"Evening in the White Mountains"

IT IS EVENING in the White Mountains of Arizona, an early September evening casting a dim light over Big Lake. There is the peace and the stillness that comes to the forest in the evening, and even the trout have paused momentarily in the lake and no longer flip to the surface in little silvery splashes striking at insects.

The summer rain that came in the afternoon has gone, leaving only traces of heavy clouds in the sky and the clean, fresh odor of the rain in the pine, and the feel of moist soil underfoot. It is the most beautiful time of the year in one of Arizona's garden spots. It has been a good summer in the White Mountains.

In the higher elevations, the snows fell deep in the winter and all summer long the snows, where they were hidden from the summer sun, remained cool and unmolested in the shade. The rains that came in the spring were heavy rains, so that when trout season started the streams were full of water, almost too full for good fishing.

But the moisture of winter and spring soaked the black, rich soil of the mountains and the undergrowth was heavy and fragrant. All summer long the mountains wore the thick, green cloak of the forest, and the thick, green undergrowth. The afternoon rains in the summer kept everything green and fresh-looking. No place could be found where there was the brown, burnt-out look of an over active sun.

This evening, this cool September evening in the White Mountains, there is the peace and stillness of a lazy summer day turning in after a good day's work. The lake is placid, smooth, resting and restful. Until night comes on and the stars come out, the world seems to pause in one great grip of complete relaxation.

And then it comes to you all of a sudden. You sense it all around you. It might be in the air, which has a cooler nip than usual. It may be in the clouds, which suddenly seem to be in a hurry to move on. You know what it is but you don't know how you know.

Suddenly that summer evening in early September it comes to you all at once. Summer will soon be leaving and autumn is in the air. It comes to you like a strange discovery, there in the White Mountains of Arizona that evening in early September.... R. C.

Ventana Cave

(Continued from Page Seven) where the workmen just found a mummified dog of unknown breed? Perhaps, but a mother and her tiny infant, buried with her, are there. Did she die in childbirth?

How surprised they would be if they could know that their bodies are to be X-rayedblack magic none of their medicine men knew. Dr. Joseph D. Aronson of the Phipps Institute at the University of Pennsylvania wants to study the plates for diseases of the bony structures. No one of 1000 A. D., anywhere in the world, knew anything about blood types. Today Dr. P. D. Candela of Brooklyn, New York, will take portions of the mummies' bones and try to determine their blood type. "Probably be O," said Professor Gabel, "as is that of all North American Indians."

As the slow uncovering process went on, Dr. Haury explained some of the things he has found out about the cave dwellers. After all, the workers had taken out 32 mummies; it was an old story to him, yet his excitement could be felt as each new one was revealed. Some precious piece of new evidence might be uncovered in those burial pillows under the mummies' heads, in the baskets, pottery, saguaro scar tissue, or blankets turned over the flexed bodies, or in funeral offerings placed in the graves. "These Hohokams seemed to wear only breech cloths and sandals," Dr. Haury was saying above the clatter in the rock shelter. "We may presume they used blankets during cold weather. They may prove to be fur blankets similar to those found elsewhere in ruins over the state.

"Look in this burial pillow." Everyone moved, throwing up more clouds of the powder fine dust that coated faces and clothes. "They seemed to have tucked anything at hand in these pillows, or perhaps the items were the possessions of the dead person."

Carefully he handled that stiff pillow with its hidden articles. Out came a bone awl, polished and pointed, excellent for sewing sandals or hides. Then a cord made of human hair was followed by another cord of some unidentified fiber. And look at that belt Dr. Haury just pulled out of the pillow! It is elastic. Pull it out wide and instantly it returns to its normal two-inch width when you let go. Pull lengthwise and it is as strong as a rope. Admire that weaving for it is intricate, strong and firm after centuries.

"Now look at this," he said. His tone indicated something important. "This cotton textile was woven in this complicated, openwork design. We found a charred piece of this type at Snaketown and similar cloth in Northern Arizona and New Mexico cliff dwellings. I don't believe so complicated a technique could have been known all over the country. I feel there had to be a manufacturing center. Where? I don't know, but cotton could be grown most easily in Southern Arizona. It is interesting to find so much of this textile in this cave."

He talked of manufacturing centers. We thought of women at looms weaving that complicated cloth so it looked like all-over or Hardanger embroidery. The mind could visualize them making these nets with diamondshaped openings and cording together strips of rabbit fur for snug blankets. For them there were no stores with bolts of cloth and no simple housekeeping with gas and electricity. "What did they eat?" we questioned.

