Highway Adventure

THROUGH central Arizona runs a thin black line, alive with motion, day or night. Over the mountain pass, down the rocky gorge, across the deep arroyo, and then up again, wrestling with another of Nature's efforts to block man's new mode of transport, winds the thin, black line. Transcontinental traffic admits of no barrier and chafes at the least obstruction. Block the swiftly moving life line, and in a few minutes the howls of protest would drown out the lonely lament of the coyote as he hides out of sight around the desert knoll.Thus does Highway 70, one of the most traveled cross-state highways, from its entrance into Arizona near Duncan, to its exit over the humped-backed bridge at Eherenburg, on the Colorado River, wind and turn through some of the most mountainous parts of the state.

The three east-and-west highways across Arizona are nearly of the same length. Highway 70 is 396 miles long, within the Arizona state lines. The other two are 385 miles, for the northern route and about 417 for the most southerly route. It is only the mountainous partof Highway 70 that has prompted this sketch, as there are plenty of mountains along its eastern end and naturally plenty of accompanying scenery.

Some Mountain Scenery Along One of Arizona's Principal Highways

At the eastern gateway of Highway 70 on the New Mexico-Arizona line, a vista toward the west opens out into the wide valley of the Gila River, hedged in by distant mountains. The town of Duncan is only six miles or so from the state lines and is in the center of the old Mormon settled farming area in the Gila bottoms.

It is shortly after leaving Duncan, headed west, that the motor traveler gets his first introduction to Arizona mountains. The Peloncillo range lies directly across the path of the west-bound tourist, and it takes about twenty miles or so of curved highway to pass through them. In this distance some very fine, longrange views of southeastern Arizona can be seen as the car glides between the rounded ancient volcanic hills or tops the low summits.

It is with a sudden unfolding panorama that the great eastern valley of the Gila River appears as the car rounds the last curve in the foothills. The immense blue bulk of the Graham Mountains, snow-capped nearly half of the year, blocks almost half of the western horizon. As the road is still high above the valley on a sloping mesa, the view westward is one of the finest sights on the entire route of Highway 70. As if an aerial map, below winds the sinuous shallow river, defined its entire visible length by the green cottonwood trees, and bordered by a wide patchwork of multicolored fields. Far across the hazy San Simon, coming in from the south, reclines the sleeping giant of mountains, the Grahams.

The finest sight imaginable was seen one evening in June, after an early sum-m.r rain. Golden shafts of the sinking sun streaked over the wide, green fields below the mesa near Solomonville, illuminating the tops of the cottonwoods near the river with a still more vivid green, and casting purple shadows eastwardly behind them, while a light aurolian mist rose from the sinuous curves of the invisible stream bed of the river. High up on the flanks of the Grahams, thousands of feet above the valley, a horizontal and motionless line of clouds, seperated the rugged canyons and foothill mesas of the sleeping mountain from its dome-like, pine-covered crests. The sun sank beneath a reddish cloud bank in the far off Apache Indian reservation, and darkness enveloped the valley, but above the halo of encircling cloud, the Grahams still glowed and shimmered in the last rays of sunlight long gone from the view of those in the valley.

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS MARCH, 1936

m.r rain. Golden shafts of the sinking sun streaked over the wide, green fields below the mesa near Solomonville, illuminating the tops of the cottonwoods near the river with a still more vivid green, and casting purple shadows eastwardly behind them, while a light aurolian mist rose from the sinuous curves of the invisible stream bed of the river. High up on the flanks of the Grahams, thousands of feet above the valley, a horizontal and motionless line of clouds, seperated the rugged canyons and foothill mesas of the sleeping mountain from its dome-like, pine-covered crests. The sun sank beneath a reddish cloud bank in the far off Apache Indian reservation, and darkness enveloped the valley, but above the halo of encircling cloud, the Grahams still glowed and shimmered in the last rays of sunlight long gone from the view of those in the valley.

Safford, on the Gila River, is the largest city of eastern Arizona and the county seat of Graham County. It lies in the center of the rich river bottom lands and was settled by the Mormons many years ago, when they spread out from their original pioneer settlements further north. Many of the houses on the farms are typical of the old days with their red brick construction and architecture.

After passing successively through Solomonville, Safford, Thatcher, Pima and Fort Thomas, the farming lands gradually give way to the familiar greasewood or creosote bush-covered, semi-desert land. After passing Geronimo at the edge of the Apache Indian Reservation, there is very little to be seen of land cultivation. The roundtopped haystacks covered with sheets of canvas may look like agriculture, but they are the homes of the Apache Indians who have elected to stick to the ways of old Geronimo and the Apache warriors who made this part of Arizona a very lively place for many years. They resemble the hogans of the Navajo in regard to shape, but instead of being made of cedar logs covered with mud, they are made of brush and hay or straw, and shed the rain easily.

About 80 miles west of the New Mexico line, in Arizona, Highway 70 enters the Apache Reservation. As the car tops the hill just west of Geronimo a long stretch of the highway lies ahead, with a very prominent mountain to the south, snow-capped during the early spring months. Mount Turnbull rises well over the 9,000-foot mark and seems to be a sort of pivot around which the highway winds for many miles. We use it as a guiding landmark for 25 miles before its bulk is hidden by the eroded high mesas near the Coolidge Dam, which is 111 miles within the state from the New Mexico line.

