Arizona Highways, June 1950

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Of High Mountain•
Of all people, desert people appreciate the mountains most. In summer, when the
furnaces of the sun are blazing at their best (or worst), our mountains beckon with
promises of cooling breeze, shaded forest, refreshing stream. We haven't the mountains
to brag about as you find in some states, but the mountains we have are convenient and
big enough to do a good job of air conditioning. We make the most of them.
There isn't a place in the desert which is not nudged by a mountain range, some
high, some low, but all offering a summer retreat in a few hours of travel. A flat country
of interminable depth and width would be boring. You have to have hills and the moun­tains
beyond the hills to give you variety. Mountains grapple with the storms of winter
and protect the valleys below. · The lazy clouds of summer <;1re halted over mountain
peaks and the rain therefrom is a tribute to the )and. :Mountains take the late after­noon
sunlight and do tricks with it, straining the white flame through upraised fingers
into color patterns of variegated hue . The blues and reds and purples of mountain light
defy the most skillful fingers wielding the most artistic brush.
There is a spi~itual quality about mountains, as any mountain climber will tell you .
On a mountain peak, with the whole world below, one feels closer to God, as if there were
sublimity in eminence. Maybe it comes from the fee1ing of being where few others have
been because too few people climb mountains .
Mountains emphasize the passing of the seasons. Most of us know the mountains
best in summer for then they are of easier access . Perhaps in summer mountains are at
their best, when streams are running, flowers are in bloom and trees are peopled with
birds, their song the song of summer. Whoever has not slept beside a mountain stream
or has not heard the soft sound of a gentle wind in the pine trees has missed pleasures
that cannot be found elsewhere. Whoever has not huddled around a camp fire on a high
mountain, with the morning chilJ in the air and the air itself redolent with the aroma
of bacon and eggs frying and coffee boiling is truly an unfortunate sou) and greatly to
be pitied. Life has been ungenerous and unkind to the one who has not enjoyed the clean
forest smell after a summer rain, or felt the soft crunchiness of a needle-strewn moun­tain
path under his feet, or heard the thunder roll down mountain chasms, or drank
deep from r1 cold mountain spring . Mountain pleasures Fire simple pleasures . .. R.C.
"HANNAGAN MEADOW" BY WAYNE DAVIS. Twenty-four miles south
of Alpine, on the Coronado Trail, is a pleasant oasis known by
traveler's as Hannagan Meadow. This is high mountain country.
sparsely inhabited, seldom visited. The Coronado Trail is an ad ­venture
in summer travel. It extends from Springerville to Clifton.
FRONT COVER- "INVITATION TO ROAM" BY ALLEN C . REED. Here is a
road typical of the many country-style back roads to be found wind­ing
through the forests of Arizona's White Mountains. This scene
was recorded one bright day last summer on Ektachrome with a
4x5 Crown Graphic camera. 6 inch lens. 1110 sec.owl at f16 on a tripod.
VOL. XXVI. NO. 6 JUNE, 1950
!1!?IZDNfl !IIG!IUJAVS
" TtlE WINDOW Of TtlE WEST "
from the north banks of the Salt
RAYMOND CARLSON, Editor
George M. Avey, Art Editor
LEGEND
"INVITATION TO RoAM" . FRONT Cov.ER
A MOUNTAIN ROAD, BLUE SKY, ADVEN­TURE.
PHOTOGR.\PH BY ALLEN C. REED.
GRAND CANYON'S LONG-EARED TAXI 4
LoN GAnRISON GIVES us A SCHOLARLY
DISCUSSION OF SOME WONDERFUL MULES.
A CHAPTER ON LUMBERING . . . . . 8
YEs! THIS IS THE DESERT STATE, BUT
WE ALSO BOAST OF EXTENSIVE FORESTS.
CROSSROADS OF THE Cow CouNTRY . 14
PoRTI<AIT oF THE ADAMS HoTEL, PHoE-Nix,
LANDMARK AND HAVEN POR PEOPLE.
SPRINGERVILLE- GATEWAY TO THE
WHITE MOUNTAINS . . . 18
A FRIENDLY WESTERN TOWN WHICH
HAS AN EXTENSIVE MOUNTAIN RANGE.
THE BLUE RIVER COUNTRY .
"DowN ON THE BLuE" rs A PHHAsE
THAT MEANS A LOT TO A PEW PEOPLE.
28
LosT PoNY TRACKS . . . . . . . . . 34
Ross SANTEE TELLS Us A11ouT Hrs
FRIEND SHORTY WHO RODE 'EM ALL.
Youns SINCERELY ........... . 40
BouLDER vs. HoovER DAM! DrscussION
BY READERS WITH A FEW SHOHT VEHSES.
"SuMMER IDYL" . .. ... IlACK CovER
Bon MARKOW sHows us AN INVITING
BETREAT IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.
DAN E. GARVEY
Governnr of Arizona
ARIZONA HIGHWAY COMMISSION
Brice Covington, Chairman . . .. .. Kingman
H. Earl Rogge, Vice-Chairman . . . . . Clifton
Louis Escalada, Member . . ....... Nogales
Clarence A . Calhoun, Member . . . . Mesa
John M. Scott, Member . . . . . . Show Low
J. Melvin Goodson, Exec. Secretary .. Phoenix
W . C. Lefebvre, State H'way Engineer . Phoenix
R. G. Langmade, Special Counsel . Phoenix
ARIZONA HrGI-IWAYS is publ ished monthly by the
Arizona Highway Department. Address : Am­ZONA
HrGHWAYS, Phoenix, Arizona. $3.00 per
year in U. S. and possessions; $3.50 elsewhere.
35 cents each. Entered as second-class matter
Nov. 5, 1941, at Post Office in Phoenix, under
Act of March 3, 1879. Copyrighted, 1950, by
Arizona Highway Department, Phoenix, Ariz.
Allow five weeks for change of addresses. Be
sure to send in old as well as new add re_ss.
HBL-OE GREEN ·wATERn BY llAY MANLEY. H e re· is
portrayed one of the fa lls a long Cataract Creek
in the Havasupai Indian Rese rva tion. The
Supai Indians live in this colorful canyon,
which is nn isolated branch of Grnnd Canyon.
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i!fi1 he '·o;;·t of June ~ . ,,
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All the rich, thick juices of Nature come to a boil during
the happy days of June. Gone now is this business of blossoms
and such nonsense. June is a green world, the alchemy of sun,
soil and moisture. June is a serene world, the blending of
wonderful things: whirr of insect wing, sound of leaves, smell of
grass and earth. More folks are about and abroad this month
than other month during the year, and for good reason. The
weather works on us as it does on grasshoppers: makes you
want to stretch your legs.
This is a nice time to stretch one's legs in the direction of
Springerville, little town up in Round Valley in Eastern Ari­zona,
which we briefly portray this issue. All towns in Arizona
can vyith justification claim some scenic treasure. Springer­ville
claims the White Mountains. Here is a right friendly town
with an interesting history, really wild west, increasingly im­portant
as a travel center. As a descriptive addendum to this
part of our state, vve also tell herein, in word and picture, of
the Blue River Country. If you are not in a hurry take a day
or so and see what's happening "down on the Blue."
If you are up Grnnd Canyon way, and again if you are
not in a hurry, spend one day at lec1st taking the mule trip into
the Canyon. Here, c1s they say, you'll meet mules with a
college education . If you would like to brief yourself on the
subject read Lon Garrison's account of "Grand Canyon's Long­eared
Taxi." Lon is assistant superintendent of the Park
and knows his mules. Here is travel at a clippety-cloppety
pace, but an admirable way to travel if you want to see the
country. You get the feel of things in more ways than one.
Lumbering is one of the major industries in Arizona, a ·
fact that seems to astonish visitors. We have the Ponderosa
Pine and a lot of them, thickly covering miles and miles of
mountain ranges and the annual harvest is considerable. For
more details we refer you to "A Chapter on Lumbering."
And so pass the days of .June. They are bright dc1ys in a
hig. hright world, full of the sun, sky and scenery . .. R.C.
Maverick, Arizona, is a new lumber camp in the White Moun­tains.
This camp is a timber procurement center for Llze South­western
Lumber Mills at McNary. Timber harvested around
Maverick goes by rail to McNary, where it is processed for
commercial sale: Despite winters, work here does not stop.
gr~and canyon's long.eared taxi
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BYLON GARRISON•~
"Mules," says Josh Billings, "are like sum men, verry
korrupt at harte; ive known them tu be good mules for 6
months just tu git a chance to kick sumbody. I never
owned one nor never mean to unless there is a United
Staits law passed requiring it."
Stubborn, obstinate, wilful, lazy, treacherous, dumb
- these are the usual adjectives for the mule. But at Grand
Canyon National Park, this pattern doesn't fit. There, the
lowly mule comes into slightly more than his own. There
he is glorified for his sagacity, his endurance, his faithful
adherence to his training, his aversion to change, his pa­tience,
his unimaginative acceptance of routine. There he
is fed, watered, curried, stabled and pampered as no other
mule in the world. There he is an important part of the
tourist travel picture and daily is led forth, saddled and
bridled, and turned loose with a dude on his back to ne­gotiate
the long, rocky, winding trail into Grand Canyon
to the Colorado River.
He's been doing it for years. Following John Hnnce
and ·vv. W. Bass, who operated mule strings into tlw Can ­yon
before the turn of the century, Martin Buggeln prob­ably
was the first to run a commercial muleback trans­portation
business down the Bright Angel Trail from what
is now Grand Canyon Village. He started in 1901, and
turned his business over to Fred Harvey in 1904. Since
that time neither Fred Harvey nor the National Park
Service have accurate figures on the total number of mule-back
riders, but current figures are between nine and
ten thousand a year. So, all agree that even counting the
lean years during two wars, and the times away back,
when Teddy Roosevelt went down to Dave Rust's hunting
camp- now Phantom Ranch-well over 200,000 people
have taken the trips. These trips, counting all destina­tions,
average around sixteen miles each, so we get a total
of over three million miles of dude riding, hump-backed
and hanging on tight, and all without a single fatal acci­dent!
That makes it just about the safest transportation
known, although the unsuspecting dude who has clam­bered
aboard in the little round corral at the trail head,
all full of bravado and adventure, and then suddenly rides
to the rim of all visible creation and is asked to just take
off down that little narrow ledge of trail, frequently is
slightly uncertain for as much as a couple of minutes.
"Yu kan trust them with enny one whose life ain't
wirth enny more than the mules. The only way to keep
mules into a paster, is tu turn them into a medder jineing
and let them jump out," writes Josh Billings. Grand Can­yon
experience proves that the first part of this is com­pletely
true. You can trust a mule with anyone whose life
is worth as much as the mule's is to the mule, and he places
an unusual and extreme value on his own and steadfastly
refuses to get involved "into" any situation which might
endanger it. Thus, he proves ideal for the rugged, steep,
and crag-bound trails into Grand Canyon. He is perfectly
willing for the guide to hoist the nervous dude aboard,
and he is perfectly willing to plod on down to the river
and return, making his usual nineteen rest stops, all in the
same place each time. But he is highly opposed to any
deviation from this routine, and usually gets his own way
about it. Canyon guides know this and they tell the dude
to "Just hold on. It ain't no disgrace to just hold on!" And
if the dude is content to take this advice, the imperturbable
mule takes charge and everything goes as slick as red
adobe.
To help reach this state of affairs, Fred Harvey goes
into quite a complicated process of mule training which
gives a mule a sizeable headache, but at the end he has
learned a couple of things, and these are all he needs to
add to his innate conservatism to make him as safe as a
baby carriage.
To begin with, mules from £our to six years of age
are purchased, mostly in Kansas or Missouri. Their weight
must be between 900 and 1400 pounds. Preferably, un­broken
stock is chosen._ Men from Grand Canyon-usual­ly
including John Bradley, present Fred Harvey general
foreman-make the final selections, and they admit that
they cannot tell what it is that makes them choose or re­ject
certain mules. Probably they've been around mules
so long they know the language and are able to ask each
mule a personal question or two about his desire to travel
and view the scenery, and that's that. Mules are shipped
to Grand Canyon and their education begins. They are
often reluctant and indifferent students, but generally
the guile and patience of the instructors outlasts the immo­bility
of the mule.
"The mule's confused at first," says John Bradley.
"He'll do what you want, but he doesn't know what you
want, rn you've got to show him, an' then you've got to
show him again, an' pretty soon he gets confidence that
you won't get him into any jackpots an' the battle's over."
