
see much likelihood that the
prospector would show up
again. But one day, the old man
came into Nogales leading four
burros loaded down with
chunks of nearly pure silver.
He told Connors that after his
young companion left, he pros­pected
farther along Carrizo
Creek as it veered southwest
toward the border.
Then he found the area sprin­kled
with the large nuggets
which apparently had eroded
from an outcropping of caliche,
a claylike hardpan usually em­bedded
with pebbles.
Connors had the silver as­sayed,
sold it, and divided the
proceeds equally between him­self
and the prospector. Then
he began making arrangements
to accompany his partner back
to the site of the rich find so
they could mine it.
The old man , meanwhile,
was spending his money freely
in the bars
and gambling
houses of Ambos Nogales. On
the day set for departure to the
silver mine, he failed to appear.
Connors started a search party
through the fleshpots and al­leys
of Nogales.
The old man's body was
found behind a wareh ouse
owned by Connors. He appar­ently
had passed out there and
died from the combined effects
of alcohol and exposure. It was
winter, and Nogales is almost
4,000 feet above sea level.
Connors made several trips
into the country west of No­gales,
searching the length of
the creek that was then called
Carrizo. He never found a trace
of the silver nuggets or the out­cropping
of caliche that appar­ently
had yielded four burro
loads of silver.
And so, more than a century
later, the legend lives on, still
confusing, still tantalizing. ~
Arizona Highways 43
wit stop
Not All Birds of a Feather Flock Together,
As the Speedy Roadrunner Can Testify
TEXT BY GENE PERR E T • ILLU S TR AT ION BY KEVIN KIBSEY
e live and learn. I was
reading the paper the
her day when I came
across the words, "The road­runner
is a flightless bird." I
never knew that.
The roadrunner is a bird, I
knew that, and I assumed that
it could fly. All other birds fly.
Well, except the kiwi, and
the ostrich, which doesn't real­ly
look like a bird. It looks like
a ball of feathers with legs and
its h ead stuck in the sand.
Naturally, that wouldn't fly.
Then , too, there's the pen­guin,
which doesn't really look
like a bird, either. It looks like
a maitre d'. Besides, penguins
live in the antarctic
where there's no rea­son
to fly. There are
no trees to land
in, no telephone
wires to perch
on ... nothing
but ice . If you
take off and fly in
.. ·.·
the antarctic, the only place to
land is on the ground. Since
you're already on the ground,
why bother7 It makes sense
that penguins don't fly.
But the roadrunner looks like
a bird, so I assumed it could fly
Although, come to think of it,
I don't remember ever seeing
one in flight. Although, come
to think of something else , I
wouldn't recognize a roadrun­ner
in the air, so I don't know if
I've ever seen one in flight. But
then, because they are flightless
birds, I suppose I've never seen
one in flight.
It's not unreasonable to ex­pect
certain things to fly. How
would you like it if you rushed
to the airport, boarded the air­craft,
stuffed your luggage into
the overhead compartment,
settled into your seat, and fas­tened
your seatbelt, prepared
for takeoff, and then heard the
pilot's voice over the intercom:
"Ladies and gentlemen, this
is your captain
speaking. Wel­come
aboard.
This particu­lar
aircraft is
a flightless
aircraft.
We will
,. .·. ., ~ .:.
be leaving the gate in about five
minutes and will taxi all the
way to Cleveland. If there is
anything we can do to make
your trip more enj oyable .. .. "
Yes, there's something you
can do, Captain-fly to Cleve­land.
This is an airplane; it
should fly.
The roadrunner is a bird; it
should fly.
Besides, it seems rather heart­less
that a bird can't fl y. Al­though,
it's probably better
than a fish that can't swim. Is
there such a thing as a swim­less
fish? If there were, it prob­ably
would have been extinct
years ago, wouldn't it7
Are there other anomalies
in nature? Are there craw less
snakes? Quilless porcupines?
Stinkless skunks7 Are there
octopuses that run out of ink7
I don't know; the article didn't
mention these.
But it definitely did mention
that the roadrunner is a flight­less
bird. Is this frustrating to
the creature7 Does the roadrun­ner
sometimes pause while
scurrying around the desert
floor, look up into the sky and
watch the sparrows, cac tus
wrens, and hawks floating
gracefully among the clouds
and say to itself, "I wish I
could soar like a
bird . . wait a
minute, I am a
bird."