The Coolidge Dam is the only large storage dam on the Gila River and is situated at the head of a deep canyon, almost impassable even on foot, as a look downstream from the top of the dam will show. As the highway goes over the top of the dam, many people stop there at the wide parking places and rest up a bit while taking in the spectacular mountain scenery on every hand, especially the view from the parapet down the gorge. The canyon below the dam is very similar to the Granite Gorge, that black crevasse near the bottom-most depths of the Grand Canyon. The water stored at Coolidge Dam is let out gradually, and after turning the big dynamos in the power house below, continue on down the Gila River canyon, blue and clean of silt, to irrigate the lands of the Pima Indians, many miles away. After leaving Coolidge Dam, Highway 70 begins quite a climb up and out of the Gila River valley, in order to make as straight a line as possible to Globe, twenty-six miles west of the dam. From many points on this upward climb, Coolidge Lake may be seen stretching eastward and the old landmark of Mount Turnbull reflected from its surface. Tiny dots on the lake are optimistic fishermen hoping for and often snagging a game fish, which abound in the lake.

Up near the summit, about ten miles west of the lake, a great expanse of the wild and rugged mountains of the western part of the Apache reservation spreads out in one vast panorama. Stepladder fashion do the ranges and cliffs rise higher and higher until the outermost blends into the uplifted Mogollon Rim in the blue distance. Between a gap in these ranges and so far away it seems as if floating in the sky, a dazzling white horizontal line above a basement of purple, ending in a sharp white cone on the left reaveals the high White Mountains, almost 12,000 feet above the sea, mantled with eternal snow.

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

Globe, the venerable mining district of all this part of Arizona is just one hundred and thirty-seven miles within the state on Highway 70. It is a typical mining town, situated in a deep valley, almost a canyon, down which the main street leads the entire length of the city. Winding through town the highway soon passes at the foot of an immense slag pile, black and cascading from the hill upon which the Old Dominion mine and smelter stand. Many are the millions taken out of the Old Dominion not only in copper, but in gold and silver. Before the railroad was built into Globe from Bowie almost fifty years ago, the bullion from this mine had to be taken out in wagons almost over the very path the highway now takes, needing as many days or more for the trip, as it does for an automobile to make the trip in hours. Many are the skeletons of men and horses along the old trail to Bowie where flowed the wagon drawn traffic to and from the Old Dominion mine. The Apaches were in their glory, those days. West of Globe, about seven miles by the pavement over the long ridge between the two cities the modern mining town of Miami holds forth in its setting of mining shafts, slag piles and tremendous mounds of tailings from the mills. Twenty-five years ago men found under a blanket of ancient rock, a thick sheet of copper locked within the grains of subterranean stone, small in amount, but incalculable in quantity. At that time they figured that there was enough copper to keep the mills and smelters busy for twenty-five years. The time has passed and still the copper comes forth, with the end as far away as it was in the beginning.

Twenty pounds to the ton of rock it went, and they mined it, threw away the waste rock and shipped it by the millions of pounds a month at a profit. The mountain of yellow sand almost encroaching the highway for some distance is the nineteen hundred and eighty pounds of rock waste that originally held twenty pounds of copper, and now lies out in the Arizona sunshine together with the millions of other tons taken out of the ground. A hole in the ground must result if this rock has come out of the earth. The hole left under ground in the Miami mines is used to assist in the mining of the ore by the simple method of getting up under the hole below the copper strata and letting the ore cave in toward the tunnels and shafts. It looks easy but sooner or later the hole works its way upward and gets so big that a large patch of ground settles within the mining bounds with the suddenness of an earth quake. A large area on top of the mountain near Miami is fenced off where the caved ground has occurred.

Leaving Miami, Highway 70 begins a climb over a spur of the high Pinal mountains, and the west bound motorist has twenty-one miles of solid mountain driving, before he has arrived at Super-ior, at the foot of the mountain on the other side. Winding and twisting up a granite gorge, the highway steadily climbs until it comes out in a rather more open kind of topography, but still in the mountains. A moderate speed makes the way as safe or safer than the speed commonly used on the open desert road. There is something about Nature's disposition of canyons, cliffs and rocky peaks that makes the motorist instinctively more cautious, as he drives a mountain road. This has resulted in an almost negligible record of accidents on this type of road. Signs are numerous and as the roadway is all oil surfaced, Highway 70 becomes more of a picnic trip over the Pinal mountains than a hazard. In spite of the many curves the twenty-one miles to Superior can be made in less than an hour, and with time to take a look around at times and see some fine scenery.

has twenty-one miles of solid mountain driving, before he has arrived at Superior, at the foot of the mountain on the other side. Winding and twisting up a granite gorge, the highway steadily climbs until it comes out in a rather more open kind of topography, but still in the mountains. A moderate speed makes the way as safe or safer than the speed commonly used on the open desert road. There is something about Nature's disposition of canyons, cliffs and rocky peaks that makes the motorist instinetively more cautious, as he drives a mountain road. This has resulted in an almost negligible record of accidents on this type of road. Signs are numerous and as the roadway is all oil surfaced, Highway 70 becomes more of a picnic trip over the Pinal mountains than a hazard. In spite of the many curves the twenty-one miles to Superior can be made in less than an hour, and with time to take a look around at times and see some fine scenery.

Up at the summit locally called the "Top of the World", the entire visible horizon is a mass of mountains. The most distant view is toward the north and west, and takes in the Sierra Ancha mountain region on the other side of the Roosevelt Dam and Lake, and the rugged country through which winds the Apache Trail.

There is Devil's Canyon to pass through with its many odd shaped rock ribbed canyons and side gorges, before making another short climb to Oak Flats where the distant Catalina mountains, blue on the southern horizon, dome like, stand (Continued on Page 16)