First, of course, comes a period of getting used to the
PAGE FIVE ARIZONA HIGHWAYS JUNE 1950
200,000 people - no fatal accident.
About the safest transportation known.
altitude. This takes about a week and is very important,
as otherwise a mule's wind would be poor. Meanwhile,
he is taught to lead, to go into the barn for his feed, and
that this two-legged spriggins in overalls and a big hat
is a good guy to get along with up to a certain point.
Early day training required a period of service in the
pack string which daily plods from Yaki Point down the
South Kaibab Trail to Phantom Ranch with gasoline, hay,
groceries, mail, laundry, and the stack of other things
needed there. But John Bradley believes that the way to
teach a mule to ride is to ride him, and that's the training
he ge ts now. He is ridden around the corral; he is ridden
out through the woods. He may be ridden over for his
first view of his future workroom- the Grand Canyon
and its trails.
Kickers and buckers receive special attention. Mod­ern
treatment for kicking calls for hitching an old auto­mobile
tire to a hind leg by a short hobble for about 24
hours or whatever it takes for the mule to learn that he
can't get rid of it and it just comes back and whacks him
again every time he gets a good hold on it with his heels
and gets it headed off towards the North Rim. This tire,
passed around from foot to foot until the mule treats it
with full contempt, does the job. Fro.,m then on, rocks,
papers, rain coats- he won't budge.
Or, if he bucks, the sa;me tire hitched to the saddle
horn by about a foot of good rope will soon solve the prob­lem.
Every time the mule jumps, the tire jerks around
and alternately whacks him on the neck, the sides or the
back, and he soon gives up with great disgust at himself
for being such a fool as to' fight it.
But most mules never buck and never need this treat­ment.
They serve a period as mounts for the guides; and
if still tractable and patient, in two or three months may
be star ted out with a dude aboard.
This is the crucial test, and some mules never pass it.
But, if a mule has not been abused, and if he feels confi­dence
in man generally, within a week from his gradu­ation
he finds that he is boss of the whole outfit. The
dude on his back is mainly scared into hanging onto
everything but the reins, and he- the mule- can go right
on doing the few things he has learned and the world is
full of hay and oats every evening, and occasional bites
of sugar and ham sandwiches, and lots of love and affec­tion
from the dudes.
While his training has been going on, the guides have
been thinking up a name for him. Some mules are named
for guides or those they wish to honor. Others for guides'
girl friends. l\!Iainly, however, they are named for some
peculiarity of their own. Skillet, Spade, and Rastus are
black; Angel is white. Chocolate is dark brown and prac­tically
indistinguishable from Candy. By-Gosh looked sur­prised,
and Egypt was named by the errant fellow who 1
took in the side shows on his trip to town. A few years
back a mania for card games came around-Ace High,
High Low, Solo, Deuce, Jack Pot. Then there were Brandy
and Whiskey. Copper was a favorite of the late "Curly"
Ennis, Transportation Superintendent. Today's list in­cludes
such characters as Boob, Button, Chili, Chigger,
Derby, Guz, Lightfoot, Possum, Pistol, Pickle, Popeye,
Spud, Snuffy, and Sis. Strangely, the mule trip makes
such a deeply seated impression that anyone who has
taken the trip can reach back into memories of twenty
years ago and remember the name, color and disposition
of his mount!
By the time this is over, Jug, as we may call our speci­men
mule- because he is little · and brown- has learned
all the tricks of the trail. At every stop he turns across
the trail with his rump to the cliff wall and his nose hang­ing
out over the open trail edge and vast quantities of
space. Guides tell you this is to avoid any possibility that
he may absent-mindedly step backwards and fall off, but
this has never happened. Maybe it's to keep him from
reaching for a bite of brush or something, and getting into
a fight with Chipmunk or Buck next to him. Certainly
it rests him, and as the guide explains to the dude- it
gives a real view! An occasional dude, jarred to the core
by ('.ontemplation of this awful emptiness he sees be­tween
Jug's ears, has been known to complete the entire
trip of eight miles down and eight miles back with his
eyes shut, but this is not common.
Other things Jug learns are the location of all regu­lar
rest stops; to turn as required without too much regard
for the dude's efforts with the reins; to handle a switch­back
turn so that mules going the opposite direction at
another level do not confuse him; to roll joyfully in the
corral dust when the day's work is ended; but the most
important lesson of all that he learns is to stop. Just stop.
Whatever goes ;wrong, all he has to do is stop. And if he
stops, everything is fine. Rocks may fall, chipmunks and
leaves whirl across the trail, lizards scurry by, his dude
may even fall off. All Jug has to do is stop, and that he
learns above all else. It is the main reason he is the safest
transportation in the world. And it is a lesson he never
forgets.
"The mule is the ha£ hoss and ha£ jackass, and then
kums tu a full stop," says Josh Billings. The dictionary
is slightly more technical-"the offspring of mating a
mare with the male ass." It all amounts to the same thing,
and Grand Canyon guides will tell you that in all the
questions they are asked about the Canyon-about the
scenery- about the job- about the mules- the most fre ­quent
one has to do with a mule's ancestry. Schoolmarms,
searching for knowledge, are the worst, say the guides.
"Is it true that the mule is part horse and part-uh-part­uh-
uh--J ack-uh-uh---?"
"Yup."
"Well, which is the father c1nd which is the mother:i··
"Donkey's the father, mare's the mother."
"Whal if it's the other way around?''
"You get a hinny. No durn good."
"Are mules sterile?"
''Yup."
" But, do the_y--ar·e tl1ey normal-do they-do theY
- - ?"
"Yup."
Generations of writers have been working on thi~
subject. It even got into politics once. Back in 1871 ,
Ignatius Donelly in addressing the Minnesota Legislature.
released this gem: "The Democratic Party is like tlu•
mule, without pride of ancestry or hope of posterity. ''
The mule's calm, unruffled demeanor, his bland
acceptance of his lot with no visible expression of annoy ­ance
or delight, worries the dudes, but the guides hastP11
to explain that the mule likes it that way. He is completely
a creature of habit; so much so that he is often unhappy if
placed in the lead of a dude string instead of being tlu•
caboose or vice versa . This extends to all he does.
On the trail, there are the previously mentioned nine­teen
rest stops. The mules go their trainers one better,
and have established another half-dozen restroom stops
along the trail. This is one of the most peculiar sights in
the canyon as a string of mules all stop and all wait their
turn, one by one, to walk ahead to a certain spot in the
trail, relieve themselves and go on. One such spot de­veloped
near the trail head last year and all efforts to
break down its use or move its location were futile. Park
Service crews even hauled all the dirt away once and
replaced it with clean, fresh dirt, but it continued to bP
the restroom stop, used daily, while the mule passengers
looked about at the heavenly bodies or gazed solemnly
far off into the Canyon.
The guides, of course; have quite a line of conversa­tion
that goes with the mule trip. One of the most common
questions at the head of the trail, John Bradley reports,
is "Have you a real gentle mule for me?" To this the
guide is apt to reply solemnly, "No ma'am, I'm right
sorry, but we just sent the last gentle mule down with the
last party. If you ain't ever rode before, why we'll just
give you a mule that ain't ever been rode before either,
an' you can start right out together."
Even the most obtuse catch on about this time anrl
relax a bit.
Another common bit of advice the guide may hand
out deals with hanging on. "Just you hang right on to
that saddle horn, lady," he will advise the frightened
female from Poughkeepsie. "Just you hang right onto it.
an' pull hard. If you pull it off, just hand it to me an' I'll
put it back on for you."
(Plnzsp turn to pag,, 1t1•enty siz)
An e,/11c"led mule al Grand Canyon.I
Guirfos know their mules and the Canyon!
A Chapter on Lunibering
BY ALLEN C. REED
The Arizuna story would not be complete without a
chapter on lumbering, for within Arizona's borders is
located one of the largest Ponderosa Pine forests in the na­tion.
This multimillion acre forest lies in a belt reaching
from the Arizona-Nevada border diagonally down across
the state into southwestern New Mexico. The timber in­dustry
within this area involves many lumber companies,
hundreds of miles of special roadways, huge power gen­erating
plants, railroads, and many other enterprises.
A model sample of modern lumbering practices at
their best and perhaps most picturesque is exemplified by
the Southwest Lumber Mills operations on the Apache
Indian Reservation in the White Mountains of Arizona.
This includes both the faie modern mill at McNary and
the point of timber procurement around Arizona's newest
town of Maverick, 67 miles away. The story can best be
told in terms of modern methods, for not only is the in­d1,1.
stry highly mechanized in this area with up-to-the­minute
machinery and equipment but also here as on other
public or reservation lands modern methods of forestry
management and reforestation are federally · regulated.
Gone are the days when forests were slashed wholesale
into destruction as has happened in some lumbering sec­tions
of the country. With the full c ooperation of the lum­ber
companies, government experts now inspect the for­ests
ahead of the loggers to sel ect and mark each and every
tree that may and should be cut. All standing dead trees
and snags are singled out for removal as they are constant
fire hazards. Only a percentage of the mature trees are
marked for harvesting assuring that plenty of seed trees
remain as well as r etaining the maximum amount of neces­sary
cover for_,the water sh ed . Trees, like any other crop
when ripe and mature, are ready to be harvested so that
PHOTOGRAPH S BY T H E AUTHOR
the younger trees may have room to grow. It is estimated
that it will take approximately 25 y ears to harvest the ma­ture
trees surrounding Maverick, cutting 40 to 50 million
feet of logs yearly. By then it will b e time to start all
over agam.
To gain access to this timber it is n ecessary for a full
time crew to construct and maintain fifty miles of new
road each year in the Maverick area alone. These roads
are invaluabl e in fire control and are open for public
enjoyment.
All timber harvested in the v icinity of Maverick is
transported to McNary over the 67 miles of company ·
owned, standard broad guage Apache Railroad. The 1000
hp radio equipped Fairbanks-Morse diesel locomotive pow­ered
trains, covering approximately 85,000 railroad miles
eac h year, not onl y haul supplies to Maverick and return
with a long string of log loaded cars but extending north
to Holbrook they also provide a rail outlet for the live­stock
and farming industries of Navajo county. Even
sightseeing excursions are occasionally conducted since
this railroad winds through one of the wildest, most beau­tiful
areas in the state.
An air of friendly relations exists a mong the workers
and between the workers and management at Maverick
,md McNary . From the cutting of the tree in the forest
to the final loading of the freight cars with processed lum­ber,
every operation is swiftly and efficientl y handled.
This i s essential if approximately six to eight hundred
employees are to produce the hour' s capacity of 25 to 30
thousand board feet, enough to build at least two five room
houses per hour or five thousand h ouses per year.
Following is a step by step photo essay on the Arizona
lumber industry from the forest to the processed lumber
shipping do cks as practised at Southwestern Lumber Mills :
IN THE HEART OF AHlZONA's WHITE MOUNTAINS, the Southwest Lumber Mills' M cNary operations viewed in th e photograph on the ~ight across
the great log pond is a humming industry located in a beautiful pine- clad setting. It's modernl y construct ed steel a nd concret e mills pr ocess
e nough smooth, even-textured, straig ht-grained lumber to build 5,000 houses a y ear, 25 million lineal feet of moulding each month and numerous
other rel ated wood products. On the page following, a trainload of logs on the sc enic route of the Apache Railroad from M averick to McNary
passes by the tip of Big Lake. Color photographs by Allen C. Reed were made with 4x5 Crown Graphic camera, si x inch Ektar l ens, on Ektachrome.
A tall Ponderosa Pine. gooernment ap­proved
and marked for culling. is felled
by power saw near .Mauerick, Arizona.
Two fourteen car train loads of heavr
logs are transported each day from
Maverick, 67 miles to the McNary mill.
second operation is to cut the tree
into logs and trim off the hranches
which are later stacked and burned
At the end of the -line thP logs will
travel the last lap of their journey to
the mill by floating across the pond.
Scaler calculates the amount of lumber
in each log as a basis for payment to
hath the Indian Service and the sawyers.
Chains are unhooked and with one gianl
effort the logs are rolled into the
pond, rm entire carload at a time.
In the 20,000 log capacity pond the
logs are poled to the conveyor chain
where they are hauled into the mill.
Lumber is efficiently picked up a stack
at a time by "straddle trucks" to
be carried to drying yards or kilns.