Of course,
this could lead
to delusions of
. . airworthiness.
.. A particular road­l:_
unner could perch
.... em some precipice
· .. ·. :(presumably having
·' climbed up there)
/ _"'._'and in a fit of self­esteem
thrust for­:
·w.:ard , spread its
~~"- · Wings, and shout,
: <"Oh: yeah , I am a
bird ... oh no, oh no ,
I am a flightless b
r
r
d.
That probably would never
happen, though, because the
roadrunner must know that it's
a flightless bird. Animals have
instincts about those things.
When my wife came in, I
said to her, "This is absolutely
amazing."
She said, "What?"
I said, "The roadrunner is a
flightless bird."
She said, "So7"
I said, "So, it's very interest­ing."
She said, "Oh." She said it in
a tone that implied it wasn't
really very interesting, except
maybe to the easily interested.
I said, "I think it's incred­ible.
This bird has wings, but
it doesn't know how to fly."
She said, "That's not so un­believable.
You have golf clubs."
I stared at her.
She went on. "You have a
toolbox."
I was still speechless.
She said, "You have a . . .. "
"Okay, okay," I said . She'd
made her point.
"Besides," she said, "I don't
believe it."
I said, "It's right here in the
paper." I showed her the article.
She said, "I still don't be­lieve
it. Look it up in the ency­clopedia."
So I did.
The encyclopedia said, "The
roadrunner, noted among des­ert
birds for killing snakes, is
a fast, agile runner, but rarely
flies." Rarely flies. That's a to­tally
different story That means
it knows how to fly, but it just
doesn't want to.
In that case, forget every­thing
I just said .. . and don't
believe everything you read in
the paper. ~
MARK S. THALER
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Inconsiderate Sows
During a visit to a hog farm
near Phoenix, I asked the
owner how he knew ""
when his sows would
give birth. 1.
"Well, that's (
easy," he said. "You (
just figure she'll be
ready in around 113
days. It always works out
to three months, three weeks,
and three in the morning."
Thomas LaMance, Prewitt, NM
The Mouths of Babes
Standing beside her mother
in a teller line at a local
Tucson bank, my friend's
five -year-old daughter
became fidgety and began to
ease away from Mom's side.
She wandered to a young
man whose arms were covered
with tattoos.
••
Frowning, the child looked
up at the stranger and said,
"Your mommy is going
to be real mad at you
for writing on your
arms."
Annabelle Winfrey, Tucson
!always enjoyed those
summer v1s1ts to my
cousin's trading post along
old U.S. Route 66, where she
sold a colorful mixture of
Indian art and curios. I spent
time in the store with her,
watching her sell Arizona
souvenirs and jewelry to
tourists. And how she
loved to make a sale.
One day an excited
shopper insisted, "Miss,
miss ,I just have to buy that
mechanical snake."
"When you said we'd be cooking outdoors,
L------I- didn't know you meant it LITERALLY!"
46 june 1998
A cowboy who gets his leathers wet
will soon have liis chaps stick
Bewildered, my cousin
grabbed her sales book and
followed the customer to the
back of the store. I was right
behind my cousin when she
saw it - an enormous bull
snake, slithering among
the pottery bowls. There
was nothing mechanical
about it.
She lost that sale.
Pat Bezunartea, Scottsdale
The Mining Town
My eight-year-old
grandson visited us in
Wickenburg. He lives in
Round Mountain, Nevada,
where his father works in a
massive gold mine.
The first morning, I made
breakfast while listening to
the news, and he seemed
unusually absorbed in the
announcements. Then he
asked, "Grandma, do you
have a big mine like ours
around here7"
"No," I answered. "There
are several mines, but
nothing as big as Round
Mountain. Why?"
"Well, how
come so
many
miners
are having
wrecks all the time7"
I paused , trying to think
what he mightbe talking
about, when the announcer
spoke," .. . and watch out
for another minor accident at
I-17 and ..
Carole Jarvis, Wickenburg
Slow Learner
;\ t the Cross Triangle Ranch
.L\.. several years ago, a
young cowboy tried hard
to break a spirited colt. Time
and again he mounted the
colt, only to land on the
ground again and again.
Finally the ranch
owner, who'd been
observing the series
of defeats, summed up
the problem. "Son,"
he said, "that horse
is learning how to
buck faster than
you are learning
how to ride."
