Sycamore Canyon

Sycamore Canyon, even in this very advanced year of our very advanced century, is a discovery and surprise for the traveler. By its location, though, it should be as overrun with picnic parties as the municipal park in your home town.

Just twenty miles due north of the northern tip of Sycamore Canyon is Williams, that picturesque lumber and travel center on U. S. 66, near the junction of State Highway 64, along which you scoot northward to Grand Canyon, South Rim. If you stand on a corner of the main street in Williams long enough half of the world will soon pass you by and if you are patient you'll see license plates from every state in the Union, and many foreign countries almost every day of the year.

West of Sycamore Canyon, not too many miles through the juniper flats, you'll come across U. S. 89, not a cow trail by any stretch of the imagination, what with its heavy load of north-south Arizona traffic. South of Sycamore Canyon, and not too far south, you'll find the communities of Jerome, Clarkdale and Cottonwood, and all the rest of that vast inhabited area we call the Verde valley. In fact, Sycamore Canyon, after running its gnarled, twisted course, opens into the Verde Valley, giving up a grateful ghost as it were, glad to have come to its peaceful end. State Highway 79, affectionately known as the Oak Creek Canyon highway, which skips along some grand country between Prescott and Flagstaff, is earning its keep these days carrying many paying customers.

You'd imagine, then, that in these times any area bound by such highways as "66," "89," and "79" would be anything but "a discovery and surprise for the traveler." But such is not the case. Even today Sycamore Canyon would be a big task in the day's work of Old Bill Williams himself. It's just that wild and rugged.

At several places you can drive to the very rim of the canyon and for your trouble you'll be rewarded with an eyeful of country as eye-filling as Grand Canyon. But more people have traveled the length of Grand Canyon than they have Sycamore Canyon, strange as that seems. People who know about things like that say that only one party has ever made the passage of Sycamore Canyon from start to finish and when they came out they looked as if they came out second best in an encounter with a buzz saw.

Sycamore Canyon is a wild, rough, rugged country and therein lies its charm. You can't pack in because the brush and trees and undergrowth is so thick a horse can't even get started. You have to crawl and climb and slide and most of your way you are attacked with luxurious growths of various description with the unluxuriant habit of clawing at you. All Nature seems to be in conspiracy to trip you up and hold you back. That's the kind of country you'll find in Sycamore Canyon.

But it's a challenge for the venturesome and the hardy. There's bear there, and deer. Mountain lions pad along over its paths. Small animals of all sorts roam unmolested and protected through this wilderness.

Twenty years from now you might be able to rent a cabin in the very depths of Sycamore Canyon equipped with room service, and hot and cold running water.

Today the accommodations are very limited. A few berries on a bush, and things like that... R. C.