A Visit With Kingman

KING

BUT INDIVIDUAL

IMAN

LIKE THE DESERT TOWN ICKSTART, ALS GIVE IT STRONG SPIRIT

ENTER PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID ZICKL

THE SCENT OF WATER RISES FROM A PURLING STREAM BENEATH THE GRASSY MOUSTACHE ON A LIP OF STONE. BARELY 2 YARDS WIDE, LESS THAN HALF THAT DEEP, THE COLD SPRING RUNS CLEAR AS TRUTH.

A mesquite blossom pirouettes upon an eddy and floats toward reeds 20 yards away where the stream flows back underground. The surrounding hills stand dark and dry, and filaree roots reach no moisture.

Drawn by the scent, birds and mammals embroider the damp bank with their tracks. Some are fresh, like those made by my boots, and some are fading. Others, the ones accumulated since the Earth winced and opened this tear duct in the hard countenance of the Cerbat Mountains, only the mud remembers.

This spring and others in Kingman have been gurgling for at least 10,000 years, when humans first occupied the area. The story of Kingman -the why, the how and the who-is really the story of these springs, of this water.

In northwestern Arizona, elevation 3,333 feet, Kingman lies in a gap between the Cerbat and Hualapai mountains. Interstate 40, U.S. Route 93 and U.S. Route 66 intersect in that gap. For many travelers, Kingman is an enigma. They ask, "Hot ain't it?" and "How far to Vegas/California?" And they wonder, "Why would anyone live here?" With 36,000 people living in and around the city, there must be a reason.

An ancient trade route through the Kingman area linked the Pueblo tribes to the east with the Pacific Coast tribes. In 1776, Father Francisco Tomas Garces, a Franciscan missionary, drank from the springs on his way to the Hopi mesas north of present-day Flagstaff. Yet the springs remained a remote respite on a faint footpath until 1857 when Lt. Edward Beale passed through the area with a survey crew and 25 camels to mark a road following the 35th parallel that would provide emigrants with an alternative winter route.

Gold was discovered in the area in 1862. The mountains soon swarmed with miners, and

BREAKFAST

mining towns dotted the slopes. The Hualapai Indians, many of whom lived near the springs, rebelled against the encroachment. The murder of a Hualapai chief at the springs in 1866 precipitated a war that lasted until 1871, when the U.S. Army establishes an outpost, Camp Beale Springs. Loren Wilson, a former high school teacher and now a volunteer at the museum, has been instrumental in the restoration of Camp Beale Springs.

"When I retired from teaching 15 years ago, people asked me where I would go to retire," he said, grinning. “With these mountains and the river and the good people, where else would I want to go?” The Atlantic and Pacific Railroad followed the Beale wagon road. The project surveyor, Lewis Kingman, noted the springs on his map as “Kingman siding.” In 1883, trains began stopping there for water.

Kingman has always been a tough town, as rough as Tombstone or Bisbee, but without the publicity. Take equal parts miners, ranchers and railroad men, add whiskey and heat to a boil, and you have a recipe for a rough Saturday night. “To me, Kingman is the Wild West, and always has been,” said Bob Boze Bell, editor of True West magazine. Bell was reared in Kingman. “Most of the folks are bighearted and wonderful. Of course there are some big, fat jerks, but, fortunately, most of them are either my relatives or lifelong friends.” With its abundant water supply and the railroad, Kingman became a shipping and communications hub for Mohave County. The community weathered gold and silver market fluctuations better than the mining towns in the surrounding hills; still, relatively little of the wealth extracted from the mines, more than $93 million between 1863 and 1960, stayed in the community. As a result, Kingman's economy grew very little until the 1930s, when the construction of Boulder Dam and the road to it (now U.S. 93) opened new opportunities for employ-ment and business growth.

During World War II, an airfield was built north of town for the Army Air Force Flex-ible Gunnery School. Approximately 35,000 airmen were trained as gunners for the B-17 Flying Fortress.

After the war, many of the servicemen returned to Kingman for the climate and for the opportunities provided. The completion of Interstate 40 through the area in the late 1970s diverted traffic from U.S. Route 66 to the outskirts of town, so businesses moved out to the turnpikes and the center of town shifted northward. As a consequence, Kingman has evolved into a regional trade, service and distribution center with tourism and manufacturing its leading industries.

Bill Jordan was born in Kingman in 1954. After living several years elsewhere in the state, he and his wife, Corene, returned to Kingman 12 years ago to raise their three children. Bill supports the current initiative toward reviving old downtown. “The older neighborhoods and business districts are monuments of the strong sense of community that prevailed throughout my youth,” he said.

The Fountain Cafe thrives as part of that revival. On the last Friday of every month, the gourmet coffee shop hosts the Homemade Jam Band. Bob and Michelle Hall, along with fiddler Tim Parker, are mainstays of the bluegrass group, and all three have lived in Kingman for more than 20 years. Bob has been an endangered-species biologist and now works as a public affairs officer with the Bureau of Land Management. He said the area offers a great place to raise kids “with a terrific variety of outdoor