Bltdge Ruffner, Phoenix
Dip, Anyone?
' X Jhile visiting my sister
V V in Tucson, I went on an
interpretive tour of Saguaro
National Park with a group
of tourists from northern
California.
The ranger was explaining
how the Tohono O'odham used
the creosote bush for medicine
when a rancher commented
that even today they use
creosote for sheep dip.
"What in the world is
sheep dip 7" a woman from
Sacramento asked.
Before the rancher could
f ~ respond, another
• · tourist said,
· ~ "You know,
-:-. it was that
• green sauce
we had last
night with our
lamb chops."
Bob Thaxton, Buffalo, IL
TO SUBMIT HUMOR
Send us an original short story, no
more than 200 words, about your
humorous experiences, and we'll pay
$75 for each one we publish.
Send them to Humor, Arizona
Highways, 2039 W Lewis Ave.,
Phoenix, AZ 85009. Please enclose
your name, address, and telephone
number with each submission .
We'll notify those whose stories
we intend to publish, but we cannot
acknowledge or return unused
submissions.
The cowboy saying at the top of the page is from the Arizona Highways humor book
Cow Pie Ain't No Dish You Take to the County Fair. To order call toll-free
(800) 543-5432. The book costs $6.95 plus shipping and handling.
Some Old West Pioneers Survived Illness
Despite Those Medications Grandma Used
TEXT BY DON DEDERA • PHOTOGRAPH BY CARLTONS ' PHOTOGRAPHIC , INC .
Not the Indians. Not the
elements. Not the bad
guys.
But rather, the greatest threat
to great-grandpa's life in fron­tier
Arizona was great-grand­ma's
liniment bottle.
In a little book long out of
print, Echoes of the Past, Volume
Two, published in 1964 by the
Yavapai Cowbelles , Dr.
Florence B. Yount listed
some of the medical tech­niques
commonly employed
by pioneers in the American
Southwest.
Because of distances to pro­fessional
help, most well-estab­lished
frontier households kept
a private pharmacy. Standard
compounds were calomel,
turpentine, castor oil, Seidlitz
powders, paregoric, lauda-
UJ num, and assorted herbs.
g A popular theory - "If a
§ little bit will do some good, a
(!)
:;i lot will work wonders" - was
~ employed with a vengeance.
~ Or as Dr. Yount observed, "A
~ fierce disease called for fierce
~ treatment." Herewith:
: Asthma: Five drops of rattle-
~ snake grease (adult dose) .
a! Rope burns: Cowboy urine.
~ Snakebite: Externally, poul-
~ tice of turpentine and gunpow­~
der; internally, all the whiskey
~ the victim can hold.
~ Toothache: Pack with a piece
5 of the frog [a mass of horny
~ material] from the middle of a
~ horse's foot.
~ Dysentery: Pulp of roasted
~ prickly pear cactus pads.
~ Rheumatism: Wear a brass
""'' belt , rub joints with tincture
§ of black cat , and drink a tea
~ brewed from cockleburrs.
~ Nosebleed: Hang cold butch­:
S er knife down the back of the
>-
~ victim.
~ Leg cramps: Turn shoes up-
~ side down under bed.
<{
<D
-'
<{
u
iS
Goiter: Wrap a snake around
the neck and allow it to creep
~ over goiter.
Corns: Rub with salt and
lemon solution for 10 nights.
Malaria : Swallow pills of
rolled-up spider webs.
Diffi cult labor: Drink tea
made by boiling wedding ring
in water.
"A pleasant way to treat ane­mia,"
reported Dr. Yount, "was
to push iron nails into an ap­ple,
leave it overnight, pull out
the nails, and eat the apple."
And, "The famous Prescott
[Arizona's Territorial capital]
Cure patent tonic of the 1870s
was a strong tea from mullen
leaves, sweetened with sugar
and taken freely for three to six
months. This guy [the medicine
manufacturer] planted mullen
all over town, so there would
sure to be a good supply."
Preventive medicine was
equally imaginative. (And equal­ly
ineffective, probably.) Small­pox
could be held at bay by a
necklace of rattles from snakes.
Lockjaw serum was extracted
from cockroaches. Influenza
would not invade a room where
there was an uncovered dish of
onions, or where sulphur was
burning on the stove.
Nor were the wellness myths
of the West so out of line with
the beliefs of mainstream Amer­ica.
