OBSCURE REFERENCES

From rare art at Hubbell Trading Post to an aerial tramway at Fort Bowie, Arizona's national parks are rife with interesting trivia. BY KATHY MONTGOMERY / ILLUSTRATIONS BY ERIC HANSON

Canyon de Chelly National Monument

Charles Lindbergh is most famous for making the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean; less known is his contribution to archaeology. In 1929, Lindbergh and his new wife, Anne, conducted the first aerial survey of Canyon de Chelly. Their photographs helped persuade Congress to declare it a national monument in 1931.

Casa Grande Ruins • National Monument

Protection for Casa Grande predated the Antiquities Act of 1906, which allows presidents to create national monuments. In 1892, after trying for seven years to secure funding for archeological sites, Congress authorized funds to repair only Casa Grande - making it the country's first publicly protected prehistoric site.

Chiricahua National Monument

The land inside the present-day monument once contained a hot spring. Bonita Canyon's first Anglo settlers, Ju and Pauline Stafford, used it to irrigate a large garden, and the warm water allowed them to grow vegetables even in winter. The spring disappeared after an 1887 earthquake.

Coronado National Memorial

The park commemorating Francisco Vázquez de Coronado's 16th century expedition was designated in 1941 as an international memorial. It was meant to include land in both the U.S. and Mexico, with a museum at the border. When an agreement with Mexico couldn't be reached after more than a decade, new legislation renamed it a national memorial.

Fort Bowie National Historic Site

A preliminary plan for this site central to the Apache Wars included a paved road and an aerial tramway. Ultimately, the National Park Service concluded that keeping the bare ruins in a remote, undeveloped landscape would better reflect the hardships endured at this frontier post.

Glen Canyon National Recreation Area

Glen Canyon preserves one of the world's most complete sections of Mesozoic strata, formed during the era when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Dinosaur tracks are among the highlights of a new trail that links the Horseshoe Bend overlook and Glen Canyon Dam. At press time, the 6.5-mile trail didn't yet have a name.

Grand Canyon National Park

In the mid-1910s, the status of the Canyon, which then was a national monument, was challenged on the grounds that it was too grand. The Antiquities Act requires a monument "be confined to the smallest area" compatible with proper management. But in 1920, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the designation - creating a precedent that, so far, has stood the test of time.

Grand Canyon-Parashant National nal Monument

Primitive campsites at Twin Point allow you to pitch a tent on the Grand Canyon's rim, far from the madding crowd. But don't expect amenities or cell service, and take a four-wheel-drive vehicle with a full tank of gas. Just getting onto this remote monument requires a long drive over gravel roads.

Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site

John Lorenzo Hubbell's frequent guests included preeminent artists, who often thanked their host with artwork. Hubbell's impressive museum collection contains many such gifts, including E.A. Burbank's famous "Red Head" sketches of local residents and two paintings by Hubbell's close friend Maynard Dixon.

10. Lake Mead National Recreation Area

Located where the Colorado River exits the Grand Canyon, Pearce Ferry was a seldom-used crossing, operating for only about 20 years in the late 19th century. With a number of primitive campsites, it remains a lightly visited area in one of the country's most visited national parks.

11. Montezuma Castle National Monument

Named for one of the best-preserved prehistoric cliff dwellings in North America, Montezuma Castle National Monument also protects Montezuma Well. According to the Yavapai creation story, the natural limestone sinkhole is where the first woman emerged, in a hollow log.

12. Navajo National Monument

Surveyor William B. Douglass requested protection for Navajo National Monument's Ancestral Puebloan villages based only on the descriptions of a Paiute guide. When President William Howard Taft designated the monument in 1909, no one in the federal government had ever seen the villages.

13. Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

Organ Pipe's Senita Basin is the most accessible place in the country to see three columnar cactus species growing together. Saguaro, organ pipe and senita cactuses share the basin with other rarities, including Dr. Seuss-like elephant trees, which give the landscape an otherworldly look, and a formation tantalizingly called Twin Peaks.

14. Petrified Forest National Park

John Muir is most closely associated with Yosemite National Park, but in a little-known chapter of his life, the conservationist spent a year at Petrified Forest in 1905. Many believe Muir's influence with his friend Teddy Roosevelt was behind the monu-nment's designation the following year.

15. Pipe Spring National Monument

Pipe Spring once served as a tithing ranch for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Part of a system created by the church to manage live-stock donated, or tithed, by members, Pipe Spring collected livestock from the faithful from Fillmore, Utah, to the Colorado River.

16. Saguar National Park

When Saguaro National Monument was created in 1933, it protected land in the Rincon Mountains but not the saguaro forest. Unable to control the saguaro habitat, the Park Service considered abolishing the monument in 1945. A series of land swaps, completed in 1959, ensured the park's future.

17. Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument

Before taking "one giant leap for man-kind," Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and other Apollo astronauts took smaller steps on the Bonito Lava Flow at Sunset Crater. Scientists believed the loose, pulverized rock of the cinder cone most closely simulated conditions on the moon.

18. Tonto National Monument

No money or staff accompanied Tonto's designation as a national monument in 1907. The Southern Pacific Railroad developed the monument's first tourist facilities and hired its first caretakers. The railroad promoted the attraction in its promotional magazine, Sunset - named for the Sunset Limited, which ran from New Orleans to California.

19. Tumacácori National Historical Park

Tumacácori National Historical Park - which protects Guevavi and Calabazas missions in addition to its namesake - also maintains mission records, including baptisms and burials. Called Mission 2000, the electronic database is available to the public on the park's website.

20. Tuzigoot National Monument

Before this monument was created to protect its hilltop pueblo, its land was briefly part of the Rio Verde Reservation. Established in 1871, the reservation was home to 1,500 American Indians until Congress abolished the reservation in 1875.

21. Walnut Canyon National Monument

Like her protagonist in The Song of the Lark, Willa Cather found inspiration among Walnut Canyon's ruins. An editor at McClure's magazine when she visited in 1912, Cather wrote that Arizona helped her recover from the "editorial point of view." She published her first successful novel the following year.

22. Wupatki National Monument

Inconceivable as it would be today, the first rangers assigned to Wupatki in the 1930s lived in two rooms of the ancient pueblo, storing water from a spring in a 55-gallon barrel behind their "beautiful, sunny little kitchen." For the privilege of living there, they paid $10 a month. AH