Tlzese are but a few of the many pat ­terns
manufactured at Sout/1111pst .!\Ii/ls.
world's largest produrp,r of moulding.
At the top of the chain the log enters
the whirring, screeching din of the
smoothly operating·mill interior and . ..
In the drying yards the smaller stacks
are hoisted atop each other where the')·
are allowed proper time to air season.
Processed moulding and lumber is then
lumled into freight cars for nation-wide
distribution to thr manr .~nlrs 011t!Pt.~
almost instantly is met by the large
deck saw which suddenl_r descends upon
it from above to cut it into lengths.
A load of kiln dried lumber is removed
from one of the long battery of heat
and moisture controlled drying kilns.
Typical behind the scenes operation is
the crew of experts at work operating
the rrutnmf1tic .mw .~hnrpening mnchines.
The logs are then picked up by a car­riage
on which they ride back and forth
to be band-sawed into heavy planks.
Properly cured lumber is ready for the
planing mill where high speed planing
machines finish it up for shipment.
Highly skilled craftsmen produce and
sharpen moulding machine knives, a
few of which may be seen on wall rack.
The large planks of lumber traveling
on mechanical rollers are next gang­sawed
into required board thicknesses.
In the moulding factory lumber is
ripped and planed to dimensions which
are suitable for the moulding machines.
All trim and sawdust waste is accumu­lated
in an automatic hopper system as
fuel to generate steam and electricity.
Out of the mill comes the rough cut
lumber on the "green sorting chain"
to be stacked according to grades.
A single length of lumber enters the
moulding machine to come out in mul­tiple
lengths of f inislzed m.oulding.
The large turbogenerator produces as
much as twenty million KWH annually
for distribution to various communities.
BY .l OSEPH STOCKER
Cro11road1 of the Cow Country
They te ll around Phoe nix of an old gentleman who,
in his sa l a d days, h a d enjoyed high prosperity a s an Ari ­zona
mining promoter. Such wer e his enterprises and af­fluen
ce tha t he b ro u gh t people out from th e Ea st in special
Pullman s to insp ec t his p ro perties, with an eye, of course,
to inves tment.
But h e slipped from t h e h e ights, and in his later
years w as r e duce d to living in a shanty n e a r the state fair ­gro
unds . Som e friends, th eir compa ss ion arouse d b y the
o ld m an 's plig ht, rustle d toge ther a few dolh1r s t o keep
h im fro m starving. I nstea d of buy ing food , though , h e
promptly ch ec ked in at the Hotel Adams, which had been
the scen e of many of his early da y triumphs- social a s
we ll as business- wise .
The friends rep roached him gently. Wasn ' t this ,1
rath er unseemly self-indulgen ce for someone who was
living on th e ragged edge of hunger ? The old gentleman
drew himself up with prideful defiance.
" If I'm a -gonna die," h e proclaime d , " I'm a -gonna die
in the Ada ms Hotel. "
The stor y m ay be a pocry phal, but it illustrates th e
fe e ling of Arizona towar d one of her most enduring insti­t
utions- Phoenix' Hotel Adam s. For 53 years, with time
o ut for a quite thoro u ghgoing fir e, this sturdy ca ravan ­sary
has been a ce nter of life in Arizon a a nd, in fact, the
whole Southw es t. It h as served- and still se rves- as the
time-h a llowed gathering place for cowmen, mining ty­coons
a nd the p olitical gentry, not to mention uncounted
hosts of jus t pl a in travehff s ,om e t o tarry in the sun.
The Adams has afforded a haven for Presidents,
senators, governors, empire builders, industrial magnates
and luminaries of the screen, opera and stage. It has shel­tered
denizens of the race tra ck , gentle folk and scoundrels.
fancy ladies and some not so fancy. It has accommodated
eccentric characters like the rich young man who rode
his horse into the bar and kicked the door to shreds, and
the crochety old man who bequeathed $10,000 " for my
wife to go to hell. " And it has provided a metropolitan
bunkhouse for practically ev er y cowboy who ever punched
a steer on the Western range.
It is as a sort of unofficial headquarters for the cattle
business that the Adams has gained particular renown.
The high-ceilinged lobby, with its massive pillars, is a
veritable Western stock exchange, where thousands of head
of cattle are traded, whole ranches bought and sold and
millions of dollars change hands. Stockmen are a peculiar
breed, strongly addicted to the informality of doing busi­ness
whilst slumped in a deep leather chair, with battered
Stetson tipped lazily down over one eye.
Comes rodeo week and the Adams lobby resembles
the old Bar-X at roundup time. The place is teeming
with cowpokes, in their vivid shirt and boots still heavy
'with the dust of the arena. You can always find three ~r
four of them perched loosely on the steel railing at the
stairway leading to the basement. Perhaps the Adams '
had it put there for just that purpose-as a sophisticated
substitute for the old corral fence.
Time was when the Adams required that cowboys
PAGE F OURTEEN :\Rl ZONA HI GHWAY S J UNE 19 50
P H O T O G R A P H S B Y H E R B M C L A U G H L _ I N
c heck their six guns with the bartender. This regulatio11
has fa ll en pretty ge nerall y into disuse, sinc e , contrnr_v to
the impression c onveyed by the VVestern movies. tli<'
modern covvpoke has little truck with sbootin · in~ns.
But rodeo w eek still makes for spirited goings -on ut
the Adams. True, they may take r1 slig htl y synthe tic
form, as when a group of local Jaycees, a mite over-zealous
in thei r efforts to publicize their rodeo, s taged a mock
ha ttle in the lobby. One called another a 11augh ty name.
Hevolvers were jerked out and shots blasted the quiet or
the afternoon.
The bullets happened to be blanks, but the Jay cees
. had neglected to notify the hotel management, and the
management thus had no opportunity Lo warn the guests,
and one old lady fainted plumb away. Su the hotel made
another rule- no more feudin ' in the lobby, synthetic or
otherwise.
The Adams hasn 't been abl e Lo protect its guests
ngainst all e xigencies, however. Oue of its patrons not
long ago was a cowboy from Wyoming, a rustic and guile ­less
innocent who fell into the hands of a sharper. He soon
found himself the possessor (for a consideration) of a
machine guaranteed to convert $1 bills into $100 bills.
The bunko man, obviously gifted with a sense of
humor, stipulated that the machine had to be operated
in th e bathtub. And so, all that night, the cowpoke toiled
in his bathroom, grinding $1 bills into one end of the
niachine and wondering why they didn 't come out $100
bills at the other.
The Adams -is renowned not alone as a cowmen's
headquarters but also as a mecca of politics in Arizona .
Here the law -makers and the lobbyists and sundry hang­ers-
on foregather when the legislature is in session. Po­litically-
minded Arizonans like to say that that there are
more laws made in the Adams Hotel than at the state­house.
It isn't necessary to have a doctorate in political
philosophy to be a bellboy at the Adams, but it helps.
For even the bellboys find themselves mustered into ser­vice
as impromptu political sounding-boards , summoned
to a conference room to provide water, ice and a layman's
opinion on some bill under consideration. The Adams
can even claim some kind of distinction among U. S. hotels
in the fact that one of its bellhops, John Hunt, was himself
a member of the State Senate.
There is no doubt but that the late J . C . Adams, ven­erable
founder of the hotel, intended it to play precisely
the role which it has played in the political life of Arizona.
He reasoned that if the Adams became the center of
politics, it would become the center of everything. For
politics is an important business in an infant state just
commencing to get its stride.
Once, when a fussy manager threatened to clear the
lobby of its "loafers," J. C. restrained him. "Let 'em all
loaf," he insisted. "I want this to be the headquarters
of town."
And that' s the way things have turned out. The
Adams is at the same time a headquarters, a rendezvous,
a bulletin board and, somewhat incidentally, a hotel.
The hotel switchboard serves as a handy dispenser of in­formation
about anything that is going on in Phoe nix,
whether it' s going on at the Adams or elsewhere.
Many years ago, in an expansive moment of civic
pride, .J. C. Ada m s made it known that a n y body could
have a free meal at the hotel on an y day that the sun
didn · t shine in Phoe nix . Most folks have forgotten that,
but not all of them. Today the hotel still gets an occa­sional
call on a cloudy day from someone calculating to
collect his roast beef on the house .
It is a curious fa c t that the Adams was built origin ­ally
because there were two l a w y ers in Phoenix . The
year was 1896, and J. C. Adams had come to this raw
and primitive territory with his family £~om Illinois,
where he had been first a traveling salesman and then n
practicing attorney in Chicago .
Phoenix, he discovered, alrea dy had two attorneys
and that seemed to be about all the youthful community
could accommodate comfortably. So he decided to build
a hotel.
Lacking the wherewithal, he borrowed $25 , 000 from
the Chicago mercantile wizard, M a rshall Field, and raised
tile remaining capital amongst the better-endowed citi ­zens
of Phoenix . Adams, as one member of his family
has colorfully ex pressed it, " was a great guy for black­jacking
people into getting things done." His m o dm
operandi in this and many subsequent community pro­motions
was to stage an elaborate banquet, feed the guests
into a wmm nnd generous mood and then call for sub­scriptions.
Occasionally h e found it n ecessary to " plant" the
first subscription, which leads one to surmise that, had
J . C. Adams not chosen to be a hotel builder and a .. VV es tern
pioneer, he would have done ex ceedingly well as the pro­prietor
of a medicine show.
The hotel he built, at the corner of Central and
Adams, was truly the last word. It was four stories high,
with 200 rooms, 66 of them equipped with private baths,
each with a genuine porcelain tu b as shiny as a set of
new false teeth.
The structure was distinctly on the rococo side,
erected of frame and pressed brick , with brown stone
trimmings. It boasted, as a chronicler of the period rhap­sodized,
" all the applian ces for comfort to be found in a
big first class hotel in a big city ." This was simply a
fancy version of the desc ription preferred b y folks around
Phoenix. The Adams, they liked t o say, was the " umptiest
hotel in these h'yar parts."
Perhaps its most distinguishing features were the
commodious 15-foot verandas built right out over the side­walks
on both the Adams and Central Avenue sides.
There may have been a direct connection between these
verandas and J . C . Adams' preoccupation with politics .
For the story goes that a city ordinance prohibiting this
kind of construction was repealed just long enough to let
the Adams build its verandas.
It doesn't matter too much whether the story is true.
The mere fact of · the verandas' existence was something
for which many a patron had cause to be thankful. They
provided a welcome sanctuary for guests desperate for
sleep on stifling summer nights.
It wasn' t until considerably la ter that someone con­trived
the idea of letting the guests sleep on the roof in
mid-summer. The men slept on one side and the ladies
on the other, and there was a 12-foot solid board fence
between them, bolted on both sides.
It was even later tha n this tha t the Adams developed
Cabs of the Adams in the good old days.
what is regarded in some quarters as the first air condi­tioning
system in Arizona. This consisted of seven or eight
large pans spaced strategically around the lobby, each
containing a 300-pound block of ice, with a large electric
fan blowing across it.
In winter the heating was done largely with wood.
Each floor had its woodroom and each guest, for 25 cents
a day, could be assured that his individual wood box would
be kept well-stocked.
A perpetual source of managerial headaches was the
wood-filcher-a precursor, perhaps, of that light-fingered
soul who today persists in making off with the bathtowels
and silverware. Interestingly enough, among the most
flagrant wood-filchers were the members of a prominent
and wealthy Boston Back Bay family.
Adams, who served as mayor and later as postmaster
during the course of his political career, wasn't averse to
a good, lively scrap when he felt that the interests of his ·
hotel were involved.
He decided one year that his electric bills were too
high, so he started a move for municipal ownership of the
public utility. The utility, not surprisingly, didn't cotton
to the idea.
Adams challenged the president of the utility to a
public debate. It was held on the grass around the city
hall. The president spoke first. Then Adams, whose voice
didn't carry too well, got up to say his piece. But nobody
heard him, because just at that moment the power com­pany
arranged to have the irrigation water turned in to
the grounds so that the audience had to move back.
Adams cried "dirty pool" and challenged the utility
president to another debate, this time in a downtown meet­ing
hall. And this time he lead off. When his adversary
arose to answer, Adams arranged to have the lights go
off. The meeting ended forthwith and the dispute eventu­ally
was settled to the mutual satisfaction of both of them.
Adams was a tall man with a stately bearing and
fluffy moustaches which he habitually riffled from under­neath
with the side of one index finger. His office was a
nook off the lobby. There the cattlemen dropped in with
the latest advices from the range country and legislators
came after a day's session to be greeted with, "Well,
m'boy, what did you do today?"
