The Call of the West

If you haven't done it before you should not don your chaps, get on a cow pony, and spend a whole day chasing a bunch of cattle through a typical Arizona cattle range. It's hard work and if you take too big a portion at one sitting you'll wake up the next day full of aches and pains and sore spots and your bones will creak like the hinges on a rusty gate. Generations of clear thinking people have made the saddle about as comfortable as possible and skilled artisans have worked overtime to pattern the saddle to fit and to serve its purpose well, but if you are unaccustomed to riding and all at once you spend a day chasing a cow you will maintain that the saddle is an instrument of torture and the horse a demon under a saddle blanket.

While there is no law against it, you would look ridiculous seated on top of a couple of pillows for comfort's sake, and you surely would not look like a hard-working, debonair cowboy, that vision in nonchalance we all try to attain. Break in easy and gentle-like and when you get toughened up you'll find a day in the saddle good for the soul and out here in Arizona where the weather is ideal for that sort of thing you'll enjoy your experience to the utmost.

Every person should spend some time on a cattle ranch. There is something about the life on the range that affects you unlike any other experience. The cowboy will curse it as a dog's life at little pay, but have you ever seen a cowboy who wasn't full of fight and fire. We have yet to see a work-a-day cowboy who was down on life in general, who bemoaned the state of the world, or who had to be overhauled by a psychiatrist because of jumpy nerves. We once met a man who has an office in Wall Street, full of office workers running around like a bunch of wild steers, and with more dollars in the bank than he could possibly spend. All he would talk about was how much fun he had in his younger days working on a ranch in Idaho. And possibly the only fun he ever had in his life was on that ranch and if he had stayed in the cattle business he wouldn't have had so many dollars in the bank but his digestion would have been better.

The life on a cattle ranch teaches you the value of hard work, because it isn't a soft life. Isolated as you are, you also learn that you can have a lot of fun in the simple pleasures of life and that it is possible for a person to live quite happily without the broadening effect of motion pictures, bill board advertising, and the daily stimulus of the newspaper. You even learn that there is as much enjoyment in moonlight and starglow as there is in the sickly rieon dimness of a cocktail lounge. You learn that a horse is just about as good a friend as a person could have, just as reliable, just as companionable, just as faithful. And ten times smarter than most of your acquaintances. You learn that the fresh, zestful air of the open range is a good substitute for the carbon fumes of the city boulevard and a bawling calf makes just as good music as the peep! peep! of the motor horn.

After riding hard all day and you come to a stream you'll appreciate the taste and the uplift of good stream water. You'll enjoy the smell of cows and horses and the tired feeling at the end of a day's work.

An evening by the camp fire will be high entertainment and high education for you and then you'll come to learn how companionable simple, hard-working people can be. The finest literature in the world is the unwritten stories told around the camp fires in cow camps at night We know a man who writes books, good books, really very good books, who worked for a cattle outfit in Arizona for about five years. He contends that any person wanting to write should get around a camp fire and tell his stories. If you don't tell them well, the boys will just walk out on you. When it comes to stories, he says, a bunch of cowboys around a campfire are about the finest critics in the world. They know a story when they see one.. R. C.

The pictorial of the cowboys on the opposite page taking refreshments is by Tad Nichols. The scene is Sycamore Creek, near the Sunflower Ranch, on the Bush Highway.

Arizona... perfect winter vacationland

DEAR SIR: IT IS with great pleasure that we learn that you have decided to spend your winter vacation in Arizona. If we were to tell you that you have picked the finest place in the world to come for the winter and if we told you that Arizona's winter climate possessed the superior qualities you expect in the perfect winter climate you would tush! tush at the superlatives. So we won't tell you that. You'll find out for yourself.

Arizona, you know, is the admirably constituted vacation state. For your summer travels you'll find Northern Arizona perfectly delightful, and you'll find the scenery unsurpassed. During winter, Central and Southern Arizona come into their glory. You can't find anything nicer than a warm, friendly, sunshiny winter day on the desert because there isn't anything nicer than that.

We think our desert is the most beautiful place on earth and we promise you evenings, full of starlight and dim horizons you'll never forget. If you enjoy traveling about, every mile of highway and byway throughout Arizona beckons you to a warm welcome, and you can even take a day or two and motor into Sonora, our southern neighbor, and enjoy that strange, dreamy land called "Mexico."

There are so many things for you to do that we are sure you'll not find your vacation tiresome. We have lakes for fishing and boating, there are concerts and football games and parks and things like that, you can go hunting if you wish, and you'll find in any of the towns and cities you visit all of the conveniences and accommodations you require.