"For the most part they lived off the desert," Dr. Haury replied over his shoulder as he walked back into the cave. He returned with tiny corncobs and bits of hard squash rind. "They were agriculturists and food gathering folk. They raised corn and squash, supplementing that diet with mesquite beans, saguaro fruit, cholla buds, and the seeds of many plants. How many green herbs and leaves they ate we do not know."

He took a handful of bones from a grocery sack on which were marked key numbers to Skilled and interested workers are these Papago, some of whose people ran the scientists away from a scheduled "dig" at a village Apaches destroyed in the 1700's. Reason: disturbed Apache spirits would bring sickness to modern Papago children. Reason the laborers at the cave arc not afraid: "they were not our people; we knew no one buried here." Scientists may prove the Hohokam mummies direct ancestors of the Papago workers.

match which trench and from what level in that trench they had come. "All these have not been identified, but so far we know they ate deer, mountain sheep, coyotes, pack rats, rabbits, gophers, and other small desert animals. They caught desert tortoise," he continued, showing the mosiac back of one. Other grocery sacks gave up arrow points which showed a wide variety of types. Only one quiver has been found, its arrows still in it. The small points were mounted on short, thin shafts. Despite passing centuries, the sinews still held the points tightly in place. Dried foods they must have stored in baskets and pottery bowls, remnants of which came out of the burials and the cave's floor. Perhaps those diamond-meshed nets stored other foods to be air dried. We could see the bare outlines of the lives of the Hohokam rebels who buried their dead. We could imagine them spreading out over the valley with the dawn to search for food, select fibers for woven articles, to till small farms, and to find ores to grind for ceremonial paint or the wall friezes. Those rock murals have heroic figures in great headdresses and ceremonial garb. Red from iron oxide, black perhaps from charcoal and white from lime plaster seem fairly certain quantities, but the unknowns intrigued us. What did the figures and the border of geometric patterns represent?

All these obvious things one can see, but who can tell the fine points of the Hohokams' lives their gods and religious rituals, myths and legends, taboos and tribal customs, wars and defeats, and years of bounty and of drought? The day could have been spent in meditat-ing, but William Bailey blew the lunch whistle and everyone began the steep descent to camp. Bill is from La Grange, Illinois, and is a grad-uate student at the University. It is his job to supervise the workers while the professors commute to Tucson to lecture to their stud-ents. It is just a matter of 220 miles each round trip.

With clean faces and hands, full stomachs and abundant eagerness, we climbed up again to the eye-like cave. The silt poured into shoes. The Papago again stirred the dust, Dr. Haury took up the thread of the story where we had left off.

From the several gaping trenches, Dr. Haury chose one completely excavated. It showed, below the top four feet of grassy deposits from which had come the Hohokams, another eight feet without grass. That bottom portion looked disappointing until we watched what came out of it. All the organic matter had disappeared with time. Only stone implements and bones remain. The layers took one past the time of Christ, past the building of Rome, Greece, Carthage, and the pyramids, and into that Neolithic period on this continent when no man knew how to cultivate crops.

As we sat there our minds remembered that the last continental glaciation for North America has been dated from 20,000 to 65,000 years ago. We recalled that mammoth, mastadon, bison, the small horse, and other extinct creatures of the Pleistocene period have been found throughout the Southwest. What if the first Ventana residents could have known such animals? But, then, they didn't.

"We have found 2,000 years of pottery records here," broke in Dr. Haury's voice, returning us to the land of actualities. "This pottery is one of the bases on which the cave can be dated; textiles, sandal types, and stone implements also assist. Back of that 2,000 years of pottery comes the transition period when man changed from a culture without pottery to one with it. We've never found what we felt sure was that transition period until Ventana was opened. But months of laboratory work remain to be done.

"Now, below that transition period lies the stone age culture which ties into that of the Cochise culture which Dr. Antevs dates at 10,000 or more years ago. The cave's dating is nebulous as yet; we may find it goes back to 2,000 to 5,000 B. C., or earlier. Laymen are more eager to fix a positive terminal date than we," he said laughingly. "The pre-pottery period was one of a functional culture. No aesthetics, on finely woven cloth. The people were too busy just getting a living from the desert. We've found only tools that served some utilitarian purpose."

What the people looked like is anyone's guess. They may have been Mongoloid, short or tall, muscular or slight of build. No one knows because no skeletons have been found.

