TAKING IN THE VIEW

COCONINO NATIONAL FOREST

Headquarters: Flagstaff Size: 1.8 million acres south of the Grand Canyon. Claim to Fame: Part of the world's largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest; includes Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon.

Fun Fact: Early on, the Coconino had only one road, a 14-foot-wide cinder track running from Flagstaff to Williams.

Long Live the Forests

After 100 years, rangers still balance conservation and exploitation of Arizona's 11.2 million acres Gifford Pinchot, the Forest Service's first chief, faced a big problem in the summer of 1907. He'd traveled to Arizona to meet with cattlemen who wanted to know why in tarnation was it the federal government's business to tell them where and how to graze cattle? These men were mad clear through, and not inclined to accommodate a wealthy tenderfoot from Yale University. In the previous 30 years, America had seen dramatic westward growth and expansion, much of it built with wood from seemingly inexhaustible forests. This unrestricted exploitation gave rise to the conservation movement, led by Pinchot and other progressives. The movement filled a void left by states reluctant to grapple with such complex issues as watershed destruction and the need for irrigation systems. The conservationists argued that the forests should become public property, protected from unregulated, profit-driven private interests. The U.S. Congress listened, and in 1891 gave the president the power to create forest reserves, which grew to nearly 63 million acres by the time the modern-day Forest Service was created under the Department of Agriculture in 1905. Pinchot had lobbied hard to create the agency, and he found a sympathetic ear in his friend, President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt. Many Arizonans supported the creation of new national forests. But other Arizonans who'd fought Indians and range wars to gouge out a living in a wild place sputtered and fumed when told they suddenly needed a permit to graze cattle on land they already controlled. As Nogales cattleman Joe Wise grumbled, "Looks like every time one of the government scouts finds a tree in the West he wires Pinchot, and Pinchot gallops into Teddy's office and says, 'Oh, Teddy, we

PRESCOTT NATIONAL FOREST

Headquarters: Prescott Size: 1.25 million acres in central Arizona. Claim to Fame: Eight wilderness areas include the Granite Mountain Wilderness, which starts just outside Prescott. Fun Fact: Sam Miller named Lynx Creek after the lynx that attacked him on the same day in 1863 he made the gold strike that led to the founding of Prescott.

Very few artists with all the colors at their command can really do justice to this land. The color, the silence, the distance of it are all things which nature alone commands and man can only imitate.

I found a tree in the what-the-hell mountains. Let's create a new forest.

When Pinchot walked into Tucson's Santa Rita Hotel that summer, more than a few of the 200 cattlemen present reckoned he might not walk out. Instead, Pinchot's considerable charm and unexpected grit won the day, according to a 1956 account in The Arizona Republic.

Those tensions between use and preservation ran through ensuing decades and continue today. Meanwhile, Pinchot had to get the fledgling bureaucracy on its feet.

"There were no guidelines," wrote early ranger-turned-author Paul Roberts, "for no government ever had attempted such an undertaking."

Arizona presented a particular problem, with forest reserves totaling 7 million acres in 1905, still seven years from statehood. (Today, the national forests in Arizona total 11.2 million acres.) The new land managers, dubbed "Teddy's Pets" by skeptics, broke down into two categories: scientifically trained foresters seeking to build careers and Westerners who just needed a job.

"The resulting personnel was picturesque, to put it mildly," noted Tucson writer Bernice Cosulich. "It was a Mulligan stew of cow punchers, college dudes, barkeeps, prospectors and timber men."

The college boys could read a book in a blink, but knew nothing about the West, cattle or the horses they had to ride to cross the nearly roadless reserves.

Shortly after arriving in Flagstaff in 1913, Ranger Edward Ancona climbed aboard a rented horse to check some sheep east of town. He trotted out of the livery stable with no idea how to steer the beast.

"The horse went up on the sidewalk and mounted part-way up the stairs of the Opera House before I got him turned around and back into the street," remembered Ancona. "I learned, though, after that because all of my work was on horses.

Many other early rangers were masters of carpentry, woodmanship and even diplomacy. In fact, the Forest Service required written tests, which reminded some Arizona applicants of something truly dreadful-school.

Ranger Henry Benham recalled a fellow who took the exam with him in 1906.

