ARIZON~ HIGHWAYS
MARCH 1978 VOL. 54, NO, 3
Marvin Beck,
Director of Publications
Tom C. Cooper, Editor
Wesley Holden, Associate Editor
Richard G. Stahl, Assistant Editor
Gary Bennett,Art Director
Shirley Mummaw,
Circulation Manager
Wesley Bolin, Governor of Arizona
Arizona
Department of
Transportation
William A. Ordway, Director
Oscar T. Lyori, Jr., State Engineer
Board Members
Len W. Mattice, Chairman, Pima
William A. "Bill" Erdmann,
Vice Chairman, Casa Grande
John S. Houston, Member, Yuma
Robert M. Bracker, Member, Nogales
Armand P. Ortega, Member, Sanders
E. J. "Charlie" McCarthy, Member,
Kingman ·
Ralph A. Watkins; Jr., Member,
Wickenburg
In This Issue
Arizona's National Monuments
Arizona Highways is publ ished monthly by
the Arizona Department of Transportation.
Address: Arizona Highways, 2039 W. Lewis Ave.,
Phoenix, AZ 85009. $8.00 per year in U.S. anq
possessions. $9.00 Canada, Mexico and
P.UAS countries, and $10.00 elsewhere; single
copies one dollar each. Second Class Postage
paid at Phoenix, Arizona, under Act of March 3,
1879. Copyright© 1978 by the Arizona Department
of Transportation.
Production Assistance, Lorna Holmes
Allow six weeks for a change of address. Send
in the old as well as the new address including
ZIP code. Telephone (602) 258-6641.
The editors will not be responsible for unsolicited
manuscripts, photographs, artwork, or
other maierials sent for editorial consideration.
(Front cove r) Wupatki National Monument
contains some 800 ruins; the largest, Wupatki,
itse lf, had more than 100 rooms and rose to a
height of three sto ries.
David Muench
(Inside front cover) Colorful vegetation grows
on the stark slopes of numerous volcanos in
the Sunset Crater National Monument area,
near Flagstaff.
David Muench
AMERICXS
NATIONAL PARKS
AND MONUMENTS
~ THE BEST IN THE WORLD!
From the Editor: In some circles it is in vogue to knock impersonal institutions,
Le., the National Park Service. For some the NPS can do no right. It is a debate
that will never end, as !orig as freedom holds forth in this country.
But there are a great many thirigs right with the NPS which we uncovered
in putting together this issue, featuring Arizona's National Monuments. For one,
the NPS is making great strides in developing "people oriented" services. A classic
example is the number of wheelchair ramps and paths that can now be found at
our monuments and parks. For another, there are developments such as the
"braille trail" for the blind in Missouri, where you can . .. "Feel the remains of
this old tree .. , smell the presence of insects, bacteria and fungus ... put your
hand here. Touch the smooth texture of the lichens and the spongy surface of
moss on the rough rock. Try to wrap your arms around this stone. It weighs 10
tons! These gigantic boulders that feel so cold today were pools of hot volcanic
liquid 100 million years ago."
That is a people-oriented park!
A publication for the handicapped is now available giving brief descriptions
of parks offering these special services. (Stock number 2405-0286, U. S. Government
Printing Office, Washington D.C., cost is 40 cents).
Author Don Dedera visited each of Arizona's National Monuments for
information to prepare this issue. in his articles he spells out still other peopleorierited
services and facilities now being provided by the Park Service.
· And finally, a rioted Japanese photographer a few years back calculated
that Americans spend more money preserving their natural and historic wonders
than the rest of the world spends on its own. That's staggering, but when you
consider the federal spending by the National Park Service ($556 million in fiscal
1978), state agencies, city and county governments, foundations and other private
gr01:1ps, you realize the statement is true.
But while the total figure spent for such preservation and service is awesome,
it is money well spent. There is no other way to insure that our children,
and their children, too, will have the chance to see firsthand the natural beauty
and the wonder of our great land.
Next Month: We have prepared a visual feast for desert lovers. Our focus will
be ori the majestic and colorful wildflowers that each spring are sprinkled over
Arizona's vast desert regions.
35mm COLOR SLIDES
This issue: 35 mm slides in 2" mounts, 1 to 15
slides, 40¢ each, 16 to 49 slides, 35¢ each,
50 or more, 3 for $1.00. Allow three weeks for
delivery. Address: Slide Department; Arizona
Highways, 2039 West Lewis Avenue, Phoenix,
Arizona 85009.
NM-11 9
Sf-94
NM-120
NM-121
NM-122
NM-123
NM-1 24
NM-125
NM-126
NM-127
NM-128
Tall House Ruin ............... . .. . . Gov. 1
Volcanic pattetns ................. . Gov. 2
Saguaro National Monument . . ....... Gov. 3
Tumacacori National Monument . . . .. . Gov. 4
Organ Pipe Cactus ... . .. .. ... . ..... . .. p. 3
Wonderland of rocks ....... . ......... p. 8-9
Lomaki Ruin .... .. .................. . p. 14
Tumacacori National Monument ... . .... p. 17
Casa Grande National Monument .. . .... p. 18
The coming of win.ter .................. p. 19
Betatakin Ruin . ................. . .... p. 20
NM-129
NM-130
NM-131
NM-132
WL-205
WL-206
· WL-207
NM-133
NM-134
NM-135
PH-60
PH-61
NM-136
NM-137
NM-138
NM-139
Nf-0-140
NM-141
NM-142
NM-143
NM-144
NM-145
Tom C. Cooper
Pipe Spring National Monument ....... p. 21
Weather beaten wagon ...... . . .. .. . .. . p. 21
Old grinding wheel ... . .. .. . . ........ . p. 21
Saguaro hillside .... .. .. . .• . .•... . . p. 22-23
Jackrabbit ............•. . •..••....... p. 23
Red-tailed hawk ................... . . p. 23
White-tailed deer .. . . .. ....... .. ...... _p. 23
Coronado National Memorial .. . •.... p. 24-25
Tonto National Monument . ....•. . ... . . p. 26
Spring poppies . .. .. . .. . ... . . . • ... .. .. p. 27
Polychrome .pottery . ......... •..• ..... p. 27
Tu zigoot Pottery .............. • . . .. . . . p. 28
Wal l details .. ... . ...... . .. . .. . ..... . p. 28
TlJzigoot National Monument .. .. . . .. p. 28-29
Bonita lava flow . . . ....... · . .... ... . .. . p. 30
Sunset Crater National Monument .... p. 30-31
Montezuma Castle National Monument . . p. 32
Montezuma Well . . .. . ......... ... ..... p. 32
Walnut Canyon National Monument .... . p. 35
White House Ruin .. . ......... . .... . .. p. 40
Canyon del Muerto .. . . .. . . ........ . .. p. 41
Ajo Mountains ....... .. . . • • . . •. .•.... p. 46
1
by Dori Dedera
A pretty girl's fingers stitch a crazy
guilt of gaudy cotton scraps . ..
Littering the floor of a stone house
is a thumbsize, thousand-year-old corn
cob ...
The last rays of the setting sun shine
through a hole in an adobe wall to signal
the arrival of the summer solstice ...
With murderous thoughts, a Mexican
jaguar peers at a subtropical thickbilled
parrot ...
From a graveyard of American
Indians, converted a century ago to
Christianity, a daisy blooms in the
rebirth of spring ...
As an August thundershower lashes
the plateau country, waterfalls abruptly
leap from canyon rims to plunge 400
feet , . . ·
What do these varied sqmes share in
common? For one thing, they are all
set in Arizona. For another, they are
among the details of a priceless American
heritage : the monuments managed
by the National Park Service. Of nearly
300 places in the United States supervised
by park rangers, 22 are located in
Arizona. Of these, 14 carry the designation,
"mon~ment," and one, the term,
"memorial." It is to these 15 remarkable
rnltural and cultural shrines that this
issue of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS is devoted.
Arizona is blessed with more parks
and monuments than any other state in
the Union. Although nomenclature of
the. National Parks System is not altogether
consistent, in general a park
covers a large area containing a variety
of scenes and resources. A monument
is established to preserve at least one
national significant resource . The
National Park Service holds jurisdiction
2
over other types of reserves, such as
recreation areas, historical sites, battlefields
and memorials. Arizona has some
of these, too (see pg. 5).
This unexampled national system
now comprises 3i million acres, the
most extensive and diverse public
grounds and resources in the world. Yet
strangely - self-critical Americans tend
to forget that this country was first and
foremost in setting aside lands and
treasures in trust for the people. It
required vision, sacrifice, tenacity, and
revolutionary thinking to conceive of
and execute an ide~ for parks thrown
open to all citizens. Yet such was the
intent of Congress, by act of March 1,
1872, in creating Yellowstone National
Park in the territories of Montana and
Wyoming "as a public . park and
pleasuring ground for the benefit and
enjoyment of the people." The worldwide
movement initiated at Yellowstone
has grown to some 1200 national parks
or equivalent preserves in a hundred
nations on earth.
