Arizona Highways, February 2004

              First Peek at
Kartchner
Caverns’
big room
The Lure of wild
orchids
gold, gold
everywhere
Tucson’s Noted Exhibition
arizonahighways.com FEBRUARY 2004
Discover Our
Newest Desert Preserve
the eternal search for ‘lost’ gold mines
PHOENIX
TUCSON
Sonoran Desert
National Monument
White
Mountains
Santa Catalina
Mountains
Kendrick
Peak
Alamo
Lake
Grand Canyon
National Park
Kartchner
Caverns
Wilson
Canyon
F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4
[this page] Yei-bichei formation
and its northernmost spire, ­Totem-pole,
frame a perfect blue sky above
the rippled sands of Monument
Valley on the Navajo Indian
Reservation. chuck lawsen
[front cover] A stand of saguaro
cacti flaunts a distinctive variety of
profiles before the rising sun in the
Sonoran Desert National Monument.
For more on one of our newest
protected monuments, see the
portfolio on page 20. jack dykinga
[back cover] Dawn bursts through
fog-shrouded ponderosa pine trees
near Big Lake in the White
Mountains of eastern Arizona.
randy prentice
46 DESTINATION
K a r t c h n e r C a v e r n s S t a t e P a r k
A new Big Room has opened in southeast Arizona’s
“living” cave, where breathtaking formations create
one of the world’s great underground sites.
42 BACK ROAD ADVENTURE
Alamo Lake
The eastern-Arizona lake attracts bald eagles, plenty
of fish and visitors who like secluded desert beauty.
48 HIKE OF THE MONTH
W i l s o n C a n y o n T r a i l
Near Sedona, this 1.5-mile trail wanders through
Arizona cypress trees for an easy and delightfully
scented forest outing.
2 LETTERS AND E-MAIL
3 TAKING THE OFF-RAMP
Explore Arizona
oddities, attractions
and pleasures.
40 HIGHWAY TO
	 HUMOR
20 6
12
EVENTS
A Show of Gold:
50th Anniversary
The Tucson Gem and Mineral Society celebrates a
milestone exhibition with another extravagant display
of alluring and amazing precious metal.
ADVENTURE
Searching for ‘Lost’ Gold Mines
The mesmerizing attraction of vanished or mislaid
­treasures—
or perhaps mere lies and dreams—has
kept the inner fires burning for those who would
go in quest.
FOCUS ON NATURE
Stalking Wild Orchids
Passionate admirers of these fascinating beauties of
the flower world hunt Arizona’s 26 native varieties.
COVER/PORTFOLIO
Desert Preserve
Our new Sonoran Desert National Monument
protects a significant history of pioneers, explorers,
backcountry travelers, Indians and soldiers.
TRAVEL
Eluding All Seekers,
the White Ghost Lives On
Around Kendrick Peak, northwest of Flagstaff, the
­legend
persists of a rarely seen, mysterious white
deer, revered by locals, tourists and hunters who
refuse to shoot.
34
{also inside}
{more stories online}
GENE PERRET’S WIT STOP
If there’s a hex on misappropriated petrified wood
souvenirs, our author’s the last guy to admit it.
ONLINE EXTRA
	 G o l d M i n i n g i n A r i z o n a
In 1858, men with visions of treasure began a rush
into what would become Arizona Territory after news
of rich deposits on the Gila River ignited their
imaginations.
WEEKEND GETAWAY
	 F o r t L o w e l l P a r k
This tree-lined, activity-filled park in Tucson once was
home to ancient Hohokam Indians, and more recently
to an Old West garrison of U.S. Army troops. The park’s
museum displays relics from both cultures.
EXPERIENCE ARIZONA
A festival of fun cold-weather events in Flagstaff and a
cowboy poetry and music gathering in Sierra Vista are
among Arizona’s February activities.
at arizonahighways.com
P O I N T S O F I N T E R E S T
F E A T U R E D I N T H I S I S S U E
16
Cemetery Remembrance
In the September 2003 issue, I read the “Along the
Way” column on Camelback Cemetery.
A few days before Christmas in 1932, we buried
my father in Camelback Cemetery. I was probably
three weeks away from my 13th birthday. I was the
oldest of six children.
My aunt, who was Daddy’s sister, and her
husband took my mother and all of us children to
the cemetery after the services. She wanted us to
see where Daddy was buried so if, after we were
grown and wanted to show our own children where
their Grandpa George Thaggard was buried, we
would know how to find the grave.
My mother took a camera along and stood us at
the head of Daddy’s grave, on the left side of a
grave with a marker that read “Laura Dunne Stanley
and Baby.” So you can see why it brought back
memories.
As far as I know, my Dad’s grave is unmarked,
but in standing in front of the two graves,
Daddy’s would be on the left side of Laura Dunne
Stanley.
Sybil Thaggard Sammons, Los Banos, CA
Satisfied Readers
I subscribed to Arizona Highways on a whim last fall
when the junior class at our high school held a
magazine drive. I wanted a magazine that showed
me the West. Arizona Highways does just that. Your
magazine brings to life in its beautiful photography
the places I’ve visited only in books. In fact, I liked
the magazine so much I purchased several of the
Wild West books you publish and thoroughly
enjoyed them.
Karen Collins, Twin City, GA
After almost 40 years of receiving Arizona Highways,
I ask, “What can it publish that I haven’t already
seen?” And every month I wait with anticipation for
the arrival of yet another issue, and I am never
disappointed. There is always something new and
interesting to see and read.
Hilda Desmond, Fairport, NY
I have been a reader of your wonderful magazine
since 1950. I am continually amazed at the
gorgeous photos that show up each month. It
seems your newest issue outdoes the previous one
in pictorial displays.
Aubrey D. Brown, Mesa
Receiving letters like these really invigorates the poor
old editor. They’re much more effective than taking a
short nap.
Charitable Act
While camping at Lee’s Ferry, I was reading your
September 2002 issue when I came upon an article
about the Cameron Trading Post in your
“Destination” department. Knowing we would be
passing through there on our way to Sunset Crater,
I said to my wife, “Let’s stop there.”
We did so and I asked if that was Elsie Glander (a
Navajo woman featured in the story) sitting over
there weaving a blanket, and was told, “Yes, she is.”
I walked over and asked if she had seen the
article about the Cameron Trading Post, and she
said she had but only had one copy. I gave her
mine, and she was so thrilled you would have
thought I gave her a million dollars. It made my day.
Bobby and Faith Brown, Fort Mohave
Magazines to Iraq
We now send our copies of Arizona Highways on to
our grandson who is serving with the Arizona
National Guard in Iraq.
Max and Shirley Crandall, Traverse City, MI
Many of our readers are doing the same, sending a
touch of home to our soldiers serving in harm’s way.
It is a tradition of sorts that began during World War
II. And judging by our mail, the troops really ap-preciate
it.
Kartchner Caverns
I was in Bisbee recently visiting my sister, and we
took a side trip to Kartchner Caverns. I was left
speechless, it was such a beautiful place. I would
tell anyone visiting Arizona that a trip to the
caverns is a must.
Mary Romero Sabato, Philadelphia, PA
Need More Maps
As a loyal subscriber for 30 years, I have never
written you a letter, even though I occasionally
wish you might do more of certain types of
articles. I realize you have a lot of interests
to please.
But one thing really irritates me. You do not
put enough maps with stories that call for them. I
am presently reading the stories on the Kofa
Mountains [“You Can Almost Smell the Water,”
September ’03]. This type of story screams for a
good map.
I think you once mentioned that maps take up
space. But a map would take up no more space than
a picture takes. I’ll trade one picture for a map
anytime. Additionally, maps are works of art that
would enhance the article’s enjoyment.
John F. Mueller, Toledo, OH
The poor old editor sympathizes with Mr. Mueller
and all the others who want more maps. I agree
some stories scream out for maps. Believe me,
we are trying to find ways to provide more maps
and to do it without affecting the photographs.
And we are getting closer, but we’re not there yet.
Bear with us.
2 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4
{letters & e-mail}
When the Arizona Biltmore
resort opened on February
23, 1929, newspapers
hailed it as an example of lavish
living in a great oasis. But its
location—8 miles northeast of
downtown Phoenix—scared some
parents, who refused to allow their
daughters to stay in employee
dorms, so distant from civilization.
Although no one considers the
“jewel in the desert” remote
anymore, the hotel remains a
hallmark of luxury and legend.
Almost every celebrity imagin-able
has stayed there. Ronald
and Nancy Reagan honeymooned
at the Biltmore, and so did Carole
Lombard and Clark Gable, who
became frequent guests. Gable once
lost his wedding ring on the golf
course. An employee found the ring
and returned it to him.
In the mid-1980s, Frank Sinatra,
Sammy Davis Jr. and Liza Minelli
gathered at the Biltmore’s grand
piano after midnight for an
impromptu concert. Guests poured
from their rooms
on hearing the
com­motion,
prepared to
complain
about their
interrupted
slumber.
They calmed
down when they
saw Sinatra and his
friends. The kibitzers crowded
onto the second-floor promenade,
tapping their toes. Bing Crosby
had created a similar sensation
years before.
Brothers Charles and Warren
McArthur built the hotel to
complement their tour company.
They’d moved west from Chicago,
and by 1913 had started a
successful Dodge dealership in
Arizona.
Albert Chase McArthur, older
brother of Charles and Warren,
designed the building, with
help from his mentor, Frank
Lloyd Wright. But the McArthurs
lost heavily in the 1929 stock
market crash, leaving investor
William Wrigley Jr., the
chewing gum magnate, as
sole owner, according to a
hotel history written by
Candice St. Jacques Miles.
With its copper roof and
gold-leaf ceilings, the
construction tab ran to an
unheard of $2.5 million.
The Catalina pool, which
was a favorite of Marilyn
Monroe’s, sported tiles—at
$1 each—from California’s Catalina
Island, which Wrigley owned.
Songwriter Irving Berlin,
another poolside regular, used
the Biltmore as a working retreat.
In 1939, an Arizona Republic
reporter caught up with Berlin as
he lounged in trunks and dark
glasses. Berlin had been there a
week and had already written six
songs, as well as the score for the
movie When Winter Comes,
starring Sonja Henie.
The composer said lyrics came
to him more quickly in Phoenix
than anywhere else. “When I’m
working like this, the sunshine is
vital to me,” he said.
Maybe the sunshine made
him think
of snow.
In her book,
The Complete
Lyrics of Irving
Berlin, daughter
Linda Berlin
Emmet said he might have
written his biggest hit — one of the
most popular songs ever—at the
desert-bound Biltmore.
The title? “White Christmas.”
Information: (602) 955-6600.
THIS MONTH IN
1848
1862
1863
1871
1878
1901
1912
The Mexican
War ends with
the signing of
the Treaty of
Guadalupe-
Hidalgo.
Capt. Sherod
Hunter and his
Confederate
troops occupy
Tucson without
firing a shot.
Arizona
Territory is
created by the
U.S. Congress.
Maricopa
County is
created from
portions of
Pima and
Yavapai
counties.
C.T. Rogers
establishes a
160-acre ranch
at the base of
Bill Williams
Mountain. The
site is later
incorporated
into the city of
Williams.
Arizona’s first
union—the
Phoenix
Typographical
Union—is
created.
The Capitol
building is
dedicated by
Governor
Nathan Oakes
Murphy.
On the last day
of his
administration,
Governor Sloan
pardons eight
convicted
murderers
serving life
sentences.
The Biltmore lobby circa 1930s (above)
and as it appears today.
Clark Gable (in black) and friends golfed at
the Biltmore in the 1940s.