The hotel is a center for cattle buying.
Though a steadfast Republican, Adams managed to
stay on generally good terms with the Democrats, who,
then as now, constituted the prevailing power in Arizona.
Once, however, the law-makers took affront at some real
or fancied lapse in the hotel's service and passed a bill
requiring that all sheets at the Adams be 12 feet long
and new carpets be installed in the rooms every other day.
Though J. C. Adams was of the Victorian period,
there was nothing Victorian about his outlook on the social
mores. When the country club banned the popular if
rather intimate dance known as the "Bunny Hug," J. C.
announced that it was entirely permissable at his hotel.
This made the Adams temporarily anathema to some of
Phoenix' stuffier families.
It was in the early 1900's that Adams launched the
Arizona State Fair on its way and thus came to be known
as "the daddy of the Fair." The customary technique
was brought into play-elaborate banquets, a "plant" or
two, subscriptions, etc.
While considerations of civic betterment undoubtedly
motivated him, Adams wasn't being entirely selfless in
his efforts toward a State Fair. He saw it as a nice, de­pendable
bonanza for the hotel, with Fair Week bringing
in a horde of people from the outlying desert regions and
the northern uplands.
Then, too, sporting blood ran deep in J. C. Adams.
He was an unflagging devotee of the race track, especially
of harness racing, or, as it was known then, trotting. He
visualized Phoenix as a sort of Saratoga of the West, and
this indeed is what it became.
The greatest trotting horses and riders of the country
converged on Phoenix and the fairgrounds, to compete for
handsome purses which Adams helped to make possible.
He himself put up the Adams Hotel Stake, and he in­duced
the copper bigwigs to post the Arizona Copper
Stake. The record fails to show whether or not this con­tribution
was preceded by a banquet.
There was auto racing, too, bringing to Phoenix such
daredevils of the track as Barney Oldfield, driving at fan­tastic
speeds of 50 and 60 miles per hour. An event of
each year's fair was the Desert Classic, which was an
automobile race from Los Angeles to Phoenix . .
Between fairs, when times got dull, Adams and some
PAGE SIXTEEN ARIZONA HIGHWAYS JUNE 1950
Folks say: "I'll meet you in the Adams lobby/"
fellow sportsman would stage a matched horse race up
Central A venue past the hotel. The guests found this sort
of thing highly diverting.
In 1910 the hotel burned down. It was a corker of a
fire, quite the most spectacular Phoenix had ever had,
and rumors reached Tucson that the whole city was i11
flames.
The building went with extraordinary speed. But
the verandas served as fire escapes and there were no
fatalities save that of a health-seeker from the East who
was not even a guest at the hotel. He watched the fire
from an alleyway across the street and got so excited
he had a heart attack and died.
Among the guests of the Adams at the time of the
conflagration were "Hoot" Knox, son of Philander C.
Knox, secretary of state under President Taft, and Terri­torial
Gov. Richard E. Sloan and his family. When the
fire had died down, Sloan offered a young man $10 to
go back and look for his trunk. The young man returned
with a trunk and collected the $10. The trunk turned out
to be one belonging to a chambermaid.
Tendrils of smoke were still curling upward from the
ruins when J. C. Adams set about to build a new hotel.
Again the familiar rallies of local men of means. Again
the persuasive speeches. Again the subscriptions. And
in 1911 the new Hotel Adams was opened to the public,
having risen from its own ashes like the phoenix bird
whose mythical feat inspired the name of Arizona's capi­tal
city.
The new building was five stories high and con­structed
of reinforced concrete. The first guest to check
in was a salesman who became a fast friend of J. C.
Adams. Adams betrayed the sentimental side of his
nature by stipulating in his will that the salesman was
to be allowed to stay free at the hotel for the rest of his
life, if he so wished. The salesm,m is still living and
still at the Adams.
In 1928 a $500,000 nine-story annex was added to
the hotel to keep up with the competition. Surviving
cronies of J. C. Adams point out that, so long as he lived.
the hotel had no serious rival. J. C. saw to that, they say
admiringly. Not until after his death in 1926 did new
hostelries spring up in the growing city.
Auto garage for guests is recent addition.
When Adams died, his close friend and political
compatriot, Dr. R. W. Craig, took over the direction of
the hotel. It may have been his long association with
Doctor Craig that stirred in Adams an uncommon interest
in medicine and medical research. It is told that when­ever
Adams read of a new remedy-pill, potion or in­jection-
he persuaded the good doctor to try it out on an
Indian-Mexican janitor at the hotel. If the janitor sur­vived,
Adams decided it was a good remedy.
In the early 30's, Adams' daughter, Mrs. Margaret
Rockwell, assumed management of the hotel. She steered
it gingerly through the depression which plunged 85 per
cent of the American hotel industry ( excluding the
Adams) into receivership. Mrs. Rockwell also appears
to have inherited her father's predilection for politics, Re­publican
species. She is G.O.P . national committeewoman
for Arizona.
Control of the Adams is now in the hands of the
third generation, with John Rockwell, the founder's grand­son,
as its directing head.
Responding once again to the demands of progress,
the hotel recently built an elaborate "auto lobby" where
guests may drive in, register and be whisked to their
rooms.
It's been a problem, though- this thing of progress.
The Adams is perpetually walking a tightrope. If it fails
to keep up with the times, it loses the patronage of exacting
winter visitors. If it gets too lacy, it loses the patronage
of the cowmen, who are terribly allergic to lace.
So far the Adams has negotiated its tightrope with
nice dexterity. It still ranks in the forefront of American
hotels. And its reputation as a cow country crossroads
of a half-century's standing is quite intact- the Arizona
cowboy would sooner desert his horse than abandon the
Adams.
This makes it a sort of lone guardian of \V es tern
traditions, in a time when the West is slowly yielding to
the pressures of modernism and sophistication. It was a
Phoenix newspaper which remarked recently, with sor­rowing
nostalgia, "Phoenix ... is so rapidly becoming
a city of metropolitan airs. It might get so that the only
time we see a cowboy is when we take a stroll through
the Hotel Adams lobby."
WAYNE n.,ns
Springerville, gateway to the White Mountains, is busy travel town in summer.
lpringer¥ille
~--= ~~~
ateway -to - the White Mountains
~~ ,'.W,\' I I
BY LA WREN CE CARDWELL
Hou11<l Valley, up in Apache County just north of the
White Mountain timber, is about the last place you would
expect to find a congestion of towns. But there they are,
Springerville ,mcl Eagar, huddled together as though still
l' earh ii of Indian raids, when there is room for a dozen un­c
rowded towns in the surrounding country. Early in 1948
( not · having h e md an Apache war-whoop since along in
!he '80"s ) and having grown almost into each others in ­corporation,
sh arply defined "city limits" were resorted
to flS a pr· ecaution against one neighbor swallowing up the
other. Alpine, Nutrioso and Greer are in the immedinte
area .
T,mn partisanship and the social philosophies wh1ch
1n<1de two towns desirable in the first place are still strong.
In !h e early ' 70's outlaws from many sections were riding
into Arizona Territory. Cattie rustling, stage robbing,
,md horse stenling were recognized occupations; mnny out ­laws
were very nice people, otherwise.
Round Valley, with its grassy rolling hills and the Lit­tle
Colorado River running down the middle of it, was
ideally suited and situated to hold large numbers of horses
and ca·ttle that had been driven too far and too fast, and
were being looked for elsewhere. The present site of
Springerville was an outlaw camp, a very nice one too ,
where man and benst could rest unmolested. Round Vc11ley
sits right up against the White Mountains, and it is only
a short ride from Springerville and Eagar into the heavily
timbered country where horses and outlaws could be well
hidden when posses appeared on the scene . If pursuit be­came
too spirited it was easy to escape into New Mexico.
The Clanton gang operated here after they were run
out of Tombstone. Ike Clanton was killed and buried on
the Black River, south of Springerville. Fin Clanton was
killed by Springerville people across the line in New
Mexico. The Clanton boys had a sister who operated n
boarding house in Springerville and the gang used this
area for some of their more desperate operations .
In time a few honest settlers moved in and the commu -
THE LITTLE COLORADO RIVER, photographed OJ~ the right by Wayne
Davis, passes by Eagar and not far from Springerville on its way
from the mountains toward the desert country and to its junction with
the Colorado near Cameron. Born in high mountain springs and
nurtured by melting snow, this stream, in its easy journey from the
mountains, provides excellent fishing in upper Round Valley as well
as irrigation water for small farms in the region. One can hardly
believe that this clear little stream in the mountains can become a
raging torrent of red mud further along its course carrying flood
waters over the desert plateau in rainy seasons. BASIN LAKE, SHOWN
IN THE CENTER PANELS BY HUBERT A. LOWMAN, is one of the small
lakes found in the White Mountains which attract campers during
the summer season. Most of these lakes can be reached over good
ro,uls and offer swimming. fishing ,md boating when summer sets in.
PACH~ EJGHTEEN ARIZONA HIGHWAYS JUNE 1950
- - - - .I,! ~-
Here are the high mountains, the big sky.
Streams offer trout fishing for the vacationist.
WAYNE DAVIS
MARTIN LITTON
PROM COLLECTION OP JULIUS BECEF.R
Becker Brothers store was business center for Springerville area in pioneer dap as it is today. Photograph taken in 1893.
ni ty grew up to include two general stores, an ea ting house.
nnd a couple or three saloons-surely big enough to have a
name . Henry Springer and the Becker brothers, Julius
an.d Gustav, vvere the competitive merchants. The story
goes that seeing the need for more stock feed , l hose men
most interested in this commodity conceived the idea of
raising oats. After rounding up a bunch of Mexican work­ers
with promises of high wages and easy work, the prob­lem
of seed oats- on credit also- became the major con­sideration.
The Beckers shook their heads and told the boys, "cash
on the barrel-head," or its equivalent in those days. While
some outlaws were honest in a way, it had to be ad­mitted
that it was a hazardous occupation, what with ev·
ery man going heavily armed, a rope on every saddle, and
so many stout tree-limbs handy . And a man's debts died
or disappeared with him . Julius Becker came in 1874
while his brother, Gustav, came in 1876. They prospered
because they were s hrewd merchants.
Henry Springer, so the story continues, was cajoled
into feeling differently about seed oats on credit. Through
lack of overseeing, the diversions offered by the saloons,
and the understandable urge for longer siestas the next
day, the Mexican farming effort was unproductive. Henry
Springer's seed oats were a total loss.
The consignees, with hands dangling conveniently
close to gun-butts, laughed off the indebtedness as a huge
joke. Since a community name was taking ·civic preced­ence
by this time, some wit with an ironic sense of humor
slapped his leg and said, "Hell's bells, let's call 'er Spring­erville!"
The idea was accepted unanimously as a com­mendable
gesture under the circumstances. Henry Spring­er
got commemorated with the town name, but his busi­ness
never fully recovered from the seed oats blow. Today
the Becker Mercantile Company and second and third gen­eration
Beckers are still there playing an important part
in the civic and commercial life of Springerville.
In late 70's and early 80's Mormon pioneers from Utah
began trickling into Arizona Territory. With an eye for
rich farming soil and irrigation possibilities some of them
found Round Valley particularly appealing. They first
se ttled in Springerville. The Eagar brothers took up home­stea
ds a few miles south and established Eagarville, later
to become the town of Eagar.
They settled a couple of miles up the valley (a thought­ful
geographical advantage for priority on irrigating wa­ter
from the river) far enough from Springerville to avoid
moral contamination, and at the same time close enough
to form a quick temporary alliance with the outlaws in the
event of Indian trouble. The Eagar brothers, staunch
churchmen, personified many of the virtues Springerville
seemed to lack.
Springerville has changed greatly since then. As re­spectability
with its attendant laws and quick shooting en­forcement
officers increased, outlawry became more and
more unpopular and got to be downright unhealthy right
in their own bailiwick. Federal troops handled the In­dian
situation in like manner, and things tamed down to
where a man could go down town unarmed and a woman
could go to the store without an escort.
Not counting Saturday nights and other festive occa­sions,
Springerville settled down to a sedate community
zealously trying to live down her lurid past by laudable
endeavors, like a youthful harridan who had taken the
veil. When the White Mountains were no longer needed
as an outlaw hide-out through the decline of qualified ten­ants,
it was discovered they were a recreational paradise;
fishing, hunting, scenery, climate.
