Yesterday in Arizona Transportation

YESTERDAY TRANS

BEFORE the railroad and the highway, Arizona was a land of dreamy (and too many travelers) dreary distances. The land was hot and without water, the towns few and far apart. Indians with no sense of humor but with rifles ever ready and willing presented hinderances to transportation as serious as the weather and terrain. Those were the days before the paved highway, the slick busses and fast and powerful trucks. Those were the days before the gasoline age. River steamers came splashing up the Colorado, groaning with the weight of mining machinery and supplies for America's frontier outpost. There were mines to dig, towns to be built, a wilderness to be conquered. And men with courage hauled the machines and the supplies from the river to places all over the territory, the seemingly impossible task accomplished by mule trains and cursing. And before that, even when they were digging the mines at Clifton and Morenci, machinery was hauled overland from St. Joe, Missouri, and the ore was hauled back. The journey was not measured in days or weeks but in months and the housewives in those Greenlee county towns had to do their Christmas shopping months and months in advance. An Easter bonnet for my lady would come joggling half way across America, escape Indian raids and bad weather before appearing new and shiny on some storekeeper's dusty shelves. And when you wore it, with its feathers and frills, you weren't wearing a hat you were wearing an epic.Passengers and mail came by overland stages, clouds of dust through the hills and desert marking their path. Traveling in those days was a matter of patience, a sense of adventure, a belief in Providence, and a firm and healthy liver.

INDICATED FROM MCCLINTOCK COLLECTION IN ARIZONA PORTATION

When the railroads came pushing their way across the territory, distances diminished, but there were many points and places dependent on the wagon and the stage coach to keep in contact with the outside world. The railroads hurrying across America had time to pause only at the more important places and where they left off the teamster took over.

The whips cracked, the clean, clear but still unpublicized Arizona air was filled with curses, and the wheels creaked and complained as another haul was begun. These amazing people, truckers they were called, feared no load or distance as long as their horses and mules were well-shod and as long as there was enough whiskey at the end of the haul to wash the dust down with. To them weather was a whimsy, floods a foolishness of Nature, and the hot sun a ball of fire that made the back of your neck burn. The only thing important was to get the cargo through to its destination, not because of any dramatic or heroic attitude, but simply because if you didn't get the cargo through you didn't get paid.

It was just a business with them and while they didn't know it, and wouldn't care if they did, they were writing history the history of Empire. Their chapter has been written and they have gone the way of all the pioneers. Ours is a new age now, the motor age, and another race of men have appeared in our land equipped with new instruments but busy at the same old job chewing away at the dreamy (and to some) dreary distances. R. C.