New Mexico . . . Our Interesting Neighbor on the East

Eighteen miles west of Alamogordo, N. M., on U. S. 70 (above) is White Sands National Monument. Covering an area of 270 square miles, White Sands is one of New Mexico's noted scenic areas, a study in light and shadow. The great dunes are almost 100% gypsum and resemble granulated sugar. Below, a view of the Mission Church of the Pueblo of Acoma, located on the Rock of Acoma, in southwestern New Mexico. Established in 1629, the Mission hearkens to the days of the Spanish Conquest in our great Southwest. R. C.

September Soliloquy

SEPTEMBER'S arrival on the Arizona calendar is always an auspicious one. The month heralds the coming of autumn and finds summer beginning to pack up the more dazzling of her wardrobe. Out here in Arizona the changing of the seasons is not something that takes place overnight but is a gradual, almost imperceptible process, not harsh or impatient, but gentle and calm. So summer is still with us, you understand. in September but autumn is in the air. September's weather is just about perfect. For the traveler September and October are perfect travel months. All Arizona beckons and it would be hard to find two months more perfect for the adventurer following the open roads ahead. You will like September in our land. September also announces the busy time acoming. First there is the hunting season in the fall, and Arizona has just about all there is to offer for the sportsman. This year, as an added attraction, there is to be antelope hunting and folks who should know say that that is some sport. You really have to be a hunter to bag your antelope. For any details you want to know concerning licenses and seasons and bag limits, we suggest you write to the Arizona Game Commission, Phoenix. The colleges of Arizona start the fall semesters this month and that always adds to interest of things what with Flagstaff, Tempe and Tucson teeming with college students and the landscape cluttered with football players. The number of out-of-state students attending our state colleges and the university increases each year adding a cosmopolitan note to the already colorful campuses. And there is a reason for it too. Not only are our colleges outstanding as educational institutions, but their location adds much to their charm. The University of Arizona at Tucson and the Arizona State Teachers College at Tempe are in central and southern Arizona and that means "sunbath" weather all winter long. If you like a higher clime and you go in for winter sports, Arizona State Teachers College at Flagstaff will surely fill the bill. A note to the registrar at the university and the colleges at Tucson, Tempe and Flagstaff will bring you a catalogue and all the information you need. We might point out that you will have to go a long way to find colleges where the education for yourself or your children will cost you less. Nor should we overlook the Arizona ranch schools, where education and the life of the west are available for boys and girls from six to twenty. There are many such schools in the state some on the desert, some in the mountains-where a boy, for instance, can learn algebra and bulldogging at the same time, and where branding a calf is as much a part of the school course as English literature. School on the range and at the ranch can be a thrill for the boy or girl whose parents can afford such education for their children. Arizona ranch schools have just about anything any parent would want and ARIZONA HIGHWAYS urges further consideration of the schools if you plan to have your children attending away-from-home school this winter. If you want further information on Arizona ranch schools you can write to the secretaries of the chambers of commerce at Phoenix, Prescott, Mesa, Tucson, Wickenburg or Douglas; or to these organizations: the Tucson Sunshine Club, Tucson; Yavapai Associates, Prescott; Round-Up Club, Wickenburg; or to the Division of Publication and Travel, Arizona Highway department, Phoenix. You can always tell that September is here because all the resorts and guest ranches in the southern part of the state take on a hum of activity in preparation for the coming season. Bunk houses are getting a dusting, the saddles are being polished, the horses are being curried. This coming fall, winter, and spring should be the finest we've ever had in Arizona for our resorts and guest ranches. We have a couple of things out here in the winter that you can't equal-hospitality and sunshine. It is little wonder Arizona is becoming such a great winter recreational and vacation area. Such is the line of thought that was brought on by the contemplation of September in Arizona. Summer is still with us, you understand, in September but autumn is in the air. September's weather is just about perfect, and September reminds us of the glorious autumn and winter days to come. R. C.