For 75 Years, the Arizona Biltmore
Has Brought Out the Song in Everyone
a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m A R I Z O N A H I G H W A Y S 3
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY ARIZONA BILTMORE
MIKE WILSON
Produced in the USA
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FEBRUARY 2004 VOL. 80, NO. 2
Publisher WIN HOLDEN
Editor ROBERT J. EARLY
Senior Editor BETH DEVENY
Managing Editor RANDY SUMMERLIN
Research Editor MARY PRATT
Editorial Administrator CONNIE BOCH
Administrative Assistant NIKKI KIMBEL
Director of Photography PETER ENSENBERGER
Photography Editor RICHARD MAACK
Art Director MARY WINKELMAN VELGOS
Deputy Art Director BARBARA GLYNN DENNEY
Deputy Art Director BILLIE JO BISHOP
Art Assistant PAULY HELLER
Map Designer KEVIN KIBSEY
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Editor
2039 W. Lewis Ave.
Phoenix, AZ 85009
Governor Janet Napolitano
Director, Department of Transportation
Victor M. Mendez
ARIZONA TRANSPORTATION BOARD
Chairman Ingo Radicke, Globe
Vice Chairman Bill Jeffers, Holbrook
Members Dallas “Rusty” Gant, Wickenburg
Richard “Dick” Hileman, Lake Havasu City
James W. Martin, Willcox
Joe Lane, Phoenix
S.L. Schorr, Tucson
INTERNATIONAL REGIONAL MAGAZINE ASSOCIATION
2001, 2000, 1998, 1992, 1990 Magazine of the Year
WESTERN PUBLICATIONS ASSOCIATION
2002 Best Overall Consumer Publication
2002, 2001 Best Travel & In-transit Magazine
2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1995, 1993, 1992
Best Regional & State Magazine
SOCIETY OF AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITERS
FOUNDATION
2000, 1997 Gold Awards
Best Monthly Travel Magazine
Arizona Oddities, Attractions and Pleasures {taking the off- ramp}
ARIZONA
{taking the off- ramp}
a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m A R I Z O N A H I G H W A Y S 5
LINDA LONGMIRE
Travelers who don’t wish to
kennel their pooches have a
new option in Arizona. The
renovated Stoneman Lake Lodge
Bed and Breakfast, about 100
miles north of Phoenix, offers
varied accommodations,
including rooms with entrances
and runs for canine companions.
The lodge also has a corral for
horses arriving to explore the
great outdoors with their owners.
The bunkhouse, just right for
families or large groups, sleeps 10
and the cost starts at $210. Inside
the lodge are eight bedrooms with
private baths that start at $75 a
night including a gourmet breakfast.
Visitors have the delightful
choice to take it easy and lounge
on the lodge’s spacious rustic
porch, or put on some hiking
shoes and explore the
surrounding Coconino National
Forest.
Information: (480) 239-0254;
Cowboys, with www.stonemanlakelodge.com.
their saunter and
slang, have inched
their lingo into
everyday English.
Consider
“panhandler,”
“maverick,” “runt,”
“hog-tied,”
“rustler,”
“roundup,”
“cowed,”
“hoofing,”
“hightailing” and
“outfit.” They all
originated on
the range.
And let’s not
forget the term
“necking.” In
cowboy
terminology,
necking refers to
the practice of tying
a frisky steer to a
gentler animal with
a short rope to
calm the
troublemaker.
We wonder how
this term found its
way into a
teen-ager’s
vocabulary.
Cowboy
Talk
Check out the recent
cookbook, Flavors of the
Colorado Plateau, at the
Museum of Northern Arizona
bookstore. Compiled by the mu-seum’s
staff, docents,
volunteers and friends, the nearly
300 recipes range from traditional
Indian dishes to Southwestern to
“old country” specialties. Profits
from the sale of the cookbook
support and expand education
about the Colorado Plateau
region.
Information: (928) 774-5211 or
www.musnaz.org.
Tombstone’s Boot Hill
Cemetery might be one of
the most famous graveyards in
the Southwest, but its formerly
rowdy residents aren’t the only
interesting personalities resting in
Arizona’s graveyards. Here are
some famous favorites:
Hadji Ali a.k.a. Hi Jolly
(unknown-1902). A monument
in Quartzsite holds the remains
of this Arab camel driver who
led the failed U.S. Army desert
camel experiment.
Mary Cummings a.k.a. Big
Nose Kate (1850-1940). This
infamous madame and girlfriend
of Doc Holliday died at the age
of 90 in Prescott and is buried in
the Arizona Pioneer Home
Cemetery.
“Lord” Bryan Philip Darrell
Duppa (1832-1892). The
gravesite for this eccentric,
dipsomaniacal Englishman, who
reputedly named Phoenix after
the mythological bird that rises
from its own ashes, resides in
the Pioneer and Military
Memorial Park in Phoenix.
U.S. Senator Barry M.
Goldwater (1909-1998).
Known as an icon of Arizona
politics, a captivating
photographer and a shrewd
businessman, Goldwater is
interred at The Christ Church of
Ascension in Paradise Valley.
Sharlot M. Hall (1870-1943).
Arizona’s state historian and the
founder of the Sharlot Hall
Museum is buried at the Arizona
Pioneer Home Cemetery in
Prescott.
George W.P. Hunt (1859-
1934). Hunt, the most-elected
governor in U.S. history with
seven terms in Arizona, can be
visited in Phoenix’s Papago Park.
John Slaughter (1841-1922).
The soft-spoken, iron-willed
Slaughter—former Texas
Ranger and lawman of Cochise
County—is buried in the
Douglas Cemetery in Douglas.
Jacob Waltz a.k.a. The Lost
Dutchman (1808-1891). This
German-born prospector, whose
cache of gold in the Superstition
Mountains remains lost, can be
visited at his final resting spot in
Phoenix’s Pioneer and Military
Memorial Park.
L I F E I N A R I Z O N A 1 9 9 0 s - 2 0 0 0 s
?Question
of the
Month
QWhat
Arizona
town built the
nation’s first
municipal air-port?
AIn November
1919, Tucson
opened the first
municipally
owned airport in
the United States,
boasting machine
shops and a
hangar that could
accommodate 10
planes.
LEO W. BANKS
BOBBIE BOOKHOUT
PAULY HELLER
NIKKI KIMBEL
CARRIE M. MINER
MARY PRATT
KATHLEEN WALKER
CONTRIBUTORS
Arizona Underground
Big Nose Kate
COURTESY STONEMAN LAKE LODGE
BOYER COLLECTION SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM
Located down the road from
the extraordinary Arizona-
Sonora Desert Museum
near Tucson, one might think the
Red Hills Visitor Center 18 miles
west of Tucson in the Saguaro
National Park West would be
outclassed. No way.
“We get rave reviews from
the visitors who come in,” says
Park Ranger Chip Littlefield.
The center offers a gentle first
taste of the Sonoran Desert
through hands-on and
photographic displays, two easy
trails and an extensive bookshop
dedicated to the region. The
center also offers an automated
slide presentation.
Playing in the center’s
theater, the show presents the
Sonoran Desert through the
eyes, the legends and the voices
of native people of the Tohono
O’odham Nation. Be prepared for
a surprising and touching ending.
Also be prepared for the price
of admission—free.
Information: (520) 733-5158.
If you’ve ever wondered what
gives a city like Tucson a
sense of “place,” you’ll want
to pick up a copy of Anne M.
Nequette and R. Brooks Jeffery’s
A Guide to Tucson Architecture.
Infused with the authors’ zeal to
preserve Tucson’s rich architectural
history, the book guides readers
from the 10,500 b.c. camps of
nomadic hunter-gatherers to the
large malls of today.
Both architects and faculty
members at the University of
Arizona, Nequette and Jeffery
express a nostalgic sense of loss
for the sensible thick-walled
homes surrounding cool, shaded
communal courtyards in Spanish
Colonial buildings like those
remaining in the Telles Block, home
of the Old Town Artisans shops
in the original
Presidio area.
Describing
the influences
that resulted in
structures like
the Henry C.
Trost-designed
1898 first Owls
Club, home to
the brotherhood
of Tucson’s elite
bachelors and the Art Deco
facade of a private residence on
University Boulevard, the
authors call the reader to refocus
on Tucson as an “urban city.”
The book details 13
geographic areas in the city,
with maps for walking or
driving tours and information
on the significant architecture
in each of its neighborhoods.
Nequette and Jeffery hope that
Tucson’s residents won’t relinquish
the unique diversity of their
architecture for a contrived
Southwestern style. The authors
conclude, “Tucsonans have a
responsibility to be stewards of
their natural and cultural heritage
for future generations to enjoy.”
Flavors of Flagstaff
A Dog-friendly B&B
Tucson Architecture Guide
The first Owls Club, at 300 N. Main Ave., was designed by architect
Henry C. Trost, as was the second in 1902.
KEVIN KIBSEY
LINDA LONGMIRE
RICHARD MAACK
4 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m
CHICKEN FAJITAS
1 pound chicken breasts,
cut into 1-inch cubes
1⁄4 cup oil
2 to 4 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon cumin
2 garlic cloves, minced
flour tortillas
The Cactus Critics’
Choice
Mix oil, honey, cumin and garlic and
pour over cubed chicken. Marinate
overnight. Cook on stovetop until
chicken is no longer pink in middle.
Serve on warmed flour tortillas.
Top with lettuce, chopped
tomatoes, chopped onion,
shredded cheese, salsa
and sour cream.
LINDA LONGMIRE
EVEN IF YOU’VE NEVER
experienced gold fever, never
considered yourself suscepti-ble
to this ancient curse, you’d
best watch out. Gold speaks to
everyone, knows every lan-guage.
Its peculiar power can
creep over you at any time.
Like this month, for example.
The Tucson Gem and Mineral Society will cele-brate
its 50th anniversary show in February, with
gold as its theme. Dealers, collectors and museum
curators will display a king’s cache of the precious
metal in every size and form imaginable—gold in
the shape of seahorses and dragons. Gold that looks
like seaweed. A gold boot. A gold flame. A spectac-ular
gold horn, measuring 4.5 inches in length.
When workers completed the first transcontinen-tal
railroad at Promontory, Utah, in 1869, the final
spikes they drove were pure gold. One of those
5-inch golden spikes will be on display in Tucson.
Feeling the weakness yet?
Just as alluring will be some of the stories sur-rounding
these specimens.
Example: Back in 1887, miner Tom Groves found
a 13.7-pound hunk of gold in Breckenridge, Col-orado.
He wrapped his precious find in a blanket and
went from saloon to saloon, tossing back whiskeys
and showing it off.
It came to be called “Tom’s baby.” The find, now
in two pieces, is Colorado’s largest surviving gold
specimen.
Although tiny by comparison, also expect to see
the original nugget that James Marshall discovered
while building John Sutter’s mill on the American
River in 1848, touching off the California gold rush.
This bantam beauty, only half the size of a thumb-nail,
changed America in ways we’re still measuring.
If you like big samples, look for the largest gold bar
ever cast—weighing 80 pounds—from the SS Central
T E X T B Y L E O W . B A N K S
Tucson Gem and Mineral Society
Celebrates its 50th Show
ANNIVERSARY
year. Coming to Tucson was like a trip to Mecca.”
But gold has never played a big part in the Tucson
show. Until recently, buyers could find little of it at
reasonable prices, and getting at new pieces proved
unprofitable because it appears so sporadically in rock.
However, with an increase in the price of unusual
gold pieces, known as specimen gold, it began to pay
for individual miners to seek out rare crystallized sam-ples
that could be sold for large amounts. Crystallized
gold develops from what is called a hydro­thermal
solu-tion—
hot water that surges up from the interior of
the earth, dissolves and brings minerals with it—in
an open pocket of rock, as opposed to nuggets, which
are stream-tumbled.
Technology helped, too. New metal detectors in use
over the last 20 years allow miners to go underground
and scan mine walls for hot spots. More speci­men
pieces have been unearthed and a sizeable market has
flowered.
“Tucson didn’t show its first important piece of gold
until 1971, when we had the horn of gold from the
Harvard University Collection,” says historian Jones.
This year’s show will include more than 60 pieces
from the Harvard Collection, including its curving
a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m A R I Z O N A H I G H W A Y S 9
America, which sank off the Carolinas
in 1857.
This year’s show features an addi-tional
treat for history buffs—the orig-i­nal
survey of the land acquired through
the Gadsden Purchase, loaned from the
Arizona Historical Society, and the orig-inal
purchase document, on loan from
the National Archives and Records
Administration.
In 1853, our government purchased
from Mexico a 30,000-square-mile strip
of what became New Mexico and south-ern
Arizona below the Gila River. This
year marks the 150th anniversary of the deal, which
made Tucson part of the United States.
The city plans to celebrate the opening of the Tuc-son
Gem and Mineral Society’s show—and the 30
or so satellite shows that take place simultaneously—
with a fireworks display on A Mountain, west of
downtown, the evening before the show opens. Some
50,000 visitors will attend the show, including 3,200
dealers.
According to Bob Jones, a member of the permanent
show committee and author of a book-length history
of the event to be published this month, the shows will
display roughly 7 million gem and mineral specimens
on 9 miles of table space.
The show didn’t start out so grand.
The show’s first home, the cafeteria of the Helen
Keeling Elementary School, accommodated eight
dealers. The three men who organized that 1955 week-
­end
event—Dan Caudle, Clayton Gibson and Harold
Rupert—did so without approval from
the Tucson Gem and Mineral Society
board members.
The leaders wanted nothing to do
with such a crazy idea and refused to
put up money to fund it. Caudle and
his cohorts went ahead anyway, bor-rowing
display cases from jewelry and
drugstores, and from the University of
Arizona.