The tools of the ancient folk were coming from one of the trenches. We moved nearer to study the large metates and manos, beautifully fashioned pestles, hammer stones, primary choppers, uni and bifacial manos, scrapers, and other practical implements. The bones of carnivorous animals of all types came out with arrowpoints of widely differing designs. At a selection screen Dr. Haury quickly selected this or that stone or bone. All others he discarded. Why? To his trained eye a stone on which man has worked is instantly identifiable. Rocks show injury when struck hard, "percussion chipping." The blow leaves radial lines downward from the point of impact and circular bulges at right angles to the lines, he explained.

"This is a fine implement," he said as he picked up a stone. "It is a bifacial mano or one that has two sides at right angles to each other. Either face may be used for grinding seeds, beans, or ores for pigments. An efficient tool, it could also be used for many other purposes, such as softening a hide."

We tried hammerstones, pestles and manos and found each had an excellent hand grip so the greatest pressure or blow could be delivered. Their utilitarianism took no account of beauty, yet those mere rocks had a type of beauty. The realization of the age of the implements in our hands carried to us a special thrill. We felt that the men who had made and used them could not have known of the rising and falling empires in Europe, Asia and Africa from 5,000 B. C. to the time of Christ. Their news must have been limited to the tribal tilts of neigh bors or invasions of Indians from, what was to them, remote regions. Perhaps even they laid siege upon the strongholds of others.

We knew admiration for these early Arizonans as we sat beside their tools. They used the materials at hand. They had adjusted themselves to their desert environment, made it yield a living. They must have been selfreliant, sturdy folk; no weakling could survive. In this mood we suddenly realized that Castle Mountain's shadow was extending across the camp below. It was time to leave this window cave. Through it we had seen the changing patterns of past civilizations and had met its people who had not only wrested a living from the desert, but created something of beauty for themselves. Through it, too, we had seen the skill of modern scientists who are endeavoring to give us the whole, continuous story of the true pioneer residents of Arizona.

reliant, sturdy folk; no weakling could survive. In this mood we suddenly realized that Castle Mountain's shadow was extending across the camp below. It was time to leave this window cave. Through it we had seen the changing patterns of past civilizations and had met its people who had not only wrested a living from the desert, but created something of beauty for themselves. Through it, too, we had seen the skill of modern scientists who are endeavoring to give us the whole, continuous story of the true pioneer residents of Arizona.

Evening light lay in the valley as we began the descent to our car. Our eyes lingered on the illuminating light on a pyramid-like mountain to the East near Santa Rosa village, caught the shadows of two large openings in Window Mountain to the South, and saw the startling silvered wings of an army bomber flying toward Baboquivari range.

You Remember Humboldt?

That year, the plant got away to a bad start; so when the near panic of mid-1907 jolted the country, Humboldt was the first smelting camp in the Southwest to feel it. And it was hard hit. During August and September, the little combination train pulled out daily with eight, ten or a dozen smelter stiffs outward-bound for Douglas or Bisbee; and those perennially impoverished souls who lacked the required price of a ticket, shouldered their packs and trudged off over the hills, mostly toward Jerome-a stiff climb and a weary hike. Some even declared they'd "do a bit of prospectin', maybe, 'til she opens up again." Gradually, The Hollow, Little Mexico and Cooktown, and the double row of tiny cottages at the lower end of Main Street felt the pinch of the lay-off order. The Hill felt it, too. Then one day, came the order to "shut 'er down." Smoke no longer billowed from the stacks; the furnaces went cold; even the chimney from the mess house where the staff ate, became lifeless; houses and stores went gaunt and empty; there was no more shift whistle at three and eleven and seven. At night it was worse than ever: in place of the sparkle and brilliance of thousands of electric lights, occasionally overshot with the warm, crimson glow from brimming slag-pots when they dumped their hellish loads, the place was blacked out, except for the bobbing light from the watchman's lantern as he made his lonesome rounds. The converter floor, once an inferno of heat and noise and blinding light, was now cold and still and very dark. Also cold, still and dark were the once gay and giddy night spots down in The Hollow.... A screen door at Schwanbeck's banged and squeaked listlessly, almost in time with the hoot of the lonesome owl perched atop the brick facade, as he watched and blinked at the full moon rising over the Black Hills.

The ten to fifteen-car train, with oil from the Coast, limerock from Puntenney and ore from half a dozen mines and the combination baggage and passenger car at the very endwas now cut to two cars. And in the wake of the shut-down, a similar fate overtook a score of small mines near-by, such as the Yaeger and the Iron King, the Jones mine at Chaparral, the McCabe, the Henrietta and the Pol-and mines, and the properties in and about Mayer and Crown King and Walker and Pres-cott. The smelter-owned Blue Bell near Mayer and the De Soto at Middleton likewise lan-guished when paralysis set in at Humboldt.

