Along the Way

Celebrate 80 Years of Arizona Highways magazine and Discover the Beauty and Splendor of Arizona!

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80 Years Later, We Revisit Arizona Highways' First Cover Location

“FIND THIS SPOT,” says Arizona Highways Editor Bob Early, dropping a copy of the first issue of the magazine on the table. The April 1925 black-and-white cover photograph shows the graceful, S-shaped curve of a just-completed, much-ballyhooed dirt road connecting Phoenix to Prescott by way of Wickenburg.

“No way,” I say, certain that the conversion of that squiggly dirt road into the paved State Route 89 has changed the scene of that picture beyond recognition.

“I'll pay you,” says Bob. “I'm on it,” say I.

So I embark on a quest to find that vanished place, more time traveler than travel writer. It's hard to overstate how much Arizona has changed since the launch of Arizona Highways during that Roaring '20s interlude between two world wars. The highway map of the state in that first issue includes great voids, no interstates and mostly dirt and gravel connections to the outside world. The longest stretch of pavement ran from west of Buckeye to just east of Tempe. The magazine's description of the state's loose web of roads ranged from“rough in places” to “graveled surface, excellent.” So construction on the last segment of the Prescott-Phoenix Highway from the White Spar-Congress Junction Highway to Prescott qualified as a big deal-well worth that first cover shot.

Since then, Arizona's population has risen from 335,000 to 5.3 million, and personal income per capita from less than $600 to about $26,000. The number of cars has risen from 15 per 100 people to 48.

So how can I find one curve in a vanished road built in another era? Thank heaven for photographers. The persistent Paul Gill scouted the road incessantly (while I quailed at the difficulties), then called and said he'd found a likely spot-near the Prescott National Forest sign right outside Prescott. Check it out, he says. So I head for Prescott and lodge myself in the historic Hotel St. Michael, built after an infamous 1900 fire destroyed Whiskey Row. I feel the story needs that historic touch: I am not at all influenced by the proximity of the saloons that swirl together bikers, cowgirls, college students and bemused tourists. That's also why I order a big steak at The Palace, a frontier saloon turned family restaurant, and sit sensing the historic vibes coming off the massive, imported bar that the devoted patrons saved from the 1900 fire by hauling it across the street to the plaza. There they spent the night consoling themselves and toasting the flames. And just to capture that historic, Roaring '20s ambience, I spend the evening enjoying myself in Matt's Saloon, knowing Bob would expect no less.

Arising well before 11 the next morning, I set out on the 56-mile drive on State 89 to Wickenburg.

My wife and I meander southwest out of Prescott as I study the roadside trees, looking for the photograph's distinctive mix of pine, juniper and oak trees marking an ecological transition zone on the drive down the hill. But soon after the first oaks and junipers appear, we enter a burned area where the grassy slopes between spindly trees mark how much the forests have changed since 1925. Once giant ponderosa pine trees dominated, wide-spaced and set in swales of grass. But a century of logging, grazing and fire suppression has created miles of grassless pine thickets, except in such recovering burn areas.

The road descends sharply after the burn,