ALONG THE CORONADO TRAIL

THE Golden FLEECE

SINCE Biblical times, and before, flocks have browsed on vast areas of the earth's sur-face where rainfall is scanty and where vegetation is too sparse to support cattle. Sheep have given sustenance to mil-lions of people through thousands of years and now, in the American West, irrigation threatens to alter man's oldest industry, just as it has pushed back the agricultural frontier of the new world. Habits and traditions as old as history itself are being broken by enterprising sheepmen of Arizona, who have found in the big irrigated valleys a warm sun that means new profit to an industry that has been sliding toward the red in the ledger for a decade. It has been the custom, since the day when David tended his flocks near Gali-lee, to drive the sheep out of the moun-tains and down the hillside each fall so that they can browse and "lamb" in warmth, away from the snows and cold winds of the highlands. This past winter hundreds of thous-ands of sheep have been driven out of the high mountains of Northern Arizona into irrigated valleys of Central Arizona, not far from the Mexican border. Many of these sheep will not be driven up the long trails into the mountains, next spring, but will make their residence permanent in the valleys. Sheep in the Arizona valleys are giv-ing up two fleeces a year! The late spring of 1937 found great flocks in the lowlands at a time when they ordinarily should have been hun-dreds of miles north in the great pine forests and on high plateaus. Cool weather kept the flocks at a low altitude and several owners, rather than begin the 300 mile trek up the well-marked sheep trails, rented alfalfa lands and kept their flocks in the valley all summer. The drive would take 30 to 45 days, they said and the return trip before the snow fell would take as long it would give the flocks but little time to fatten on the mountain forage. So the sheep stayed in the valleys, where a summer sun beat down hotly on unaccustomed sheep and shepherds, but to the amazement of all but the sheep-gave growth to an exceptionally heavy fleece. Experts from the University of Ari-zona animal husbandry extension service were consulted, and gave their "horse-back" opinion that two clips a year were possible! So the great electric shearing machines were taken out of storage, and early in the fall, the flocks were clipped for the second time in the year. Now it may become a universal custom

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The Coronado Trail blazes a path through pine and aspen forests, over the Blue Range and White Mountains, affording you high motoring adventure in one of the most picturesque portions of Arizona