Chino Valley: Where Beauty Lingers

CHINO VALLEY...

PEACE, beauty and habitation! It is eventide in Chino Valley. The shadows are long and the lowering rays of the sun cause even the smallest blade of grass to become important by its illusion; the clouds cast moving, purple patterned shadows on the wide landscape; and the small nodulous hills stand in armorial guard as sentinels before the growing loftiness of more distant mesas reaching ultimately the snow-capped San Francisco Peaks. Look out over Chino Valley and feel the serenity of the landscape, catch at least a fleeting moment of the contentment of the little farmsteads dotting the country-side. The small green fields, the flowering orchards, the little homes, the fence lines of cottonwoods, the lowing herds, and the little white church cast for you a canopy with the calm, the beauty, the prayers of the Angelus. Peace, beauty, and habitation haloed with floating clouds and fading sun create here a place where beauty lingers. As you listen and look you may see a band of antelope dancing in the sunshine on a nearby hill. When the sun recedes behind the hills and the golden glow becomes purple, then blue, then gray and darkness hovers, the lights go on in the houses and you turn away cognizant of the beauty that lingers. Chino Valley unlike some parts of Arizona presents in its extended panorama small farmsteads and great expanses of grazing land. The line of demarcation between "The Farms" and the range land is decisive and real. The little settlement of 2480 acres is an irrigated area where small farms flourish supplied by water brought fourteen miles by open ditch from Lake Watson to the south of Granite Dells. The settlement is a modern oasis surrounded by the semi-arid land which has given to Arizona its vast grazing lands and livestock production. The Valley is in Yavapai, the mother county of Arizona, and the settlement is about sixteen miles north of Prescott and is traversed by Highway 89. Approaching from the south you travel past Lake Watson, through Granite Dells (I prefer the Indian name "Point of Rocks") and over a rising terrain from Willow Creek until you reach the divide and look down into the valleys of Little Chino, Upper Verde, and Big Chino. At first you see only the wide expanse of semi-level land and the bordering purple hills but soon you see the settlement called Chino Valley. You approach the little farms with the tilled land and green alfalfa fields, the small homes and many fence rows then you are in the The Farms. You drive on and come to the outlying newer area of development where 1000 acres more are being irrigated from artesian wells. On you go past Del Rio (famous spring), back to range land, and finally climb again to a high plateau. Looking back from the north, the settlement is again lost in the distant shadows but you will remember those miles as you drive on to Highway 66; the miracle of the fecundity and beauty of the Valley will go with you.

Where Beauty Lingers BY CHARLES FRANKLIN PARKER

MEADOW SCENE IN CHINO VALLEY.

However, the great Del Rio spring and the attractiveness of the valley was to sooner or later lure some strong souls to its bosom despite the danger of Indians. A group of settlers did come in and among them the Bangharts and Postons. Later the Bobletts, Littles and others came. They stood their ground against Indian forays and later greater ranches were carved oiut of the area including the Campbell-Baker or 76 Ranch, which was the best horse brand in the entire country, the Van Deeren Brothers or IU Bar Ranch, the King Brothers, and the Perkins, who trailed their herds in from Texas. This development has continued until this day and some of Arizona's best cattle ranches are in this area of greater Chino. Another notable event at Del Rio was shared in by the Santa Fe Railway and the Fred Harvey Co. Fred Harvey established there under the great cottonwood trees a dairy and poultry farm to supply the many eating places along the Santa Fe, and pastures for the winter feeding of the mules used on the Grand Canyon trails. Though now the dairy has been discontinued and the poultry farm is privately operated the mules indicate its continued use and the yellow buildings with the red roofs still stand picturesque in the pastoral setting.

FLOWERS OF SUMMER TIME.

Myriads of antelope were much frequented by the foraging Apaches and Mohaves. While some settlers stopped it was not for more than a season or a freshening up period to go on to Fort Whipple or Fort Lincoln and to better watered valleys with United States Army protection. Puro is the station on the Santa Fe at Del Rio spring where the large water tanks of the Railway are filled with the pure spring water for the use of the locomotives and water tanks along the Santa Fe route. Tank cars are the usual scene at Puro as they are lined up on the siding for filling to maintain good transportation in times when the quiet serenity of the valley appears as a mirage in a world of chaos. About twenty-five years ago an enterprising group of investors from Indiana came to Arizona and purchased the acreage now in The Farms. Former United States Senator Tom Watson of Indiana was the leader in this endeavor. They built Watson Dam, carried the water to the Valley by open irrigation ditches, and subdivided the land into small farms. These farms were sold with all rights included and thus the project became self liquidating for the company known as the Hassayampa Farms Company. Some experimental farming was carried out by the Company and much of the acreage was actually plowed and planted in alfalfa before sales began.

The first farmers that came into The Farms were a colony of Russians. They were brought out through the efforts of Professor A. М. McOme of the University of Arizona, and Mr. R. N. Fredericks, then a banker in Prescott and president of the Yavapai County Chamber of Commerce. However, the plan was not entirely satisfactory and the Russians moved on after about two years. But Russian farmers are good tillers of the soil and much was accomplished in preparing the land for future developments.

After the Russian experiment The Farms were operated successfully by the Company. Mr. L. L. Bate, then located at the State's experimental dry land farm nearby, became interested in the possibilities afforded by the irrigation project. Mr. Bate interested a group of friends, members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, in Chino Valley. They came, farmers all, from earlier Mormon settlements at Snowflake and Mesa. This movement was the real and lasting establishment of homes and families in The Farms. Many of these original families have moved away and the area Can no longer be thought of as a colony or community of any one church affiliation. The sixty families there now represent a cross section of the American scene and they are all working hard to produce more food per acre than has ever been done before.

This Valley of pastoral quietude and spacious firmament is classically rural America. It is a spot that shows forth American ingenuity and resourcefulness. It portrays the strength of the good earth and has as a backdrop an amazing array of the magnificence of the Creator's handiwork. Artistically it is most

WATER IS WHERE THE TREES ARE.

alluring near sunset and it is then that the beauty lingers seemingly restrained and prolonged at the even-hour.

Into this valley came one searching beauty. Beauty that he could record by the magic of photography and Norman Rhoads Garrett, F. R. P. S. has made of this place a studio for the recording of those scenes and he has captured superbly the spell of the lingering beauty. Pictorials such as these require something more than natural beauty, which abounds here. They require a skilled artisan whose own perspective of life catches, absorbs, and reflects this beauty.

It is not only technique, composition and skill that makes pictorials good or bad, but also subject matter to which these procedures are applied. The subject matter and its treatment is most likely to characterize a pictorial. Subject matter in turn is not chosen alone or entirely by mechanical methods but by a sub-conscious imagery which places evaluation and "sees" pictures. This sub-conscious imagery stems from a life philosophy and thus comes the relationship of philosophy and pictorial embodiment. Norman Rhoads Garrett is proof of this belief.

Garrett is a native of Pennsylvania. He served as an ambulance driver in World War I and after his return to civil life was employed in a large insurance office in Philadelphia. In about 1926 his health failed and he went with his wife and daughter to Saranac Lake, New York. Upon advice of his attending physicians he moved to Arizona coming directly to Prescott in 1927. It was in 1928 that he began his hobby as a camera enthusiast but soon he was more than a shutter-clicker. He began submitting prints to salons in 1930. In 1935 he was made an Associate of the Royal Photo(Continued on Page Forty-three)