Majestic Mount Graham

Majestic Mt. Graham The Swift Trail Follows the Lumber Routes Used by Early Settlers

RISING MAJESTICALLY from the floor of Gila Valley in Southeastern Arizona, grand, gloomy and alone, Mt. Graham towers 1,516 feet above the level of the sea.

Named for Colonel James Duncan Graham of the Topographical Corps, U. S. Army, in early territorial days, heliograph stations were established on this mountain and messages flashed for hun dreds of miles, transmitting information by the War Department in its efforts to subdue and restrain the warring Apache.

Away back in the sixties, Camp Grant, now utilized by the State Indus trial School, was established on the southern slope of the mountain. A road was built by the soldiers up the moun tain side, over which logs were hauled to the fort, to be sawed into lumberthe only source of supply in those days. A summer hospital was built on one of he beauty spots at the mountain top, at the site now known as Hospital Flat, and in the canyons on the northern slope early settlers in the Gila Valley established saw mills, which supplied lumber for building purp ses to the val ley below.

At the present time a splendid road exists, built at a cost of over half a million dollars and known as Swift Trail, named for a veteran forest super visor, T. T. Swift, who for many years was in charge of the Crook National Forest, in which Mt. Graham is located. Swift is at present supervisor of the Tonto National Forest. The road winds its way by easy grades to the top of the mountain, 36 miles from Safford on U. S. Highway 180.

An hour's drive over this mountain road affords a surfeit of scenery-va rieties of plant life, from the semi desert castus to Alpine spruce and as pen, with flowers and ferns beyond de scription, while streams abounding with trout add to the lure and invite the traveler to linger. The mountain is a game preserve, and one encounters deer startled from grazing, and an occasional bear lumbers hurredly away. At an elevation of approximately 6,000 feet the Noon Creek CCC Can'p is established, and at an elevation of 7,300 feet one passes through Pinecrest, a mountain hamlet of nearly a hundred summer homes. Beyond Pinecrest the road passes through Ladybug Saddle, affording a magnificent view of a large portion of southern Arizona, with glimpses of New and Old Mexico.

The Graham County Boy Scout camp and two CCC camps, Treasure Park and Camp Columbine are encoun tered on the road to the top, through lanes of towering pine and quaking aspen, through which occasional open ings occur, affording views of a vast ex panse of Arizona mountains and plains, stretching away as far as the eye can see. From Heliograph Peak, upon which the government has established a look out tower, a view unsurpassed in all Arizona may be obtained.

Another CCC camp is located in Trip Canyon on the western slope, and it is the purpose of the Forest Service to continue the road from Camp Columbine(Continued on Page 14)