A typical medicine chest
of that day might harbor hips
(fruits) from the rosebush, mint,
powdered peonies, saffron , to­bacco,
and tree bark. "Lots of
people died of the treatments,
not the disease," opined a mod­ern
medical researcher at the
Washington University School
of Medicine at St. Louis.
Even so, "granny nursing"
was less lethal than many of
the salves, ointments, elixirs,
nostrums, and "vegetable" com­pounds
peddled in fancy jars
and cans by hucksters and
printed ads.
In 1872 five U.S. states and
territories grew poppies to sat­isfy
the nation's widespread
opium addiction . More tons of
opium were imported. Laud­anum,
or tincture of opium,
was openly sold by drug and
grocery stores to tens of thou­sands
of "opium eaters." The
roadside
r est
most famous over-the-counter
treatment for "female disorder"
contained 21 percent alcohol
- or about the kick of a Man­hattan
cocktail. Other patent
concoctions were loaded with
cocaine.
Despite casually controlled
traffic in dangerous and ineffec­tive
products, plus a rich and
often contradictory folk­lore
of home treatment,
bright young scientists
were able to introduce fun-damental
advances in medical
care: the first major disinfec­tant,
carbonic acid; and the
first generally accepted anes­thetics
, ether and chloroform.
Now, 15 decades later, med­ics
are confident they soon
will be creating genetically al­tered
animal organs, such as
kidneys , as transplants into
needful humans. One simple
cure for cancer, or the common
cold, thus far defies discovery,
but our generation has benefit­ed
from a host of health mira­cles,
now taken for granted.
Fading from collective memory
is my childhood's scourge of
polio, virtually defeated world­wide
at present by the serums
of Sabin and Salk. Today's na­tional
apothecary overflows
with rational medical weapons.
But as late as 1893, a Yavapai
rancher, bitten by a polecat, or
skunk, went on a five-day train
trip in search of a madstone, a
concretion occasionally found
in the stomach of ruminants
(cloven-hooved, cud-chewing,
four-footed animals, including
cattle). It was thought that a
madstone would draw the poi­son
of rabies.
In El Paso, Texas, some 500
miles distant, the Arizona cow­man
finally located a madstone,
the temporary use of which
was available for a $50 fee.
And as our Dr. Yount faith­fully
reported, "He never did
get rabies." ~
Arizona Highways 47
back road
adv e nture
Tatahatso Point Overlooks the Colorado River
and Offers Vi ew s Not U sually Seen
T EXT BY SAM NEGR I • P H OTOGRA PH S BY GEORGE STOCK IN G
T atahatso Point rar e ly
appears on maps and is
never discussed in books.
Located on the eastern edge of
the Na vajo Indian Reservation,
the spot remains difficult to
find, which may explain why it
remains one of the most ex­traordinary
and unforgettable
spots on the Colorado Plateau .
A person standing where
the vast expanse of sage ends
can look toward his shoes and
see the Colorado River wind­ing
between some of the most
magnificent buttes, domes , and
cliffs of Marble Canyon. Most
48 june 1998
visitors to Arizona who see
Marble Canyon view it from
Navajo Bridge , about 10 miles
south of Lees Ferry, on U.S .
Route 89A. Those who find
that vantage point inspiring
will lapse into gibberish when
they see the same canyon from
the stunning isolated cliffs at
Tatahatso Point.
Tatahatso is protected as
part of Marble Canyon Na vajo
Tribal Park, a long strip of
bone-dry plateau that extends,
roughly, from a point south­west
of Cedar Ridge - some
90 mi les north of F lagstaff
- to Navajo Bridge , which
spans the Colorado River near
House Rock Valley and the
Verm ilion Cliffs.
Tatahatso, a bungled attempt
at transliteration, is derived
from dida'a hotsa'a, a Navajo
expression that means, literally,
"th e edge or top of it is big ." It 's
more loosely translated as "the
land juts out," according to
Henry Lane, a Navajo rancher
in the area.
Backcountry travelers would
do well to keep in mind that
this "park " is unconvention­al:
Not only are the so - ca ll ed
"roads" to it unpaved, they also
are unmarked . And even though
the land is designated as a park,
you will never encounter a sign
that says so.
What does this mean? It means
several things: You make this trip
(BELOW) A predawn glow lights
the walls of Marble Canyon
in Marble Canyon Navajo
Tribal Park .