“Boy, were they heavy,” remembers
Caudle, the only surviving member of
the organizing group. “We set every-thing
up ourselves.” But the three paid
their bills and cleared a handsome $10, which they
donated to Keeling Elementary. That precedent con-tinues
today. The society donates about $20,000 per
year to local charities and to the Arizona-Sonora Desert
Museum and the University of Arizona.
The second year, the show moved to a World War
II-era Quonset hut located at Tucson’s southside rodeo
grounds. Caudle, now 81, had to sleep in his truck
inside the hut, his shotgun handy, to provide security
for the specimens.
“Everything was r­­eal
seat-of-the-pants in the begin-ning,”
says Caudle. “But it kept getting bigger and bet-ter.
Every year we’d think, ‘How in the world will we
top this?’ ”
They always did, says Jones, adding that volunteers
still do all the work, the only thing that hasn’t changed
since 1955. The show crossed a threshold in 1961
when the Smithsonian Institution brought an exhibit
to town, the first time that prestigious museum had
participated in any club event. The British Museum
followed suit in 1970.
More milestones followed almost every year, includ-ing
the ring meteorite’s return to Tucson. This 1,400-
pound space monster provided a wonderful story
around which to promote the show.
Sometime in the early 1800s, settlers found the ring-shaped
meteorite, along with a smaller fragment, in
the Santa Rita Mountains. After the ring was hauled
to the presidio in Tucson, Mexico’s military blacksmith
used it as an anvil.
In 1857, shortly after Mexican forces withdrew from
Tucson, Lt. B.J.D. Irwin, a U.S. Army medical offi-cer,
found the meteorite half-buried on a side street
and recognized what it was. He shipped his find to
the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., where it
remains today.
The ring meteorite’s reappearance in southern Ari-zona
profoundly impacted the 1972 show, swelling the
crowd to a then-record 19,000.
But the most important factor in building the show’s
early reputation was the variety and quality of the
specimens on display. Collectors adopted the habit of
saving their best for Tucson.
“Items would be shown here that had never been
shown before,” says Gene Schlepp, an exhibitor at
the 1955 show and now president of the Tucson Gem
and Mineral Society. “The anticipation built every
8 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m
[above] The curling
gold “ram’s horn” on
the left is the largest
known of its kind. It is
4.5 inches tall and 1
inch across at the base.
The crystallized mass
on the right was found
at the Wire Patch Mine
in Colorado. Both are
from the Harvard
Collection. bob jones
[preceding panel, pages
6 and 7] Since its
humble beginning in
1955, the Tucson Gem
and Mineral Show now
draws collectors from
around the world and
spreads its displays
through miles of
downtown venues. At
left is a conglomerate
of crystalized minerals
and gold, valued at
approximately $50,000.
edward mccain
The distorted
octahedral crystal of
gold on the right comes
from the Harvard
Collection. bob jones
[below] The collection
of Wayne Leicht,
proprietor of Kristalle
in California since
1971, has been
featured in many fine-mineral
publications.
edward mccain
This year’s show
will include more
than 60 pieces
from the Harvard
Collection,
including its
curving gold
horn, possibly
the most famous
specimen of wire
gold in the
country.
drinks in celebration, he telephoned Leicht and the two
met in the middle of the night in Leicht’s shop.
Paulson had the gold wrapped in his lucky shirt
and thumped it down on the desktop. Leicht knew
he wanted to buy it, but figured to have some fun first.
“I said, ‘Guy, I’m not going to buy this nugget unless
you sell me the shirt, too,’ ” says Leicht, one of the
world’s top experts in crystallized gold. “But he refused,
saying, ‘Sorry, I can’t do that.’ Paulson continued min-ing,
bought an RV and made more frequent visits to
his girlfriend in Las Vegas.
Paulson wouldn’t say where he found the nugget,
tell­ing
Leicht only that it was within a 50-mile radius
of the town of Mojave. Fifteen years later, Leicht learned
the precise location from Paulson’s partner.
“People still discover nuggets in that desert, includ-ing
a recent find of 35 troy ounces,” says Leicht. The
troy scale is the international standard of weighing
precious metals. A troy ounce, based on 12 ounces
to a pound, is heavier than the avoirdupois ounce, the
measure we commonly use.
Doug Clark’s best gold-discovery story dates to the
day in 1983, on Valdez Creek, Alaska, when he and
his workers pulled 400 ounces of placer gold out of
the ground. At $400 an ounce, that added up to a
$160,000 day.
“But we couldn’t stop to celebrate,” says Clark, now
in his 30th year of gold-mining in Alaska. “This was
September, and we already had icicles hanging off our
equipment. We had to keep working to beat the onset
of winter.”
Except for his unusual success in gold mining,
Clark’s story proves typical. As a 20-year-old in 1967,
he moved with his brother to Alaska, intending to
hunt, fish and kill time. Those activities wore out in
a few years, so he thought he’d try gold mining.
“I bought a little ’dozer to shove gravel around, built
a sluice box and went out,” says Clark. He had a blast.
He also went broke. But he tried again and eventually
made it. He now co-owns two gold properties near
Mount McKinley that total 42,000 acres.
“I really enjoy doing it,” says Clark, who’ll attend
the gem show this year. “Every day is like Christmas.
Some days it’s a good Christmas, and some days it’s a
poor Christmas.”
Steve Rice, of Colorado Nuggets, another success-ful
gold miner, also will attend.
His techniques for finding gold include reading out-of-
print government brochures and books about gold
mines, and collecting old maps. And he has a way of
engaging retired miners in conversation about poten-tial
finds they never got around to exploring.
But none of these is the key ingredient. “You need
imagination to find gold,” says Rice.
If he comes across an interesting
valley, Rice tries to figure out the land-scape
and determine where Mother
Nature might’ve hidden her gold.
“If the hills on both sides show evi-dence
of a vein, maybe a glacier cut its way through,
splitting the vein,” says Rice. “Then I’ll look to see if
the valley is rounded on the bottom. If so, the gold will
be on the sides of the hills. But in a V-shaped valley,
the gold probably will be toward the bottom.
“By using my imagination, I’ve developed a real
knack for finding veins.”
Hearing that kind of talk at the gem show can bring
visions of gold to your eyes. You might even feel the
need to lie down. Best not to, though, because then
you’ll just dream. Of more gold.
Editor’s Note: The Tucson Gem and Mineral Society
Show will be held at the Tucson Convention Center
in downtown Tucson February 12-15. Admission is
$5.50; free, children 14 and under with paying adult.
Tickets are sold at the Church Street and Granada
Avenue entrances to the TCC.
For more information, call the TGMS office, (520)
322-5773, or visit its Web site: tgms.org.
Leo W. Banks of Tucson has attended the gem show several times,
and still has more to see. He also wrote about the “ghost” of Kendrick
Peak in this issue.
Tucsonan Ed McCain found some very small platinum nuggets at the
gem show for his 10-year-old stepdaughter, Liza, who is obsessed with
everything platinum.
a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m A R I Z O N A H I G H W A Y S 11
gold horn, possibly the most famous specimen of
wire gold in the country.
Also on display will be the Houston Museum’s
dragon gold, discovered at the Colorado Quartz Mine
four years ago. Careful not to damage it, workers spent
three days sawing through the quartz around it with a
powerful diamond chainsaw. The piece stands 7 inches
high and resembles a sparkling dragon rearing up on
its back legs.
Another gold piece, sure to draw public fascination,
has a tree root growing through it. In 1959, a miner
working at the Red Ledge Mine in Nevada County,
California, tipped over a pine tree and found the gold
close to the surface beneath it.
“The gold is captive in the root,” says gem dealer
Wayne Leicht of Kristalle, in Laguna Beach. “You can’t
get the root out without destroying the gold. It also has
a clear quartz crystal on it, naturally attached to the
gold, which is very rare.”
Collectors consider it among the most interesting
pieces ever found.
Visitors to this year’s show might hear any number
of fascinating gold-discovery stories. Leicht tells of the
so-called Mojave Nugget, a 13-pound specimen dis-covered
in 1977 in an area of the Mojave Desert that
most miners figured had played out.
But not crusty, eccentric Guy Paulson. With a metal
detector rigged to a long boom dangling in front of his
jeep, he inched through Southern California’s El Paso
Mountains, playing a hunch.
It paid off when the detector squealed and he located
the massive nugget high on a canyon ledge. After a few
10 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m
[above] This natural
sculpture of intricately
twined and flocked gold
crystals with black
petzite crystals is 4.5
inches tall. bob jones
‘I bought a little ‘dozer to shove gravel around,
built a sluice box and went out,’ says Clark. He
had a blast. He also went broke.
[above] Hundreds of
gold and mineral
merchants, collectors
and window-shoppers
fill Tucson’s convention
center each February.
edward mccain
‘LOST’
GOLD MINES Are They Really? BY SALLY BENFORD
1894, Whitlesy prospected gold in Mohave
County, Arizona’s third-most-productive
county for gold. Prolific treasure hunter
and author Thomas Penfield wrote in his
book, A Guide to Treasure in Arizona, that
while prospecting, Whitlesy came across a
deposit of gold that was said to have
assayed for $35,000 a ton. Back in town,
Whitlesy told two friends that the deposit
was within 2 miles of Sitgreaves Pass in
the Black Mountains, not far from Oatman.
A few days later, the prospector loaded
up his supplies and set out toward his find.
After traveling down the trail a way,
Whitlesy realized two men were following
him. He pulled out his gun and started
shooting. With bullets flying in all direc-tions,
Whitlesy succeeded in killing the
two would-be claim jumpers right then
and there. Unfortunately, in the process he
was fatally wounded and died soon after,
taking the location of the gold to his grave.
Arizona boasts an abundance of unique
mineral deposits from one end of the state
to the other. For centuries, since the Span­-
ish conquistadores searched the territory
for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, leg-ends
of vast riches beneath Arizona soil
have kept treasure hunters’ dreams alive.
Mine names like Vulture, Gold Road,
Eldorado, Congress, Crown King and
Bonanza fill volumes with Arizona’s gold-mining
history. But other names, like Lost
Black Maverick, Lost Apache, Lost Soap­maker
and Lost Jack Rabbit spur interest
in fabled Arizona mines. Even Geronimo
may have used stories of a hidden gold
mine in an attempt to trick American sol-diers
into bringing him back to Arizona
after his capture. In his book, Penfield
wrote about Ger­on­imo’s
lost gold mine.
According to Penfield, while a prisoner
at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Geronimo begged
to return to his homeland before he died.
He tried to strike a deal with soldiers there
that in return for his freedom, he would
lead Army officers to his hidden gold mine,
purportedly some­where
near Sycamore
Canyon in Yavapai County. The officers
opted not to give the cunning Apache a
chance to escape, so Geronimo never again
stepped foot in Arizona, and died near Fort
Sill in 1909.
Fighting Indians sometimes led to gold
discoveries. In the April 1983 issue of Ari­-
zona Highways, James Cook wrote about
a well-authenticated legend concerning
gold found in a spot called Squaw Hollow.
In 1864, King Woolsey, a veteran Indian
fighter, and Judge John T. Alsap, a respected
Arizona pioneer, led an expedition in search
of Indian warriors near Bloody Basin.
After a few days, the group encountered
a band of Apaches and a battle began.
Outgunned, the Apaches retreated, and
Wool­sey’s
party set up camp at Squaw Hol­-
low. Recognizing the area as a good spot
for prospecting, some of the men fanned
out to search for gold. According to Alsap,
they returned with the richest ore he had
ever seen. It had been taken from a ledge
that the men said contained an abundance
of gold. Before they could make their way
back to their discovery, the Apaches came
back with reinforcements outnumbering
the white men. Woolsey’s party hightailed
it back to Phoenix, keeping the location
of the ledge a secret. Alsap wasn’t with the
men who found the gold, so he wasn’t sure
of its whereabouts. Years later he searched
for the ledge, but never found it.
If lost gold mines do exist in Arizona,
Niemuth said, they’re most likely located
in western Arizona, an area known for gold
deposits. A map hanging on the wall in
Niemuth’s office shows significant gold
occurrences in La Paz, Mohave and Yuma
counties, not too far from where Sam
Whitlesy and the miner Perkins took their
chances on finding gold and paid dearly.
Yet as long as legends of Arizona’s lost
gold mines stay alive, those who are will-ing
to risk desert storms, sweltering heat
and treacherous terrain will keep search-ing.
And, who knows? Maybe one day some
lucky prospector might stumble across a
pair of six-shooters half-buried in the sand
—and uncover the key to untold riches.
a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m A R I Z O N A H I G H W A Y S 15
from the dust and sand that blinded him,
Perkins stumbled into a rock ledge that
provided him with some shelter from
the howling wind.