Or to emphasize the accomplishment
from a Park Service point of view:
"The United States has made numerous
contributions to the peoples of the
world from the output of its factories
to the ideas of its founders and statesmen.
Perhaps none is more representative
of the American · spirit than the
concept of national parks that all citizens
may enjoy, and where they inay
find strength and comfort in their heritage
and in. the beauty of nature."
That said, in America heroic struggles
were required to remove national
resources from the threat of commercial
exploitation and mindless destruction.
Scene along Ajo Mountain Loop Drive,
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
David Muench
In Arizona, before the cliff dwellings
were placed under an umbrella of federal
protection at Walnut Canyon,
heartsick writers dubbed it "a monument
to vandalism." Only a hurried
proclamation by President Theodore
Roosevelt rescued Petrified Forest (first
a monument, then a park) from an
enterprise designed to smash the
ancient agate logs into industrial grinding
powder. Grand Canyon, itself, was
not brought into the national system
until 1919: The deliverance of Coronado
National Memorial into the parks system
in 1952, followed years of dedicated
labor and lobbying by the late
Miss Grace M. Sparks.
A fresh philosophy flourishes nowadays
within the Park Service. What is
a worthwhile park experience? Custodians
asked of themselves, and of the
park's owners: the American people.
The resμlts are greater opportunities for
visitors to participate in interpretive
activities. There was always an abundance
of scenery in national park land,
and this is no less true today. But the
latter-day emphasis is on peepening the
understanding of the importance of a
Park Service area through appeals to all
senses. Now there are things to touch,
to taste, to smell, to hear, and to think
about, deeply.
Says a veteran Park Service administrator:
"A trip to many of our areas today
might be considered as ni.uch an intellectual
vehtlire as a physical outing.
And the best way of learning is by
doing. By taking part."
Thus, at the pioneer fort of Pipe
Spring, during some seasons, visitors
4
may churn butter and harvest squash
and sew a stitch in a guilt. A hiking trail
through Coronado indeed crosses paths
where the footprint of the mountain
lion, largest cat of the Western Hemisphere,
infrequently is sighted, and
where birdwatchers make pilgrimage to
catch a rare glimpse of the copperytailed
trogan. The tour guide at Casa
Grande represents the ruin as a kind of
Stonehenge of the Southwest - a
celestial observatory where aboriginal
astronomers possibly timed the planting
of their crops and scheduled the
irrigation of farms supporting a population
of 10,000.
Likely Frank Pinkley would be
pleased. He was a champion, detective
@NATIONAL MONUMENT
gfl NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE e NATIONAL MEMORIAL
and first underpaid supervisor at Casa
Grande. As early as the teens of this
century he realized that parks and monuments
could become fundamentally
different in purpose and management.
Sallie Van Valkenburgh Harris tells
of Frank Pinkley' s "life-long struggle
to have the National Monuments understood
for what they were, not as areas
to be filled in one folder marked Miscellaneous,
Assorted Monuments."
"His contention was that the only
distinction between a Park and a Monument
which would hold water in a hundred
percent of the cases was the fact
that one was created by Act of Congress,
and the other by Presidential
Proclamation; but that, from the
visitors' standpoint . .. the difference
usually implied a need for different
National Park Service planning. At a
Park the beauty and grandeur of the
scenery could be enjoyed without any
background knowledge ori the part of
the visitor; but at a Monument, protecting
something of special historic or
scientific value, it was up to the
National Park Service to provide the
key to enjoyment, which came only
through understanding. Depending on
the way it was presented, the visitor
saw the Casa Grande as only a pile of
mud, or he saw it as a unique tower
built and used by people of America's
past."
CANYON DE CHELLY
NATIONAL MONUMENT
ARIZONXS
NATIONAL
MONUMENTS
ATA
GLANCE
Canyon de Chelly - Under sheer,
weather-streaked cliffs repose ruins
and pictographs of Indian villages built
between A.D. 350 and 1300. Modern
Navajos live upon and farm the valley
floor. On the Navajo Reservation in
Northeastern Arizona. Authorized
February 14, 1931. P.O. Box 588,
Chinle, AZ 86503.
Casa Grande - Adobe ruins surrounding
a perplexing, four-story clay structure
probably erected by the vanished
Hohokam people. One mile north of
Coolidge on Arizona 87. Efforts begun
in 1889 for preservation. Monument
established August 3, 1918. P.O. Box
518, Coolidge, AZ 85228.
Chiricahua -A wonderland of balanced
rocks, volcanic spires and grotesquely
eroded cliffs, high in the Chiricahua
Mountains of Southeastern Arizona.
Access is from Bowie, Willcox, Douglas
and Bisbee. Established August 18,
1924. Dos Cabezas Star Route, Willcox,
AZ 85643.
Coronado - Memorial of nearly 3000
acres commen"iorates the first European
exploration of the Southwest. On the
border with Mexico, about 22 miles
south of Sierra Vista. Established
November 5, 1952. Route 1, Box 126,
Hereford, AZ 85615.
Montezuma Castle - Neither a castle
nor remnant of Mexican rule, this 20-
room cliff dwelling is one of best-preserved
in nation. About four miles
north of Camp Verde, in Central Arizona.
Proclaimed monument, December
6, 1906. P.O. Box 219, Camp Verde, AZ
86322.
Navajo - Betatakin, Keet Seel and
Inscription House are three of the largest
cliff dwellings known. Limited
access. In North Central Arizona,
reached from U.S. 160. Established
March 20, 1909. Tonalea, AZ 86044.
Organ Pipe Cactus - More than 500
square miles of Sonoran Desert plants
and animals found nowhere else in the
United States. On the border of Arizona
and Mexico in the southwestern corner
of the state. Proclaimed April 13, 1937.
P.O. Box 38, Ajo, AZ 85321.
Pipe Spring - Memorializes with an
historic fort and other structures the
struggle of Mormon pioneers in the
settlement of the West. Fifteen miles
southwest of Fredonia near the Utah
border in northern Arizona. Established
May 31, 1923. Moccasin, AZ 86022.
Saguaro - Two units totalling over
80,000 acres preserve natural life
including giant saguaro cactus, unique
to the Sonoran Desert. Both units near
Tucson, state's second iargest city .
Monument established August 10,
1933. P.O. Box 17210, Tucson, AZ
85731.
Sunset Crater - A volcanic cinder cone
active 900 years ago, the rim is tinted
as if by a sunset glow. On a loop road
reached via U.S. 89 northeast of Flagstaff.
Established May 26, 1930. Route
3, Box 149, Flagstaff, AZ 86001.
Tonto - Cliffside stronghold of the
Salado people, who farmed the Salt
River Valley in the early part of the
14th century. Reached via the Apache
Trail (State Route 88, 25 miles of which
is unpaved) east of Phoenix or by State
Route 88, 32 miles northeast of Globe.
Proclaimed December 19, 1907. P.O.
Box 707, Roosevelt, AZ 85545.
Tumacacori - An early Spanish Catholic
mission, long abandoned but hauntingly
beautiful. Forty-eight miles south
of Tucson on U.S. 89. Established September
15, 1908. P.O. Box 67, Tu~acacori,
AZ 85640.
Tuzigoot - Ruins of a large hilltop
pueblo which flourished in central Arizona's
Verde Valley between A.D. 1100
and 1450. Near Clarkdale. Designated a
monument, July 25, 1939. P.O. Box 68,
Clarkdale, AZ 86324.
Walnut Canyon - Cliff dwellings in a
deep limestone canyon tell of a well
developed culture of 800 years ago.
Seven and a half miles east of Flagstaff
on Interstate-40. Established November
30, 1915. Route 1, Box 25, Flagstaff, AZ
86001.
Wupatki - Partly excavated ruins of
homes and sports structures of a pueblo
people thought to be the precursors of
present-day Hopi Indians. On a loop
road together with Sunset Crater via
U.S. 89 northeast of Flagstaff. Established
December 9, 1924. Tuba Star
Route, Flagstaff, AZ 86001.
IN ADDITION, IN
ARIZONA ARE:
National Parks
Grand Canyon - "Erosia," U.S.A.,
encompassing the course of the Colorado
River and adjacent uplands, in
northern Arizona. P.O. Box 129, Grand
Canyort, AZ 86023.
Petrified Forest- World's largest exposure
of petrified wood - trees changed
millions of years ago to rainbows of
stone. Petrified Forest National Park,
AZ 86025.
National Recreation Areas
Lake Mead - The waters behind Davis
Dam and Hoover Dam, providing a mil~
lion and a half acres for camping and
aquatic sports. 601 Nevada Highway,
Boulder. City, NV 89005.