"He was just eating tobacco by the plug," said Benham. "He had a big spittoon by him and he was busy writing and spitting, and writing and spitting. Everything was quiet in there, not a word said, when he comes to this one about fighting forest fires. Well, he couldn't hold it any longer.

"He broke out, How'd you fight a top fire? There's only one way. I'd run like hell and pray for rain!"

Rangers had to house themselves, provide their own horses and live on a starting pay of $60 a month. The agency also insisted that its men shed their preferred Levis, blue denim jackets and Stetsons in favor of uniforms with a tight-fitting collar mimicking those of German foresters. Rangers groused endlessly and got a measure of revenge in 1908 at Douglas' Gadsden Hotel. As strong uniform advocate Ranger Arthur Ringland strolled across the lobby, a guest thinking he was a bellboy approached with an envelope. "Boy," he commanded, "mail this letter."

Working as a forest ranger, issuing grazing permits, overseeing tree-cutting and, where necessary, fighting fires proved more of a lifestyle than a job. Ancona remembered a hot summer at Crown King, in the Prescott National Forest, when getting ice cream became a community project.

With no way to keep food coldexcept Maple trees provide a dazzling fall backdrop in the Coronado National Forest's Miller Canyon, part of the 20,190-acre Miller Peak Wilderness. A birder's paradise, more than 170 species of birds-including 14 species of hummingbirds-populate the wilderness. GURINDER P. SINGH To order a print of this photograph, see page 1.

Headquarters: Tucson Size: 1.78 million acres in southeastern Arizona; 69,000 in southwestern New Mexico. Claim to Fame: Boasts 12 "up-thrust sky-island" mountain ranges towering to 10,720 feet over the surrounding Sonoran Desert. Fun Fact: Early rangers found Baboquivari, Huachuca and Tumacacori mountains so hard to pronounce they called them the cough-sneeze group because that's what they sound like.

CORONADO NATIONAL FOREST

Thanks to a restoration effort, the endangered Apache trout swims again in the Black River, which starts in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests and runs down through the White Mountain Apache Reservation. The forest includes the wettest areas in the state, including the headwaters of the Black, Little Colorado and San Francisco rivers, plus 11,500-foot Mount Baldy, sacred to the Apache Tribe. LARRY ULRICH

APACHE-SITGREAVES NATIONAL FORESTS

Headquarters: Springerville Size: 2 million acres north of Clifton and south of Springerville. Claim to Fame: A high, wet forest, the Apache-Sitgreaves has 24 lakes and 450 miles of streams. Fun Fact: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's wolf reintroduction program has brought the howl of wolves back to Apache-Sitgreaves.

Hanging it by rope in a water well-residents arranged for a special shipment of ice to mix with cream from a rancher's cows. Just as everyone in Crown King gathered for an ice cream party, a horseback messenger announced that a fire had been spotted. Ancona galloped off to do his duty.

"I sat by that burning tree all night while my friends were eating up the only ice cream in Crown King in two years," said Ancona. "But I put the fire out, by golly."

Most rangers looked back on their service as the time of their lives.

If there were an award for literary excellence by a forest ranger, George Harris Collingwood would win. In 1914 and 1915, he worked at the Honeymoon ranger station on Eagle Creek in the Apache Forest.

He spent much of his free time writing rich and sensitive letters to his sweetie, Jean Cummings, in Ohio. In one, he tells of the beautiful countryside.

"...Very few artists with all the colors at their command can really do justice to this land. The color, the silence, the distance of it are all things which nature alone commands and man can only imitate."

Collingwood-whose son was the late TV journalist Charles Collingwood-covered a range of topics with equal aplomb, from all-night ranch square dances to strange Harlan Walker, a little man "like the Gnomes of the Black Forest, who has lived out in these hills for 20 years."

But he saved his romantic prose for Jean. He described traveling to town: "On those long, lonesome trips where the trail is boggy and my horse must go slow, I amuse myself and imagine that you are there beside me on another pony. We hold real animated conversations, so that the range cattle turn to look a second time at me and the jackrabbits peek out from behind the prickly pears to see who it is I'm talking with.

"But even their eyes aren't sharp enough to see you. Except for your company it would've been a miserable trip..."

