Loop Around Gobbler Peak

backroad A Loop Road Around GOBBLER PEAK in the White Mountains Provides a Glimpse of LOCAL HISTORY, Elk, Turkeys

"HELLO, HULLO. ANY TURKEYS HERE?" No response. Was I foolish to expect wild turkeys on a road that runs around the base of something called Gobbler Peak? Not at all, said Doc Bradberry, who lives at Nutrioso, in the White Mountains of eastcentral Arizona. "They're out there almost every day around 4P.M." I was an hour early, but the sky was overcast and stormy, and it certainly looked like 4P.M., contrary to what the turkeys might have thought. Never mind. Even without turkeys, there was plenty to see and think about on the scenic back-road loop from Alpine to Nutrioso and Williams Valley. Frankly, thinking was not high on my list of entertainments when I left Alpine on U.S. Route 191 headed north, but after 9 miles I came to Nutrioso. It was Nutrioso's name that set the little gray cells in motion. Nutrioso is a version of three Spanish words, which, if spelled out properly, would be nutria y oso, meaning "otter and bear." People around Nutrioso claim nutria means "beaver," but my dictionary says it actually means "otter." "Well," said 80-year-old Richard Rogers, "the otter and the beaver are brothers." Or sisters, for that matter. I will not question Rogers' knowledge. His grandfather, Hank Sharp, homesteaded a farm and ranch in Nutrioso in 1904. Rogers' family has been in Nutrioso so long that he probably knows every beaver in the area on a first-name basis. When I reached Nutrioso, I left U.S. 191 and turned left on Auger Canyon Road. I had a plan: As soon as I turn left, I'm going to go

right at the fork. This will take me alongside Nutrioso Reservoir. A half-mile later a gravel road should be on my left. It's unnamed at that point, but I know it's going to become Forest Service Road 88, the road through Dry Valley and around Gobbler Peak to Williams Valley. Driving this loop from Alpine can be done in an ordinary sedan in a couple of hours, but you can also loll about, go fishing in the Black River or stand around gawking at elk and colorful birds if you want to make a morning out of it. I drove up the gravel road until I saw a large green barn in a field to my left-Hank Sharp's Dry Valley homestead, the place where he had raised seven children single-handedly. Sharp's wife, Anna Mae, had died three years after the

couple settled in Nutrioso. Sharp was 52 years old at the time. His two oldest daughters were 15 and 13; the youngest of the seven kids was 5 months old. According to a biography written by Virginia J. Rogers, Sharp told his daughters that if they would promise to help him, he would never remarry. He kept his word and they kept theirs.

Sharp died in 1942, when he was 87, and was buried next to his wife in Nutrioso cemetery.

Sharp's house burned down many years ago. Subsequent owners built the green barn and other structures visible today. The current owners, archaeologist Doc Bradberry and his wife, anthropologist Rebecca Vogt, bought the place in part because of its historical and scenic value. If you stand where Sharp's house once stood, the view is exhilarating-Escudilla Mountain to the east, Gobbler Peak to the west and Noble Mountain to the south.

I left the Sharp homestead and headed west up FR 88. About 2 miles later, I passed a small pond listed on maps as Rogers Reservoir. Sharp and his son-in-law, Floyd Rogers, built the reservoir and dredged a canal from the top of the hill all the way down to a pond on the homestead.

A mile beyond Rogers Reservoir, 88 veers west and eventually meets Forest Service Road 285, where I turned left. I followed it to its junction with Forest Service Road 249 and turned left again. The road travels the rolling meadows of Williams Valley; 5 miles later I came to Three Forks. Arizona's drought continued when I made this trip, but at Three Forks on the Black River, braided streams still meandered southward to Diamond Rock and Buffalo Crossing.

Off to my left, according to the map, lies a spot called Boneyard northeast of Lake Sierra Blanca. The Chriswell family spent the cold winter of 1878 locked in their cabin by heavy snows, subsisting by eating their few cattle. The bones were shoved out the window where they remained for many years, bleaching in each spring's sunshine.

Not shown on the map is a place right next to the Boneyard that was known as Clabber City. In the summer, Rogers said, ranchers would corral their cows there, and the women would milk them and make cheese. Clabber is sour or curdled milk.

About a mile east of Lake Sierra Blanca, Forest Service Road 276 heads south. I didn't take that route because at the time I didn't know about the ill-fated Oscar Schultz. Rogers later told me that Schultz's grave is clearly marked about 2 miles down that road. Schultz, a cowboy of German extraction, lived in Springerville during the early 1920s.

In Rogers' version of the story, Shultz needed money to send to his mother in Germany. He went to the bank in McNary and asked for a $92 loan. When the bank refused him, Schultz pulled a gun and took the money anyway because, as Rogers explained, “He didn't want his mother to starve.” He even promised to repay the bank. Schultz fled and escaped the law for a period of time, in part because Hank Sharp and Rogers' parents gave him food and shelter.

Lawmen eventually tracked down Schultz and killed him in the vicinity of what is now Blue Lookout. According to one account, he came out of a cabin with his hands in the air and was shot by someone with an itchy finger. Deputies draped him across a mule and tried to get him to Springerville on that warm summer day, “but the body began to rot so they buried him near Coyote Creek,” Rogers said.

Linger as long as you like at Schultz's lonely grave. You may be joined by elk or even wild turkey, and when you return to FR 249, you're only 11 miles from your starting point at Alpine.