Glen Canyon - Within red sandstone
walls, a deep blue lake forming a shoreline
longer than the nation's West
Coast. P.O. Box 1507, Page; AZ 86040.
National Historic Sites
Fort Bowie - Dating to 1862, the ruins
reachable only by trail are of a military
post deep in Apache country. P.O. Box
158, Bowie, AZ 85605.
Hubbell Trading Post - Still active
Navajo tradin"g post, with weaving
demonstrations, collections of artifacts
and art. P.O. Box 150, Ganado, AZ
86505.
The Gateway to Rainbow
Rainbow Bridge National Monument -
Although located in Utah, 309-foothigh
sandstone arch is most popularly
approached across Lake Powell from
Arizona. C/ 0 Glen Canyon National
Recreation Area, P.O. Box 1507, Page,
AZ 86040.
Information about the above and six
other state parks can be obtained from
Arizona State Parks Department, 1688
W. Adams, Phoenix, AZ 85007.
5
(Left) Seeming almost as though it were just
being constructed, Keet Seel Ruin, Navajo
National Monument, has 150 rooms still intact,
complete with a kiva, at lower left, and a 35-foot
Douglas fir tree used by the original builders.
Josef Muench
(Right) Prehistory lives at Betatakin.
Josef Muench
(Below) Sketch by Don Perceval , from
A Navajo Sketch Book, Northland Press,
Flagstaff, Az.
"Tough Going But Worth It," was
the title of an article which appeared in
Arizona Highways in 1946.
In the essay H. G. Franse recounted
how he and his wife had about carried
their automobile 180 miles across the
sands of the Painted Desert and slickrock
tablelands of the Navajo Indian
Reservation, in order to make what had
been represented to them by friends as
a "one-mile hike."
Franse learned that the walk was
actually an "Arizona mile," more like
two and a half miles down and a like
distance out of a canyon, the equivalent
in altitude of descending and ascending
the staircase of a 70-story skyscraper.
But afterward, as Franse wrote, it was
worth it.
Below, Franse summoned Milton
Weatherill out of his tent, and refreshed
themselves with a bucket of spring
water. The ranger then led them up the
WAJO
canyon bottom to what appeared to be
a huge outdoor band shell shielding a
wonderwork of humankind. It was
Betatakin, six tiers and a balcony of
apartments once occupied by the Anasazi
people. The Franses looked over the
130-room pueblo at their leisure, photographed
it, bellowed to hear their multiple
echoes, perused the trunk of a tree
which had sprouted in A.D. 1074,
touched the soot of long-dead cooking
fires, and pondered upon stunted corncobs
perhaps evidence of the drought
which caused the abandonment of the
dwellings in 1300.
Moderns may duplicate the adventure
of the Franses today - sans the
brutal motoring safari. A nine-mile
paved road connects from U.S. 160 to
the headquarters of Navajo National
Monument, protecting the ruins of
Betatakin, Keet Seel and Inscription
House. An easy walk goes along the
Sandal Trail to a point overlooking
Betatakin. Keet Seel, the largest cliff
dwelling in Arizona, eight miles from
the visitor center, is limited to twentyfive
persons per day, by reservation
only, and all accompanied by Indian
guides by foot or horse. Inscription
House is not open to the public.
It's still an "Arizona mile" to Betatakin
ruin. Twice a day tours of no more
than 20 persons depart the visitor center
under leadership of a ranger. The
round trip takes about three hours, and
the climb is still 70 stories down and 70
stories up . Tough going but worth it.
7
CHIRICAII
A small boy hugs his knees while
sitting on a stone perch, and he contemplates
the curiosity filling his field
of view, so near and yet so far.
It is Big Balanced Rock: a blob of
cold lava, weighing a thousand tons.
Yet despite its mass, the rock rests on
a narrow pedestal by tapering to a base
a mere three feet in diameter. A mischievous
thought crosses the lad's
mind:
I wonder what would happen if I
gave it a little push?
The boy is not alone in his outrageous
imagery. The grotesque formations of
Chiricahua National Monument seem
to appeal to a darker side of human
nature . It overtakes young and old.
While the boy is plotting against Big
Balanced Rock, an elderly gent stands
at Massai Point and slyly says to his
wife :
"Why - there's one - if I shoved it
with my cane ... 11
Fortunately for the visitors and the
landscape, the rocks of Chiricahua are
(Belo w) Nature's madcap museum , the
'Wonderland of Roc ks ', Ch iricahua National
Monument.
Carlos Elmer
beyond the strength of mere human
muscle. And who would want, really,
to undo what a capricious Mother
Nature labored to sculpt over millions
of years?
In explosive, volcanic outbursts she
spread her pads of molten stone and
fields of colored ash. Then she playfully
etched with water, pressure, ice, sand,
silt and wind, while lifting up mountains.
And her patient chiseling continues,
creating new designs for an
outdoor inadcap museum.
"Cartoons in rock," one visitor
dubbed it. Another thought, "Carlsbad
Caverns without a roof." But for most,
Chiricahua is known as Wonderland of
Rocks.
Spires tower up nearly 200 feet. Rank
follows rank of stone giants, marching
through palisades of rock pillars .
Balanced rocks are stacked like children's
blocks. In endless variety, figures
of men and women and animals and
things pose, perch, cling and rest
precariously.
The Apaches favored this redoubt, on
the western flanks of the Chiricahua
Mountains. They would steal out into
the San Simon Valley and Apache Pass
\ -
and New Mexico, raid, and retreat to
their hideouts here. Avenging tribes,
and later American troopers, would pull
up at the entrances to the stronghold.
So forbidding was the region the first
soldier did not venture into the Wonderland
of Rocks until 1886. Sergeant
Niel Erickson and Captain Hughes Stafford
chased Massai (Big Foot), who had
stolen the captain's horse. Erickson and
his family built the first trails. They are
credited for bringing about the establishment
of the monument.
The trails range from gentle strolls
through some of the more dramatic
areas of the 17-sguare-mile monument,
to expeditions 8 miles long to Heart of
Rocks. Rangers run shuttle trips to help
visitors avoid long, uphill hikes. The
rangers take a lot of kidding about how
they keep the rocks balanced.
They also hear questions about the
Apache people. Weren't there thousands
upon thousands of Apache
braves, to harass the 19th century
cavalry, and to be reincarnated in the
films of Hollywood?
An 1870 report discloses:
Tribe Warriors Women Men
Jicarilla 327 349 188
Coyotero &
Chiricahua 340 672 466
Mimbres 280 370 210
Mogollon &
Gila 130 180 230
Mescalero 160 280 320
TOTALS 1,237 1,851 1,414
These relatively small bands, and not
all of them at that, kept the Southwest
in turmoil for the next decade and a
half. They were not even 5000 versus a
nation of 50 million. In the end, 1886,
Geronimo and a few dozen fighting
men were tying down one-half the field
forces of the United States Army, across
a land the size of Germany and France
combined. What the Indians lacked in
numbers, they made up with a classic
guerilla advantage: places like Wonderland
of Rocks for hideaways.
(Right) Once an Apache stronghold, the rocky
wilderness on the western flanks of the
Chiricahua Mountains is today a 17-squaremile
monument offering visitors gentle strolls
or miles long expeditions through a
fantasyland of nature.
Dick Arentz
(Left)' . .. Look on my works, Ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Earl Petroff photo
(Below) Casa Grande pottery, 900-1100 A.O.
Herb and Dorothy McLaughlin
We form a semicircle of intent
listeners as the green-clad ranger squats
to scrape the edges of his hands roughly
across the hard-packed ground. He
gathers enough dirt for a bowl-size
mound. Then, as a child might in play,
he lets trickle an egg-size addition to
the mound. Now it resembles an
earthen igloo.
"This is a model of what their homes looked like," he
says. "The homes consisted of a pit, roofed over with sticks
and mud. They weren't large, but they were snug."
1 The dirt for the ranger's demonstration is not ordinary
dirt. Probably over the centuries it has eroded off the walls
of the imposing edifice which rises three, or by another
interpretation, four, stories above the flat desert floor. This
is Casa Grande, or Big House, the mystifying main feature
of a national monument unlike any other, anywhere. The
ancients 'who erected Casa Grande are believed to have been
the Hohokam, here from before the time of Christ and missing
persons since before Columbus sailed. Archaeologists
know Casa Grande was built in the year 1350, by dating
the growth rings in ceiling beams. But the purpose of Casa
Grande is uncertain.
Perhaps it was a lookout tower, or a fortress, or a temple,
or an apartment house, or all of these. The height suggests
a sentry station, although no evidence is available to support
it. From Casa Grande marauding enemies could be seen at
great distances, yet Casa Grande must have been more than a
watchtower. What of the seven round holes in the upper
chamber - a room too small for living quarters? The holes
are not aimed at the ground; rather, above the horizons. Could
they have been sights for setting planting seasons by astronomical
observation?