As time went on, (Text continued on page 26)

Gold Lost and Found

Near where the famed Dutchman's gold reportedly is lost, springtime visitors can find Mexican goldpoppies, shown here in Hewitt Canyon in the 160,000-acre Superstition Wilderness. The Superstitions, just east of Phoenix, are part of the Tonto National Forest, which ranges in elevation from 1,300 to 8,000 feet and draws nearly 6 million visitors a year. TOM DANIELSEN

Rafters brave the rapids of the Salt River, which runs through the San Carlos and White Mountain Apache reservations and into the Tonto National Forest. The Salt River has nourished human civilizations for more than 1,000 years, and now provides a major source of water for Phoenix. LARRY LINDAHL October light makes the aspens glow in the Kaibab National Forest, which includes the most pristine old-growth ponderosa pine forests in the state and borders Grand Canyon National Park. Elevations extend from 5,500 to 10,418 feet, harboring plants ranging from juniper to blue spruce. The Kaibab also is home to a flock of endangered but recently returned condors. GARY LADD

TONTO NATIONAL FOREST

Headquarters: Phoenix Size: More than 2.8 million acres north and east of Phoenix, up to the Mogollon Rim. Claim to Fame: One of the most-varied and most-visited forests in the United States. Fun Fact: The setting for dentist-turnedauthor Zane Grey's 1926 novel, Under the Tonto Rim.

Continued from page 23) significant improvements to the forests took shape.

During the Depression, men of the Civilian Conservation Corps built waterlines and bridges, fenced stream bottoms and constructed small dams.

One of those who worked in Arizona and New Mexico was the renowned conservationist Aldo Leopold. Between 1915 and 1923, he served in a number of Arizona jobs, including helping lay out summer home sites in Pine Flats and Oak Creek Canyon.

Initially, the Forest Service focused on protecting the forests from timber thieves and fires, which the Duke University-based Forest History Society calls the custodial era from 1905 to 1942.

In the second era, 1942 to 1969, the emphasis shifted to supplying the public with natural resources and giving post-World War II families a place to hike, fish and play. Rangers who formerly rode horses now climbed into green pickup trucks and became conservationists.

In its current third phase, the Forest Service focuses on striking a balance between producing forest products and protecting wildlife, habitat and outdoor recreation.

But even now, the Forest Service relies on the connection between the land and the communities that distinguished people like Fred Winn, former longtime supervisor at south-east Arizona's Coronado National Forest.

In addition to building recreation areas around Tucson, including in Sabino Canyon, he made it part of his public service to put markers on graves of pioneers killed by Indians in the Chiricahua Mountains.

By the time Winn retired in 1942 after 34 years, he'd become part of the blood and bone of Arizona.

So had F. Lee Kirby, supervisor of the Tonto National Forest. In 1935, he received a letter from retired railroad worker Uncle Mack McCord, asking for an eighth of an acre in the Tonto for his final resting place.

In his 20 years of service, Kirby had dealt with many of the rugged old-timers whose sweat and tears had shepherded Arizona to statehood, and he could hardly say no. Today, however, the Forest Service no longer authorizes headstones or graves. When Uncle Mack got the good news, he scribbled a note back: "After I locate there,"

he wrote, "I will not violate any of the regulations that are enumerated in the permit. Thank you. It won't be long now."

A boulder, chiseled with the inscription "Mack's Rest," today sits atop a hill, visible from State Route 87, about 3 miles south of Sunflower.

The forest Gifford Pinchot spent a career protecting still gathers around McCord, just as Pinchot a century ago hoped it always would. A ADDITIONAL READING: Hoof Prints on the Range (1957) and Them Were the Days (1965) by Paul Roberts, and Men Who Matched the Mountains (1972), by Edwin A. Tucker and George Fitzpatrick. The Forest History Society's Web address is www.foresthistory.org.

Tucson-based Leo W. Banks says he consistently finds the simple treasures of calm, quiet and beauty in the forests of Arizona.

KAIBAB NATIONAL FOREST

Headquarters: Williams. Size: 1.6 million acres. Claim to Fame: The Grand Canyon splits the Kaibab's northern and southern sections. Fun Fact: The Havasupai Indians consider Red Butte, just south of Tusayan, the navel of the Earth.