For six long years the little camp was definitely a ghost; the only activity was marked by the daily arrival of the much abbreviated train from Prescott, followed by the desultory shuffling of the figures of a few die-hards, always hopeful "she'll open up soon," as they followed the postmaster up the hill carrying an all but empty pouch.

Then came rumors; before long the air was electric with a contagious sense of imminent good times. "Yes, sir; she's goin' to reopen this spring-summer at the latest." The well-known grapevine throbbed and sizzled, as men came in from all over; these included such former Humboldters as Clem Pederson, reengaged as purchasinig agent, Otto Janssen as auditor, Walt Goeglein as yard foreman, Arthur Marshall as sample mill shifter, and dozens of others. It was a real story-book reunion, accomplished to the exhilarating sound of the hammer, saw, riveter and the unloading of new machinery and fresh supplies.

The company had been reformed as the Consolidated Arizona Smelting Company; the new general manager was G. M. Colvocoresses, a mining and metallurgical engineer of wide experience, and an able executive. He "clicked" immediately, with the entire force. Once more the camp came to life, and with it a dozen mines in the district. Main Street again throbbed and throve, and so did The Hollow. This was in the spring of 1914; by May, the furnaces were blown in and the smoke began streaming down Lonesome Valley. Then one night in mid-August when Gary Vyne was giving his weekly movie drama at Jones Hall, the feature was suddenly cut in favor of a slide proclaiming "England declares WAR on Germany!"

This was destined to mean great things for Humboldt. The price of copper zoomed and soared until it reached a 32-cent price level during '16 and '17. Those were banner years for the camp, especially while the Little Daisy (later "U. V. X. Mine") shipped its ore there, pending completion of its own smelter at Clemenceau. So rich was this ore that for every three carloads arriving in Humboldt, one car of blister copper was dispatched to eastern refineries. . In one of the hectic war years, the C. A. S. Co. set up the astonishing precedent of declaring a dividend!... Money flowed freely. Guns spat out hot lead twice-once fatally; the "toter" lit out for hills ahorseback, and Deputy Marks, after a futile chase, had Doc Vivian attend a nasty arm wound result-ing from a slug from the toter's gun. A bad fire destroyed the sample mill and storage bins. Badger fights being outmoded, mountain lion "hunts" gained vogue and victims! Home guard "incidents" occurred on The Hill, under General Scott and Colonel Brunskog. Deputy Smith raided a polite bridge game on The Hill, freezing visible funds total-ing 40 cents, causing feminine hearts to skip a beat at the prospect of doing a stretch at Florence.

Then came the Armistice from which the last echoes of the Humboldt power house whistle haven't yet died out! Bert Banks. as captain of Royal Canadian Engineers, returned from France with certain signal honors spelled with initials. Bud Gilbert, Johnny Peel, Mort Smith and others brought o. d. and navy blue to the streets of Humboldt. One who failed to return was Billy Kinsman: the local Legion post was named in his honor.

Meanwhile, the ore kept rolling in as the blister copper went out; but the long overdue ebb in the market finally set in, and late in 1920 the warmth and breath of life again departed Humboldt. Again the camp was gripped with discouragement, though not so tightly as before.

So in April of 1922, back she came, with a bang. Once more the compressor thumped rhythmically, the furnaces roared and converters breathed flickering color. Again the ore trains rolled in from Blue Bell and beyond, to dump their clattering loads into the bins to be crushed and rolled, then digested by flotation, or perhaps fed directly to the furnaces. This time, it was the plant of the Southwest Metals Company, and still under the direction of G. M. Colvocoresses. "Tony" Smith was his assistant, Frank Corwin the smelter super-intendent, Arch Scott chief chemist, "De Soto" White superintendent of mines; and in the office, Otto Janssen still was auditor, with Tommy Connell as chief clerk; "Soss" Henry was purchasing agent.. The ultimate on the social side of all this revived prosperity was achieved with the arrival from New York of Colonel Thompson, who financed the re-vival. His guests included Lord and Lady Louis Mountbatten, close friends of the then Prince of Wales. While their private car stood out on the siding below the tennis court, the home of Manager and Mrs. Colvocoresses be-came the scene of a four-day series of brilliant receptions and dinner parties.