Casa Grande is not a typical Hohokam building. Some
experts theorize puebloan allies provided the engineering.
Caliche clay, rich in lime, was strip-mined and moistened
like a plastic and poured into courses of about 25
inches high. Beams were fetched from ponderosa pine forests
60 miles away. When Casa Grande was completed it dominated
a walled village into which ladders were the only means
of entry.
Masters of another form of engineering, the Hohokam
SA
DE
surveyed and excavated 600 miles of
irrigation canals along the Gila and Salt
rivers. They maintained one large city
six miles from the nearest water, an
unprecedented accomplishment. They
fashioned handsome red-on-buff pottery,
and traded far and wide in copper
bells, abalone shell, turquoise, pinyon
seeds, cotton cloth, and bird feathers .
They carved stone vessels and etched artworks with acid.
They raised bountiful crops of corn, squash, and beans in
circular fields . They played a sport in a clay arena with a
rubber sphere about the size of a baseball.
The reason the Hohokam vanished (the name means "all
used up" in the Pima Indian tongue) is yet another archaeological
mystery. Drought may have parched their crops, or
floods may have destroyed their dams. Disease, insects invasions
and soil exhaustion are other possibilities. For whatever
cause, by 1450 they were gone, maybe to perpetuate
in the bloodlines of the modern Pimas.
The first European to see and record (and name) Casa
Grande was Father Kino in 1694. Thereafter, Casa Grande
became a landmark for desert travelers. Not even that crusty
old voyageur, Pauline Weaver, could resist the temptation to
scratch his name into the plaster of the Southwest's first skyscraper.
Troopers, cowboys, railroaders, miners, fortunehunters
- they all paused to peck their marks on the walls
of Casa Grande.
Nothing but a melted mound would exist today were it
not for an early shoring-up by the Smithsonian Institution.
Later a crude roof was thrown over the mud walls of the larger
ruins. After Casa Grande was designated a national monument
the Park Service protected it with a wide steel umbrella
to ward off occasional downpours.
The rangers at Casa Grande operate a slowly paced park
experience. Well off interstate tourist routes, the monument
and museum are seldom overcrowded, except for busy winter
week-ends. There are several tours, led by rangers or guided
by booklets. Two visitor activities transform ranger smiles
to frowns. It is forbidden to set foot on the walls, or remove
the slightest artifact (as in all historic and prehistoric areas).
And heaven help the citizen who thinks to scrawl his name in
the sacred mud, today!
13
Lomaki Ruin , one of an incredible number
to be found in Wupatki Nat iona l Monum ent,
eas t of Flagstaff. ·
David Muench
(Below) Sunset Crater' s dormant cinder cone.
Herb an d Dorot hy Mclaμgh li n
"We could be in Flagstaff watching the Steelers on TV,"
grumps the dad from Pittsburgh.
Instead, at first glance at least, he sees not much more
than a symmetrical little mountain and numerous arrange-ments
of flat stones. ·
Would that he could allow his mind's eye to rove back
into time. He might conjure up teams of lithe athletes in
colorful uniforms, cunning coaches on the sidelines, fetching
cheerleaders, bookies and oddsmakers, marching bands, and
keepers of scores and time. And fervent fans.
But one needs no imagination for the stadium. at Wupatki
National Monument. It is there, plainly to see.
The " ball court" is an oval masonry ring, one of several
in the Wupatki area, and the northernmost of numerous
fields of play discovered in Arizona, Mexico and Central
America. What kind of sport? It's conjectural, but in some
sites hard rubber spheres about the size of a baseball have
been unearthed. Perhaps prehistoric communities sponsored
teams in a game similar to lacrosse, popular with Algonquin
Indians and adopted as the national sport of Canada. The
court at Wupatki is unusual in that it is formed with stones.
Others generally are made of adobe. If the game at Wupatki
was like those of Mexico at the time of Spanish conquest, it
was attended by much pageantry with religious significance.
Is it too much to presume rival teams traveling from village
to village following a schedule culminating in a Super Bowl?
Wupatki must be considered in context with another
national monument nearby, Sunset Crater. Now dormant,
capped by glowing hues and beskirted by verdant conifers,
th,e crater was born violently 900 years ago in earthquake,
eruption and molten rock. Boiling chemicals and acrid fumes
finished off the vent in sunset colors, giving a name to the
youngest feature of the San Francisco Peaks Volcanic Field.
(So moon~like is the cinder cone, Apollo astronauts trained
here .)
Before the eruption, the land was all but barren: poor
soil, little moisture, short growing season . Few humans eked
out an existence in the high plateau between the San Francisco
Peaks and the Painted Desert. But when the botnbinations
subsided, travelers found that prevailing southern winds
had carried ash and cinders northward to coyer the earth over
800 square miles . The cinders acted as a moisture conserving
mulch. Enterprising farming peoples were attracted to cultivate
fields of unprecedented fertility.
The gardens around Sunset became a melting pot of
humanity. The Sinagua were first in a land rush joined by
the Hohokam, the Anasazi and the Cohonina. Each culture
arrived with particular customs and notions, about how tools
should be shaped, how pottery should be decorated, how the
dead should be disposed of. They swapped some ideas, clung
to others, such as differing home styles - deep pit houses
here, ramadas there, pole and brush huts everywhere.
For a couple of hundred years green thumbs pushed seeds
of maise and gourds and legumes into the black cinders, and
brought off surplus crops for bartering across trade routes
extending for hundreds of miles. But insidiously the wind
that scattered the agricultural bonanza likewise carried it
away. Cinders were driven into windrows, leaving bare spots.
The farmers tried to husband their topsoil with stone windbreaks.
But in the end, the wind prevailed. The Indians
began to leave, and by A.O. 1225 all were gone.
They left an astonishing archaeological record: some 800
ruins within the national monument, 100 sites within one
square mile. The largest, Wupatki itself, during the 1100s
contained more than 100 rooms and in places rose three
stories.
Today the monuments, each with an interpretive visitor
center, are connected by a loop road eastward from U.S. 89 .
Rangers manage a lively series of services designed to induce
visitors out of their cars and into educational participation.
During warmer seasons a bus goes to the top of a mountain
and a view to Sunset. Rangers tell tall tales and true around
evening campfires. Starlight lectures are given near the ceremonial
chamber at Wupatki ruin .What the Park Service calls
"the great bicycle whoopie" is led by a ranger for 18 miles,
most downhill, from Sunset to Wupatki . Cruising the ruins
is the "interpmobile" looking for people with questions.
"Well," asks the gent from Pittsburgh. "if these people
did play a ball gaine, what was the name of their team?"
"The Wupatki Warriors," responds the ranger, straightfaced.
Oh, sμre.
SUNSETC
&WUPATKI
15
(Right) Hau nting ly bea utifu l , T umacacori is
today host t o th e g hosts of old Spain and a
monum ent t o the zea l of th e early padres.
· J im Tal l on
(B elow) The ruin ed chape l of Tu macacori.
W. G. Carroll
CACORI
He is a priest ... a young miln wear-ing
a white collar and dark suit . .. on
something of a busman' s holiday .. .
inasmuch as he is searching for another
man of the Church.
"Kino," says the modern priest. "He
could march lik·e a soldier and bargain
like a merchant and work like a stonemason.
But in all respectfulness, he
could lead people as a most successful
politician . How thilt man could motivate
others!
"You see, i'm pursuing something,
sort of a self-motivating trek. I hope
that what I learn about Father Kino
may help me in my teaching in California.
I've gone to Kino's grave at Magdalena in Sonora, and
spent some days at San Xavier del Bae Ii.ear Tucson, and they
are impressiye and beautiful, but I haven' t felt greater admi~
ation for the iiian, his dreams, his bravery, his leadership,
than I do, here, at this spot."
The priest utters these words in the shade of the bell
tower of a nation.al monument named Tμmacacori.
An Italian educated in Germany, in service of Spain,
Padre Eusepio Francisco Kino, wrote in his diary in January,
1691: "Whereupon we ascended to the Valley of Guevavi, a
journey of about fifteen leagues and arrived at the rancheria
of San Cayetano ... they had prepared three arbors, one in
which to say mass, another in which to sleep, and a third for
the kitchen ." Before Padre Kino's life ended, he established a
parish of 50,QOO square miles, built 24 missio~s, founded
19 expansive ranches, and made 50 explorations along the
"rim of Christendom."
