Eluding All Seekers, the White Ghost Lives On

On the Trail of the White Ghost of Kendrick Peak A Legendary Tale for Fools, or the Nemesis of Dreaming Hunters?

TEXT BY LEO W. BANKS PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBERT G. MCDONALD

The 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 inhabits 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 colorful 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 railroad 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 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 brotherin-law.

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 brotherin-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 carrying 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. “Though on foot,” Sherburne wrote, “he ran with such rapidity 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 accompanying the expedition, described them as “powerfully made, with large heads, projecting cheekbones and foreheads, very thick noses, swelled lips, and little slits of eyes with which [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.

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 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 computer 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 supposed home of the White Ghost and the perfect place to test my theory. It's a fair distance 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 protection 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, dating 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.

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.

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 cornered and destroyed the outlaw in MC Canyon, in the Prescott National Forest east of Drake. But some folks believe the vengefulanimal'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, Merrill took its striking white pelt to the Grand Canyon, and according to a Scenic Southwest report in November 1954, sold it for $1,000 to George Horace Lorimer, editor of the Saturday Evening Post.

We wondered at that stillness, and then it came— the most unearthly noise I ever heard.

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 companion 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 Valley 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 climate 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 something else.

I continue driving on FR 141, and as the shadows of night begin to fall I pick up Forest 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 59year-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 seeing ing a lone deer, a huge white buck with flowing 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 nonhunters, 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