As he sat facing the ledge, the miner
broke off a few rocks and examined them.
Realizing that he sat next to a quartz ledge
streaked with gold, Perkins stuffed the
nuggets into his pocket and scrawled some
notes. Unable to discern his exact location,
he unbuckled his six-shooters and laid
them in the sand to mark the spot.
After the storm passed, Perkins, weak
and disoriented, held onto his horse’s tail
as it staggered back toward the mine. But
within a few hours, Perkins was dead, half-buried
in the desert dunes, probably not
far from the rich ledge of ore. Several days
later, when Perkins’ horse showed up with-out
its rider, a search party of Planet min-ers
set out to find their boss. They found
his body, his pockets filled with the gold
ore and notes describing his find. By all
accounts, he had become lost and died
from dehydration and exposure.
According to legend, countless prospec-tors
have circled the area looking for
Perkins’ gold quartz ledge, but have yet to
find it. Known as the Lost Six-Shooter
Mine, perhaps it remains buried, along
with Perkins’ guns, until another storm
uncovers it.
Many lost Arizona mines still lure trea-sure
hunters, who, like prospectors of the
past, believe their searching will pay off.
Some spend their entire lives looking for
legendary gold mines.
Arizona lays claim to the world’s most
famous lost gold mine, the Lost Dutchman
Mine. Named in July 2000 by U.S. News
and World Report as one of the world’s
greatest mysteries, the Lost Dutchman
remains the most sought-after gold mine
of all time. Since 1891, the legend has
lured thousands of people to Arizona’s
Superstition Mountains to search for
prospector Jacob Waltz’s fabled mine.
If anyone knows the extent to which
Arizona’s lost gold mines entice would-be
miners, it’s Nyal Niemuth and Diane Bain
of the Arizona Department of Mines &
Mineral Resources. Niemuth, an agency
mining engineer, and Bain, its public infor-mation
officer, have seen their share of
treasure hunters over the past 20 years.
Regarding the Lost Dutchman, Niemuth
said, “I get a phone call every week from
someone who tells me they’ve found it.”
He refers callers to the Forest Service,
which has jurisdiction over any treasure
trove found in the Superstition Wilderness.
As far as finding the legendary gold mine,
Niemuth explained that no one can stake
a mining claim within federal wilderness
areas, so the agency doesn’t encourage
Dutchman hunters.
“Even if someone did find Waltz’s mine in
the Superstitions, they can’t even get to the
first step in filing a claim,” Niemuth said.
Although the agency develops Arizona’s
mineral resources by providing field inves-tigations,
technical research and informa-tion,
it also stores files of research materials
on lost mines, which it makes avail­able
to
the public.
“We can’t spend a lot of time with maps
and files on lost gold mines, but we don’t
mind if people come in to do that. In fact,
we should probably be their first resource,”
said Neimuth.
Bain said people come in carrying old
mining claims or stock certificates, found
among a deceased relative’s belongings,
hoping that the papers are worth some-thing.
In most cases, the claim has such
elusive boundaries that it’s impossible to
pinpoint an exact location. An agency file
labeled “Belmont Veteran Mine” contained
a 1940 description of the property, which
listed its location as “15 miles southwest
of Salome in a rolling to hilly country.
Reached by a good desert road.”
Bain, who’s written an agency publica-tion
titled Gold Panning in Arizona, said
some mines have been lost simply due to
the vastness of Arizona’s outback and the
secretiveness of old-time prospectors.
Bain explained that although a mine
may carry an intriguing name like the Lost
Dutchman, it isn’t necessarily “lost.”
“Today we may know some of those old
lost gold mines by a different name, ” she
explained.
Indeed, a 1992 Arizona Highways story
by Rick Heffernon speculated that the Lost
Six-Shooter Mine might be the modern-day
Copperstone Mine, one of Arizona’s
top-producing mines until the gold mar-ket
bottomed out in the 1990s.
Lost Dutchman aside, many modern
pros­pectors
believe the truth about Ari­zona’s
lost gold mines has been buried in
years of folklore, fables and fabrications.
Dusty library books and cryptically drawn
treasure maps tempt gold hunters with
roman­tic
tales as rich as the shiny stuff
itself.
Ironically, the land that produced and
houses Arizona’s gold also conceals it. Des-
­ert
sandstorms, searing heat and water-parched
terrain have played key roles in
Arizona gold legends. Add in avenging
Indian war parties, sketchy directions and
mislabeled maps, and you begin to under-stand
why Arizona has it share of lost gold
mine stories.
Most lost-gold accounts share a familiar
theme: A stranger staggers into town, his
pockets filled with gold, telling tales of
quartz ledges laden with rich gold veins or
golden nuggets lying on the ground—
there for the taking. Usually, the prospec-tor
spends the better part of the evening
and his gold at the local saloon drinking
whiskey, awakening the next morning with
a hellacious hangover and permanent
memory lapse. That is, if he makes it out
of the desert alive in the first place.
Take ole Sam Whitlesy, for instance. In
14 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m
[preceding panel, pages 12 and 13] The wild and
forbidding landscape of the Superstition
Wilderness provides the setting for legends of
Jacob Waltz’s gold and the Lost Dutchman Mine.
robert mcdonald
[above] The lost gold of a murdered miner
reportedly lies secreted within 2 miles of
Sitgreaves Pass, shown here, in the rugged Black
Mountains near Oatman. terrence moore
Sally Benford enjoyed researching Arizona’s lost gold
mines, but plans to leave prospecting to the pros. She
lives in Peoria.
A MONSTROUS BROWN CLOUD of dust loomed
on the horizon as a legendary miner named Perkins
rode his horse north of Quartzsite toward the
Planet Mine where he worked as superintendent.
New to the area and unfamiliar with Sonoran
Desert dust storms, Perkins continued to ride into the growing
brown swirl until he could no longer see beyond his horse’s nose.
In a wasteland of sand, where one dune looks like the next,
Perkins decided to sit down and wait out the storm. Seeking refuge
A stranger staggers into town, his pockets
filled with gold, telling tales of quartz ledges
laden with rich gold veins or golden nuggets
lying on the ground — there for the taking.
O WildORCHIDS Orchids seduce Ronald Coleman. He was smit-ten
on the spot three decades ago.
“Wild orchids continue to fascinate me because
of their beauty, rarity, the thrill of the hunt and
the challenge of photographing them,” says the
author of The Wild Orchids of Arizona and New
Mexico. The initial object of ­Coleman’s
passion: a
14-inch plant with a leafless stem sporting eight
three-quarter-inch purplish-pink, brown and
white flowers. Spotted in 1972 at Washington’s
Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park, the
Corallorhiza mertensiana was as good as gold for ­Coleman.
“I had been growing commercially available
orchids on my windowsill for about two years,
so I knew about orchids and was even aware
that some were native to the United States,” says
the Tucson resident. “But I hadn’t contemplated
ever finding any. Since I was already hooked on
orchids and wildflowers, this was a match made
in heaven. For the rest of that trip, and ever since,
I’ve spent all my vacations and most weekends
during the blooming season looking for orchids.
Off-season, I spend time at the library research-ing
orchids.”
The largest family of flowering plants in the
world, orchids are the second-largest commer-cial
flower crop in the United States, behind only
poinsettias. More than 25,000 kinds of wild
orchids exist worldwide, with some 200 species
native to the United States.
Remarkably durable, orchids have adapted to
varied climates, from steamy jungles to arid
deserts, and with the exception of Antarctica,
orchids grow naturally on every continent. Ari-zona
is home to 26 native orchids, found in 13
of the state’s 15 counties. Sonoran Desert species
growing close to cacti include the Hexalectris
warnockii, H. revoluta, H. spicata and Epipactis
gigantea.
Perhaps the heartiest Arizona wild orchid is
the Stenorrhynchos michuacanum. Pale green,
with dark-green stripes, the flowers possess a
mild, musty fragrance that is noticeable at night,
suggesting pollination by night-flying insects.
“This orchid grows in the most difficult condi-tions,
in alligator juniper forests at elevations of
T E X T B Y C H E R Y L A. S W E E T
P H O T O G R A P H S B Y R O N A L D A. C O L E M A N
Arizona has 26 species
of the world’s largest flower family
[above] All of Arizona’s
26 species of orchids
are terrestrial (they
grow from the ground),
and about half of them
grow in riparian and
wetlands habitats.
Shown here is the
Calypso bulbosa.
about 5,000 feet in extreme southeastern Arizona,
sometimes in direct sun,” ­notes
Coleman. “The
plants grow and bloom entirely within the sum-mer
monsoon season, which is the only time the
conditions are gentle enough to support them.”
Coleman’s book, which took nine years to com-plete,
is the latest scientific work on wild orchids
in Arizona and New Mexico. Photo­graphing
all 26
species took considerable plant-detective work.
“Part of my objective was to document the historic
record, and make a case for the study and pres­ervation
of these enchanting flowers,” he says.
Withwild-orchidhuntingbecominganincreas-
­ingly
popular pastime, Coleman offers a few Ari-zona
trekking tips: Search moist, forested areas
above 7,000 feet during the April to October na-tive-
orchid blooming season. The White Moun-
­tains
are the richest native-orchid region in the
state, and the Santa Catalina Mountains north
of Tucson harbor at least 10 wild orchid species.
Keep in mind that sightings don’t necessarily
spell the only success, he points out: “You’re out
there hiking in beautiful country, so the search
itself is rewarding.”
Wild orchids are often difficult for novices
to detect. “The flower on some orchids is so
small that you need a magnifying glass to really
appreciate them,” says Coleman. “There can be
100 flowers on a stem that’s just 6 inches tall.
That tells you how small the flowers are, and
that’s what you have to be prepared for when
you’re out looking. When I’m with friends who
aren’t familiar with orchids and I point one out,
they’re amazed it’s an orchid.”
Perseverance pays. At least it has for ­Coleman,
who discovered a California orchid in the 1980s
that was named after him. The Piperia colemanni
is a tiny green flower on a green stem found in
the Sierra Nevadas in California.
The Arizona Department of Agriculture has
included all wild orchids in Arizona on the list of
Highly Safeguarded Protected Native Plants, the
highest level of protection under the law. “Most
orchids live in association with a fungus, so they
won’tsurvivetransplantingbecausethey’lllosetheir
association with the fungus,” Coleman notes. “The
success rate in getting them transplanted back in
the wild remains abysmally low.”
While Coleman’s research contributes to spe-
­cies
survival, Aaron Hicks is immersed in another
orchid-preservation project. The seven-year-old
Orchid Seedbank Project preserves native orchids
not only from Arizona, but also from every coun-try
in the world, through collection of seedpods.
According to the OSP Web site, Hicks, an Ari-zona
State University plant transgeneticist, cre-atedtheorganizationbecause“
therewasnocentral
clearinghouse for conservationists, researchers
and commercial and hobbyist growers” to get
orchid seeds. Operating OSP from his home, Hicks
works with horticulturists, chemists, biologists,
biochemists and other scientists to improve
longevity of orchid seeds in storage. Surveying
his home overflowing with 90,000 common and
rare orchids, Hicks dryly admits, “There has been
some sprawl to the kitchen, but the lab itself is
the garage.”
If you’re interested in hunting orchids in
Arizona, the 120-member Orchid Society of
Arizona is a good resource. The group holds
informative meetings and other events, includ-ing
educating students about orchids.
For more information, see its Web site at
welcome.to/orchidsocietyaz.
Once blasé about orchids, Cheryl A. Sweet of Phoenix has
developed a new appreciation of the flowering plants and is
considering purchasing some for an in-home project.
Tucsonan Ronald A. Coleman has spent more than 30 years
studying native orchids. He has written and photographed two
books on the subject.
[this page] A) Hexalectris spicata, B) Cypripedium
parviflorum, C) Hexalectris revoluta,
D) Stenorrhynchos michuacanum, E) Platanthera
limosa, F) Calypso bulbosa, G) Hexalectris
warnockii, H) Malaxis corymbosa, I) Corallorhiza
maculata, J) Epipactis gigantea, K) Spiranthes
delitescens, L) Corallorhiza striata.
[opposite page] M) Corallorhiza maculata,
N) Malaxis corymbosa.
