ALONG THE WAY

Arizona Highways Special Scenic Collection Book NAVAJOLAND A Native Son Shares His Legacy

Text and photographs by LEROY DEJOLIE foreword by TONY HILLERMAN NavajoLand is richly illustrated with full-color landscape photography and stories about the ancient ways and beliefs of the Navajo people. You will see Dinétah (Din NAY Tah), the land between the four sacred mountains that mark the boundaries of NavajoLand, through the eyes, camera lens, and culture of a Navajo artist steeped in the traditional ways of his people.

Full-color photography. 80 pages. Softcover. #ANLS5. Was $12.95 - NOW only $10.36

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Ironwood Monument Loop Drive Has Expansive Desert Views

IF YOU SEEK A LONESOME DAY that likely will pass without human interaction, we have the trip for you. But a warning: This Sonoran Desert tour, including the Ironwood Forest National Monument, is a getaway without services, interpretive signs or pampering of any kind. This landscape doesn't open its arms and invite you in. This is nature at its crankiest, purest or most beautiful, depending on your point of view.

But the drive offers one undeniable benefit -some of the grandest views of the Sonoran Desert anywhere, including better views even than both Saguaro national parks. It also presents great opportunities for photography and sunset-watching, a few makeshift roads doubling as hiking trails and a bit of Old West history.

Beginning in Tucson, my son Patrick and I drive 16 miles northwest on Interstate 10 to Exit 242, then turn left onto Avra Valley Road. We drive over the Santa Cruz River, past cotton fields, open range and the Marana Regional Airport-a full 22.2 miles. With the Silver Bell Mine just ahead, we turn left onto Silverbell Road, which essentially loops around the mine. From our elevated vantage point in the Silver Bell Mountains, we look down on a vast expanse of land south and west of Tucson, including the Altar and Aguirre valleys and a slice of the reservation owned by the Tohono O'odham Nation.

As the road curls northwest, the view expands to include the desert leading up to Ajo and Gila Bend. The land appears to the eye as a cobalt ocean below a mantle of mist, broken in the middle distance by smaller mountains and buttes, their caps thrusting out above the foglike shroud. So many giant saguaros rule the foreground that finding a spot to enjoy the full panorama might be harder than you think.

But Patrick's mind settles on less ethereal matters. He wants to hear about the gunfights that took place long ago in the mining town of Silver Bell.

The first miners came to this country in the 1860s, and their pocketbooks filled and emptied over the decades, according to copper prices and the availability of water.

In 1903, the Imperial Copper Co. began large-scale operations in the Silver Bell District, including starting a new town with shacks, tents and lean-tos, according to a brochure published by Asarco Inc., present owners of Silver Bell Mining. In the boom years immediately following, the town of Silver Bell-most of which is now on mine company land-grew to more than 1,000 people, including Dr. Mead Clyne, who supervised the town doctors.

He kept a glass jar half-filled with bullets that had been pulled from unlucky victims, according to the brochure.

In January 1908, the Tucson Citizen noted that the prosperous mining town, "where hell breaks forth every payday," had grown to become the toughest in Pima County. This particular boom ended in 1911, and later bouts of copper fever came and went like the desert wind.

As we hike up a randomly selected roadside hill, these stories fill Patrick's mind, convincing him we'll find remnants of these wild times.

We come upon a campsite littered with spent cartridge casings, and try as I might, I can't convince him that they were left by 21st-century hunters, rather than early 20thcentury bad guys. With his imagination in full holler, he starts in on rattlesnakes, a more likely threat. After all, rattlers come out in late summer to gorge themselves in preparation for winter hibernation.

"I know what I should've brought," he says as we hike. "My book, Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook."

"Like what?" I ask.

"Well, if you have to wrestle an alligator, it tells