(OPPOSITE PAGE) The icy cold
Colorado River .flows through
the canyon near Tatahatso
Point.
back road adventure
in a high-clearance vehicle; you
take along a companion to keep
an eye on the compass (you'll
need one), the scant landmarks,
and the mazelike network of
crisscrossing roads, which are
actually two tire tracks sepa­rated
by a mound of red dirt. A
map may be helpful but not
much. More useful is knowing
where north is located, and re­membering
that Tatahatso Point
is west and slightly south of
Shinumo Altar, the most promi­nent
landmark in the area.
I managed to avoid doing all
of the above on three attempts
at finding this tribal park. As a
result , I am now on speaking
terms with several white-faced
cows and a handful of whiny
sheep.
I am not on such good terms
with a Navajo whose sheep
camp I accidentally invaded. In
the absence of any signs, how
was I to know I was driving
into the corral where he was
shearing sheep? However, after
a minute he set aside his anger
and gave me the information I
needed. He pointed to two ruts
south of his corral. "Go west on
that road, and then you'll swing
north." That's not as precise as
it sounds in a place where you
often can't tell one road from
another, but it definitely helped.
To visit the Tatahatso Point
area, you must purchase a
backcountry permit from the
Navajos at Cameron. Once you
hav e your permit, drive north
50 june 1998
(ABOVE) Parry's agave was used
by Native Americans for food,
fiber for tools and clothing,
and medicin es .
(RIGHT) Sunrise illuminates the
Kaibab lim estone on the west
wall of Marble Canyon opposite
Tatahatso Point.
on U.S. Route 89 another 38
miles from the Little Colorado
River bridge at Cameron to
Cedar Ridge. The unpaved
road you are looking for is
Indian Route 6110, which is
marked only with a cairn on
the left (west) side of 89. You
will not see any sign for 6110
until you have turned west at
the cairn and driven 6.8 miles.
At 6.8 miles from the cairn,
the road forks. Bear right, and
the road will swing northwest.
At .6 of a mile from the fork,
and immediately after cross­ing
a culvert, tum left onto the
narrow dirt road headed direct­ly
west. As you do so, take note
of Shinumo Altar, a large butte
standing by itself to the north­west.
A 17 -year-old artist named
Frederick Dellenbaugh, who
had accompanied Maj. John
Wesley Powell on his second
expedition down the Colorado
River in 1871, is credited with
naming Shinumo. Someone told
him there was a prehistoric In­dian
tribe by that name , though
experts have never heard of it.
The word means "peace " in the
Hopi language.
With Shinumo north and
west of you, drive another .8
of a mile , and you'll come to
another fork. Bear right and go
another .3 of a mile where the
road forks again . Go left. You'll
note a rock outcropping off to
your left (so uth). Continue an­other
1.5 miles. You'll go over
a sma ll hill and down to a
stock pond where cows , mules,
and sh eep will b e amazed to
see you.
Two roads lead over the hill
in front (west) of you. Take ei­ther
one because they come to­gether
at the top of the hill. A
quarter-mile above the stock
pond, go left at the fork , and
almost immediately you'll see
three roads come together. Go
right 1.8 miles to the next fork,
where you continue b earing
right. After 3.5 miles from the
last fork, take a sharp left (south­west)
for .1 of a mile. You have
arrived at Tatahatso Point.
Reading these directions may
be harder than finding Tata­hatso
Point. The roads are bad
and confusing, but you really
can't get too lost if you remem­ber
that almost every road in
the area is headed either east­west
or north-south . If you ac­cidentally
take a wrong fork,
there 's no need to despair. As
long as it's headed west, you'll
eventuall y come upon a road
headed north. And you certain­ly
can't lo se Marble Canyon: If
you look west from almost any
point on the plateau, you can
see in the distanc e the silhou­ette
of hazy cliffs. The cliffs are
the eastern end of the Grand
Canyon, and you will never
reach them because you will
get to Tatahatso Point and Mar­ble
Canyon first.
The road ends at a cairn
at Tatahatso Point. I thought
the view from that spo t was
spectacular, but I scrambled
down the hill in front of me
and looked over the edge at the
Colorado River snaking its way
around sandstone domes and
limestone pinnacles. Nothing
seemed real.