A
B
C
D
G
E
F
M N
H
L K J I
Sonoran Desert National Monument Its captivating wilderness embraces moments in history
Text by Bill Broyles Photographs by Jack Dykinga
8
8
238
NORTH
MARICOPA MOUNTAINS
WILDERNESS
SOUTH
MARICOPA MOUNTAINS
WILDERNESS
TABLE TOP
WILDERNESS
Mobile
Big Horn
To Casa Grande
To Phoenix
To Yuma
Brittlebush
Trailhead
Table Top
Trailhead
Lava Flow
Trailhead
Maricopa
Peak
Gila Bend
SONORAN DESERT
NATIONAL MONUMENT
M a r ic o p a M o u n t a i n s
S a n d T a n k M o u n t a i n s
T abl e Top M ou n t a i n s
Gila River
B e nder Wash
Vekol Wash
Blue Pl ateau
Javelina
Mountain
Butterfield Pass
85
85
N
of it was as a child. Few cars had air conditioners. When we’d
go from Tucson on old U.S. Route 80 (now I-8) to visit relatives
in California or to go to the beach, my parents would buy a block
of ice and set it in a cake pan on the transmission hump of the
car. As it melted, we’d at least think we were cooler. We’d leave
on Friday after work and school, and we’d travel by night to
dodge the brunt of the sun.
In Casa Grande, we’d buy another block of ice, and a third in
Gila Bend. I managed to stay awake only that far, but I remember
a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m A R I Z O N A H I G H W A Y S 23
’M GUILTY, BUT WE’VE ALL DONE IT: Ignore the kid next door who
eventually becomes our best friend. Drive right past the better
restaurant. Ask everyone to dance except the one we eventually
choose to marry.
Of the 2 million people a year driving Interstate 8 past the
Sonoran Desert National Monument in central Arizona, few know
it’s there, and fewer stop to enjoy it. I was one of them. Four mil-lion
urbanites live within 60 miles, but few can tell you its name.
It may not even be on your map yet. Created in January 2001,
it’s Arizona’s newest national monument.
Located southwest of Phoenix between Gila Bend and Casa
Grande, the monument spans half a million acres of rugged moun-tains
and rutted valleys. It’s known for its bighorn sheep, spell-binding
scenery and saguaro cacti forest. It has not one or two,
but three wilderness areas. It’s so good that many states would use
it as a model for a license plate motto: “The Monument State.”
To many of us who’ve lived in Arizona more than a couple of
summers, the monument is both new and old. My first memory
22 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m
[preceding panel, pages 20 and 21] Otherworldly monsoon light charges the
atmosphere, creating hard-to-believe color contrasts in the Sonoran Desert
National Monument. Moisture-laden air, heavy with turbulent potential,
combines in a swirling alchemy of wind-borne dust and the day’s last light to
produce two different scenes of rare and powerful beauty.
[above] Saguaro cacti stand against a horizon dominated by the setting sun
and the Sand Tank Mountains in this view from the western slope of the Table Top
Mountains.
I
(Text continued on page 27)
KEVIN KIBSEY
the road between those blocks of ice. It was two lanes back then,
and wound through tall saguaros and strange trees. Invariably we’d
see a fox or coyote cross ahead of us. Once we saw a deer. The coun-tryside
was magical, one without towns or many cars.
On another trip, we drove that stretch during a lunar eclipse
and stopped by the roadside to take in the full sweep of the
event. There was absolute silence—and no lights, no noise, no
breeze, only black space from horizon to horizon, from us to the
moon. On later trips, when driving to California on my own, I saw
the golden moon rise and the full moon glare off granite cliffs as
the radio blared rock ’n’ roll from a high-watt station in Oklahoma
or a disc jockey named Wolfman Jack from a transmitter in Mex-ico.
If you had the Wolfman on, you could drive all night.
One of my University of Arizona English teachers was Byrd
Granger, who’s known for writing a second edition of Will Barnes’
Arizona Place Names. I knew her as the no-nonsense instructor
who cared about words and people. During World War II, she
served in the Women Airforce Service Pilots and ferried planes for
the military. In the classroom, she talked about ballet and art, air-craft
engines and folklore, and in one unguarded moment men-tioned
that she still wrote letters to her deceased husband. Her
glare could strip wall paint. Her praise could raise the sun.
Her poetry class was one of the two best college classes I ever
took—and I took some dandies. An Emergency Medical Techni-cian
class taught me to check breath and blood, heart and bone;
Doc Granger taught me to triage every word, healthy or sick, of
the body we call language. One day she came to class almost giddy
and announced, “I finished my manu­script
at 4 this morning.” She
walked the talk, just as she expected us to do.
Dr. Granger, as we underclassmen called her, loved our word
heritage, particularly the names of places. She loved derivations
and geography, saying that names told little histories of the
countryside and biographies of people who had mattered. Marana,
a growing town in southern Arizona, may have been her favorite,
since she mentioned it several times. The name sounds eupho-nious,
but in Spanish it means “an impassible tangle of briers
and brambles,” because the original town sprang up in a mesquite
thicket along the Santa Cruz River. She admired that. It also has
impish connotations of a puzzle or a mess.
Although I still feel 16, my age is closer to the reverse of those
digits. And somewhere in between those numbers, I found myself
compiling place names not yet in Dr. Granger’s book. And some-where
I grew interested in exploring that country between Casa
Grande and Gila Bend, so I’ve been to many of those places named
on the map and have met not only the butte, arroyo or well, but
sometimes also the people behind the name.
One of the prettiest arroyos within the new monument you’ll
ever see is named Bender Wash, broad and sandy, lined with
mesquites and desert willows. I met two of the Bender family, Letty
Hofstra and Anita McGee. Their family moved to Arizona in 1913
to escape Oklahoma’s panhandle. One thing and another, they
ended up along the lonesome dirt road that eventually became U.S.
Route 80.
There were no neighbors. Their dad started a gas station at a
spot on the highway they called the Big Horn. Mom sold sandwiches
26 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m
[preceding panel, pages 24 and 25] A sharp angle of sunlight fires the spines of
a dense stand of saguaro cacti in Bender Wash.
[left] A frost-damaged saguaro displays a stately resignation in the face of
desert climate extremes.
a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m A R I Z O N A H I G H W A Y S 27
(Continued from page 23)
and collected money for the gas. The girls started school and
grew up in that country. Their father built and named places now
in the monument, like Hog Tank, Big Horn and Jake’s Tank. Though
they left the ranch in 1952, the Bender sisters still return every win-ter
to pick up litter along the I-8 near the Big Horn.
At the northern end of the monument, Margie Baker Woods has
a cove, a trail and a peak named in her honor. She and her hus-band
ran the Cosmo, a bygone restaurant and nightclub between
Gila Bend and Buckeye.
Some of the monument names are descriptive. In springtime,
the Brittlebush Trail passes hillsides splashed with yellow brittle­bush
flowers. The Lava Trail, as you’d expect, winds for 7 miles
through the lava flows on the west flank of Table Top Mountain.
The waterholes at Sand Tanks have sandy bottoms, and at twilight
the Blue Plateau looks blue. Wildlife is represented by Antelope
Peak, Big Horn and Javelina Mountain.
The monument names are unexpectedly tame. There’s no Poison
Well, Deadman Gap or Rattlesnake Hill. And, there are too few
names from the Pima, Maricopa or Tohono O’odham languages.
Vekol, a Pima word for grandmother, has been applied to Vekol Val-ley
and to a silver mine south of the monument.
Place names can be lofty goals. The Table Top Mountains, in the
monument’s southeastern corner, have a summit trail beginning at
a campground on the edge of the Table Top Wilderness area. The
lower stretches provide easy walking, but it becomes rocky and
loose on the upper slopes. The elevation gain is 2,000 feet over the
4.5-mile rise. Quail call from the hillside; a roadrunner crosses ahead
of us, chasing a lizard. A mile later, two mule deer stare at us from
behind a paloverde tree.
During springtime, yellow bladderpod and brittlebushes, orange
poppies and pink owl clover may cover the slopes. Along the
trail, mallows, chicory and phacelia lend spots of color against
the dark rock. Later in the year, the cacti will bloom, with magenta
hedgehog, yellow barrel, orange cholla and white saguaro blossoms
[above] The ruins of the old Big Horn service station slip into decay near the
entrance to the Sonoran Desert National Monument.
[right] Monsoon clouds build over Table Top and a stand of mature saguaro cacti.
28 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4
attracting insects, birds and bats, as well as photographers.
When the trail nearly crests, we’re confronted with a mysterious
wall of stacked stone blocks. Lore differs on who built it and
why. Did Indians build it as a fortified wall to guard against their
enemies? Did someone pen domestic sheep on the summit? Could
the Civilian Conservation Corps have built the trail and wall to
pave the way for airline beacons that guided planes from one air-port
to the next? Perhaps cowboys built the wall to keep cattle
from straying across the summit from one valley to the next. Take
your pick. Whatever the purpose, someone moved tons of rock.
The top of the mountain is not quite as flat as we’d expect from
its name or distant profile. It appears more like an open book being
read by someone sitting to the northwest, the two flat pages tilted
into a gutter that drains the infrequent rains. The Table Top Moun-tains
were known as Flat Top prior to 1941, but the Pimas called
it Mo’obad for “mountain with its head cut off.” Doc Granger would
say Mo’obad is much more poetic than either Table or Flat Top.
Some of the names throw us off the scent. Maricopa Peak forms
the summit of Javelina Mountain. The 3,183-foot summit of the
sprawling Maricopa Mountains is unnamed. Go figure.
Maricopa Peak, like Table Top, has another twist. They both are
in a monument dedicated to the Sonoran Desert, and their slopes
are covered with magnificent saguaros, paloverde trees, cholla
and ocotillo. But near their summits we begin to notice plants
that are not in our desert flower books: Arizona scrub oak, rose-berry
juniper, Arizona rosewood, banana yucca and canotia, as well
as ferns and grasses such as curly mesquite and little barley.
These are leftovers—relics—of previous cooler, wetter times,
stranded after the last ice age. They manage to hang on here by root-ing
in shady canyons, on north-facing slopes and on the shadow side
of boulders to save them from the summer sun’s full fury.
In the monument can be found at least 450 of the Sonoran
Desert’s 2,500 or so plant species, as well as many of the typical
animals.
Page upon page of history have plunged through the monument,
but few structures have stuck. A few ranch houses and barns, rail
sidings, a gas station, some roads and mine tunnels, and water
tanks and wells were built over the centuries, but no towns. Bet-ter
land, with water or gold, beckoned farther down the trail. In
1699 Father Eusebio Francisco Kino and his entourage became the
first Europeans to visit the monument. They “discovered” many
small Indian villages along the Santa Cruz and Gila rivers and
mapped them, writing trail directions for future travelers.
Early explorers and travelers going from the East to California
used a trail through the Maricopa Mountains to shave 80 miles off
their trip. The trail went directly west from what is now the com-munity
of Maricopa to Gila Bend, instead of following the Gila River
and looping north through Phoenix. This stretch undoubtedly was
traveled earlier by Pimas, Maricopas and Cocomaricopas, as well
as their Hohokam and Patayan ancestors before them. They went
on foot to hunt and to gather wild foods. A dozen or more Indian
tribes fit the monument into their histories and religions.
Perhaps the most historic spot in the monument is Butterfield
Pass, first called Puerto de los Cocomaricopas by Francisco Garces
in 1775. He also named Sierra Maricopa, in honor of the tribe,
although another member of the expedition, Pedro Font, called
it Sierra de Comars. Garces and Font were part of an expedition
led by Juan Bautista de Anza, a Spaniard, captain in the army and
commander of the garrison at Tubac in what became southern
Arizona. New Spain was growing as settlers and missionaries
came. They needed a fast and safe route from mainland Mexico
to California. Travel by sea was risky for both passengers and
a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m A R I Z O N A H I G H W A Y S 31
[left] Symbolic of the constant desert cycle of death and rejuvenation,
Mexican goldpoppies peek out between the ribs of a fallen saguaro.
[above right] A spiky symmetry marks the tough exterior of the saguaro.
The ribs encased beneath the spines and the cactus’ leathery hide expand
and contract with seasonal rainfall.
These are leftovers—relics—of previous cooler, wetter times, stranded after the last ice age.
They manage to hang on here by rooting in shady canyons, on north-facing slopes and on the shadow side of boulders.
cargo, so Anza set out to establish a commercial route along the
trails mapped by Kino 75 years before.
The safest way was along the riverbanks of the Santa Cruz and
then the Gila to the Colorado. Anza started from the presidio of
Tubac, south of modern Tucson, with 240 people, 165 pack mules,
340 saddle animals and 302 head of beef. During the journey, they
lost cattle, mules and horses, but they gained a few souls when
wives traveling with their husbands gave birth along the trail. They
would seed the settlement of San Francisco when they arrived
March 27, 1776, five months after they began.
The route was also used by many of the forty-niners on their
way to the goldfields of California and by the Mormon Battalion
during the Mexican War. You’ll find segments of it called the Juan
Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail, Gila Trail, Mormon Trail,
Leach’s Wagon Road, Butterfield and Southern Overland Trail.
