BACK ROAD ADVENTURE

In 1863, CHARLES TAYLOR, one of some three dozen frontiersmen traveling with the famed explorer Joseph Walker, wandered into what became the Prescott area. He liked what he saw, though he never struck much pay dirt in the gold rush that soon followed their arrival. Instead, Taylor took the harder road to riches, building a cabin in the rocky foothills of the Bradshaw Mountains and digging a potato patch whose yield he would load onto a groaning buckboard and take to town to earn a little spending money.The road Taylor helped carve out of stone and earth is still there, extending from Kirkland Junction, southwest of Prescott, to the homestead he called Minnehaha, named in bookish tribute to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's famed poem "Hiawatha." Later homesteaders and foresters extended the road high into the Bradshaws all the way to the hamlet of Crown King, a place well known but little visitedand for good reason: the dizzying dirt road that switchbacks up to Crown King from Cleator.

Still, that road looks like a superhighway compared to its poor cousin, the bumpy, 40odd-mile path that descends along the spine of the Bradshaws down to Minnehaha, then into the handsome valley of the Hassayampa River. Here, having tested the mettle of the traveler, it dusts itself off, straightens its tie and puts on a presentable face.That was the visage that greeted me on a warm day, when, in the company of my friends Richard Sims, director of Prescott's Sharlot Hall Museum, and Dan Shilling, a specialist in the new field of civic tourism, I went to have a look at Charley Taylor's domain.

The road's beginning gives no hint of the bumpy times ahead. Instead, Wagoner Road, as it's marked at its junction with State Route 89 near Kirkland Junction about 22 miles south of Prescott, is a well-tended, two-lane dirt affair that meanders across gentle, grassy hills and passes by neatly tended ranches and pastures full of well-groomed horses. All along the way, the road offers remarkable views that include several tall mountain ranges-the Bradshaws, the Sierra Prieta and the Weavers, plus hundreds of square miles of some of the richest grazing land in Arizona.But past the newly repaved bridge over the Hassayampa River in the foothills of the Bradshaws, that pastoral gentleness gives way to something wilder. We caught a subtle portent ofthat change as the road descended into the bed of Minnehaha Creek, one of the Hassayampa's many feeder streams: Where numerous quail had dotted the ground before, the bird life now consisted of one tough, annoyed-looking roadrunner, accompanied by a stubborn gopher snake that blocked our path as if to say, "turn around, get a hamburger in Skull Valley, and call it a day." We pressed on, following the cobble-strewn, boulder-littered, spine-lined streambed, through which a trickle of water flowed. We bounced up it, backing up from time to time to assay different approaches to getting over some of the trickier rocks, taking our time and enjoying

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Established in 1906, the Crown King Saloon sponsors horseshoe competitions, cowgirl appreciation days and the "world's shortest parade" among its lighthearted events.

VEHICLE REQUIREMENTS: Four-wheel-drive, high-clearance. WARNING: The road from Wagoner to Minnehaha Flat is poorly marked. Allow five hours to reach Crown King. Take a friend or two with you, as well as plenty of water and food, and be prepared to hike cross-country for at least 10 miles in the event of car trouble. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Prescott National Forest, Bradshaw Ranger District, (928) 443-8000.

the scenery. In about half an hour's time-just where my cell phone blinked "no service" most insistently-we came to a spot where the suggestion of a road went off to the left, another to the right. Either one works; we chose the rightward path, climbing out of the creek onto dry land. Truth be told, boulders and tortuous streambeds notwithstanding, the possibility of taking a wrong turn was the more constant challenge. About 25 miles from the junction with State 89, the road goes "primitive," as a few lonely signs warn, and it's sometimes a challenge to distinguish the road from crisscrossing hiking trails or a few old scrape-away turns leading to long-abandoned mining claims. The road climbs, drops and climbs again over rocky hills studded with Spanish bayonet, prickly pear and yucca, never quite getting smooth enough to go more than 10 mph until, finally, it turns a bend to reveal a fine view of an old mine, with bits and pieces of heavy machinery still scattered across the face of a steep hill. We stopped to poke around in the ruins, glad to give our jarred spines a rest, and then topped that hill to find ourselves suddenly out of the desert and into cool pines. We had found Minnehaha Flat, Charley Taylor's remote hideaway, marked by a ruined cottage, a clearing where the potato patch had once flourished and a rusting truck of more recent vintage. We could have turned around at that point, having succeeded in our quest for Minnehaha, and retraced our hard-won steps. But buoyed with newfound confidence and cheered by a road that now allowed us to hit speeds of 15 mph, we pressed on through thick groves of ponderosa pines, finally making the junction