Near the site where the Jesuit Kino held those first services,
priests continued to worship in modest buildings. In
the late 1700s Franciscan fathers initiated construction of a
church-fortress they hoped would rival magnificent San
Xavier. Twenty years of Indian labor, principally under the
direction of Father Narcisco Guiterrez, went into a Roman-
16
esque sanctuary, arcades, workshops,
living quarters, storerooms, granaries
and schools . Never quite finished,
Tumacacori nevertheless must have presented
an astounding sight, of
sun-baked brick laid up in great walls,
adorned with arches, a dome, a barrel
vault, copings and cornices, much of it
plastered stark white . For five glorious
years Tumacacori had a functioning
church with altars , gilded reredos,
carved images, bells and lights.
Then followed a century of decline.
The Franciscans were expelled from
their missions . The church fell into
qisrepair ; perhaps in a snowstorm, the
roof of the nave collapsed. Treasure seekers slipped into
Tumacacori and gutted it. Warring Indians added to the
destruction. A traveler named Hays described Tu~acacori
in 1849:
" The fruit has fallen and none to gather it. Corrals still
standing - not a living thing seen. It has a melancholy
appearance. The walls of the church still stand, nb roof, and
only the upright piece of the cross. It looks desolate indeed . ..
built of bea,utiful large burnt brick; the walls inside plastered
with cement, and adorned with paintings in the cement. The
dome over the altar covered with cement which shines white
in the s~n; portico in front; with two tier of columns ; rich ~nd
exquisite carvings inside, four bells, one has peen taken
down. : .. "
The pillage continued even after the United States purchased
the lands and church of Tumacacori from Mexico in
1853. Only its massiveness saved the church from total ruination
.
Today Tumacacori recalls the peak of Spanish occupation
of the New World: Only protective restorations have been
made under park service Cl\Stody. Scattered along a self-guided
tour are several illustra tions, plus a scale model ofhow Tumacacori
~ight have appeared at the height of its development,
about 1820.
18
A TREASURY OF
The coming of winter. Canyon de Chelly
National Monument.
Jerry Jacka
ARIZONJXS COLORFUL NATIONAL MONUMENTS
It is a farsig.hted tribute to Americans and our government that we have seen fit to set
aside areas of precious beauty and scenic wonder as an everlasting memorial to the past and our
concern for the future. Many generations from now, the grandchildren of today will be driving
America's Highways - bringing their grandchildren to see the National Monuments pictured on
these pages.
Arizona has 14 National Monuments, more than any other state. Some are built around
living plants, such as Saguaro and Organ Pipe, or ancient man's struggle for existence, as
preserved in the ruins of Montezuma's Castle and Casa Grande National Monuments. A third
type of natural gem is Sunset Crater, where we can see - and study - the stark beauty of the
earth's explosive volcanic forces.
From its northern border with Utah, to its southern boundary with Old Mexico, Arizona
is dotted with National Monuments. The finest highways in the world lead right to their front
doors. They are there for you and yours, a gift of the land - a treasure of the United States.
Come see them . ..
- Tom C. Cooper
The Big House of the ancients, Casa Grande. - Jim Tallon
~
Q) e 0
0
iii
iii
.;
c..
Josef Muench
(Left) One of the three largest cliff dwellings
known, Betatakin looms large beneath its rocky
canopy, Navajo National Monument.
Josef Muench
Dick Dietrich
(Above) An historic Mormon fort, Pipe Spring
National Monument is situated near the Utah
border In northern Arizona. An old grinding
wheel and wagon recall the days when Pipe
Spring served as an important way station in
the wilderness.
21
(Left) Saguaro and cholla along the Apache
Trail, the scenic route to Tonto National
Monument.
Josef Muench
(Below) The jackrabbit , red-tailed hawk and the
white-tailed deer are all Monument dwellers.
J i m Tallon
(Following panel)
Looking into Mexico from the heights of the
Coronado National Memorial , 3000 acres
commemorating the first European exploration
of the Southwest.
David Muench
Ray Manley Studios
Ray Manley Studios
23
(Left) 14th century ruins of the Salado people,
Tonto National Monument.
David Muench
(Above) Saguaro guardians of the Tonto ruins ;
spring poppies ; and polychrome pottery from
the cliffside stronghold.
27
Jerry Jacka Bob Bradshaw
(Left) Tuzigoot close up ; large clay pottery jar
is of the type found here.
(Below) Tuzigoot National Monument, a hilltop
pueblo which flourished between 1100 and
1450 A.O ., was old before Columbus first sailed
for the New World .
David Muench
(Above) Bonita Lava Flow beneath its source,
Sunset Crater.
David Muench
30
(Right) Sunset Crater, now dormant, is one of
the youngest features of the vast San Francisco
Peaks Volcanic Field , in northern Arizona.
Ken Merten
MONTEZUMA CASTLE
Something of a commotion occurs at the entrance to
Montez uma Castle National Monument. A family from Canada
has arrived with a g r andmother too crippled to walk.
Apparently she will not traverse the trail to see the castle and
hear the lecture. And everybody is blue about that.
" No probl em," says the rang er. " You are welcome to use
our wheelchair, compliments of the Southwest Parks and
Monuments Ass ociation." .
The thoughtful provision of aids for the physically disabled
is just one of the projects of a non-profit association
which over the years has cooperated with the Park Service in
supporting historical and scientific activities . The work
ranges from publication of Southwestern books to the operati'on
of Hubbell National Historic Site as a workaday Navajo
trading post, and ~o~, to supplying wheelchairs where handicapped
visitors may borrow them at no charge.
So grandmother joins in. Montezuma II , the ranger begins,
was an Aztec emperor who never s et foot in Arizona. Nor is
the central fea ture of Montezuma Castle a castle . But p ioneer
name-droppers knew no better. Their misnomers stuck.
The people who tucked five stories of Montezuma Castle
into a cave above Beaver Creek were the Sinagua, whose
relatives also occupied Waln~t Canyon, Tuzigoot ;md
Wupatki in north~central Arizona. At and around the cliff
dwellings are evidences of at least three cultures - an early
nomadic hunt ing tribe ; the immigrants from irrigated desert
farms, the Hohokam; and the dry-farming Sinagua. Archaeologists
believe that a 25-year drought at t he end of the 13th
century brought on crop failures and forced many Indian dry
(Above) Ae ri al view of Mo ntez uma Wel l. This
natu ral limes tone sin k has seve ral prehisto ri c
ru ins j u st be low th e r im.
W es Ho lden
( Left) Mon tezu ma C as tl e Natio nal Monum ent
fea tures thi s 20- room cl iff dwell in g , o ne of th e
bes t preserved rui ns of it s kin d in th e co untry.
Earl Petroff
(Inse t) C l oseup view of Mo ntezuma Wel l.
Josef Mue nch
farmers to seek land with dependable water s upplies . Bands
of Sinaguas drifted down off their parched plateaus into the
well watered Verde Valley. A hundred feet above the creek
under a rock overhang the Sinagua people stacked their
pueblo. It took three centuries to complete nineteen rooms
most of them suitable for living space.
About 90 percent of what exists today is original. The
Park Service from time to time has shored up and patched
over weak spots. But the hand-fitted stone walls and footthick
sycamore ceiling beams remain largely as the Indians
fashioned them. Ladders would have been required to reach
some levels of the pueblo .
The first Europeans to encounter the ruin found heaps
upon heaps of corncobs and other debris left behind by the
Sinagua residents. It is from the extensive garbage dumps
behind and in front of the cliff dwellings that science has
inferred much of their customs . They were farmer s of squash,
beans and cotton, harvested from terraced patches served by
well engineered ditches . Some of the irrigation arose from a
large limes tone sink, seven miles to the northeast, now called
Montezuma Well, and also a part of the national monument .
Twenty-two other dwelling places have been identif ied within
a half-mile radius of the castle. Altogether 150 Sinagua citi zens
occupied the complex.
Grandmother takes in the lecture with an appreciative
smile. Then the ranger says something that makes her doubly
grateful for this day in the sun, scented air and canyon
scenery:
" The life expectancy of the Sinagua people was 35 years."
33
Out on Interstate-40 some seven miles east of Flagstaff
the traffic swishes through the pines along the successor to
U.S. 66 - "The Main Street of America," and Steinbeck's
"Glory Road." Now the jalopies and hollow-eyed Dust Bowl
refugees are shelved in libraries. They are replaced by caravans
of mobile homes loaded with refrigeration, indoor
plumbing, gas ranges and soft beds. What would the Joad
family have thought of them? These, the new Americans who
prevent polio with a sugar cube, smash atoms, and sample
the soil bf Mars?
Then a few miles to the south exists a vivid reminder of
how rapidly change has swept through a mere two generations
of our populace. Raw, wrenching change. 'Cultural
revolution. Giant steps for humanity, from Kitty Hawk to
Tranquility Base. ·
This place is Walnut Canyon National Monument.
The people we call Sinagua infiltrated this steepwalled
limestone canyon beginning in AD. 1120. They sought a
more secure lifeway, and here they found the elements of
survival: the dependable water of Walnut Creek, a great
variety of plants and animals, rim tops for cultivating, and
among the fossil sand dunes of the canyon sides, numerous
caves and ledges to shelter and support permanent, masonry
homes.
