TAKING THE OFF-RAMP

First (Legal) Hanging

The first legal hanging in Yuma took place on May 2, 1873, opposite the only school in town. The teacher, Miss M.E. Post, not wishing her pupils to witness it, dismissed school for the whole week. The entire town of Yuma, undoubtedly including the school children, turned out to witness the hanging. The "victim" was named Fernandez and had been sentenced in the district court.

Temple of Music and Art Lives on in Elegance

Theatergoers crossing the bougainvillea-draped patio of Tucson's Temple of Music and Art enter a makebelieve Spanish hacienda. The graceful building was the dream of a group of determined ladies. Some thought the lawless town of Tucson never would settle down. But by the turn of the 20th century, the Saturday Morning Musical Club had elevated local entertainment above cowboy banjos and dancing girls. In the 1920s, Madeline Dreyfus Heineman led a campaign to build an auditorium modeled on the Pasadena Playhouse for the club's cultural performances.

At the grand opening in October 1927, hostesses dressed in romantic Spanish finery to complement the architecture. The famed violinist Jascha Heifetz opened the first season, and many other noted performers followed. In the second year, the organization, in financial difficulty, rented the main auditorium to a gentleman who would show "talkie moving pictures." Mrs. Heineman gamely referred to the new art as an extension of the original purpose of the Temple.

As the decades passed, the beloved theater hosted fewer artists and began to decline, and the decaying building served a variety of functions under a succession of owners. By the early 1980s, some residents suggested leveling it for a parking lot. Then in a dramatic turn, a new group of art lovers rallied to the rescue and convinced the city to restore the building.

Following the historical renovation and a rededication in October 1990, the Arizona Theater Company now performs in the main auditorium of the renewed Temple of Music and Art, which anchors Tucson's downtown arts district. Beside the curving stairs that lead to an art gallery on the second floor, a cafe serves today's public.

Information: Temple of Music and Art and the Arizona Theater Company, 330 S. Scott Ave., Tucson, (520) 622-2823.

Ross KNOX, GRAND CANYON MULE WRANGLER

Every working day of his life, cowboy Ross Knox leads pack mules with supplies down to Phantom Ranch, the lodge at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, then turns around and rides back up to the Rim again. This has been his job for almost 15 years. Knox says he's traveled 30,000 miles.

"The manager at Phantom Ranch used to figure the miles," explains the 45-year-old. "I told him he never should've started that, on account of it makes me tired." Knox gets up at 2 or 3 A.M., packs a minimum of 10 mules and leaves with another cowboy by 4:30. It takes two to three hours to get to the bottom. After breakfast at the ranch, he begins the three-and-a-half-hour trip to the top. Each mule carries up to 200 pounds.

"These mules are packing supplies because they have problems (being around people)," says Knox through his handlebar mustache. "They're like me. But we do all right."

He grew up in central Oregon and quit school at 16 to work on a ranch in Nevada, and ran mules at Yellowstone National Park. When he isn't wrestling mules on narrow Canyon trails, Knox writes cowboy poetry.

RETRACING A NAVAJO SURVIVAL STORY Long-abandoned hogans and secret canyons tell of a desperate escape

On a foot journey across far northern Arizona, two of us find ourselves deep in the Navajo Indian Reservation. Carrying on our backs weeks' worth of supplies, we walk among staggering red desert cliffs. There are faint trails here and there. Not hiking trails, necessarily, but the paths of deer through sand and boulders, the shortcuts of sheepherders and long-abandoned horse routes between mesas. We are walking into a ceremony, although we do not yet realize this. By happenstanceor maybe by the plan of this desert landscapewe follow an old, nearly forgotten Navajo road. As people had done more than a hundred years before us, we cross to safety, walking the road to sanctuary. At dusk, we climb into a mesa's cliffside too