Archive All Issues October 2005

BACK ROAD ADVENTURE

Share:
Facebook X
Verde Valley Excursion Grief Hill earns its name.

Featured in the October 2005 Issue of Arizona Highways

Today, ranches and summer homes dot the area around Cherry. Here, elm trees create a canopy above a bucolic lane.
Today, ranches and summer homes dot the area around Cherry. Here, elm trees create a canopy above a bucolic lane.

As it leaves the cottonwood-lined banks of Cherry Creek, the road ascends a series of switchbacks through the Black Hills on its way to the Grief Hill trailhead. Valley Horseman's Council and the Verde Ranger District restored the Grief Hill Trail for use by both riders and hikers. It begins on Cherry Road at the base of Hull Hill (named for George W. Hull, who obtained a franchise for a toll road from Grief Canyon to Camp Verde in 1864) and winds up the mountain, following the original road. Ranger Dennis Lockhart of Fort Verde State Historic Park has explored the mountain many times and notes that it took three and a half hours to ride a horse to the top of Grief Hill-elevation 5,800 feet-but only 40 minutes to come down. Four documented Indian attacks, most likely by Yavapais, occurred on Grief Hill between 1865 and 1869. Indians attacked a group of soldiers with 10 pack animals in January 1866, but the military escort escaped unharmed.

According to the Arizona Miner newspaper of Prescott, an estimated 100 warriors on May 6, 1869, ambushed two oxen teams escorted by nine soldiers and two citizens. The raiders wounded five, killed one and ran off with most of the cattle.

Grief Hill also gained fame as a result of a legendary massacre that never actually happened. Mounds of dirt spurred rumors of mass graves, but researchers later confirmed the mounds were actually old roasting pits in which the Indians baked agaves, a nutritious food source, rich in sugars.

Cottonwood trees spread above a grassy meadow near Cherry Creek. Because they most often follow the path of flowing water or groundwater near the surface, moisture-loving cottonwoods are a signal of water in the desert.

Pondering this unforgiving terrain, I try to imagine the grief early settlers experienced as they negotiated those steep slopes with wagons and ropes. More than a century later, the trip takes mere minutes—with power brakes instead of trees dragged behind with chains.

And so long as your brakes hold up, Grief Hill will no longer live up to its name. AH

route finder

Odometer readings may vary by vehicle.

Phoenix's WaterWorks Provides Power and a Touch of Streetside Art

WATER IS GRAVITY'S DOG, following it everywhere." These words by Nogales-born poet Alberto Rios are etched into the concrete deck of the WaterWorks at Arizona Falls, a restored hydroelectric plant on the Arizona Canal at 56th Street and Indian School Road in Phoenix.

Here gravity's dog takes a 20-foot leap to create one of the few waterfalls in the Valley of the Sun. The falls were created in 1884 during the construction of the Arizona Canal from the Salt River north of Mesa to Skunk Creek in Peoria. The construction crew hit a subterranean ridge of Precambrian rock that was as hard as the hump of Camelback Mountain. The man hired to build the 40-mile canal, William J. Murphy, decided to let the canal flow drop over the rock ledge rather than spend precious time trying to blast a channel 8 feet deep and 85 feet across. After all, Murphy was being paid in stocks and bonds, not cash. Water began flowing through the canal in 1885, and 100,000 acres in the valley had irrigation. Murphy recognized the value of the land surrounding the falls and bought all With the land bounded by present-day 56th Street, 84th Street, East Lafayette Boulevard and East Thomas Road. He called the tract Ingleside. Meanwhile, hydroelectric technology was evolving. By 1889, the same year Murphy planted the first citrus orchard in the Phoenix valley, there were 200 water-powered electric plants in the United States and Canada. The falls were a good location for a hydroelectric plant.

With a constant volume accelerated by gravity, the waterfall provided sufficient force to turn the impellers of a turbine and generate electricity. In 1902, a small power plant was constructed at the falls, providing some of the first hydroelectric power in the state. A decade later, a larger plant was built on the site and the Salt River Project operated it until 1950.

Murphy laid out a townsite near the falls. To attract investors, he built the Ingleside Club, which no longer exists, as the centerpiece of his vision. Amenities included excursions to the man-made waterfall and an oiledsand golf course that eventually became the lush green fairways of The Arizona Country