It's a Lovable Place

A CUT ABOVE

Three-year-old Joseph Martinez (left) has the look of a satisfied client in Hermanis Ulibarri's chair at the Ulibarri Barber Shop, where photos of young first-haircut customers decorate the walls.

JUST HANGIN' OUT

John Doskicz (right) hangs out at his Vertical Relief Climbing Center, a favorite of northern Arizona rock climbers.

Flagstaff Getaway Guide wild people

Folks in Flagstaff have a real fondness for their mountain place Text by Tom Carpenter Photographs by David Zickl This is a love story. The beloved is a place. The place is Flagstaff. Surrounded by natural beauty and curled up like a contented cat at the foot of the San Francisco Peaks in north-central Arizona, Flagstaff is an easy place to love.

One measure of love is commitment. Barely noticeable among the myriad opportunities in Flagstaff for visitors to enjoy this community-Lowell Observatory, the Museum of Northern Arizona, The Arboretum, the Arizona Snowbowl, to name a few-is the community itself. Approximately 61,000 people live in Flagstaff. They're business people, educators and students, river runners, rock climbers, artists, musicians; they're the panoply of commerce and society that constitutes any community.

They live on hard ground. Beneath a thin layer of topsoil here lies a thick layer of basalt and limestone. It's not easy to put down roots. People come and people go. The high cost of living, wage disparities and expensive housing make it difficult for many people to stay. But, like a gnarly little juniper tree growing from a crack in a rockface at nearby Walnut Canyon National Monument, those who want to live here find a way, with tenacity and time, to get their roots in the ground.

If there are flowers in a vase at the reference desk of the Cline Library on the campus of Northern Arizona University, they probably came from the garden of Cynthia Davis. Cynthia hails originally from Detroit, where she learned to garden watching her mother tend a tiny plot. "Flowers were my dolls," she says. "I made people out of hollyhocks."

Cynthia arrived in Flagstaff in 1976 and pursued her dream of working as a park ranger. She eventually went to work in the library. Her expertise as a gardener increases with every short growing season. "Up here it's gardening against the odds. It's not like it is in South Carolina," she explains, where, a friend of hers

sad truth continues to propel his prolific brush across canvas.

If there is a common denominator among the people of Flagstaff, it is a visceral need to be outdoors.

Early in their marriage, Tom and Cuyler Boughner came to the realization while living in Phoenix that they didn't want to live any place "where you can see the air in the day and you can't see the sky at night."

So, they moved to Flagstaff in 1983 and have enjoyed a lifestyle of outdoor recreation with their two sons, Forrest and Gavin. Tom is a police officer and Cuyler is involved with numerous community organizations. They live in Baderville, northwest of town, where they say "gardening is impossible," but they can hike or ski into the woods from their front door.

Whether caching a meal in a tall pine and then skiing crosscountry to enjoy a snowy picnic, or hiking in the Grand Canyon, or cycling to work, the Boughners have found in Flagstaff a lifestyle that satisfies their spirits and nurtures their roots in the community.

Understanding this communal love of the outdoors is essential to understanding the Flagstaff history since 1881, when settlers profited from the construction of the railroad.

Richard K. "Dick" Mangum was born in Flagstaff and graduated from Flagstaff High School in 1954. He earned a law degree from the University of Arizona in 1961 and retired as a superior court judge For Coconino County in 1993. Sherry G. Mangum, a photographer, was born in Salt Lake City and moved to Flagstaff with her family when she was a little girl. Together, Dick and Sherry have published seven books about Flagstaff including Flagstaff Historic Walk: A Stroll Through Old Downtown, Hexagon Press, 1993.

On selected Sunday mornings during the summer, the Mangums dress in exquisite Edwardian costumes and conduct free, guided tours of the downtown area. “Our first tour in 1993 included three people and a dog,” Sherry says, “but in July 2001, we had a tour with 104 people. Fifty is a comfortable group for us.” Unlike so many towns in the West that saw the wealth built by extracting natural resources sent back East, Flagstaff benefited from early leaders who invested their wealth back into the community. “Leadership means a lot,” Dick says. “We got lucky.” All There are 61,000 love stories that can be told about this place. These are just a handful that hint at the hope and happiness that can be had when roots take hold in hard ground.