Editor's Letter

I think it was Robby’s idea. Or maybe mine. It definitely wasn’t Jeff’s. My younger brother was scrupulous. Yet, he was with us every day that summer as we hatched a plan to sneak into the old Ringling house, which sat in the shadowy woods about a mile from my boyhood home on the Wisconsin River. Robby Hindes was our neighbor. He and I were mop-top reflections of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and when we weren’t busy mowing lawns and painting picket fences, we’d go out looking for adventure. “Looking for trouble” is how my father described it.

The Ringling house, long since abandoned, was a three-story stone building that was used as a winter home for some of the circus animals. As the story goes, they kept the elephants in there, but I don’t know if that’s true. As kids, though, we believed it. It added to the allure of a place we hoped to infiltrate. We were itching to get inside, but the rusted locks were intent on doing their jobs. The only way in, we figured out, was through a window on the top floor. Even that was tricky. We had to swing from the upper branches of a big oak and catch the narrow wooden frame around the window with our fingertips. Like free-climbers on El Capitan, we’d hang there with one hand and use the other hand to pry open the latch. It took a while, but, eventually, we got in. We were Howard Carter at King Tut’s tomb.

The upstairs was the living quarters, and going from room to room in the darkness was unnerving — Scooby-Doo had conditioned us to expect a parade of mummies on the other side of every door. The middle level was a haymow, and the first floor was for the elephants. Or unicorns or dragons. It was everything we’d imagined. An unopened time capsule. Unlike history museums, which are sanitized facsimiles, this was a dust-covered look at how it really was. We got to see where the caretaker made his coffee in the morning and slept at night. Everything that was left behind, including the old photos, was part of the story — a story we romanticized and talked about for the rest of the summer.

So many decades later, I’ve stopped swinging from trees and trespassing, but I’m still drawn to old abandoned buildings. Or what’s left of them. Mayhew Lodge intrigues me now. Whenever I hike the West Fork of Oak Creek, I always walk around the crumbling foundation, imagining what it must have been like to be there in 1947, when Arizona Highways published a listing for the lodge. “This is one of the oldest continuously operated resorts in Oak Creek Canyon and is beautifully situated in a delightful setting,” it reads. “Open year-round; 30 guests can be accommodated in comfortable rooms, with bath. Fishing, swimming, riding and hunting in season. Rates: American Plan from $7 per day.”
 

“Delightful setting” indeed. The lodge was built in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. But that’s not why Jess “Bear” Howard homesteaded the site in the late 1800s. He was on the lam at the time for killing a sheepherder in California. The secluded entrance to the West Fork made a great place to hide. It got even better in 1880, when he built a log cabin that was later absorbed by the lodge. He didn’t stick around, though. And neither did the string of subsequent owners, including the Thomas family, who operated a boarding house. It was a primitive lodge known as The Tioga on the day Carl Mayhew first saw the property.

Mr. Mayhew was working as a photographer in Flagstaff when Jesse L. Lasky, a pioneer in the Hollywood film industry, invited him to Oak Creek Canyon. The producer was scouting locations for The Call of the Canyon, a movie based on Zane Grey’s novel. When Mr. Mayhew saw The Tioga, he saw his future and made an offer. “I think he paid $7,500,” said George Mayhew, Carl’s son.

The property was a mess. “Pigs were running wild,” Carl’s wife, Ethel, said. “There were weeds as high as your head in the front yard. I remember a single red rose in the garden. There were no electric lights, no highway, just an old trail.”

However, it didn’t take long for the Mayhews to turn the run-down lodge into one of Arizona’s premier destinations, one that featured a swimming pool built into the red rock. In addition to the resort atmosphere and scenic backdrop, Ethel’s cooking was a draw. Traditional Sunday dinners were renowned. Other days, she’d serve up the unexpected, including lobster con queso and baked pears. She made pies, too, which impressed the celebrity guests: Ferde Grofé, Gloria Vanderbilt, Jimmy Stewart, Walt Disney, Lord Halifax, Clark Gable. One of the nicest, Carl’s daughter, Betty, said, was César Romero, who stayed at the lodge in 1940 while filming Viva Cisco Kid.

“We lived off the land,” George said. “We had two orchards there, and we’d trade apples for potatoes. We had corn. We had chickens. We had a cow — and it was just for milk.”

The patriarch died in 1943, but his wife carried on with the help of her family until 1969, when she sold the property to the U.S. Forest Service. “With the closing of the lodge,” Ethel said, “people just cried.” Sadly, things would get worse.

On March 26, 1980 — 100 years after Bear Howard built his cabin — Mayhew Lodge burned to the ground. No arrests were ever made, but most people, including the family, believe it was arson. Arsonists took the Ringling house, too. It happened several years ago, around the time we lost Robby. Like Mayhew Lodge, all that’s left are the skeletal remains. And the evocative memories of a daring boyhood adventure — a leap that landed us in the sanctuary of circus elephants.