Later I read a few lines that
Major Powell had written after
one of his expeditions through
the area more than l 00 years
earlier: "The la ndscape is too
vast, too complex, too grand
for verbal description. "
Yes, I thought , he had that
right. ~
T I PS FOR TRAVELERS
' Jisitors to the Navajo
Y Indian Reservation must
purchase a backcountry-use
permit at the Little Co lorado
River Navajo Tribal Park's
Cameron Visitor Center. To
purchase in advance and for
more information, write PO.
Box 459, Cameron, AZ 86020,
or call (520) 679-2303.
Back road travel can be hazardous if
you are not prepared for the unexpected .
Whether traveling in the desert or in
the high country, be aware of weather and
road conditions and make sure you and
your vehicle are in top shape and you have
plenty of water. Don' t travel alone, and let
someone at home know where you're going
and when you plan to return. Odometer
readings in the story ma y vary by vehicle.
Arizona Highways 51
mileposts
Camp Out at an Airport, Be a Cowboy,
See the Stars, Celebrate Summer
ED IT ED BY RE BECCA MONG • ILLU STRATIONS BY GARY BENNETT
THERE IT IS! RIGHT THERE!
Travelers on Interstate 10
l between Tucson and the
A1izona-New Mexico border should
glance to the south in the vicinity
of Milepost No. 381. Hereabouts,
even those who never see the
bunny cloud chasing the road­runner
cloud and swear that
Phoenix's Camelback Mountain bears no resemblance to its name­sake
can spot Cochise Head - if they see it from the right angle.
The horizontal profile - forehead , nose, lips, and chin- of the
great Chiricahua Apache leader appears to be sculpted along the top
of a ridgeline reaching an elevation of 8,300 feet. Y
AIRPLANE CAMPING -
IT'S A FIRST
Arizona has always been air­.
L\. plane country. Clear air
and few storms make for an
optimum number of good fly­ing
days, and long distances
can easily be flown in an hour.
And now there is a place to
camp along the way
In pine country almost ex­actly
in the middle of the state,
the town of Payson has opened
the Southwest's first airplane
campground.
Its campsites are adjacent
to the runway and sprinkled
among thickets of juniper and
manzanita with the Mogollon
Rim snaking across the north­em
horizon. This is the same
view Zane Grey fell in love with
when he immortalized the area
in numerous books.
Campers at the mile-high
strip won't be roughing it. The
facilities include heated showers
and flush toilets, and there's a
restaurant nearby
"We've begun with 12 sites,"
said LaRon Garrett, the Payson
town engineer who helped plan
BACK ROADS
AND GHOST TOWNS
Adventure and history await
Arizona travelers who explore the
state's backcountry You can tour
Sycamore Canyon as you travel from
Williams in the Kaibab National
Forest to Jerome in the Verde Valley Or you can visit ghost towns
-Harshaw, Mowry, Duquesne, and Salero among them - near
legendary Tombstone. To guide you on such treks, we recom­mend
two popular books published by Arizona Highways:
• Travel Arizona: The Bach Roads ($ 10.95), with travelogues
and color photos on 20 tours for the whole family
• Arizona Ghost Towns and Mining Camps ($ 14.95), which
contains historical in formation, photos, and travelogues for
more than 75 sites now relegated to ghostly status.
To order: Call toll-free (800) 543-5432 or, if you live in the
Phoenix area or outside the United States, (602) 258-1000.
Shipping and handling charges range from $3.50 to $5 .50, de­pending
on how many books you order.
Free gift: When calling, mention this code - AHM68-SPAD
- and we'll include a special premium with your order.
52 june 1998
the campground. "And we have
the option of developing more
sites on another lO acres if the
program is successful."
Each campsi te resembles
what you'd find at a Forest Ser­vice
campground, with picnic
tables and fire rings. A paved
walkway to each site makes
transporting your gear easier.
~vernight camping fees are
comparable to those charged by
the Forest Service. For more in­formation,
call (520) 474-2005.
- Preston Westmoreland Y
WHAT A COOL IDEA
1 earring back, you watch ·
L the 40-foot waterfall
tumble down, hoping to
catch some of the mist.
Then you close your
eyes to listen to the
symphony of water
sounds before taking
a dip in an inviting pool.
You could be lounging
beneath the Grand Can­yon
's famed Havasu Falls,
but you didn't hike several
rugged miles or work up a
sweat to get to The Pointe Hil­ton
Resort at Tapatio Cliffs,
the site of the award-winning
lookalike Grand Canyon