We are glad that you realize that a winter in Arizona is not only a rich man's delight. There are ornate resorts and ranches for people who desire more elaborate accommodations. But there are also small ranches, inns, auto courts and small hotels at almost any price one wishes to pay. Furthermore, there are so many kinds of accommodations available that the visitor can shop around and find exactly what he wishes at the price he wishes to pay.

Also, please come prepared for a very informal vacation. You and your family can dress in cotton and denim all winter and slouch about as you please without anyone noting anything unusual about your dress or deportment. You're coming to Arizona to relax and enjoy yourself and take life easy and how you do it and what you do it in happens to be your own business.

Nor should you feel you'll have difficulty getting around and getting located when you come to Arizona. Every town and city has a Chamber of Commerce or civic club formed wholly and solely for your benefit and to make your stay in Arizona as pleasant as possible. Drop into these places and ask any question you wish. You'll find that hospitality is something more than a word in Arizona and you'll find everyone anxious to assist you in being as comfortable and feeling as much at home as possible. We join with the citizens of our state in bidding you "Welcome to Arizona." You are coming to the perfect winter vacationland.

TRIBUTE TO OCTOBER

October is the blessed month in this blessed land, the perfect month for following the highways and the byways through northern and southern Arizona. For a portrait of October we refer you to our cover page, an artistic creation with the camera by Norman Rhoads Garrett, F. R. P. S. The pictorial study was made by Mr. Garrett along a road leading to San Francisco Peaks. The aspen are just beginning to turn and the sunlight on the tops of the trees changes the color from gold to silver. The winds of October play a melody in the trees and the fingers of the winds loosen the leaves and drop them silently to the good, dark earth. The earth smells clean and damp and in the road between the rows of aspen, where the sun hasn't come, the air has a twang and a bite and an exhilarating crispness. the friendly journal of life and travel in the old west

Arizona Highways

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.

We start out our pages this month with an account of "Lighthouse on the Desert" by James M. Barney, whose knowledge of old Arizona is complete and accurate. Mr. Barney grew up as a boy in Arizona territory and was alert to the drama and history enacted about him in those stirring days. Ross Santee provides the drawings for the article and as usual does a perfect job.

A house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright is always something to note in passing. This month we devote a few pages to a house he built for the Pauson sisters of San Francisco near the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix. We are especially interested in it because it typifies in many ways Mr. Wright's conception of a dwelling in the desert.

This month we are pleased to take you for an adventure in the Universe, leaving as it were, our roads and the good soil of Arizona. We take our journey through the telescopes of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. Joseph Miller supplies an account of the Observatory for us and we have a number of photographs by the Lowell Observatory staff showing how fascinating are some of our neighboring planets, stars and nebulae. Our own Lowell Observatory is one of the most important observatories in the world. The founder, the late Dr. Percival Lowell, set a tradition of astronomical thought faithfully followed by those he left to continue his studies.

Hollis B. Palmer of the Tonto National Forest is with us again this month with an account of the great sheep drive in Arizona. Each winter thousands of sheep are brought down from the mountains for winter grazing on Salt River Valley farm lands, and each spring they return to the mountains. The drive, along the Reno-Heber trail, is one of the most important sheep drives in the world. Mr. Palmer helped in laying out the trail and knows his subject well. The pictorial studies of the drive were made by Max Kegley, our own photographer.

If you have traveled for many miles over the Arizona highway system, you have enjoyed the look-outs and view points erected by the Arizona highway department at vantage places for you to see the country. Fred Guirey, our landscape engineer, explains the whys and the wherefores of the business. Just another service for the traveler.

Continuing our presentation of the national monuments in Arizona, we come this month to Walnut Canyon. The article is by Dale King, archeologist for the Southwestern National Monuments, and is an unusual presentation of an unusual subject.

At about this time of the year we always turn our thoughts southward to Sonora. For a Sonora subject this issue we give you a pictorial description of Angostura Dam on the Bavispe River and the interesting 110-mile journey from Douglas to the damsite. If you think the Mexican people are just sitting around in the shade, a trip to "La Angostura" will convince that our southern neighbors are up-and-coming folks in many ways. We are indebted to O. L. Parris of Bisbee for the fine pictures.

In closing may we again invite you to visit our state and may we suggest that for your winter vacation Arizona has more to offer you than anyplace else in the world. Come out and see for yourself. In the meantime, good luck and good journey.... R. C.

For the delightful month of october, the year nineteen and forty one, arizona highways, the friendly journal of life and travel in the old west, presents for your consideration a few pages of a many-sided and most interesting subject . arizona