Thereafter, generation following generation, the Sinagua
pursued an existence of only subtle change. Their forebears
in the Western Hemisphere for 50,000 years had preyed
upon game, had dressed in skins, and had gathered the fruits
of the wild. So, too, did the Sinagua.
They built more than 300 small cliff rooms. They tilled
small fields with sticks. They hunted animals with long, narrow,
scalloped projectile points. They fashioned and fired
well-shaped black-on-white ceramics without benefit of a
potter's wheel. They extracted food, fiber, medicines, fuel,
tools, spiritual objects and weapons from ponderosa pine,
pinyon, juniper, fir, locust, black walnut, aspen, willow and
dozens of other native plants, many of which still grow in
and around the canyon. (Some things never change ... the
WALNUT
CA
34
(R ight) A half-century after the Norman
Invasion the Sinagua people were living here,
carving out the raw materials of a new culture.
Peter Bloomer
(Below) ' ... and here they found the
elements of su rvival . .. '
David Muencti
Sinagua people made cordage from plant fibers .. . they used
the same knots we do .. . and they made the same tnistakes
in tying those knots .)
For a century and a half Walnut Canyon echoed with
human voices and rang with the sounds of human activity.
Then, as if overnight, the Sinagua were gone. Apparently
they could not cope with some gross change in their lives.
For 600 years the cliff dwellings were untouched, until vandals
found Walnut Canyon in the late 1800s.
Fortunately, all was not lost, and it is possible today to
transport yourself back to the days of the Sinagua, by observing
from the Rim Trail, or by hiking down the Island Trail to
see about 25 ruins close-up. No trek for faint hearts and weak
legs, the latter trail requires a 185-foot descent of stairways
and paved walks, and a similar climb back to the visitor center.
But for the healthy the hike is recommended, for the
worry is emphasized:
How much, how fast, can we adapt to onrushing changes?
And if we can't ... ?
PIPE
SPRING
The petite young woman is dressed in a long cotton print
dress. Her pretty face is scrubbed; her hair combed modestly;
her feet laced into high button shoes.
She is Lisa Heaton, 20, looking as if she just stepped out
of an 1875 pioneer ranch house.
Lisa is a thorough modern . She has been away to college,
and she soon will depart on a mission to Atlanta, Georgia, for
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . Today, however,
she is leading a tour of Pipe Spring National Monument,
a shrine of importance to the LDS (Mormon) Church
and to the history of the West. Lisa works for the National
Park Service as an interpretive guide for the " living history"
exhibits at the frontier fort called Pipe Spring.
The spring was the only dependable water for 60 miles
around, in the semi-arid tablelands of northernmost Arizona,
in those years when the Mormons, under the direction of
Brigham Young, were pressing back the frontiers of the Colorado
Plateau. A group of missionaries led by Jacob Hamblin
ventured first onto the Moccasin Terrace, nearly a mile above
sea level, and tarried a while at Pipe Spring.
"The name," says Lisa, "came from an incident during a
shooting contest. William Hamblin, Jacob's brother, was very
proud of his marksmanship, but his competitors tricked him
by using a silk target. His bullets wouldn' t put a hole in the
wisp of silk - they'd just brush the silk aside.
"So Mr. Hamblin when he found out, put up a smoking
pipe as his target, and he shot out the bottom of the bowl.
So that's where the name came from. Pipe Spring."
That was autumn, 1858. Five years later James M. Whitmore
staked a claim to the spring, built a dugout and stocked
the range with cattle. Poor Whitmore. He became the man
in the middle of a dispute between the U.S. Cavalry and the
Navajo Nation. Some Indians seeking food killed Whitmore
and his herder. Several more slayings of settlers brought the
Utah Territorial Militia to Pipe Spring. In 1870 President
Young and his advisors decided to build a fortress ranchhouse
for a Church-operated cattle and dairy enterprise. Laid up
of squared red stone, the fort was constructed with gunports,
36
(Right) Sketch by Do n Perc eval, from
A Navajo Sketch Book, Northland Pr ess,
Fl agstaff, Az .
(R ight below) Imposing fort ress- ran c h house
o f Pip e Spring served in its ea rl y days as a
cattle and dairy en terprise operated by the
Mormon Church.
Josef Muench
(Be l ow) Historical plaque recalls Pip e Spring's
excitin g past.
Herb and Dorothy McLaughlin
~ ' , .... '
I I j 1'
... , . / . , ~
r ,, ....
J,
..
stout gates and emergency water supply, in anticipation of a
lengthy siege. But attack never came, perhaps because of
the fort's imposing defenses. It served as a creamery, Arizona's
first telegraph station (connected to Salt Lake City),
and watering hole for an area the size of South Carolina.
Today Pipe Spring remains remote, 15 miles fro~ a town
of any size. With its tree-shaded pond and irrigated gardens
it maintains an air of oasis in a land of long horizons.
The living history activities attract authentic demonstrators.
In the springtime present-day cowboys roundup cattle
for branding, ear-marking, and castrating. Ponderous draft
horses tug relic plows through Pipe Spring's century-old
gardens, and over the summer and into fall a cornucopian
harvest of vegetables and fruits flows through the cool rooms
of Pipe Spring and even into the hands of park visitors.
Guests are also encouraged to inspect closely butter molds,
apple peelers, furniture, and a museum full of such antiques
from pioneer life. Quilts and other fabrics can be seen produced
by the women guides and neighboring ranchwives.
"Oh, yes, the quilts are for sale," says Lisa . " They are
sold through the Zion Natural History Association. The proceeds
support publishing of interpretive publications and
other interpretive and educational activities."
37
(Left) Th e 700-year-old Uppe r Ruins of Tonto
National Monument.
Herb and Dorothy McLaughlin
(Inset Left) Part ia lly res tored room of the
Salado people.
Josef Muench
TONTO
"That stuff is what they ate?"
The six-year-old girl can scarcely believe her eyes . She is
on her first trip to the visitor center at the base of the Tonto
Ruins National Monument. She is staring at a dish of small,
hard, darkly unappealing beans displayed in a glass case.
Then the child is allowed to measure her own tiny hand
against the print of a man's hand that is formed on the walls
of a room. That handprint, she is told, is 700 years old.
And then the small girl drops her gaze to the valley, and
to the lake which now covers the river that used to lie 300
feet beneath these ruins.
" The people lived up here, without an elevator?"
That they did. As artful and ingenious as a mud-dauber's
nest, the cliff ruins of Tonto are those of a tribe called Salado,
which lived along the Salt River from A.D. 900 to 1350. At
first they occupied villages of pit houses along the river banks,
but toward the latter part of their presence, probably under
threat from enemies, the Salado (Spanish for "salty") people
moved to the cliffs . They built three villages of stone and
mud - Upper Ruin containing about 40 rooms, Lower Ruin
of 20 rooms, and Lower Ruin Annex of 12 rooms. It is from
these weather-sheltered houses that the most informative
archaeological evidence of the Salado has come .
At most digs exposed to the elements organic material is
scarce because of erosion and decay. But at Tonto were found
sandals, mats, baskets, headbands, cradleboards, cordage,
skirts, carrying bags, cloaks, cotton breechdouts, and blankets.
More durable items, such as beads and shells and shards
and bone, aided prehistorians to reconstruct a Salado lifestyle
of hunting, gathering and farming, making use of as many
as 300 plants for food and fiber and medicine. They were
unexcelled cotton growers and weavers . Their textiles dazzled
with open work, diamond twills and gauze, dyed blue, brown,
red and yellow.
"A beautifully woven lace-like cotton shirt found at
Tonto is one of Southwestern archaeology's better artifacts,"
says the Park Service brochure.
Reaching Tonto Ruins is an adventure in itself. The
approach from the west is via the Apache Trail, departing
U.S. 60-70 at Apache Junction and twisting and climbing
across 40 miles, some unpaved, of narrow mountain road
- the very one used for the construction of Roosevelt Dam
after the turn of the century. Another way is from GlobeMiami
over 28 miles of surfaced highway. Tours of the Upper
Ruin must be arranged on at least five days' notice.
Tonto also has yielded a great deal of information about
the Salado people. The men were about five-and-a-half feet
tall; the women an even five. Their faces were small and
short, the features delicate. Usually their heads were slightly
flattened in the back, a consequence of spending the early
years of their lives on a hard cradleboard.
They had terrible teeth : ground down by grit in their food.
The grit, you see, was inevitable, when Salado women used
grinding stones to make flour of those black, little beans.
39
(Left) White House Ruin , home of the
Anasazi, beneath the rim of Canyon de Chelly's
thousand-foot sand stone walls.