As automobiles gained popularity and modern high­ways
began interlacing the region, Springerville became
the logical supply point and jumping off place for this
area. Through the untiring efforts of Julius Becker,
son of Gustav, and other civic spirited citizens, these nat­ural
advantages were totaled up and Springerville was
plugged far and wide as "the gateway to the White Moun­tains"
until the slogan and Springerville became synonym­ous.
There may be future side entrances and french win­dows
and back doors to the White Mountains, but there
will be only one "gateway."
It is definitely that. U. S. Highways 60, from . east
and west; 260 from northwest; and 666 from north, con­verge
at Springerville. 260, 666, and State 73, with
P/\GI\ TWI\NTY·THREE 1\1\IZON/\ HIGHW/\YS .JUNE J95Q
WAYNE DAVIS
Springerville is situated in Round Valley.
their tributary roads cover the whole White Mountain
recreational area. And to accommodate the air-minded,
there is a modern landing field a mile from town with
hangars, lights, its own well and 4,000 foot runways, long
enough to handle multi-engine craft.
The White Mountains, treasure chest for Springer­ville,
cover about 2500 square miles of forest covered
mountains and snow covered peaks. The range is included
in the Apache National Forest and the great Fort Apache
Indian Reservation. The permanent population of the
White Mountains, including Indian, logger, rancher,
farmer, and those attendant to the travel industry, is esti­mated
at 6,000. Because this range is easily reached by
fine roads, the summer population is greater, but never
crowded. The smart fisherman, willing to go to the trouble
of doing so, can pack in to isolated streams, trout filled,
and have a fine fishing time.
Ordinarily, the first snows of the season come to these
mountains in November. The summer rainy season starts
after the Fourth of July. Showers, which generally come
in the late afternoon, are of brief duration, tend to settle
the dust and bring out the wild flowers. There are more
than 200 miles of trout streams in the White Mountain
region, including the White River and its tributaries and
the head waters of the Little Colorado. Much of the White
River fishing water lies in the Fort Apache Indian reser­vation.
In autumn, when hunting season starts, the Whites
attract many hunters. A game study recently made esti­mates
the game population of the White Mountains as fol­lows:
10,000 wild turkeys, 7,000 deer, 600 elk and many
mountain lions, coyotes, ' bobcats, squirrels, porcupines,
skunks and smaller animals.
From its unpromising beginning Springerville has de­veloped
into a friendly community of 850 population that
anyone would be proud to call their home town. It has long
been the shopping center for the ranchers, lumbermen, and
farmers within a thirty mile radius, but highways and the
wisely conceived slogan were what really gave it growing
pains. Today five grocers, a feed and seed store, a drug­store,
six service stations, a general merchandise store,
HERB MCLAUGHLIN
Rodeo parade in July is feature event.
an automobile agency, two barber shops, a beauty shop, a
cleaning plant, and radio shop cater to this additional
influx of business.
As tourists, vacationists, fishermen and hunlers became
"gateway-to-the-White-Mountains" conscious, visitors and
their needs came in for first priority. A modern 25 room
hotel, five auto courts comprising 66 units, six restaurants,
three bars and two package goods liquor stores do their
best to satisfy the demands for creature comfort. Being a
hospitable lot they'd rather have you linger a spell than
to hurry away, and their prices are an incentive to do just
that. Well appointed hotel rooms may be had from $2.50
to $5.00 per day, the auto courts are up from $2.50, de­pending
on the number in the party and the accommoda­tions
desired. Restaurant prices compare favorably with
less attractive locales, and the servings are intended to
compensate for what the crisp mountain air does to appe­tites.
The altitude is 6,968 feet above sea-level with an aver­age
summer temperature of 80 degrees. The winter average
is 40 although at times it drops to zero with plenty of snow.
The Springerville climate is nationally famous among doc­tors
and recommended for alergy sufferers; it is above the
elevation of obnoxious grass and weed pollens. And ap­parently
it is highly beneficial for dispositions and marital
relations, or maybe it just peps up the gals to where they
can't be content sitting around twiddling their thumbs.
Anyhow an overwhelming percentage of Springerville's
businesses are operated by man-and-wife partnerships.
You are impressed with a feeling of substantiality in
Springerville. Things seem to be built for keeps and noth­ing
ever torn down. Nineteenth century dwellings of
weathered pink brick under graying handmade shingles
scowl with proper disdain at plate-glassed business struc­tures
and shiny gas pumps that have usurped the lots in
between and even encrouched on front lawns. But (let's
be practical about the whole thing) good frontage lots of
erstwhile free-for-the-taking land are being snapped up
at $50.00 a front foot.
It is unusual to find brick construction in a town adja-
PAGE TWENTY-POUR ARIZONA HIGHWAYS JUNE 1950
HERB MCLAUGHLlN
Fourth of July rodeo brings out local talent.
WAYNE DAVIS
Alpine, on Coronado Trail, a neighbor village.
cent to accessible timber, human nature being what it
is. But in the late 1890's, determined there would always
be a Springerville and their progeny most likely stay there,
the citizenry set up kilns and imported professional brick
makers, convinced brick was more permanent, fireproof,
and didn't need painting.
Having learned the advantages of co-operative and con­certed
effort there is a fast functioning Chamber of Com­merce
and Rotary Club. The V . F. W., American Legion
and the P. T. A. take care of those more socially inclined,
and of course there is the usual differences of opinion and
petty jealousies natural to any democratic community.
But after the folks get these little personal matters
off their chests they are behind anything that is for the
general good of Springerville hundred per cent.
As a consequence there are grade and high schools sec­ond
to none in the State, the White Mountain Hospital
with fifteen beds, operating room, and X-ray facilities, a
hydro-electric plant supplemented by Diesel power on the
Little Colorado River, Catholic, Baptist and Community
Churches ( the Mormon Church is in Eagar for those other­wise
spiritually inclined), and a new post office building
that would do credit to a town several times its size.
When the D. A. R. scout came along hunting a stra­tegic
site for one of the "Madonna of the Trail" statues
commemorating the pioneer women of the West, Springer­ville
came forward with a hundred good reasons in its favor
and cleared a prominent location in front of the post office.
This monument was erected by the National Old Trails
Highway Association and Daughters of 'the American
Revolution.
Yet, as though to prove there's no intention of being
monopolistic, there is no newspaper, no bank, and no com­munal
water system. To keep abreast of the woes of the
less fortunately situated balance of the world, the citizenry
read the Arizona Republic, Holbrook Tribune, and St.
Johns Independent News. They bank in Winslow, Hol­brook,
Phoenix, and Belin, Albuquerque, Silver City and
Gallup. As good water as you ever tried to rust your
innards with is plentiful at a hundred feet or less , so every
property has its own well for domestic use.
The climate and soil being ideal for a variety of fruits
and vegetables, irrigation was something else again. Joseph
Udall, 87-year-old pioneer who was responsible for much
of the intricate irrigation project (getting water to land
you'd swear was up hill) still lives a vigorous life in Eagar,
just an easy rifle shot from Joe Pierce whose contribution
was helping keep the peace at a time when keeping the
peace developed into quit a little chore occasionally. Joe
was one of the original Arizona Rangers, and Apache Coun­ty
Deputy Sheriff, and when the Fort Apache Indian Scouts
were reorganized into mounted police, he found his way
into that hard riding, pistol-packing outfit.
Aside from the many just everyday cattle ranches, the
same livestock conditions that attracted the early day rus­tlers
to Round Valley are now producing thoroughbred
white face Herefords that are taking first prizes through­out
the country in national livestock shows under the ban­ners
of Milky Way, Tal Wi Wi, Staple-X, and White
Mountain Hereford Ranches. The shade, sunshine and
mountain air seem to do something for these aristocratic
bovines, too.
All in all, Springerville is a progressive little commu­nity
in the easy going, unhurried tradition of the southwest
with plenty of time for fun and recreation. Most of the
residents are avid hunters and fishermen. In addition to
the annual July 4th rodeo and celebration, they stage
matched Quarter Horse races most Sundays during the
summer, and dances at Eagar Hall Saturday nights and
holidays. In fact they'll take time out to throw a whing­ding
on the slightest provocation most any time.
Maybe it's the climate, or come to think of it, it might
be the neighborliness, but there is something about the
town and surrounding country that just naturally creates
enthusiasm, makes you glad you came and sorry to leave
-if you don't see one of the many still available opportu­nities,
like many others have, to justify settling down and
becoming a dyed-in-the-wool Springervillian.
Mules make as many as 200 canyon trips a year!
Or the advice may be-"If you fall off, be
-..J. . j sure you keep your eyes open for they tell
~ me the scenery's awful purty on the way
down!" This lightness usually relaxes the
novice passengers and they start out ex­pecting
to have a good trip; and about the
third day after they get back most of them
will admit that it was a good trip. How-
------ ever, it might be noted in passing that
mule trips are the only way to get into
the Canyon and get back without getting sore feet!
The dudes themselves are often good for a laugh
when the guides get together. Ed Cummings tells about
one girl who liked her big straw hat so well _that she de­cided
the mule ought to wear it for a while. So she tied
it around his indignant brow. A sudden puff of wind blew
it down over his eyes, he stopped suddenly, the girl fell
off. But nobody was hurt, and it was all a good joke.
Oldtime guides, such as Ed, Sherm Moore, or Shorty
Yarberry, reminisce that twenty years ago they learned
to watch their lady passengers, as occasionally they got
stuck down in the saddle and never knew why. With a
pair of pliers, the guide would move around behind the
lady and usually find that a corset stay had worked down
and gouged into the saddle so that the lady was anchored
firmly in place. A quick twist of the pliers and motion
would be restored. That problem hasn't been met for over
ten years, and probably the present generation of young
guides wouldn't even know what to look for, the old­timers
concede. Another trick not needed now was to keep
a special watch on girls wearing real tight so-called "choke
bore" breeches. Sometimes- in fact, often-these girls
would suddenly find their legs practically paralyzed from
ln winter they carry supplies and take it easy!
the knee down, and the guide would simply slit the seam
behind the knee to loosen the breeches and start circula­tion
again.
Guides point out that all riders can have more fun
on their trips if they will remember a couple of things­just
like Jug h~s to. Let the guide fit the stirrups to throw
the feet slightly ahead, get ahold of the reins or the saddle
horn or both, keep your mule up with the one ahead­and
then relax. No speeders-no cross traffic-no jay­walkers-
no need to tromp on the gas or steer- the mule
will take care of it all.
They like to tell about the tubby photographer who
hired a special mule to take him down into the Canyon
with half a hundred pieces of paraphernalia that he
wouldn't let anyone touch but himself. He carried all his
truck in his arms, it was all so precious, and when he got
to where he wanted to take a picture he tried to get off,
dropped the whole works and then fell down right on top
of it. Nobody was hurt but the cameras; but the moral,
the guides say, is just this-let the guide tie your stuff
on-he'll do the work if you'll let him, and then every­body
will have more fun.
John Bradley tells about the rather chunky, heavy
set but jolly gal who rushed up to the corral gate one day
ready to go, but with a dress on and a pair of overalls
rolled up under her arm. John showed her a cabin she
might use as a dressing room and she soon reappeared
with the clothing exchanged but commenting that she
never in her whole life had worn anything as uncom­fortable
as those overalls. John didn't believe this, so he
took time to look the situation over and found that there
was a big pair of patch pockets in front. Suddenly he re­alized
she had someway managed to get a pair of bib over-
GRAND C ANYON'S LONG-EARED TAXI C:ONTINUED FROM PAGE SEVEN
They're sure-footed 1 It's a long ways down!
alls on completely backwards. "They sure fit tight, too,"
· John remembers. After being advised of her errors, she
returned to her dressing room and soon was back with
them properly faced and much more comfortable, thank
you!
One of the Grand Canyon oldtimers who remembers
about the mules from almost before the automobile is
Shorty Yarberry. A story goes that one day Shorty took
two pails of oats and started in beside Liza, a little black
mule, to feed her. She didn't like bu~kets, so she kicked
him out of the stall and across the barn into another stall
with old Star who also whanged away at him, but missed.
"Why, sweetheart, you missed me!" Shorty said to
Star as he crawled to his feet 9nd edged out of the sta 11.
One of the other guides ran up.
"Did you have an accident, Shorty?" he asked.
"Hell no!" said Shorty. "It wasn't no accident. Liz<1
done it apurpose. But you know," he added, "that mule
really likes me."