OF MANY THINGS This particular package of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS could be well-labeled "soup to nuts" because it contains many things, and has as much a change of pace as a cross-eyed southpaw. It might even be labeled "odds and ends," only that sounds too booke shoppe to suit us. It deals with a variety of subjects, some of which we hope you find interesting. Our cover page this month is an unusual study of Monument Valley by Joseph Miller. The Navajo silhouetted on the bluff overlooking the valley, and the jagged skyline in the distance, has a touch of something very pleasing to us. We happened to be wandering through the Valley last month when a "Navajo sing" was about to start. The whole thing was like a tale out of a story book and to us it is one of the highlights in many happy miles of traveling over the highways and byways of Arizona. Elsewhere in this issue is our account of the "sing" with some fine pictures by Max Kegley. We haven't attempted to speak learnedly on the import of the dances, but our impressionistic account may give you some idea of how interesting we found the proceedings.

When you turn the cover you find yourself on a short visit to New Mexico, with a few views only of several of the many scenic wonders to be found in our sister state. Arizona Highways, in attempting to cover the great area known as the southwest, will wander occasionally beyond Arizona's borders. We wish to pay homage to New Mexico as a neighborly greeting and as a friendly gesture of the citizens of Arizona to the citizens of New Mexico.

We get down to business in these pages this month by presenting a story of Ventana Cave, down in Pima County, by Bernice Cosulich, feature writer for the Arizona Daily Star of Tucson. Mrs. Cosulich is a very fine and thorough writer, as readers of the Star will tell you, and we are glad to present her to you. In her article, "Past and Present Meet at Ventana Cave," she gives you an inkling into the importance of the archeological findings at the cave and takes you back to about 5,000 B. C. as that good year and era was lived by the folks in these parts.

If you live elsewhere and this magazine should find itself into your hands, and if you are one of those persons who would rather hunt than eat, you will enjoy the article, "Hunter's Moon," by Charles Niehuis. In it the writer lists some of the hunting possibilities of this state for the sportsman during the winter and fall. Buffalo, bear, lion, elk, antelope, deer, not to mention smaller game, are to be found within our borders and all you need to do is to know the season and to have the license and the rest is up to you. Good shootin'!

We didn't ourselves realize the importance of bridges in our highway system until Gusse Thomas Smith came in one afternoon and sub-mitted the manuscript, "Hyphens in the Highways," which you will find all slicked up with pictures in these pages this month. Mrs. Smith, who is hostess at the Arizona Biltmore each winter, spends her summers wandering around Arizona and knows more than most people about the state. On one trip this summer she got to thinking about bridges. She inquired about them and began writing about them and now we offer you the results of her thinking, inquiring and writing. It all makes good reading.

Jumping about from a "sing" to a cave and then to bridges, we come now to Franklin Parker's story of the Chinese youth in Prescott, who went back to China and is now a fabulously rich merchant prince in his native land. Mr. Parker is pastor of the First Congregational Church at Prescott, where our Chinese youth embraced Christianity many years ago. And then for a historical vignette of one of the most interesting copper camps in Arizona-Humboldt-turn to Tom White's article on that roaring old camp. You'll find that interesting reading, also.

If you like a "nature" story you will like "Of Glorious Combat," by Earl Jackson, custodian of the Montezuma Castle National Monument. If you like a touch of mystery in your reading you'll also like "The Saga of Queho," which solves the mystery of a Paiute renegade whose name was poison in Nevada and northern Arizona not so many years ago. Billy Belknap, Jr., did it for us.

That puts September, as it were, on the shelf. Until October, a pleasant journey, always. . . . R. C. SEPTEMBER, 1941 the friendly journal of life and travel in the old west Published monthly by the Arizona Highway Department in the interest of good roads and for the promotion of tourist travel over highways of Arizona. Communications should be addressed to Arizona Highways, Arizona Highway Department, Phoenix, Arizona. Subscription rates: One Dollar per year. Ten Cents per copy, Printed in the U. S. A.

Arizona Highways

for september, nineteen hundred and forty one, arizona highways, the friendly journal of life and travel in the old west, invites you to a few glimpses of an interesting land and an interesting people, with an invitation to visit this empire of enchantment, our delightful state: