Jerome Mansion

“a good egg,” and sent the widow a check for $500. For $150,000, Douglas built the Jerome mansion as a comfortable place for visiting mine officials to stay. One visitor remembered Douglas as “a grand host . . . the latch was always out for his friends.” In a letter to Lewis, an adult by 1916, Douglas declared the house “a gigantic success.” The family's main residence was in the town of Douglas, but the mansion in Jerome drew them on special occasions. Productive mining of the Little Daisy ended in 1938, though various mining companies used the house until the mine closed in 1953. By then, Jerome's population had dwindled to about 200. In 1957 the Douglas family approached the newly formed Arizona State Parks Board about making the old mansion into a mining museum. They deeded the grand home, with its panoramic views of Jerome to the south and the Verde Valley to the north, to the state for $10 in 1962, and three years later it opened as a state park. Built with 80,000 adobe bricks, the mansion retains the original woodwork, concrete flooring and pale interior colors. Photos line the walls, showing the family homes in New York; Nacozari, Mexico; and Douglas, and allowing glimpses into their lives as young Lewis and Jimmy played baseball and shared rides on horseback. Off the long hallway are rooms that served as kitchen, pantry and servants' quarters and which now display the history of Jerome's people in photos of unnamed miners, shopkeepers, baseball teams, school choirs and the ever-needed firemen. Upstairs displays feature mining equipment, mineral samples and, most interesting of all, a three-dimensional model depicting the 88 miles of shafts, tunnels and passageways catacombed beneath Jerome. Jerome State Historic Park opened on October 16, 1965, with the Douglas brothers in attendance. Near the entrance to the mansion, they placed a plaque honoring their heritage from their great-grandfather to their father, whose dichotomy of character proved as extreme as the history of the town, the mountain and the state that encompass the Douglas mansion and the Little Daisy Mine. All

THINGS TO DO NEAR JEROME

HISTORIC JEROME The town of Jerome became a National Historic Landmark in 1967, recognizing its contribution of copper to the nation. A walking tour and driving tour are published in a booklet giving detailed information about the buildings that have survived the town's varied history. “Jerome Tourguide” is available at the state park.

SHOPS AND GALLERIES Today's Jerome, population about 450, has revived as a tourist magnet, with gift shops of every kind, plus art galleries, A mining museum and great places to eat. Many of Jerome's attractions are housed in restored historic buildings.

RIDE THE RIDE Established to serve the mines, the Verde Canyon Railroad now thrills visitors on fourhour round-trip tours along the Verde River into a red-walled canyon with spectacular scenery. Clarkdale, (800) 320-0718, www.verdecanyonrr.com.

TUZIGOOT NATIONAL MONUMENT Tuzigoot National Monument is the remnant of a Sinagua Indian village built between A.D. 1125 and 1400. The visitors center gives glimpses into everyday life of the village where the people ground corn for bread, wove cloth from the cotton they grew or shaped and fired pottery. North of Clarkdale on State Route 279, (928) 634-5564.

FORT VERDE STATE HISTORIC PARK The present post, completed in 1873, became the staging area for all military action in the area during Territorial LOCATION: Approximately 110 miles north of Phoenix.

GETTING THERE: From Phoenix, take Interstate 17 north to Exit 287. Take State Route 260 northwest about 13 miles to its junction with State Route 89A. Turn left, heading up the hill to Jerome. Follow the signs directing visitors to Jerome State Historic Park, on Douglas Road.

HOURS: Daily 8 A.M. to 5 P.M.; closed Christmas.

FEES: $4, adults; $1, children 7-13; free, children under 6.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: (928) 634-5381; Arizona State Parks, www.pr.state.az.us; Jerome Chamber of Commerce, (928) 634-2900.

days. Walk down Officers' Row and visit the quarters of the commanding officer, the bachelor officers and the post surgeon. Camp Verde, (928) 567-3275.

alongthe Way Meet Tombstone Inventor ERNIE ESCAPULE, a Master of USEFUL CONTRAPTIONS

OUT IN THE DESERT A FEW MILES WEST OF Tombstone, 80-year-old Ernie Escapule leans back in a well-used recliner in front of his mobile home and lets his brilliant blue eyes poke a hole into the past. Memories of his unusual inventions inevitably nudge themselves into the conversation.

"Ya know," Escapule says, "years ago when John Wayne was making a movie here, people in Tombstone asked me to make a gold and silver horsehead dispenser for a very expensive Scotch whisky decanter. They wanted to thank the Duke for all the business he brought to town.

"Most metallurgists will tell you you can't cast mixtures of multiple metals because they have different melting temperatures. But it can be done, and I did it. Never got to meet The Duke, though."

Escapule is in top form, and I'm proud to be his audience. I hadn't heard from him in a while, and then I got a phone call: "Bill, this is your old friend Ernie. I've been up in the Harquahala Mountains on a D-8 makin' a road." A D-8? One of the biggest bulldozers in the world? This guy will be rompin' till he's a hundred, I tell myself. I shouldn't have been surprised. Escapule has been a mining and metals-recovery consultant in many tough outback spots on the globe, and along the way he discovered that improvising often was the only way to get things done.

Those attributes might seem inevitable, given his family history. His father, who was born in 1896 near Escapule's present-day residence, continued the tradition of small-scale gold and silver mining that his grandfather had begun near the site in 1890.

Escapule's parents worked literally a momand-pop operation in the late 1960s, when by themselves they mined a rich vein of silver at the Red Top Mine-also within 100 yards of Escapule's present home.

By the 1960s, Escapule was a world traveler. He worked nearly a year in East Malaysia finetuning the gold-recovery systems of a company located well back in the jungle.

Bilingual in English and Spanish, Escapule found more than a language challenge at the U.S.-Mexico border when he was hired to assay a potentially rich copper deposit in Sonora. Customs officials wouldn't permit him to bring some of his equipment-specifically a large arc welder that they felt he might attempt to sellacross the line.

Escapule says he sighed and decided to build his own after entering Mexico. Again, necessity birthed another of his inventions. Today, one of the machine's cousins reposes at Escapule's homesite. He calls it a "salt brine arc welder," and it consists simply of a 55-gallon drum filled with salt water; a yard-long copper rod extending down into the center of the drum; a 110-volt power supply; assorted lengths of electrical wiring; and a standard arc welder's clamps and welding rods.

These days, Escapule and his bride of five years, Charlotte, live on 4 acres of land on which snakelike mounds of rusting steel implements mingle with greasy engines, chain-driven conveyor systems, tires, wooden sheds and the glint of cracked, green-hued windshields.

Today, Escapule decides to demonstrate his aluminum can flattener. A decidedly homemade-looking device, it's constructed of a wheelbarrow tub, a vertically halved 30-gallon lubricant drum, two automobile tires on dented rims, a Briggs & Stratton two-cycle gasoline engine and the front fender off a 1946 Harley-Davidson motorcycle. And it works.With a quick tug on the engine's starter rope, the thing comes to life, popping and sputtering. Immediately, the two tires begin spinning against each other. Above them, several hundred clanking soft-drink and beer cans start to cascade down one and two at a time from their piled-up storage into the tub and drum.

Thwump-thwump-thwump. Descending cans meet the junction of spinning tires and get squashed. Gravity drops them into a chute crafted from the Harley fender and into another waiting tub. They're ready to be recycled.

Although he still works part time in the hydrology department of a large resort development company, Escapule dreams of building a museum... "a precious metals recovery museum that would demonstrate the equipment and processes we can use to refine ore, once it's out of the ground, and make it into precision components and fine jewelry."

Although one thing is certain: Place Ernie Escapule among old pieces of metal and oddball machinery, and he's apt to concoct some unlikely contraption that performs surprisingly useful work. And from the gleam in his eye, that's as much fun as it is challenging. Al

back adventure road Don't Get 'Stuck' or 'Tired Out' on Your Visit to NORTH TIMP POINT at the GRAND CANYON

EVERY SO OFTEN, I ENCOUNTER SOMEONE who believes we are all here for a purpose. Frankly, I've never believed it. However, toward the end of my excursion to North Timp Point, an isolated and exhilarating spot on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, I had a change of heart. I suddenly had the impression of being inside a frame in a cartoon strip, with a "lightbulb" in the little bubble over my head, signifying the arrival of a new idea. I realized that I am indeed here for a purpose: I am here to keep tire shops in business. How else can I explain it? When a rear tire suddenly exploded on my truck, I was 27 miles south of Jacob Lake and about the same distance from Timp Point. There is no shoulder on that road (State Route 67), nor is there any cell phone service. The deer and elk far outnumber human beings.

I looked at the spare tire, which seemed about the size of Ecuador, and I scratched my head. I must surely exist to keep the tire business alive, I reminded myself again. How else to explain that not only have I regularly destroyed tires in all of my old trucks (destroyed two on this same trip two years earlier, in fact), but now I have destroyed a tire on a new vehicle, the fanciest truck I've ever owned, and there are only 4,000 miles on the odometer?

People stopped and asked if I were stuck. Yes, indeed, I said, but was it not a magnificent spot in which to cool one's heels? I stood at the edge of a fresh green meadow on the Kaibab Plateau, roughly 50 miles south of the Arizona-Utah border. I could see light rain at the scalloped fringe of the huge clouds in the distance. In the soft breeze I could detect a hint of the fragrance of wet bark. Well, you've been stuck in a lot worse places, I thought. Yes, but never with a brand-new truck.

Just now you may be thinking you'll never head out to this place called North Timp Point because the road must be paved with tire-eating piranhas. That would be wrong thinking. There are only so many people who have been placed on Earth to keep tire shops in business, and you're probably not one of them. Besides, about half of the 43-mile one-way drive to North Timp Point is paved and the second half is an excellent graded dirt road. Unless there's been a wicked storm, the entire road can be covered in an ordinary sedan. To begin, find your way to Jacob Lake, about 165 miles north of Flagstaff. Jacob Lake is not