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ARIZONA IS A HIKER'S PARADISE

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ARIZONA HIKING Urban Trails, Easy Paths & Overnight Treks by Arizona Highways Contributors 160 pages. 71/2" x 10". Softcover. Full-color photography. AHKS2 $16.95 ISBN 1-893860-79-5

destination LOWELL OBSERVATORY in Flagstaff Embodies the Legacy of Arizona's VISIONARY ASTRONOMER

PERCIVAL LOWELL NEVER CONSIDERED himself a dreamer. A stargazer, perhaps, but never a dreamer.

In the summer of 1894, Lowell thought he had proof that intelligent life existed on Mars. The Harvard-educated mathematician, who hailed from Boston blue-blooded society, spent night after night perched on a lonely ponderosa pine-studded mesa above Flagstaff, gazing through a telescope at Mars, taking notes and making calculations. By the end of summer, Lowell decided he had enough information to publish his findings.

Lowell never proved his theory of life on Mars, but such theories sparked a firestorm of controversy about Martians, adding a fascination with space to the developing literary genre of science fiction. Author H.G. Wells published his novel War of the Worlds in 1898 amid the debate over Lowell's writings, but no doubt Lowell's greatest legacy lies in the Flagstaff observatory that bears his name. In 1966, Lowell Observatory was registered as a National Historic Landmark. Today, professional and amateur stargazers go to the observatory, one of the world's largest, privately operated, nonprofit astronomical research observatories. Lowell's 24-inch Clark refractor telescope, which he used for his Mars observations, now serves as an instrument for public viewing.

Even in the 21st century, Lowell seems to oversee the operation as he peers from a large painting that hangs in the observatory's Steele Visitor Center lobby. Hand on hip and staring straight into the future, Lowell stands amid modern-day and historical space observational devices. The center serves as the entry point for all observatory programs, telescopes and exhibits. People come to learn the observatory's history and for a chance to look through Lowell's telescopes.

As the two-hour walking tour begins, visitors file into Giclas Lecture Hall for a short presentation about the man who started it all and how the observatory's 27 full-time astronomers continue to conduct research. In the group of about 30,