"How do figure that out?" asked the other, as Shortv
limped out of the barn.
"Why," said Shorty, "she could've kicked me in
the shins and broke my legs. But she didn't want to do
that-she didn't want to hurt me. So she kicked me in
the stomach."
In the wintertime, Jug and about 25 of his pals are
left at Grand Canyon to handle winter packing to Phantom
Ranch and the small number of trips to the River or
Phantom. The other 75 mules are haulPd to a ranch nt
Del Hio on the upper Verde River for a winter of pasture
and rest. If Jug is handled right to begin with. he can
expect to make as many as 200 trips a year into the Cm
yon. If he gPts c1long well and is not over-(To\\·clpd ,;,
An important part of Canyon's travel picture!
any time, he is good for anything up to twenty years of
work, although the avernge is a bout six to eight years
of use.
Characters all, the Grand Canyon mules, appealing
yet solitary, familiar yet strange. To the men who work
them, they are as understandable as anybody. To others
they appear as some peculiar but attractive critter with
all sorts of weird ha bits. Yet none of these possible peculi­arities
could match Josh Billings' comments along this
same line over eighty years ago:
"Tha weigh more akordin tu their heft than enny
other kreetur except a cro-bar . . . Tha kant hear enny
quicker nor further th,m the hoss, yet their ears are big
enuff for snow shoes .. . Tha are the strongest kreetures
on earth and the heaviest akordin tu their size. I herd
tell ov one who fell oph from the tow path on the Eri
Kanal, and sunk as soon as he touched bottom, but he
kept right on towing the boat tu the nex stashun, breathing
thru his ears vvhich stuck out ov the water about 2 feet
6 inches."
Grand Canyon guides have not yet matched this feat,
1>11t clou htless will if they give their thought to the problem 1
The Blue River Country is distant and hazy as viewed from the Coronado Trail .
WAYNE DAVIS
........ ~ ~
-.,,, ~ -
-...ill:~ ,,,,,. -
The Blue River Countey --=-- _
BY GASTON BURRIDGE
The first time I saw the Dlue River Coun tr_y it lay
hush ed on a late November pillow of brown leaves covered
vvith a blanket of indigo haze. The sun was tired and
low, like golden dust, transparent, suspended. The valley
alders and willows were gray design against a hard ceru­lean
sky, etched lines contrasting with the ochre-green
stain that was the pines. I remember the r ed sandstone
cliffs, along the river and the road, seemed to leap straight
up into the still, cold air from the blond bunch grass.
They were stark and raw-too much color-overpower­ing
braggarts. Yet, they seemed very much to belong ther e.
It all seemed to belong together. It impressed me as look­ing
hard like broken flint and waxy too, like flint. A trace
of eeriness seemed to linger as if the late Autumn sun had
not quite been able to flush out the black magic of a night
lit by full and verdant moon. The day was dreamy, unrea l.
-< ~
~~~
/I ,>1
Now, the valley wears the cloth of summer- summer
near the end of the rainy season. It is billowed in washed
greenness and it is the pines that are straight and dark
against an ultramarine sky filled with scudding white
clouds. No longer do the cliffs leap-rather, they peak­or
seem like stairs upon which some child has left many
colored toys. Everything has a green cast as if ground
malachite had been dusted. The sun is less mellow­has
an echo of glare- a brassy touch. The light breeze
makes the pines hum softly-the aspens rattle like dry
seeds in a gourd. The alders and willows sigh as they con­stantly
move their mantillas of shadow. The langour of
siesta has an index finger on summer's lips. Time is of
little consequence in the Blue River Country. There are
no deadlines to meet. It has been a wrinkle on the face
of the Earth too long awhile.
The Blue River Country is tucked away deep in the
PAGE TWENTY-EIGHT .\RJZONA HIGHWAYS JUNE 1950
This is the Blue River, a shaded stream, leisurely coming down from high mountains.
'' /Juu 'n 011 the Rlue" the country is scenic awl picturesque.
central portion of the Apache National Forest. close to the
Arizona-New Mexico line. The Blue River is formed bv
the meeting of Campbell-Blue Creek, from the northwest,
and Dry Fork Blue Creek, from the northeast, out of New
Mexico. Into the Campbell-Blue flow Coleman, Cat, Tur­key
and Castle Creeks. The Dry Fork Blue empties Pace
and Freeburn Creek. At the meeting the valley of the
Blue is wide, about 6500 feet in altitude and in the midst
of a thick Ponderosa pine forest. From here the valley
floor drops about fifty feet a mile in a generally southern
direction becoming narrower or wider as the mountains
press in or recede. Following this route is a Forest Service
road, a continuation of what is locally called "Turkey
Creek Road" down from Highway 260 and Alpine, Ari ­zona.
Along this road are located the rnnches of the Blue
Valley, most of which are headquarters or home nmches
for the various cattle outfits operating in the vicinity. The
mountains rise 2000 feet on the east and well over 3000
on the west of the valley- sometimes in a very great
hurry, the rest of the time just steeply. Often sheer steps of
one-hundred to two-hundred feet occur. Truly, along this
road one must "lift his eyes toward Heaven to see the
handiwork of God." This road is hridged and graded down
stream about ten miles to the Blue Post Office. From the
Blue Post Office down stream to what is known as "the
box"- where the Blue River cuts through the Mogollon
Rim- there is a road but not suitahle for these modern
cars that are "wider than they are high :" If you have il
jeep or a light truck much scenery awaits your wonder­ing
eyes, for you will be traveling through the center of
the Blue Range Wilderness area, set aside in 1932 to re­main
as nearly as possible in its natural rugged state.
It is along this part of the river and its tributaries that the
remr1ins of the ancient cliff r1nrl rnw dwelling Inrforns
are situated, indication of flourishing past civilizations.
Illue Post Office is located in one room of cl three
room native stone building. This building was built hy
the present postmaster, genial, soft-spoken, Slim Joy.
Joy also operates cl general store and bar in this build ­ing-
and there is a gasoline pump outside, too- if per­chance
you had forgotten. Slim has lived "clown on the
Blue," as the natives say, for twenty years and knows a
great denl nbout the hunting and fishing potential of the
region.
Another Forest Service road leaves Blue Post Office
to the east and traverses the southern end of the San Fran­cisco
mountains into New Mexico to emerge at Highway
260 about eight miles below Luna, New Mexico. This
road, through superb mountain scenery, must he taken
slowly and care fully hut is worth every mom0.nt of the
necessary time.
There is still another way to get "down on the Blue,"
if you have steady nerves, newly-lined brakes and are
satisfied with fifteen miles an hour. Take the left hand
road at Jess Burke's Deaver Hend Lodge, off the Coronado
Trail, Higj1way 666, south from Alpine to Clifton, Arizona.
l311t before you make the turn pmise a moment at Beaver
Head . .Jess and Flora Burke are oldtimers in this region
and though they do not live "clown on the Blue," one can't
"EVENING SHADOWS ON THE nr.trn" BY ROY CAPLES- Driving down Blue
River Canyon late one Pvening l,ist October. the photographer had
made what he thought to bP his last shot for the dfly- as darkness
comes quickly in a deep canyon. Suddenly he turned a bend in the
road thM opened a view on this striking scene-the setting sun send ­ing
its last glow of the clay on the canyon floor and peaks above, with
long shadows reaching far up the river. This shot was made ;it a point
some 35 miles south of Alpine. Arizona and 15 miles off the Coronado
Trail to the east. A most difficult pl;ice to travel hut worth every
scen ic mile of it. Exposure with 4x5 Crown Graphic-kod;ic'hrome
film. ;it 5:30 p.m.--1 /5 ser.f.29. Camern on tripod.
PAGE THIRTY ARIZONA HIGHWAYS JUNE 1950
"The colorings are somber here, vivid there-always dramatic ."
have seen the country and leave them out. Their lodge,
as the name indicates, is at the head of Beaver Creek and
is known far and wide for its old-fashioned western hos­pitality.
Jess is a hunting and fishing guide of high repute
and his stories often appear in nationally circulated sports ·
magazines. He has good lion and bear hounds, pack ani­mals
and a vast store of "know how" from many years
of trailing. The lodge itself is of pine logs and houses many
mounted specimens of local game and action photographs
of their capture.
In many respects this road down from Beaver Head
to the Blue River Country is the most spectacular. It be­g
in s at an altitude a little over 8000 feet and drops to
about 5600 feet in twelve miles. This road joins the road
down through the Blue Canyon about two miles above the
Blue Post Office. There are several points along the way
where one may pull off the road and stop to view a vast
panorama of fold after fold of pine-covered, red-soiled
mountains, dropping, dropping to the Blue Valley then
thrusting skyward again on the other side for many more
miles. Always there is that strange blue, blue haze hang­ing-
never · the same shade, even different shades in dif­ferent
canyons or along different ridges . The colorings
."HER DING THROUGH THE nox" BY ROY CAPLES-This picture was taken
last October on a Blue River cattle drive. The narrows of the river
called the "Box" by local citizens on Blue River , is about 1Z miles
below the Blu e Post Office and every family living there will tell you
they wish it were 12 times 12 below them, as many times each year
the melting snow or h eavy rains trap them at this point for days. Blue
River Canyon, named from the river that formed it, is some 75 miles
in length- beginning about 10 miles south of Alpine, Arizona and
ending at the junction with the San Francisco River near Clifton,
Ariz. The Canyon is about the same length as the Coronado Trail
which it parallels on the east near the New M exico state line. The
Blue Riv er and its canyon holds some of Arizona's most picturesque
scenery. Exposure made with 4x5 Crown Graphic- kodachrome film
- 1 /5 0 sec.f9, on mule back . Lens was f4.7 Raptar. Time-10:30 a.m.
are somber here, vivid there-always dramatic. It is in­teresting
to note how the vegetation changes with the loss
of altitude. Beginning in a heavy Ponderosa pine forest
containing many large specimens, the trees grow fewer
in number and smaller in size as one descends . As alti­tude
is further lost the cedars and junipers make their first
appearance. Farther down the pines thin out considerably,
growing only in the more 'favored spots while the cedars
and junipers grow thicker and are joined by an occasional
oak or native walnut. Somewhat lower, near the floor of
the valley, once in a while a cactus will glint in the sun
from a well protected spot with a full southern exposure.
The cedars and junipers grow smaller in stature and the
pines are found only thinly spotted on the northern slopes.
On the valley floor, because of the extra amounts of sur­face
water and deeper soil one finds the cottonwood, wil­lows
and alders and quite often the pines and cedars. The
summer rains carpet the forests with quantities of many
colored flowers- the foot lights of a vast and vivid drama.
It has always seemed to me more interesting to go down
into the valley via this road than it is to come up out of the
valley by it.
Within this region c1re hunted, during the open sea ­sons,
the mountain lion, blc1ck bear, elk, mule and white
tail deer and the wild turkey. There is both stream and
lake fishing at hand. It is a fine place where one can just
loaf or poke about. If you are interested in sketching or
photography, the number of "models" will drive you crazy
for the valley's scenery is its very own. There is only one
Blue River Country. · Life there is slower. You will feel
it put the brakes on your own activities. It is a land of sun,
soft breezes, shadow, color and secrets which bid you
welcome. Memories of the Blue River Country will remain
with you long after you have gone.
PAGE THIRTY-THREE Al\IZONA HIGHWAYS JUNl!t 1950
Shorty Caraway R(JSS Sanlec
PHOTOGRAPH
RY
JOSEPH MILLER
BY ROSS SANTEE
DR AWI NGS RY TH E ,\ U Tl!OH
It w a sn't a pony tha t finally set my friend afoot after
fifty yea rs in the saddle. He was working as a stockman
on the San Carlos Rese r v a tion when he began to have
diz z y sp ells . While always generous with his family and
friends , the old waddie 's own troubles were something he
k e pt to himself. It was when h e w oke one morning to find
himse lf blind in on e eye tha t h e rode in to se e the doctor.
High blood pres su re had cau sed it all. Since the other eye
was affect e d, too , h e w as r etired on a small pension. Fifty
years in the sa ddle is a long time on a horse. Only one who
has ridden the range knows wha t it means for an old cow­bo
y to be set afoot.
The Bar F Ba r and th e Cross S outfits were shipping
at Cutter. It w a s back in the early 'teens. The Bar F Bar
outfit had brought down eight hundred head, mostly gentle
stuff- some of them too ge ntle, I thought, for I was driv ­ing
d r ags. Coburn Broth ers , who owned the Cross S a t
t hat time, wer e shipping twe nty- nine hundred hea d , most­l
y old M ex i cos , a nd they w ere as wild as black -tailed bucks .