The late summer of '23 brought disquieting signs; the copper market was again edging away from prosperity levels and so was Hum-boldt. It was a matter of only months before the camp was shut down, tight. Right here, asterisks alone could best point the picture of what happened.

Both the plant and the townsite were de-nuded of everything of salvage value: machin-ery was yanked out, whole rows of houses knocked down for shipment elsewhere.

But there's still a store, post office, garage, and the district school-where maybe the history course includes an outline of Humboldt's hap-pier days. This wasn't so long ago, either; Humboldt hasn't yet attained senility as a ghost camp, for it's only the son of the son of the first owl, that blinks and hoots at mid-night while the full moon swings over Lone-some Valley.

Roosevelt Dam not only serves to store water, but it acts as an important hyphen in the highway, carrying the traffic up the Tonto and to Pine and Payson over the Salt River. This photograph was taken last spring when Roosevelt Lake was overflowing the dam.

Hyphens in the Highways

Such rapidity that the whole bridge travels up and down a full twelve inches each twenty-four hours. When you cross the Dome bridge in safety and comfort give it a bit of sympathy -it never has time to rest.

The Colorado rivers, big and little, are responsible for thirteen superb desert bridges; seven over the latter alone, which is neither little nor good natured at times. Over the fierce old Colorado itself, four hyphenate Arizona and California-at Yuma, Blythe, Parker, and Top-ock near Needles while as a by-product, the top of Boulder Dam, near Las Vegas, does the same with Nevada. Excluding the miraculous swinging catwalk near Phantom Ranch in the depths of the Grand Canyon only one bridge has managed to get across entirely within the state, but what a bridge that is the only one in three hundred miles of river, the Navajo bridge on highway 89 at Marble Canyon.

The location of Navajo bridge is deep in the most dramatic region of the whole southwest. To reach it U. S. Highway 89 runs north from 66 near Flagstaff, past spectacular volcanic craters, through weird reaches of the Painted Desert, across the lonely land of the Navajo stretching for incredible miles along the base of the sheer walls of Echo Cliffs. Far to the north beyond the Grand Canyon the Vermilion Cliffs are the edge of the world. It is a land of mystery and color, stirring strange depths of imagination, bringing intimations beyond interpretation of how all myths were born. Untold generations of men have lived out their lives north and south of the canyon as completely separated as are those two vast escarp-ments.

Then one day from the north came a man named Lee in desperate flight from avenging judges. In Marble Canyon, eight miles above the present bridge, he dared fashion a ferry of sorts, which for years made occasional trips across the angry river bearing hardy travelers to the unknown regions of the south.

Outside in the big world more than sixty years were added to man's calendar. Nations outgrew their dooryards and fought neighbors for space, science found wings for man, and gasoline shrunk miles to minutes. But in the land of the Navajo nothing changed, time there knew only its century-slow pulse of the ages. Echo Cliffs stared north at its Vermilion sister with no feeling of nearness, and the stern old river cut its way to the heart of the earth unchallenged.

Now until near the middle of the nineteen twenties was the spell broken by man, coming this time from the south across the raw desert, hauling tents, supplies, and tools to make permanent camp at Marble Canyon. Out of the blue emptiness appeared a solitary Navajo, to climb on a high rock and sit for weeks in judgment on the sanity of these white intruders. By day he was at his post, in the darkness he disappeared to report to his astonished people. Benches were blasted in the sheer canyon walls high above the river, men toiled to plant firm foundations on either side. One day a long arm of steel reached from the south toward one from the north. It was too much. Men should not defy nature. The wisdom of the ancients must be shared with these foolish ones. So the old Indian climbed down, found the head man and, pointing solemnly to the river in the depths below the presumptuous arms, said earnestly, "You can't-him won't let you."

But these men of today could-they didbridge the Grand Canyon, and join the north and south rims, join northern and southern Arizona, join Mexico and Canada. The incredible Navajo bridge was dedicated in 1928 and it is today the highest steel arch single span bridge in the world-not the longest but unquestionably the highest. Its value cannot be overestimated as it is the only crossing over the canyon between Moab, Utah and Boulder Dam near Las Vegas, Nevada-the longest, most impassable three hundred miles on earth. Could the value of any bridge be overestimated? A. F. Rath, State Manager of the Arizona Highway Planning Survey, himself a Bridge Engineer, said one day, "Any bridge is the most important bridge in the world to a man at the moment he needs to cross it." Yet ordinarily we pay not the slightest attention to any bridge except the one that disappoints us. People are just funny that way.