Someone sitting on a rock overlooking Butterfield Pass could have
cheered the long parade of Arizona’s history.
The road was so hot and dry that it became known as the
Forty Mile Desert, and travelers raced across as if holding their
breaths. John Russell Bartlett, who crossed it in June 1852, reported
“as there was no water the whole distance, the journey must be made
in one march without stopping. . . .” His pack train went at night
and traversed the 45 miles in 13 hours. Near exhaustion, they
reached the banks of the Gila River where they found water and
pasture for the mules, and the men, “creeping under some mes­quite
bushes soon fell asleep, rest being more desirable than food.”
Stagecoaches and regular freight-wagon service began in 1857.
The most famous of several stage lines was the Butterfield Over-land
Mail. Travelers with durable bottoms could ride from St. Louis
to San Francisco in 25 days. Butterfield service ended in 1861, but
the pass was well traveled until 1878, a year after the railroad came
to Arizona. The railroad line, still used, runs through the monu-ment
a bit south of the dusty stage road.
There’s something nostalgic as well as humbling about sitting
near the tracks and watching freight or passenger trains rumble
by. The ground shakes, and we’re grateful that pioneers built rail
routes to serve the growing nation. The railroad itself brought
names to the monument. Ocapos siding was coined from the
reversed first two letters of Southern Pacific Company.
Byrd Granger would have loved adding this new monument
to her place name book.
Location: Approximately 60 miles south of Phoenix.
Getting There: From Phoenix, drive south on Interstate 10 and
turn onto Maricopa Road at Exit 164. At the town of Maricopa, turn
right onto State Route 238 and continue to the monument area.
Travel Advisory: If you plan to visit the monument, carry
plenty of water and check your route with the Bureau of Land Management, as
travel on some of the dirt roads requires high-clearance vehicles. Spring and fall
are the most comfortable seasons. Spring flowers may bloom in the desert from
late January through June.
Additional Information: Bureau of Land Management, Phoenix Field Office,
(623) 580-5500 or their Web site, azwww.az.blm.gov/sonoran/sondes_main.htm.
32 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4
Bill Broyles of Tucson was one of many public citizens who worked for creation of
Sonoran Desert National Monument. His book Our Sonoran Desert was published last
summer by Rio Nuevo Publishers in Tucson.
This was Jack Dykinga’s second time exploring the monument. The solitude and
dense population of saguaro cacti keep him returning—even in 119-degree heat.
[right] Aglow with the lowering rays of late-afternoon sunshine, teddy bear
cholla and saguaro cacti stretch to the base of the Sand Tank Mountains.
a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m A R I Z O N A H I G H W A Y S 35
T E X T B Y L E O W . B A N K S P H O T O G R A P H S B Y R O B E R T G . M cDONALD
34 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m
t he morning sun hangs like a beacon
over the winter ground as I exit State
Route 64, south of the Grand Canyon, in
search of a legendary animal. I don’t expect
to find it, at least in daylight, and certainly
not with snow lying in puzzle pieces over
the mountains ahead of me.
No, if I have any chance at all of setting
eyes on this fantastic creature, a snow-white
deer, perhaps an albino, first seen by hunters
more than 80 years ago, it will come at night,
when its striking coat shows up through the
forest darkness.
As I drive east along Forest Service Road
141 through the Kaibab National Forest, I
wonder how this landscape of golden brown
hills sloping gently back to majestic pine
mountains produces so many odd tales.
The deer called the White Ghost inhab-its
one of many tales still told around this
part of the state, known to some as the
Land Where the Lion Screams.
The name doesn’t show up on any map,
and I can’t claim credit for coining the col-orful
phrase. It appeared as a headline in
Scenic Southwest magazine in a January
1952 article about this portion of northern
Arizona, so partial to strange occurrences.
Flagstaff marks the area’s border on the
east, and on the west stands the small rail-road
town of Williams, with Kendrick Peak
and Beale and Sitgreaves mountains in
between. Below Interstate 40, the area
includes Garland Prairie and the rugged
canyons south of Bill Williams Mountain.
The vast majority of this territory lies
within the Kaibab forest, but a portion of
it ranges south into the upper reaches of
Prescott National Forest.
I talked to a number of locals, men and
women with deep roots in the area, but no
one could satisfactorily explain why these
forests, lakes and mountain trails produce
so many tales. The best theory begins with
history.
In the latter months of 1853 and into
1854, Lt. Amiel Weeks Whipple led an
expedition across this same countryside,
hoping to advise the U.S. Congress on the
best railroad route to the Pacific.
Among several Whipple diarists, New
A Legendary Tale for Fools,
or the Nemesis of
Dreaming Hunters?
On the Trail of
the White Ghost
of Kendrick Peak
GETTY IMAGES
a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m A R I Z O N A H I G H W A Y S 37
Hamp­shire-
born John Pitts Sherburne
ranks as my favorite. I like him because he
dropped out of West Point—he tanked in
chemistry—and gained his place in the
expedition only by being Whipple’s brother-in-
law.
I also like him because he wrote well. His
account tells of several instances of wolves
howling around the men’s tents at night,
frightening everyone, and in one case carry­-
ing off sheep.
About 23 miles west of Leroux Spring,
almost due north of Bill Williams Moun­tain,
Whipple’s party was startled to see an
Indian peering into camp. “Tho’ on foot,”
Sherburne wrote, “he ran with such rapid-ity
as to render pursuit on mules out of the
question.”
Another encounter with Indians occurred
southwest of Ash Fork, between the Juniper
and Santa Maria mountains. This place lies
beyond the region of investigation, but it
plays into my theory nonetheless.
Whipple’s men captured two Indians
believed to be Tonto Apaches. H. Balduin
Mollhausen, a Prussian artist accompany-ing
the expedition, described them as “pow-erfully
made, with large heads, projecting
cheekbones and foreheads, very thick noses,
swelled lips, and little slits of eyes with which
they looked about as fierce and cunning
as wolves.”
Sherburne said that after being led into
camp, one of the captives escaped, after
which the second Indian was chained and
padlocked. Before long, he began making
animal-like calls.
“At short intervals he shouted something
for the other,” wrote Sherburne, “but no
answer except for the distant howling of a
36 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m
wolf, which was thought to proceed from
some of his comrades. This was kept up
during the evening & is still heard in the
distance.”
The prevalence of wolves in this part of
Arizona, and the apparent habit of Indians
to mimic their cries, seems significant. I
believe the land has a memory, and over
time its sounds and sights attach like a com-puter
chip to the brains of the humans who
live on it.
Stories emanate from these sights and
sounds, and they’re handed down. Even
when the source of them—in this case,
wolves—has vanished, people still hear
them, or some reasonable substitute, because
time and forest memory make it so.
Forest Road 141 rolls toward Sitgreaves,
Beale and Kendrick mountains, the sup-posed
home of the White Ghost and the
perfect place to test my theory. It’s a fair dis-tance
from the hubbub of civilization, so
I’m safe for now from the men in white
coats. History has steeped this route.
In two places, the road intersects the
Beale Wagon Road, sections of which
remain visible after more than 140 years.
Edward F. Beale built it between 1857 and
1860, and travelers used it extensively as
a wagon path to California until 1883.
By midafternoon, I’m on foot, making my
way up a hillside trail on Sitgreaves, said to
be the location of a number of rock forts
built by late 19th-century outlaws for pro-tection
against pursuing lawmen. My steps
land softly on the thick pine needles. The
deep quiet exists just as it did the night
before at Santa Fe Dam, below Williams.
One of Williams’ persistent legends, dat-ing
to the early 1900s, plays out there. As
the story goes, a woman who lost track of
her children went searching for them at the
dam, and in her excitement lost her footing
and drowned.
On stormy nights, residents today say they
can hear her calling for them. Or do they
hear the outlaw wolf?
Around the same time, the stock corrals
and pastures were besieged by a voracious
white wolf. The beast did its work on both
sides of the Perkinsville Road, south of
Williams—until Cap Merrill, a trapper who
was every bit as cunning as his prey, left his
cabin on the rim of Sycamore Canyon and
started after the predator, whose howling was
known to all.
In prose purple enough to suit a legend,
reporter George Brigham Young wrote in
Scenic Southwest: “His great jowls dripping
the blood of his kill, the outlaw would stand
on the jutting pinnacle of
a rearing crag and utter his
unearthly, vicious call.”
Merrill and his dogs cor-nered
and destroyed the
outlaw in MC Canyon, in
the Prescott National Forest
east of Drake. But some
folks believe the vengeful
A weeping woman? A bellowing wolf?
Both sound like nothing more than
stories told around a campfire.
But some Williams old-timers insist the incident
at Santa Fe Dam is based on fact.
[above] JD Dam Lake has been the scene for some
of the region’s eerie stories.
[right] Just south of Williams, the Santa Fe Dam
plays a part in local legends of separation and
tragedy.
animal’s voice still haunts the land.
A weeping woman? A bellowing wolf?
Both sound like nothing more than stories
told around a campfire. But some Williams
old-timers insist the incident at Santa Fe
Dam is based on fact. As for the wolf, Mer-rill
took its striking white pelt to the Grand
Canyon, and according to a Scenic South-west
report in November 1954, sold it for
$1,000 to George Horace Lorimer, editor of
the Saturday Evening Post.
Later, even with the wolves gone from the
area, the shrieking continued. By the early
1950s, writers attempting to explain the
sounds turned to the mountain lion.
In testimony taken by The Williams News,
Mrs. Al Legath told of the time she and a com-panion
were at JD Dam, 16 miles southeast
of town, when the peace was broken:
“There wasn’t an animal in sight, not
even a cow, nor a bird. Not even a bird song.
We wondered at that stillness, and then it
came—the most unearthly noise I ever
heard. I wouldn’t say it was like a woman’s
scream, for it was more bloodcurdling than
that. A cold hand began at the base of my
spine and ran all the way up to the back of
my head.
“When I could get my voice, I quavered,
‘What—what’s that?’
“‘I-I don’t know,’ was my friend’s reply.
‘Let’s get out of here.’
“And we got.”
Late in the afternoon, I reach Spring Val-ley
in the Kaibab forest northeast of ­Wil-
­liams,
a place of grand open meadows and
classic old barns made of wood slats that
rattle in the breeze. I see horses in pastures
behind split-rail fences. The shadows of big
pine trees fall across the dirt road.
After several days spent tracking these
stories, these odd combinations of myth
and fact, I’ve learned one thing better than
any other: A legend needs the proper cli-mate
to thrive. Under afternoon’s brightest
light, beautiful, peaceful Spring Valley hardly
seems the place.
But put away the sun for a moment and
blacken the sky. Hang a bent finger of moon
in its midsection and turn up the wind just
enough to transmit every minute sound,
every odd rustle. Then drop the temperature
to where the blood flow slows to a trickle,
and this peaceful forest becomes some-thing
else.
I continue driving on FR 141, and as the
shadows of night begin to fall I pick up For-est
Service Road 194. It intersects 141 just
past Sitgreaves Mountain, then crosses Beale
and rolls east toward Ken­drick
Peak. In
these very draws, canyons and pastures, the
story of the White Ghost got its start.
The logical mind can only scoff at the
tale, and I understand that. But before you
scoff, listen to Charlie Christiansen, a 59-
year-old road grader operator, describe what
he saw 30 years ago in the forest north of
Spring Valley:
“There were two of them, and they were
running through the cedars. I’d say they went
200 yards before they got out of sight. I’ve
spent my whole life in these hills, and believe
me, I got a long enough look to know what
they were.”
Two snow-white deer. Others report see-ing
a lone deer, a huge white buck with flow-ing
whiskers and a remarkable ability to
bound silently away from hunters.
The animal of legend was first seen in
1924, and by the end of the decade a local
taxidermist, captivated by the stories hunt­ers
told, offered $500 for the carcass. The
reward attracted professional hunters, but
the clever deer eluded them, too.
It could bound from one side of a defile
to the other, fully astonishing the pros. Few
mountain goats could descend a wall of
stone, or drop off the rim of a canyon into
the brush below. But this deer could.
One writer, noting its many feats of escape,
described the White Ghost of Kendrick Peak
as the most written-about deer in the West,
a now-you-see-him, now-you-don’t king of
the wild.
“Let me tell you about the time I spent
two weeks chasing that buck,” one hunter
said. “And when I walked off the mountain
he almost ran over me. And I’ll swear he was
laughing as he went by.”
The animal’s second peculiar feature, its
long whiskers, attracted the notice of non-hunters,
and in the 1940s, summer tourists
began showing up in the area to get a look
at him. But by then, whenever hunters
spotted the great deer, they lowered their
rifles, because no one wished to earn the
false honor of bringing down the legend of
the forest.
I stop and find a trail on the western
slope of Kendrick Peak. I have nothing in
mind but to listen and breathe the air and
exercise my tight muscles. When I return, I
sit on the hood of my car in the gloom just
after dusk.
Absolutely silly, I tell myself. A tale for
fools. But after an hour of pondering, with
the forest murmuring its terrible ode under
a gunpowder sky, doubts emerge. And they
grow as the moments tick off.
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t see the White
Ghost, and I didn’t hear the pounding of
his hooves. But I didn’t have to. The forest
remembers.
Leo W. Banks also wrote about the Tucson Gem and
Mineral Show in this issue.
Flagstaff-based Robert G. McDonald hoped to catch
a glimpse of the White Ghost deer while exploring
the Kendrick Peak area.
38 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m A R I Z O N A H I G H W A Y S 39
We wondered at that stillness,
and then it came —
the most unearthly noise
I ever heard.
location: Kendrick Peak,
which straddles the Kaibab
and Coconino national
forests, is about 17 miles
northwest of Flagstaff and
23 miles northeast of Williams.
getting there: From Flagstaff, travel 30
miles west on Interstate 40 to Williams.
Exit I-40 just before Williams and take
State Route 64 north toward the Grand
Canyon. Forest Road 141 links to State 64
about 5 miles north of Williams.
travel advisory: The forest roads are
easily passable, except after a hard rain.
For more information, check with the
Kaibab National Forest in Williams,
Williams Ranger District, (928) 635-8200.
additional information: Williams-Grand
Canyon Chamber of Commerce, (928) 635-
1418; Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce,
(928) 774-4505; Coconino National Forest,
Peaks Ranger District, Flagstaff, (928)
527-3600.
[above] An abandoned barn rests in quiet
disrepair along Forest Service Road 141 in Kaibab
National Forest. Sitgreaves Mountain hugs the
horizon in the distance.
Havasu Falls, Kerrick James; Portrait, Shawna Scherbarth; Deer Creek Falls, David Muench; Monument Valley dunes at sunrise, LeRoy DeJolie
For a Free 2004 Full-color Brochure
Call (602) 712-2004 or toll-free (888) 790-7042
Workshop details can also be found at www.friendsofazhighways.com
2 0 0 4
n Two exhilarating rafting
adventures on the scenic
Colorado River—one
with world-renowned
photographer David Muench,
the other with his son Marc
n Several captivating
workshops in Monument
Valley, including two to
remote Hunt’s Mesa
n A handful of extraordinary
workshops along the North
and South rims of the
Grand Canyon
n A photographic exploration
of the Four Corners area
n Trips to the breathtaking
waterfalls of Havasu Canyon
n A brand-new wildlife and
landscape workshop in
Yellowstone and Grand
Teton national parks
n An in-depth photographic
workshop on how to craft
memorable portraits
(SPONSORED BY HASSELBLAD U.S.A.)
SMALL GROUPS AND PROFESSIONAL photographic instruction are the hallmarks
of all our workshops. Led by photographers whose breathtaking images have graced the
pages of Arizona Highways magazine, this year’s exciting lineup includes:
Learn from the Best
nnnnnnnnnn
Photo Workshops
RODEO JOKES
We asked readers for rodeo
jokes. Here are some responses:
It’s no wonder so many young
people want to join the rodeo.
What other profession averages
more than 100 bucks an hour?
Joseph M. Jones, Ash Fork
When the champion rodeo
bronc rider was asked why he
wore only one spur, he replied,
“I’ve noticed that if you can get
one side of a horse to move, the
other side will always go along.”
Phyllis Beving, Everly, IA
One bronco was so ferocious a
contestant ac­tually
refused to
get on it, a technique called
“passing the buck.”
John Kriwiel, Oak Lawn, IL
Two small boys belonging to
rodeo families were playing
behind the bucking chutes at the
local rodeo when the strains of
“The Star-Spangled Banner” could
be heard signaling the start of
the show.
One little fellow asked his
friend, “What’s that song they
always play?”
The other one answered, “I
think it’s called ‘Bronc Riders Get
Ready.’”
Mary Einsel, Wickenburg
Our rodeo horse was half horse,
half hyena. He’d throw the
rider, then laugh.
One rodeo rider was thrown
so often he earned frequent-flier
miles.
both by Tom Padovano
Jackson Heights, NY
With dreams of rodeo glory
dancing in his head, a
tenderfoot decided to hone his
horsemanship. He mounted the
horse, and it sprang into motion.
It galloped along at a steady and
rhythmic pace, but the tenderfoot
began to slip from the saddle.
Terrified, he grabbed for the
horse’s mane, but couldn’t seem
to get a firm grip. He tried to
throw his arms around the horse’s
neck and almost lost his balance.
The horse galloped along,
seemingly impervious to its
slipping rider.
Finally, the tenderfoot tried to
throw himself to safety by leaping
from the horse. Unfortunately, his
foot became entangled in the
stirrup, putting him at the mercy
of the pounding hooves. His head
battered repeatedly against the
ground, and he was moments
away from unconsciousness when,
to his great fortune, the Wal-Mart
manager ran out and unplugged
the horse.
Roger Naylor, Cottonwood
On their first visit to the West,
the city slicker and his wife
decided to attend a rodeo. After
watching rider after rider get
thrown in the bull-riding event,
the tourist turned to his wife and
said, “Gosh Betsy, those bulls
sure are mean. How do they ever
get close enough to milk them?”
Bob McDonnell, Valatie, NY
I tended bar in a tavern across
the street from Tucson’s rodeo
grounds. My husband came to
pick me up and sat at the bar
while he waited for my shift to
end. He noticed four tough bull
riders laughing and loudly
bragging about their day’s
adventures.
He wandered over to them and
calmly said, “Ya’ know, I could
have been a bull rider if it wasn’t
for my stomach trouble.”
They snickered and asked,
“What kind of stomach trouble
do you have?”
He looked them straight
in the eye and said,
“No guts.”
LaWanda Brothers
Tucson
Running late for his
next performance, a
rodeo clown was pulled
over while speeding from
Tucson to Phoenix.
Suspicious of the
costume, the officer de-manded
to inspect the
contents of the trunk. To his
amazement, it was filled with
razor-sharp stainless steel Bowie
knives. Asking why so many
lethal weapons were concealed
in the trunk, the officer was
unimpressed with the
explanation that the clown’s
specialty was daredevil juggling.
“These Bowie knives are simply
the tools of my trade,” he said.
“Now, can I just have my ticket
and be on my way?”
“Not until you prove your
story,” quipped the cop. “I want
to see you juggle a dozen of
these knives at the same time,
right now.” Conceding with
a sigh, the clown soon had a
dozen blades flashing in the sun
as they sailed in precision above
his head.
Just about that time, on the
other side of the road, heading
in the opposite direction, Clem
and Slim were returning from
Phoenix to Tucson. Noticing the
strange spectacle of a trooper
and cruiser accompanied by a
clown juggling a dozen Bowie
knives, Clem turned to Slim
and asked, “Did you see what I
just saw?”
“Yeah,” drawled Slim, “that
DUI test is gettin’ tougher and
tougher all the time!”
Roger Rabalais, Charleston, WV
He and his best girl strolled into
the fancy French restaurant. He
tried to put on his I-do-this-every-evening
look.
Waiter: “Will Monsieur have a
la carte or table d’hote?”
Young man: “Both. And put
plenty of gravy on them.”
The Weekly Tribune (Tucson),
april 24, 1909
{early day arizona}
TO SUBMIT HUMOR: Send your jokes and
humorous Arizona anecdotes to Humor, Arizona
Highways, 2039 W. Lewis Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85009
or e-mail us at editor@arizonahighways.com.
Please include your name, address and telephone
number with each submission.
Maricopa County, where Phoenix
is located, has 168 golf courses, more than any other county in the
country. Its motto is “Fore!” — Linda Perret
u n u s u a l
p e r s p e c t i v e
{reader’s corner}
put hot sauce on everything. I’m
the only person I know whose
cereal goes “snap, crackle and holy moly.”
Send us your hot sauce jokes and we’ll
pay you $50 for each one we use.
“I’d say we should go THAT way.”
b y J I M W I L L O U G H B Y
40 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m
{highway to humor} Jokes, Witticisms and Whatchamacallits
I
have aspired to visit the Alamo Lake area
for many years. Mostly, the great eagle
rescue story lured me, but I was also
pulled by my unreasonable affection for the
sharp and spiny land of loose lava that lies
between the end of the pavement and the
shores of this out-of-joint desert lake.
Alamo Dam created the lake in 1968 at the
junction of the Big Sandy and Santa Maria
rivers to control violent floods that can raise
the lake level by 11 feet in a single day. Before
the lake’s creation, the harsh, angular desert
attracted prospectors, hermits and colorful
characters. Since the lake arrived and the area
came under the care of Alamo Lake State
Park, it draws campers, wanderers and
fishermen — not to mention nesting desert
bald eagles. So I set out to savor the
juxtaposition of lake, rivers and remote desert,
way out past the pavement in the blush of
spring — and maybe glimpse an eagle.
I launched westward onto Tres Alamos Road,
a portal to the raw desert, which begins off U.S.
Route 93, between mile markers 177 and 178.
Labeled as Alamo Road on some maps, the
unmarked road begins as a washboard dirt
track until about mile 19, where it smoothes
out into a well-graded surface. It jaunts
westward from the highway into the open
desert, hemmed first by Joshua trees, then
mesquites, paloverdes and ocotillos.
Slowing to a stop, I noticed at the top of one
yellow-flowered paloverde a smallish,
white-headed butterfly with a bright-orange
abdomen and shimmering
black wings spotted with white and
iridescent blue—a misnamed great
purple hairstreak butterfly.
He sat high on the blossoming tree,
rubbing his hind legs on a projection
of his rear wings—a “false head”
designed to fool hungry birds into
biting his other end instead of his head.
As I watched, another black butterfly
fluttered past, provoking an immediate
challenge. The resident male flung
himself at the interloper, chased it
around the tree, then straight up into
the air for a hundred feet. Then they
dove at the ground like a pair of rice-paper
biplanes. At the last minute,
they pulled up and one fluttered away.
The victor swaggered back to his perch,
having demonstrated the top-gun
flying skills that convinced the intruder
he would lose the race for any passing
female.
Satisfied that butterflies are just as
foolish as human beings, I climbed
back into the car to continue my
journey. About 6 miles from U.S. 93, I
encountered the first Y intersection,
which is unsigned, and stayed to the
left. After another 23 miles, I came to a
cluster of buildings and an intersection
signed as the turnoff to Alamo Lake State Park.
Wanting to see the north end of the lake first, I
continued straight ahead.
Almost 3 miles later, I explored several of the
bumpy, dusty side roads that lead a mile or two
into primitive camping and hiking areas around
the lake’s north shore. During the recent
drought conditions, this end of the lake has
been mostly dry.
Alamo Lake remains an out-of-place gleam
and glimmer in the desert. It captures the Big
Sandy and Santa Maria rivers and merges them
into the Bill Williams River flowing from the
lake, which nourishes one of the state’s best,
42 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m
Bald Eagles Find a Cozy, Secluded Home at Far-flung Alamo Lake
{back road adventure} by Peter Aleshire | photographs by George Stocking
I
[above] Blossoming saguaro
cacti display Arizona’s state
flower near Alamo Lake
State Park southeast of
Lake Havasu City in western
Arizona.
[opposite page] Mirrored in
the still lake at dawn, an
angler takes advantage of
what the Arizona Game and
Fish Department calls the
“very best largemouth bass
fishing in this area.”
{ b a c k r o a d a d v e n t u r e}
Aguila
Wenden
WICKENBURG
To Phoenix
89
71
93
60
60
93
ALAMO LAKE
STATE PARK S anta Maria River
Tres Alamos Road
(Ala mo Ro ad)
Alamo Dam Road
Big Sandy River
Alamo
Lake
Alamo
Dam
START HERE
N
returned to the turnoff for the state park, where
I turned right and drove to Alamo Dam Road,
then turned right again. From the first turnoff,
it’s 6.5 miles to a ranger station and fee-collection
point. A half-mile farther stands a
small grocery store, near the boat launch and
the lake’s southern shoreline, suitable for
wading, picnicking and birdwatching.
After nearly a full day of exploring side trails,
having lunch while watching an itinerant flock
of pelicans, and loitering here and there around
the lake, I took the southerly route home down
the paved Alamo Dam Road. The two-lane
highway runs through farming country about
38 miles to U.S. Route 60 and the little town of
Wenden, where I gassed up for a leisurely
two-hour return to Phoenix.
last stretches of cottonwood-willow habitat
as it meanders some 33 miles down to the
southern end of Lake Havasu on the Colorado
River. Sweltering in the summer, the remote,
shallow Alamo Lake has some of Arizona’s best
spring bass fishing, thanks to a fluctuating
shoreline and heavy, seasonal inflows from
a 6,500-square-mile watershed.
The springtime abundance of fish also
attracts at least one pair of bald eagles that
usually nest in the cottonwood snags at the
lake’s north end, feeding their voracious
chicks on the lake’s finny buffet. Bald eagles
have made a dramatic recovery nationwide.
In Arizona, which has nearly the entire
population of desert nesting eagles, there were
45 nesting pairs in 2002. State nest watchers
protect the nesting eagles in areas where they
might be disturbed by humans, like in the
tangle of drowned trees at the lake’s north end.
I’d wanted to visit Alamo ever since I’d
heard about the time, nearly two decades ago,
that nest watchers in a rowboat saved two
eagle chicks from rising floodwaters about to
sweep their nest from a cottonwood snag. The
chicks were placed with another nesting pair
of eagles and seemed to make the transition
successfully.
So I spent time around the upper end of the
lake, exploring the welter of dirt roads and
keeping an eye on the sky. Alas, while I was
momentarily fooled by a couple of circling
turkey vultures, the eagles remained hidden.
I backtracked to Tres Alamos Road and
44 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m
[above] Teddy bear cholla
spines look deceptively
touchable in the last
light of day near the
Rawhide Mountains west of
Alamo Lake.
[opposite page] The
combination of fish-stocked
water and abundant nesting
sites attracts bald eagles
to the lake.
Warning: Back road travel can be hazardous if you
are not prepared for the unexpected. Whether traveling
in the desert or in the high country, be aware of weather
and road conditions, and make sure you and your
vehicle are in top shape. Carry plenty of water. Don’t
travel alone, and let someone at home know where
you’re going and when you plan to return. Odometer
readings in the story may vary by vehicle.
Additional Information: Alamo Lake State Park, (928) 669-2088,
www.pr.state.az.us/parkhtml/alamo.html.
a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m A R I Z O N A H I G H W A Y S 45
KEVIN KIBSEY
impressive rock
formations adorn the
sections that opened
to public tours in
November, the most
accessible of 2.4 miles
of mapped passages
that twist and turn to
at least 200 feet beneath
the surface. Scientists
have found an intriguing
scattering of fossils
in the new section,
including the century-old
bones of a coyote
lost in the midst of
the Big Room. The body
of an ancient bat has
been fused with the
floor, as were the bones
of the 86,000-year-old
(now extinct) giant
ground sloth.
The wide variety of
fragile formations, called
speleothems, remain the cave’s chief draw,
both in the new Big Room section and in the
previously opened Rotunda Room (230 feet by
120 feet) and the Throne Room (170 feet by
145 feet), where tours are limited to 500
visitors per day and the waiting list for phone-in
reservations stretches for months—
especially on weekends.
The formations, known as stalactites, soda
straws, stalagmites, columns, semitransparent
draperies of stone, parachutes, turnips,
flowstones, popcorn, helecites, birdsnest quartz
and boxwork, demonstrate the astonishing
flexibility of stone. One 21-foot-2-inch-long
soda straw made of dripped calcite rates as one
of the longest such features in the world.
The neck-craning, breath-catching tour of
the Big Room and the Strawberry Room spurs
one long exclamation. Exquisitely thin stone
hangs like curtains from the ceiling, as deftly
positioned lights illuminate its undulating
striations. Ceilings bristle with thickets
of stalactites that taper downward to wire-thin
points. Massive stalagmite spires of colorful
rock rise from the floor, reaching toward the
spikes hanging from the ceiling. The whole
crescendo of calcite is so fused, melted, strange
and colorful that even Disney would not dare
such absurd overstatement.
The extravagantly decorated cave offers a
vivid lesson in geology and geochemistry. The
cave runs along a splintering of faults in beds
of 320-million-year-old escabrosa limestone,
composed of the compressed skeletons of
ancient sea creatures. Buried and fused, the
limestone layers were pressed again toward the
surface between 15 and 5 million years ago.
Groundwater seeping through the fault
zones created Kartchner and other limestone
caves scattered throughout southeast Arizona.
After creating the cavern, water formed
stalactites and stalagmites drip by drip. Release
of carbon dioxide from the mineral-rich water
dripping into the cave prompted the minerals
to crystallize. This created the formations that
have grown like living things throughout the
caves in the past 200,000 years. The rate of
growth peaked perhaps 70,000 years ago and
dwindled to an excruciating drip when the
end of the Ice Age, 10,000 years ago, dried out
the Southwest.
However, Kartchner remains a “living cave,”
building its formations at a rate almost ­­imper­ceptible
in a single, pitifully brief human
lifetime. The bats come each season, the mites
dig blindly in the guano, the bones of giants lie
frozen into the floor and the Earth takes a six-month
breath—lost in deep dreams. All the
while, the curious humans go down into the
cave to stand and stare and wonder in the heart
of the Earth—among the tumescent tissues of
calcite and crystal.
he earth breathes — its intake and
exhalation measured in seasons. In the
caverned heart of the Earth, people stand
and stare, sensing the vitality of living stone.
Now visitors have a whole new set of
wonders to marvel at when they visit
Kartchner Caverns State Park, one of the
world’s 10 most colorful and varied limestone
caverns, where air seeps into the cave half
the year and breathes out the other half as
changes in temperature and humidity alter
the difference in air pressure between inside
and outside.
After years of painstaking, over-budget,
high-tech surgery to build a trail, install
massive airlock doors and string delicate dim
lights, the park opened the second half of the
cavern—a fantasy “castle” decorated with rock
formations that appear to be of dripping stone.
The Big Room—400 feet long and 240 feet
wide—dwarfs the portions of the cave that have
been open to the public since 1999. Those
sections have drawn an estimated 500,000
visitors, and they bring in roughly $2 million a
year, which supports Arizona State Parks. A
1,220-foot wheelchair-accessible trail winds
carefully through the soaring spaces of the Big
Room, past the lurid formations of the
Strawberry Room and into the intimate,
stunning Cul de Sac. The small group tours of
the new cave sections should bring in another
$1 million per year—even though tours will
halt all summer to avoid disturbing the colonies
of nursing bats, which have migrated to this cave
to raise their young for as long as 50,000 years.
Some of the cave’s most bizarre and
46 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m
Newly Opened Big Room at Kartchner Caverns Reveals ‘Living’ Wonders
{destination} text and photographs by Peter Aleshire
a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m A R I Z O N A H I G H W A Y S 47
[below] Filled with awe-inspiring
formations, the
aptly named Big Room is
longer at its apex than a
football field, and the
ceiling at its highest point
is taller than a four-story
building.
[left] Only recently opened to the
public, the Big Room, the
Strawberry Room and the Cul-de-
Sac dramatically expand the
Kartchner Caverns experience.
[above] A “living cave,” Kartchner
Caverns grows and evolves as
deposits from gently seeping
groundwater add to its varied
formations. arizona state parks
Location: Approximately
50 miles southeast of
Tucson.
Getting There: Follow
Interstate 10 to the Sierra
Vista and Fort Huachuca
Exit 302, just west of
Benson. Turn south onto State Route
90 and drive about 9 miles to the park.
Hours: Open daily, 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.,
except Christmas Day.
Fees: Two tours are now offered. The
Big Room tour is $22.95, 14 and older;
$12.95 for children 7-13. Children
under 7 are not permitted on Big Room
tours. The Big Room will be open for
tours October 15 through April 15.
The Rotunda/Throne Room tour is
$18.95 for adults, $9.95 for children
7-13, and there is no charge for children
under 7. For visitors without a tour
reservation, a park entrance fee of $5
per carload of four people is charged for
picnicking or hiking in the park.
Travel Advisory: Reservations are
often filled months in advance, but a
limited number of walk-up tickets are
available each day when the park opens.
Cavern tour trails are wheelchair-accessible,
but strollers for children are
prohibited.
Additional Information: Kartchner
Caverns State Park, (520) 586–4100; for
reservations (520) 586–CAVE, www.
pr.state.az.us/parkhtml/kartchner.html.
T
Sedona
17
40 40
89A
89A
FLAGSTAFF
Oak Creek Canyon
To Phoenix
TRAILHEAD
Canyon
Wilson
Wilson Notch
Shiprock Midgley
Bridge
COCONINO
NATIONAL
FOREST
N
alling hikers toward red-rock
spires and variegated cliffs, Wilson
Canyon Trail meanders around fragrant
Arizona cypress trees. The graceful trees add a
sparkling scent of mint to this easy 1.5-mile
trail. The trailhead, only about 2 miles from
Sedona, lies in Oak Creek Canyon.
A favorite time to hike Wilson Canyon is
late winter. When high-elevation snows melt,
the cold, clear water musically trickles down
the canyon. Terraced waterfalls in the intimate
sylvan world seem to appear around every bend.
The trail parallels the canyon, crossing the
unnamed stream several times. Piñon pine trees,
one-seed junipers, hollyleaf buckthorns,
yuccas and sugar sumacs grace the way.
The walking proves easy, allowing plenty
of opportunities to view the rock formations
that shelter the tree-lined bowl.
Lava-capped Wilson Mountain
towers to the north. At 7,122 feet, it
ranks as the highest point in all of
Red Rock Country. To the west rise
Shiprock and Wilson Notch,
formations carved from the pale
Coconino sandstone. Below stand
several spires in the red-orange
Schnebly Hill formation.
In this setting, it seems the
only real danger might be feeling
overwhelmed by the majestic
geology. But on a day in June 1885,
bear hunter Richard Wilson made a fateful
decision that cost him his life and put his name
on the canyon.
The Arkansas native, who lived in Oak Creek
Canyon, was walking with his dog toward town.
A friend, away in Prescott, had Wilson’s large-caliber
bear-hunting rifle to be repaired. Wilson
was scheduled to check on the man’s family
at their log cabin on the northern outskirts of
town. There was no bridge crossing the gap of
Wilson Canyon. Instead, the route detoured
into the forested side canyon where travelers
could cross.
Suddenly, a huge grizzly bear charged. Wilson
fired at it with the small-caliber rifle he was
carrying. The bear—only wounded—turned
and ran away. Its blood and tracks led into the
woods. The tough old hunter couldn’t resist. He
followed.
Nine days later, two horsemen found Wilson’s
body, his faithful dog waiting nearby. Wilson
had been mauled. Half of his face was missing.
Teeth marks cut deep into his boot heel. The
men speculated that his last desperate act must
have been climbing a nearby tree, its branch
twisted and broken.
Modern-day hikers need not fear confronting
a grizzly bear in Wilson Canyon—they no
longer exist in the Arizona wild. Hikers might
instead see the tracks of deer, javelinas or
coyotes, and hear the echoing calls of ravens
and scrub jays.
Beyond 1.5 miles, the trail fades into the
streambed. Turn around anywhere that feels
satisfying. Perhaps, before heading back, take a
moment to pause. Breathe in the primal energy
of this sylvan canyon world, and save the
memory for later.
Location: About 25
miles south of Flagstaff
or 2 miles north of
Sedona.
Getting There: From
Flagstaff, travel south on
State Route 89A. From
Sedona, travel north on 89A, and cross
Midgley Bridge, the silver structure
spanning Wilson Canyon; then turn
left into the parking area. Walk to the
picnic shelters and begin the hike at
the Wilson Canyon #49 sign.
Travel Advisory: Parking at
trailheads or pullouts within Red Rock
Country in the Coconino National
Forest requires a Red Rock Pass.
Passes may be purchased at Gateway
Visitor Centers when entering Sedona,
at automated stations at several
trailheads, from local tourist stores or
on the Internet.
Additional Information: Coconino
National Forest, Red Rock Ranger
District (928) 282-4119;
www.redrockcountry.com.
48 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 a r i z o n a h i g h w a y s . c o m
{hike of the month} text and photographs by Larry Lindahl
[above] Seen from Wilson
Canyon just north of
Sedona, Giants Thumb on
Mitten Ridge glows warmly
against the white cliffs of
Munds Mountain.
[opposite page] Snowmelt
creates a seasonal stream
that cascades over stone
steps below Midgley Bridge
before feeding into Oak
Creek.
C
Wilson Canyon Offers a Short Trek in a Fragrant Forest Near Sedona
Before you go on this hike, visit our Web site at
arizonahighways.com for other things to do and places
to see in the area.
KEVIN KIBSEY