David Muench
(Below) Canyon del Muerto, one of three major
canyons in the Monument complex.
Darwin Van Campen
YON DE CHELLY
The lady is from Connecticut, a product of the best church, schools and
Eastern universities. She is accustomed to having her clam chowder hot and her
backside dry. Her hobby is orchids. She began this day at her motel room in Chinle
by carefully making her face and teasing her hairdo. Never has she camped out on
the ground. This is her first journey to Navajoland in northeastern Arizona. The
highest point in her native state is 2380
feet above sea level, and right now she
physically is twice that high.
And mentally, twice that low.
She is seated with eight grumbling
strangers on simple benches in the bed
of a stiffly sprung Army personnel carrier
racing in four-wheel drive across
the braided streambed of Canyon de
Chelly. From black boiling clouds sheets
of chill rain pelt the vehicle and passengers.
Water has gotten beneath the
woman's yellow plastic poncho .. .
around her hood ... down her back .. .
into her shoes. Her mascara is dissolved
to smudges; lipstick only a memory.
And obviously Hostie, the burly Navajo
driver, has gone quite mad. The rain
does not slow him in his lumbering
dashes across the gullies, through trackless
arbors, around slippery hairpin
curves.
She thinks, I wonder if I should have
come to this terrible place.
An hour later she is even more miser-able.
She presses her thoroughly soaked
torso against a sheer sandstone cliff trying to avoid most of the cloudburst. She
glumly munches a cold roast beef sandwich near a murky ruin called (appropriately
enough) Mummy Cave in the Canyon of the Dead Men.
Then it begins. The clouds lift. Hoskie scrounges oak for a warming fire.
Sunlight shoos away the gloom and thousand-foot sandstone walls blaze in salmon,
pink, maroon, yellow. Waterfalls like spun silver cascade from the rims,
and rivulets of rain streak the stone in sweeping surrealistic stains. A bouquet
of white wine rises from the pastel green olive trees and c;ottonwoods. Across a
41
rippled dune a flock of sheep, gray
fleece steaming, herded by a Navajo
family and patrolled by yipping dogs,
ambles past the lunch spot. The ruins of
Mummy Cave now show a brighter face
- reminder of an industrious and artistic
prehistoric people, the Anasazi.
Now the New Englander thinks,
Have I ever in my life been immersed
in such beauty?
The Anasazi must have thought the
same. From as early as A.D. 350 and for
some nine centuries thereafter they
absorbed the shapes of nature, and
abstracted the forms into paintings and
peckings upon the walls of Canyon de
Chelly. Taken together, the designs
comprise an astonishing prehistoric art
museum whose purpose we can only
imagine.
The extraordinary treasures of de
Chelly predate the arrival of the subarctic
Athabascan Navajos in the 1500s.
Apparently the Anasazi people were
beseiged. They evolved from nomadic
Basket Makers, and at Canyon de
Chelly they clustered together for protection.
Given corn, squash, bow and
arrow, they found stability in an
assured food supply and acquired personal
and public wealth - beads and
jewelry and hoards of grain. They
domesticated the dog, made music with
flutes, wove baskets, traded far and
wide for shells, turquoise, copper bells
and parrot feathers, and worshipped in
underground rooms 30 feet in diameter.
The Great Pueblo Period extended
beyond A.D. 1200 and flowered in Canyon
de Chelly (as at Mummy Cave)
with three-story, ninety-room apartments.
As a scientist wrote of his work
in 1927, "No digging, at least in the
Southwest, can compare with it in interest.
For among the trash of straw and
twigs and cornhusks that make up the
body of the deposit are literally thousands
of specimens of perishable
nature, never found in ancient sites that
have been exposed to weather. Sandals,
leatherwork, textiles, basketry, wooden
implements, forgotten caches of corn,
broken toys ; all preserved so perfectly
and all carrying so vivid a human interest
that one develops a feeling of intimacy
with the old people." At Battle
Cove was unearthed the mummy of
" the Weaver," wrapped in a blanket
woven of the breast feathers of the
golden eagle and in sheets of spun cotton.
His people must have revered the
Weaver, for along with tools and bowls
of food, he was buried with three miles
of yarn to busy his fingers in a nether
world.
42
For the Navajos who inherited this
haunted place, de Chelly came to represent
an ultimate refuge. Colonel Kit
Carson cornered many tribesmen here,
and effected their surrender by warring
on sheep, horses, and 3000 fruit trees.
At the brink of starvation, half the
Navajo Nation walked to a concentration
camp in New Mexico. Two thousand
Navajos died before the tattered
survivors were allowed to return. When
the Great White Father again sought to
take Canyon de Chelly, as a monument,
the Navajos insisted upon a one-of-akind
arrangement. The Park Service
could have administrative jurisdiction
over the 2000 prehistoric sites and 12
major ruins, but the Navajos would
continue to own the land, with freedom
to return every summer and graze their
livestock and pick from their replanted
peach orchards. And every white visitor
setting foot inside de Chelly would do
so as an alien.
Even so, access is limited. Because of
hazards of quicksand and flash floods,
all exploration is supervised by rangers
and guides. A one-mile trail leads to
White House Ruins from the canyon
rim. And view points are reached by
car along a long rim drive. It is a different
perspective of a rock gorge that
seems to bend time, and alters space.
Or as another white woman, Arizona
ranch wife Jo Jeffers, once wrote:
"Once is not enough to visit Canyon
de Chelly. If you sit quietly on the flat
rocks above the canyon at night, you
can watch the stars appear, so bright
that it seems as if each one wants to be
remembered. In the darkness, you
might hear a lone horseman coming up
a trail from the canyon, singing some
night riding song composed a long time
ago when the fi rst Navajos who saw
the Spanish mustangs thought that they
were a gift of the gods. If you stand on
the floor of the canyon, you can feel the
cool water of the wash on your bare
feet and look up past thousand-foothigh
cliffs to a slice of blue sky. You
can just make out the little toeholds
in the side of the canyon which the
Navajos have used for centuries, which
the Anasazi used before them, and
which Navajo children still use in order
to catch the school bus on top .... "
I hav e witnessed some of this, muses
the lady from Connecticut, and I know
I will return.
(Below) Sketch by Don Perceval, from
A Navajo Sketch Book, Northland Press,
Flagstaff, Az.
{Above) Tortured twists and turns corivert
th e walls of a small side canyon into a natural
masterwork.
Gill C. Kenny
(Right) Graphic namesake of Standing
Cow Ruins.
Herb and Dorothy Mclaughlin
43
---· •: ..
Where the ancients built of enduring stone,
Tuzigoot National Monument.
Ansel Adams
TUZIGOOT
The man is an avocational archaeologist. In plainer words, his hobby is
prehistory.
For the fun and challenge of it, he has in his middle years returned to college
to train himself in the skills of surveying, excavating, and cataloging the remains
of ancient cultures.
In Southern California, where he had been a welcome volunteer on numerous
"digs," he has become accustomed to sparse discoveries. Pacific Coast kitchen
middens and campsites can give up tons of shell and charcoal and fire-fractured
hearth rocks. Then, perhaps a few grinding stones and felsite tools. After that . . .
maybe a bit of bone, an awl or fish hook. In certain locales, where early peoples
buried their dead, archaeologists encounter human skeletal remains. But not much
in the way of houses. Only inferential postholes may remain of the casual
Dieguefio and Luisefio dwellings.
It has long been this amateur's wish to tour the upstanding ruins in the
Southwest and Arizona, where ancient peoples built of stone.
One target: Tuzigoot.
In a sense, this national monument in Arizona's Verde Valley is the remains
of a sizable refugee camp of prehistory. Impoverished by a severe drought
between A.O. 1215 and 1299, Sinagua Indians abandoned their dry farms in
the north in favor of the permanent, spring-fed streams from which irrigation
could be drawn to crops. By drought's end, 92 rooms clustered in the Tuzigoot
pueblo - apartment houses of a peaceful race who disposed of their adult dead
with little apparent ceremony, but buried their beloved children beneath living
room floors, perhaps in hopes their spirits would be born again in the next
children.
Along the crest of a small hill surrounded by fertile river bottom, the ruins
of Tuzigoot lay forgotten and undisturbed for four centuries. Upper floors and
roofs collapsed into lower stories. Then, in 1933 and 1934, funded by the federal
government and assisted by Phelps Dodge Corporation, Tuzigoot was excavated
by scientists from the University of Arizona.
The findings excited archaeological circles of that day. Intricate mosaic and
shell jewelry was recovered. Immense ollas, water jars, were reconstructed from
jigsaw-puzzle shards. Evidence was found of fine basketry woven from grasses,
tree bark and yucca leaf, and of refined cotton textiles produced on an upright
loom. One necklace alone consisted of 3,295 tiny beads (It can be seen in the
Tu.zigoot museum, along with numerous other artifacts from the excavations.)
