The Romantic Strip Is the Last Frontier

The Romantic 'Strip' is the

IN AN immense expanse of wild and rugged territory lying north of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River and south of the Mormon settlements in Utah's "Dixie Land" is Arizona's "last frontier", one of the few such remaining in the nation. With an area, roughly, of 8,000 square miles, three times that of the state of Delaware, and a population numbering only a few hundred at the most, the Arizona strip today is very similar to what it was back in the 60's and early 70's, when it was first explored by Powell and Dellenbaugh and Hamblin, except that its Indians are no longer hostile and its recesses are a little better known.

Penetrated by not more than half a dozen rough and tortuous trails, its beauty and its grandeur still are only faintly familiar to the world, and it has not yet become exactly a mecca for tourists. Extending over a distance of approximately 160 miles from the Lee's Ferry, or Paria, crossing of the Colorado, on the east, to the Virgin Mountains on the west, and lying about half in Mohave county and half in Coconino, the Strip was until very recent years almost inaccessible, except from the Utah towns of St. George, Santa Clara and Kanab, to the northward. The easiest route available to Coconino officials covered almost 1,000 miles and passed through four states, Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah. A few years ago, a state tax official was sent into the Strip to make inquiries as to the number of cattle grazing there, with instructions to make frequent reports to the capitol in Phoenix. He was not heard from for three weeks and his superiors were considering the dispatching of a relief expedition when the first letter arrived. Construction of the Navajo Bridge at Marble Canyon (near Lee's Ferry) and opening of a highway from Kingman north to Boulder Dam have, however, made the Strip country more accessible to Arizonians, and that huge expanse of nearly unexplored territory has become somewhat less remote, but not sufficiently so to destroy its attraction to the amateur explorer. Skirting it on the north, from Las Vegas, Nev., and Boulder Dam, to St.

Last Frontier Immense Expanse of Little Known Territory Lures Amateur Explorer

George, Utah, and the Dixie National Forest, is the paved U. S. Highway 91 -following the route of the Old Spanish Trail of the latter part of the eighteenth Century and the Old Mormon Road of later date and Utah State Highway 16 and 15, the Arrowhead Trail, through Zion National Park to the junction with U. S. Highway 89 at Kanab, Utah, and Fredonia, Ariz., leading down through Jacob's Lake to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and through House Rock Valley to the Navajo Bridge across the Colorado. Along these scenic thoroughfares, tourist traffic is yearly growing heavier, and adjacent to them, early Mormon agricultural settlements are numerous, particularly in the Virgin and Muddy River valleys; but aside from a few scattered cattle ranches, the Arizona Strip remains largely unsettled, due(Continued on Page 19)