They sp ook ed at e ver y strange sound and smell, at times
they ran for fun . While th e two h e rds w e r e h eld some
distance apa rt, the Bar F Bar herd caught the spirit of
the thing . Sorefooted drags that could hardly untrack
themselves on the drive to the pens rolled their tails and
went hog-wild.
There was the click of the hooves, the rattle of hocks,
the rumble of the herd. You could feel the ground tremble
when the cattle went into a run, and you could feel the
pony's hea rt you rod e pounding against your knee. It was
after a run that a rider rode out of the dust and flashed a
smile my way.
Strange, how some little things stay in the back of
one' s head after all the years. The horse he rode, a bay
branded with a figure 2 on the jaw, was caked with dust
and sweat. The rider was caked with it, too. When he
pulled his hat I took him for an Apache, his hair was so
black and coarse . But I knew I had him pegged wrong
when I noticed his eyes, they didn't track with his hair.
His eyes were blue and friendly, yet they made me think
of the ice on a tank in winter. He swung down, loosened
the cinch, straightened his saddle blankets. I've forgotten
his passing remark. But I remember the smile he flashed
PAGE THiaTT-POUII AUZONA H IGHWAYS JUNE 1950
before he rode ba ck into the dust.
"Who's the little wart? " I asked a waddie who rode
beside me.
" Shorty Caraway," he said. " One of Coburn' s top
hands."
Later I gingled horses for him when he was foreman
on the Cross S. In bad weather we slept in the same tepee.
Always tolerant of other men's weakness, Shorty asked no
odds for himself. He could "smell" trouble coming, and
he could usually head it off. For the cowboy, always an
individualist, is often a prima donna, too . Things are
always brought into sharp focus on the range; cowboys
in camp together often get on each other's nerves.
Shorty knew all the symptoms when a waddie was
about to "bow up an' quit." He would take the waddie
aside . "Mind doin' a chore for me? Will you take a note
for so -an'-so in town? Can't get away myself. An' say,
when yo're in town have some fun for me! We're movin'
to Alkalai, pick us up there in four days." I've never seen
a cowboy fail to return. After he'd kicked the lid off in
town he was glad to get back, too . There was never the
big fight, the big quitting when Shorty ran the spread.
He knew horses, wild cattle, and above all he knew men.
There were two punchers in the outfit who didn't
speak. If by cha nce they met at the coffee pot you could
fairly see their hackles raise. Shorty put them in line
camp together. Since both waddies were gun-toters we
looked for a killing. "There won't be ary trouble," Shorty
said . "They're just like a couple of kids-one' s afraid to
pull his gun, an' the other knows he dassent."
As foreman Shorty never took the best of anything
for himself. He took his turn a t flanking calves, and in
the corral the roping was always divided among the men .
Nor did he take the best horses for his string as is a fore­man's
right. There were several old ponies in his mount
long past their prime that Shorty h ad a sentimental attach­ment
for, yet he caught more wild cattle riding on them
than some cowbo y s riding tops . There was Wine Glass
Bucky, a pony Shorty had broken years before. Bucky
often stumbled now in a race after a wild steer. Afraid
some young puncher might abuse him, Shorty kept tpe
pony in his string.
Shorty was ,camped alone when Wine Glass Bucky
crossed over to the place where all good cow ponies go .
"I should've knowed, " said Shorty, " knowed there was
somethin' wrong. Bucky was always gentle as a dog, but
this night he woke me up a-pawin at my bed. I run him
out of camp. He woke me up the second time a-pawin'
at my bed. I run him off again." When Shorty told me
there was a mist in his honest blue eyes. "Bucky didn' t
go to his own kind, ·or go off alone-he come to me. An' I
let the ol' boy down. When I turned out next mornin'
with the mornin' star, ol' Bucky was a-layin dead just out­side
my camp."
Most cowboys are good story-tellers and they like
their stories tall. We all sat back expectantly when he took
over at night around the fire .- He had a way of weaving
fact into fiction, he made fiction sound like fact, and al­ways
there was humor that bubbled as from a spring. One
night in camp the conversation turned to rattJesnakes and
why it was so easy to shoot a snake's head off with a pistol.
One faction claimed the snake struck at the bullet. We
argued pro and con.
"Ever see one swim? " said Shorty. None of us had
had that pleasure. " I seen one swim across the river, it
was do;wn at Horse Shoe Bend. He held his head an' tail
out of the water, just seemed to slide right through it. I'd
never seen one swim before so I follered him across. But
when I tried to get him to take to the water again, ol' snake
got on the prod. I finally got tired a-messin' ' round with
him, I got a pole an' was about to knock him in the head.
Reckon he figgered what was on my mind for he took to
the r iver again, but he only swum halfway across an' then
he coiled. Last I seen of him he was floatin' downstream,
still coiled, a-spittin' at me over first one shoulder an'
then the other."
There was always a twist to things, the way he told
a story. Bob Robinson, one of the owner's sons, spent a
summer with the outfit. Bob was twelve at the time, and
with no one to insist he wash behind his ears Bob really
took himself a three-months holiday as far as washing
was concerned. The outfit was camped at the Spur camp
the night his parents came to take him into school. "He
was a good cowboy," said Shorty, speaking to young Bob's
mother, "never bellyached ary time when things got a
little tough. An' among other things he's learned to make
Dutch oven bread-an' ya know, Mrs. Robinson, he even
got so he washed his hands sometimes before he made
it, too."
Aside from his feeling for horses, Shorty had a weak­ness
for stray boys for boys still ran away to become cow­boys
at this late date and time. Shorty could spot a run­away
at a glance in town. If the boy wanted to tough it
out and be a cowboy sure enough, Shorty would help him
get a job. If the boy was homesick and wanted to go home
- well, Shorty could fix that too. The fact he was often
taken advantage of never bothered Shorty. He'd been a
stray himself.
He was fourteen when he ran away from the little
farm in East Texas. It wasn't that he wasn't treated well,
but to be a cowboy was the only thing that was ever on his
mind. His father followed and brought him home. But
a year later his father, thinking it only the passing fancy
of a boy, bought him a pony and saddle, gave him forty
dollars to go with the two Shorty held, gave his son his
blessing, and the boy was on his own. When Shorty re­turned
on his first visit it was quite a homecoming; not
even his mother knew him since he'd been gone for
twenty years.
It wasn't as simple as he thought the first morning he
rode away. He was welcome at any ranch, yet he couldn't
land a job. And the pony had all the best of it when Shorty
missed a ranch he was headed for, while Shorty took up
another notch in his belt the pony filled up on grass.
Shorty had no bedding except his saddle blankets. Nights
on the plains are cold, and he was usually up and walking
long before the morning star appeared, walking to keep
warm. Yet not once did it occur to him to go back home.
In the great sweeps of country that stretch away as far as
the eye can see he had found the thing he wanted.
He rode the chuck line for six months. He was wear­ing
castoff clothes cowboys had given him, dressed like a
little range bum-considerably ganted too- when he fin­ally
caught on as a chore boy with an outfit in New Mexico
at fifteen dollars a month. It was a straight horse outfit
where they broke horses the year 'round. Shorty stayed
PAGE THIRTY-SIX AIUZONA HIGHWAYS JUNE 1950
two years. There was hardly a day he wasn't on a pitching
horse. When he rode into Arizona to try his wings then•
was no horse he feared or one he could not gentle.
In Arizona he broke horses and punched cows. He
never made the big circle from Canada to Old Mexico like
so many of his kind, most of his riding was done in Arizona.
Shorty liked a country where the climate fit his clothes.
The Chiricahuas, the Flying H's, the C.K.'s, the Wine
Glass outfit all knew his pony's tracks. Shorty knew the
Tonto, Black River, the Gila and the Salt when white
water ran over his saddle. Two weeks in town on the
Fourth of July, two more at Xmas. The big money in the
rodeos came after Shorty's time, but he always won his
share of money whenever he hit town. Good roper, good
bronc rider, all 'round top hand! And he never missed a
chance to have a little fun.
Time to be serious too, when a cowboy was trying to
get ahead. He and a waddie bought a little bunch of cat­tle,
got them on good terms. While Shorty coyoted and
nursed the dogies, his pardner was to work for one of the
big outfits and keep the bean pot going. Shorty didn't
know he was out of the cow business until a man rode to
his camp one evening and showed him a bill of sale. His
pardner had sold him out. "A good deal too," said Shorty.
He laughed when he told me about it. "There was only
one thing about the deal I didn't like. My pardner got
drunk an' spent the money- I never got a cent."
He went back to breaking horses and punching cows.
Then a wealthy cowman cut him in as a pardner. Shorty
was to pay his share of the cattle out in wages. Once again
he lived alone and nursed the dogies. The years slipped
by. He had his share about paid out when his pardner
insisted they take on more cattle, more obligations at the
bank. It was during the lush years in Arizona when the
rains came when they were needed; every range was green,
and all were over-stocked. Then came the drop in prices,
and the drought that broke so many cowmen.
When they turned their outfit over to their creditors,
Shorty's worldly goods consisted of a war bag full of dirty
clothes, and Puzzle, a pet horse. Not much of a showing
for almost twenty years' hard work. It was known his
pardner got the best of it since he landed on his feet. But
any feeling Shorty had he kept strictly to himself. Never
have I heard him speak of any man unless the word was
good. He went back to working for wages again. He was
foreman now for some of the biggest spreads.
In the middle 'ZO's he went over to the coast just to
have a look around. With a couple thousand in his Levi
pockets any cowboy can have fun. But when he located
r1 married sister Shorty found her very ill, an operation
was necessary. Day and night nurses melted Shorty's roll.
To complicate matters further, there were two small chil­dren,
a baby boy a few months old and his brother not
yet four. So Shorty, to supplement his dwindling roll, rode
in Western pictures at ten dollars a day . . . They paid
more if a man did stunts and doubled for the leading man.
And while that worthy stood by in all his finery, with a
six-gun on each hip, Shorty rode pitching horses for the
hero, swam rivers and rode horses over cliffs.
"I'd seen him in the movies lots of times," said Shorty,
"an' admired this hombre's nerve. He was just about as
sweet as ary one I'd ever seen on a horse, an' come to find
out he's just a 'ham' that couldn't even ride in a wagon.
At first I wondered how he could look a real cowboy in
the eye . ... But there's another angle, though. If this
'ham' was hurt it would hold the picture up while cow­boys,
who risk their necks an' do his stunts, are always
a dime a dozen."
"Ever wrangle ary kids?" I shook my head. " I never
did either till I took my sister home to Texas. She was in
a berth not able to sit up. Me an' the baby an' the four­year-
old had the seat across from her. A nurse had showed
me how to fix the baby's bottle, but she forgot to tell me
how to change his diapers. Our outfit hadn't been loaded
long until the baby started bellerin'. I didn't have to look
him over either to know he's messed himself. From the
way _some people looked at me it wouldn't a-surprised me
none if they call ed the conductor an' throwed our outfit
off. _But I waited till the train stopped. I grabbed a news­paper
then an' carried the baby off the car. I laid him
on the ground an' after I'd cut the clothes off him, an'
throwed 'em away, I wrapped him in a paper. But it
seems a nice white-haired lady was watchin' from the
window. Mebbe she figured I was about to cut his throat
when she saw me pull my knife, an' she met me when I
mounted again. 'Let me take him,' she says. She drug
out clean clothes from the baby's wnr bag, took him into
the ladies' room. VYhen she brought him back to me the
baby was laughin' again an' smellin' like a rose."
Shorty was in his late forties when he married. Aside
from his mother's red hair Allen Junior, squatted on his
little boot heels beside his father, was Shorty all over again.
And often- to the consternation of his mother- Allen
talked like his father for the relation between father an<l
son was always that of one cowboy to another.
When the great Apache Reservation was given back
to the Apaches and the big outfits, the white outfits, were
forced to move off, Shorty went to work for the Forest
Service counting cattle for the government. Most cow­boys
are hurt at times, Shorty wc1s fifty and he'd c1lready
had his share of broken bones While he was working
for the Forest Service Shorty hnd his biggest wreck when
a horse pitched off a hill with him. When he was found
it took six hours to get him to the hospital in town where
they discovered eight ribs were broken, c1nd his lung had
been punctured in two places when the pony fell and rolled
over him. Shorty had had double-pneumonia twice before
this wreck so it was touch and go with him for a time.