Since the digs of the 1930s, public trails have been extended to and through the
ridgetop dwellings, whose rooms average 12 by 18 feet. Each has an undersize
entry hatch and a hole for exhausting smoke from cooking and warming fires .
Tuzigoot is everything the amateur archaeologist had hoped for, and more.
He reads, in the museum, statistics suggesting that even for a people blessed
with plenty of water and dependable corn, the "good old days" had their drawbacks.
Of Tuzigoot's 170 burials, 42 percent were of infants and children younger
than eight years of age.
Twenty-nine percent were of adults, 21 to 45.
Only four and one-half percent were people over 45.
Sun City, Tuzigoot was not.
45
(L eft ) Th e t o rtu red beaut y of t he Ajo Ran g e
c reat es an id ea l ba ckdro p for th e unre al
land sca pe o f Org an Pi pe Cac tu s Nat ional
M onument.
Herb and Dorothy McLaughlin
(B e l ow) Sa g ua ro forest morning .
Tim Cooper
SAG
ORG
RO&
PIPE
CACTUS
We have here a gentleman from Wisconsin.
An ou tdoorsman. From Oshkosh.
The Overalls Cwital of the World,
Situated on Lake Winnebago, at 214
square miies, a very big body of water.
Indeed, there is water nearly everywhere
in Wisconsin : 8500 lakes have
been charted, and most are interconnected
by rivers and canals, swamps
and marshes. Our visitor is accustomed
to an average annual rainfall of 30
ir{ches and snowfall of 45 inches. His
trees are pine, maple, oak, spruce, hemlock,
cedar, birch and elm. His shrubs
are huckleberries, juneberries, raspberries,
currants and blueberries . Moishire-
loving wildflowers bedeck bog and
vale. Waterbirds tumble in from Canada
. Furbearers populate a watery
world, along with trout and bass and
pike and muskellunge and a multitude
of panfish.
Now this native of the Northland
has driven across the Sonoran Desert
to Tucson, Arizona' s second-largest
city, thence eastward to the headquarters
of Saguaro National Monument.
" Oshkosh, m' gosh!" he exclaims .
" There ' s no thin' here!"
And then, our hero, being an openminded
amateur naturalist, is drawn to
the exhibits, scenic drives and hiking
trails of one of two national monuments
largely set aside as preserves of the
remarkably varied and adaptive life in
the land of immense e nduring: the great
desert comprising a third of Arizona
and e xtending into border ing s tates and
Mexico. Saguaro National Monument
consists of two units bracketing Tucson.
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
takes in 500 arid square miles in Southwestern
Arizona. The monuments share
some desert species; other species are
so specialized they thrive nowhere else.
But each represents a miraculous adjustment
to the land of little wc1,ter. Even
to a person from a place whose state
symbols are the. violet, sugar maple and
robin, nature's heroics are evident
where the symbols are the small-leafed
paloverde tree, the cactus wren and the
giant saguaro.
Consider the saguaro.
It germinates from a black, pinheadsize
seed, looking like a diminutive,
double-pointed, gossamer }ime gumdrop.
If lucky, for the first 20 years of
its life it receives shelter under a desert
shrtJ.b while millio.ns of other seeds,
seedlings and juveniles are eaten by
animals and insects, dessicated by sunshine,
or are stepped on by man and
animal. · ·
The plant may reach a height of 20
feet before growing its first branch.
And 200 or even 300 years will pass
before it towers to 50 feet with 20 or
30 branche s. Even so, at maturity its
tap root is short and blunt, providing
only a base for the weight, while a
spongy network of fine lateral roots
infests the first few inches of topsoil.
A big cactus through this system can
suck up a ton of water from a soaking
summer shower. The plant makes room
for the rainfall by expanding its accordion-
like pleated skin, and gives back
the mois ture grud gingly.
47
Blooms of the giant ( official state
flower of Arizona) are no larger than
a coffee cup, milky and creamy white in
May and June. In rings, they crown the
growing tips of · branches. Red fruits
ripen, dry, arid loose another pepper
storm of black seeds upon the desert
floor.
Of 3370 species of plant life cata-
1 o g e d in Arizona, some 1500 are
descendants of a rose which over 200
centuries ago shed its leaves to retard
transpiration, thickened its stem for a
cistern, and multiplied its spines to repel
attack. They are among the desert's
drought-resisters. Cacti, most diversified
of the drought-resisters, may also
be no bigger than a thumbnail. But all
shrug off extremes of radiation and
dryness.
A cactus may be shaped as flat pads
(the prickly pear), or be covered by
thousands of spines (the cholla), or be
short and fat (the barrel). A water-storing
bulb beneath the night-blooming
cereus may weigh as much as 100
pounds. The unimpressive stalk in a
single night of glory blows a saucersized
star of multiple points and fragrance
that carries a quarter of a mile.
But cacti are not the only ingenious
adaptations of the desert. The pea family
occurs as trees of small and tentative
leaf. The ghostly smoke tree, seldom
in foliage, insures propagation with
hard shelled seeds which must be
scratched by flood action in order to
sprout. The slow-growing ironwood
forms wood so dense it will turn a
woodsman's ax. The paloverde manufactures
food in its green bark. The
mesquite sinks roots as long as 200 feet,
and drops nutritive beans whose germination
is enhanced by digestion of
animals. ·
Some lilies have gone underground,
storing moisture in fibrous bulbs. Other
lilies, the yuccas, through evolution
have struck unique, mutually beneficial
agreements with moths to insure pollination.
Annuals are drought-evaders, risking
perpetuation of species in seeds which
lie dormant through dryness, stir alive
in warm wetness, and hurry to completion
of another generation of seeds.
During infrequent years when Pacific
storms soak the southwestern basins,
Arizona deserts burst alive to rival the
phytoplankton of the Arctic Ocean in
summer. Milkweeds, pinflowers, blue
dicks, buckwheats, four-o' clocks, and
mm;tards smear the flats in riotous
hues. Entire slopes are enriched by
golden poppies, and travel lanes are
lined by blue lupine and peach mallow.
48
Animals of the desert also are mostly
evaders of dryness and heat, although
some have devised remarkable ways of
coping.
The desert tortoise magically appears
(old-timers swear) when and where it
will rain, and drinks a pint of water to
last a season. The antelope ground
squirrel owes its existence not so much
to succulent forage, as to a highly efficient
kidney. More amazing is the kangaroo
rat which satisfies its water need
by breaking down carbohydrates of dry
seeds, never taking a drink of free water
from birth to death. Tenacity personified
is the spadefoot toad which waits
underground in lowlands for rain to
form a temporary pond. Only then does
the toad emerge to breed. One month
after conception, functioning adults
take on enough water to last most of
a year. They burrow into the earth for
a long sleep.
Night is the time when other animals
venture abroad. The desert bighorn
sheep can go five days without water.
The collared peccary attack cactus hoglike:
through the roots, and even head
on. Of lizards, well known is the chuckaw
alla which, when threatened, will
dart down a fissure and inflate its body
with air.
Birds, too, have bent to desert ways.
Many migrate, but those which stay
must fill a natural niche. The Gila
woodpecker and gilded flicker excavate
water-cooled apartment houses in
saguaros. The cactus wren · hides its
nest amid the cruelest of thorns of the
cholla cactus. By teamwork, Gambel's
quail decoy the poisonous, egg-lusting
Gila monster. In winter, the desert
pootwill goes into a torpor, its breath
and heartbeat all but stopped. An amusing
cuckoo is the road runner, .but not
to the rattlesnake providing its breakfast.
These and other desert achievers can
be appreciated in Arizona's two cactusri.
amed national monuments.
Saguaro is different in that it encompasses
a range of mountains, so that a
traveler may pass through six distinct
plarit com~unities : desert scrub, desert
grassland, oak woodland, oak-pine
woodland, ponderosa pine forest, and
a Douglas-fir I white fir forest. (Where
the most loyal Wisconsinite would feel
at home.)
Organ Pipe monument is closer to
the classic desert stereotype - at lbw
altitude, vast and unpeopled, and
limited annually to rainfall that might
come in on~ good Midwestern storm.
Besides the multiarmed organ pipes, the
park preserves 30 other species of cacti.
Where hundreds of treasure seekers
lost their lives in the Gold Rush along
the Devil's Highway, Organ Pipe Cactus
Monument today. offers a modern
visitor center and two loop drives
through some plarit species which exist
nowhere else in the United States.
And with all respects to our guest
from the Badger State, that's something.
(Left) The wildcat, night prowler of the
low desert.
Gill C. Kenny
(Inside back cover) Saguaro National
Monument preserves the unique forms of the
Sonoran Desert.
David Muench
(Back cover) Tumacacori National Monument,
south of Tucso n, recalls the peak of Spanish
occupation of the New World.
Jim Tallon