But the old cowboy licked it, and at sixty he could still
ride a pitching horse when a pony broke in two.
Shorty had worked with Apache cowboys ever since
he came to Arizona. Unlike so many of his kind, Shorty
!'AG E T IJJRTY- EJ(; JJ T AIHZONA HIGHWAYS JUNE 1950
had never taken advantage of them, always treated them
as equals. And the Apaches, like all primitive people, still
respect an honest man with courage. It was the Apaches
who petitioned the agent that Shorty Caraway be appoint­ed
a stockmc1n on their reservation. An old Apache, a
mutual friend, spoke to me when Shorty was retired. "Not
good," he said, "not good for us when Shorty goes. Shorty
c1lways friend."
In the good old days there were several things an old
cowboy might do when he was set afoot. He could work
in a livery stable, tend bar or act as a peace officer. Now
the livery stable has gone, and tending bar has become a
complicated thing. No longer does the barkeep's job consist
of keeping order with the house gun, serving beer in bottles,
and liquor taken "neat." But Shorty wc1sn't idle long.
He got a job as a guard at the penitentiary where he was
among old cowboy friends . There were old friends among
the inmates, too- old cowboys who were making quirts
and hackamores, who had been set afoot by the law.
We haven't seen each other in some time but we keep
in touch. When there was a long lapse on his part I sus­pected
something wrong, but a letter finally came.
"Why is it," he wrote, "when an old cowboy gets
ready to take that long one-way ride alone he always starts
talkin' about some ol' pet horse that's been dead for forty
years? I sa:w Bill Young ten days before he crossed, an'
all he wanted to talk about was ol' Chuck-a-luck. I went
over to Globe on my vacation, met John Armer on the
street. 'Dogie Si wants to see you,' he says. 'The Doc only
gives Dogie a couple of days to live. Come on an' I'll go
with you.'
" 'What' was the name of that horse?" said Dogie Si.
'It was at the Wine Glass outfit 'most thirty-five years
ago. I mean the pony that got his guts hooked out by the
big stag? An' the stag would a-killed you too, if the ol'
pony hadn't made a run on the rope an' held it tight with
his guts a-hangin' out.'
"'Smithy', I says.
"'I knowed you'd know,' said Dogie Si. It seemed to
please him too.
"Then John says to Dogie Si, 'Look up Bill Young
an' Henry Jones when you get over there, they'll know
where Smithy's runnin'. An' find out what bunch Mor­mon
Joe is runnin' with, he's the ol' pony I want to ride
when I get over there.'
"Well, Dogie only lasted a couple of days, like the
doctor said, an' I see in the paper where John Armer made
his crossing, too. I reckon John's ridin' Mormon Joe by
now. The reason I ain't wrote before was because my
ropin' arm went dead, had to button my pants with my
left hand. This is the first letter I've wrote with it, but
my arm's all right again. Fact is, I'm better than when I
seen you last, no more dizzy spells an' my good eye is
really good again. I think it will be some time before I
start talkin' about some ol' pet horse that's been dead
for forty years."
Good roper, good bronc rider, all-round top hand,
always generous to a fault. I've been privileged to know
many of his kind. Yet there was something about Shorty
that always set him apart. It might have been his toler­ance.
Never have I heard him speak of any man unless
the word was good. On the Gila, the Tonto, the Salt they'll
retell his stories in cow camps at night, but the yarns
won't be the same. From the rim on down to the desert,
Arizona's wide ranges will miss his pony tracks.
~~--
~~ --­~
::-> D~ j ,..,j f.;:
Your1 lincerely
SUCCESS FOR JAENISCH:
... ARIZONA HIGHWAYS readers may be inter­ested
to hear that Hans Jaenisch ("Prisoner in
Paradise," ARIZONA Hrn11wAn, April 1949)
has been awarded the Berlin Prize for out­standing
painting done during the past year by
the West Berlin City Government.
Many Americans, who cherish his work, hope
that this will be the springboard which will lead
the way to an exchange fellowship with some
American university, so that he can return to
the land he'd learned to love for at least one
more look around- this time as a free man.
Paul Lutzeier
Cultural Affairs Adviser
Weisbaden, Germany
• Congratulations to Hans Jaenisch. ARIZONA
HIGHWAYS deems it an honor to have had thL
privilege of showing his work to American
readers.
ANOTHER AMERICA:
... You may be interested in a letter recently
received from a cousi:i in Basle, Switzerland,
to whom we have been sending the ARIZONA
HIGHWAYS. She writes in German, which we
translate: "Also I am receiving the ARIZONA
HIGHWAYS. It is wonderful, even better than
it was last year. Our Chamber of Commerce
sent members for a study tour of America and
brought back this magazine as a choice example
of printing. We have come to think that most
of the products of America are superficial, due,
no doubt, to the influence of the American
films. But this magazine shows another Ame­rica,
and in many ways is much better than
anything we m;ike here."
Mary and Conrad Buff
Los Angeles, California
• Lithographers, plate makers, pressm,rn of
ARIZONA HIGHWAYS- please take a bow!
ART AT NEW LOCATION:
Ever ,ince you used that grand spread in the
August, 1949, issue of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS on
the river trip up Glen Canyon to Rainbow
Bridge, we've been getting letters from all over,
Hawaii, and every state in the union. Your
magazine certainly does some traveling-and it
isn't just in Arizona!
I thought we ought to tell you that instead of
being right at Navajo Bridge, for the start of
our trip- the Greene Gang has moved 9 miles
up U.S. Highway 89 to Cliff Dwellers Lodge.
We get our mail via Cameron, Arizona.
We'll look forward to seeing our friends al
our new home and hope you and your staff will
join us one of these days in the Tseh-Na-Ni-Ag
Go Atin up river to the Rainbow Bridge!
Art Greene
Cliff Dwellers Lodge
Marble Canyon
Via Cameron, Arizona
• The same old gang in a new location- and an
improved Tseh-Na-Ni-Ag-Go Atin to make the
river trip to Glen Canyon and Rainbow Bridge.
BOULDER OR HOOVER DAM:
. . . We have just received our copies of April
ARIZONA HIGHWAYS, and when I r eached the
incorrectly titled article, "Boulder Dam," my
dander rose. That dam is HOOVER Dam! We
were there recently and all the labels and direc­tions
read in large lettering, Hoover Dam, with
Boulder in parentheses in small letters under­neath
to indicate its former misnomer under
the FDR dicta torship. The fact that you en­close
the name "Hoover" in parentheses only
adds to the intended insult, for it shows that
you know better. Or was it done through ig­norance?
In either case, you certainly owe your
readers an apologetic correction. To call it
Boulder Dam in a publication such as yours
which people all over the world see is to carry
your partisan Democrat prejudice decidedly
too far.
If you think you ha ve a legitimate reason
for thia unjust atrocity I should like to knovr
what it is. The fact that Democrat Arizonn
misnames it ia no reason why it should be
broadcast thus, when nationally and ju1tly it
is named for the great President Hoover who
built it! Mrs. Lloyd Nichols
Tucson, Arizona
I am sure we all have due respect for Mr.
Hoover, but let's 1tick to the picturesque names
for our mountains and rivers as much as pos­sible.
Long after we are gone and forgotten,
our mountains, dams, and rivers will still be
here. I think most everyone will agree that
"Superstition Mountains" and "Thunder River"
call much more to the imagination than say
"Jones" creek and "Smith" mountain.
Mrs. Dorothy Bonham
Bellflower, California
. . Isn't "Public Attraction Number I" offi­cially
Hoover Dam- so named for one of our
foremost citizens.
How come "Boulder Dam?"
The first line of your article, if you have to
call the dam Boulder, should have been "The
huil<lers of Hoover (Boulder) Dam" etc.
Edward D. Hubbard
Laguna Beach, California
No doubt you will receive plenty of criti­cism
for calling Boulder Dam "Boulder Dam."
Am so glad Arizona has taken its stand. Now
I'll even consider moving out there!
To call it by a name of an individual is
bringing in the human element and "Boulder"
is more abstract. No human being is big enough
to have such a place named for him. Like you,
I have nothing against Mr. Hoover. (I even
wish his proposed economy measures would be
!Aken seriously by the present administration. )
Lucille Coy
Riverside, Illinois
• The "Hoover Dam" versus "Boulder Dam"
issue has created a f Lurry among the members
of the happy reading family of ARIZONA HIGH­WAYS.
We've been on the receiving end of so
many caustic letters because we write it
"Boulder ( Hoover) Dam in deference to a state
law we mutter under our breath iust plain
"Damn" and let it go at that!
OF LEGENDS AND SUCH:
. . . I am writing to say that I would be most
grateful if sometime you would include a few
of the legendary stories concerning your state.
You have so many. On seeing in the last issue
views of Lake Mead, my desire was awakened
to again hear the story of the old prospector and
his wild mountain goat. My memory is very
hazy on the details-perhaps it was a deer in­stead
of a goat-but I do remember the love of
man for beast. The prospector saved the life
of the goat after hawks had destroyed its eye.
In gratitude the goat returned to meet the old­timer
year after year. Then in the formation of
Lake Mead, the animal became stranded on one
of the islands and as he stood waiting for his
friend, hunters shot him .
Another story is the Indian legend about
the blessing of the Big Chief upon the seed,
and yellow corn came into being.
I am reminded of this bit of philosophy as I
read your magazine: "In a hurry son? You
ain't-a-gain' to see the beauty of these hills.
You ain't-a-gain' to enjoy your trip to the full ­e-
st if you hurry a'long. Stop and dangle your
feet in some of these cold mountain streams.
Park your car and climb up and look out over
the country. Stop at some of the homes for a
glass of milk or a drink of water. You will find
it'll put peace in your hearts."
Mrs. F. E. Williams
Glendale, California
• There are many legends to be gathered in this
wonderful land of ours, and one of these days
we'll gather a few for ARIZONA HIGHWAYS.
PA0E FORTY ARIZONA HIGHWAYS JUNE 1950
BACK COVRR-"SUMMER IDYL" BY ROBERT MAII­XOW.
A series of small dams on the Little Colo­rado
near Springerville form fine fishing ponds,
perfect for those who like best to fish lazily
from a bank. Photograph was taken with 4x5
Speed Graphic Camera, Daylight Kodachrome,
f5.6 at 1/50 secon<l, f4.7, 127mm Ektar lens.
DESERT DAYBREAK
Here in the dawning, out on the plain,
I wake with the freshnes& of childhood again . .
I bathe in an ewer of gold from the sky
And wave to an eagle who slowly wheels by.
"Top of the morning" I call to an owl,
A burrowing fellow who stares with a scowl,
Then turn to a friendlier creature, a toad,
Hunting beside a narrow ant-road;
I laugh at its babies who tumble and play,
And sing with the birds at dawning of day.
Elizabeth Reeves Humphreys
WINNER
Outside my dull and lonely confine,
A little bird decided to dine-
As he scratched, searched and ate,
It seems, I lost every ache.
But soon he gained his fill
Flew from my barren window sill­It
seems he lost, I gained,
A gol<len minute, free from pain.
Ralph A. Fisher, Sr.
EVENING SHADOWS
As twilight dims
The sun's bright light,
And earth spreads wide
Her blankets of night,
Their reverend heads
The mountains bare,
And in the hush
The winds say prayer.
Emily L. Alleman
YUCCA AT NIGHT
A pure white maiden,
Straight and slim,
With moonbeams playing
Round her head.
White madonna of the flowers.
Have you ever beheld a sight
As pure and radiant blessed
As yucca bloom at night?
Elizabeth M. Clark
LIGHTNING
Lightning rides across the sky,
Bedecked in flashing armor.
He rips the veil from modest night,
And tears her soul asunder.
Elizabeth M. Clark
DESERT SUNSET
It looks as though an artist's paints
Were spilled across the sky,
And mingling with the gathering mists,
Refused to set and dry.
Dripping kaleidoscopic hues
Through outstretched cacti hands,
Finding a resting place at last
In greedy desert sands.
Dell Avon
"THEY'RE BITING ON THE WHITE" BY MARTIN
LITTON. The White River and its tributaries
drain that part of the White Mountain range
chiefly occupied by the Fort Apache Indian Q
Reservation. Here during trout season, May­September,
fishermen come from near and far
to enjoy fine fishing and nice vacation weather.