YOURS SINCERELY

YOURS SINCERELY WHEN THE WEST WAS YOUNG

Arizona Highways booklet is a very beautiful presentation of color offset lithography and letter press printing. The art work and color work are beautifully done, and the artist and lithographer doing this work should be highly complimented for the effects obtained.Being printers and offset lithographers ourselves, we feel that we are in a position to judge this type of work. We want you to know that we feel you have accomplished excellent results.

I look forward with most pleasurable anticipation in receiving Arizona Highways. Might explain that I am naturally interested because I represented a St. Louis concern back in the early '80s and '90s and was one of the first "drummers," as they called us in those days, to blaze the trail in the great country of Arizona when it was in the making. When I first hit Phoenix it was a town of about 2500 people. One of the big stores there was Irvine and Company, and I recall when old man Luhrs built one of the first hotels in the town. We would reach Phoenix from Maricopa by stage, crossing the Salt River at Tempe. In those days Prescott was quite a booming mining camp and we would drive by wagon from Phoenix to Prescott, a distance of about 125 miles.

Paul J. Wielandy St. Louis, Missouri.

FROM AN OLD ARIZONAN

As a former Arizonan (1891-1913) I greatly enjoy your magazine, particularly the various writeups of Northern Arizona, where I lived most of my stay in the (then) territory. Your March and April numbers have especially interested me. I met Dr. A. E. Douglass when he first came to Flagstaff, in 1894, and looked through the first glass he trained on the stars from what was afterward Lowell Observatory Hill there. I also saw the first tree sections he marked off with pins to indicate the rings when he began his study of sun-spots and weather. I have seen him here recently in Southern California, and have followed his career throughout with great interest.

I think I can fairly claim to be the first person who ever "wrote up" Sunset Mountain, to which your April number gives so much space. With a party of friends I visited this interesting crater for the first time in 1895, and gave it a short article in the Coconino Sun, In those days Dr. Scott of Princeton University with a party of students visited the Flagstaff région and went over the lava beds. As I remember, it was their verdict that the latest lava flow at the foot of Sunset was not more than five hundred years old. I went to the Snake Dance at Walpi in 1897, and visited what was afterward called Wupatki, under the guidance of old Ben Doney, with some friends, in the Fall of 1899. In later years I covered the entire territory, sary the Roosevelt Dam under construction, went to Springerville by horse stage, and made several trips to the Navajo country; superintending the construction of the first hospital at Ganado. So you will see the Highways is full of inter-est to me.

Frank C. Reid Los Angeles, Calif.

WHOSE RIVER?

In your May, 1946, issue of the Arizona Highways, you wrote in the article on Davis Dam of the Colorado, and I quote, "Incidentally, we can call it names because it is our river, but no one else can." From that I assume that you mean that you, an Arizonan, can call the Colorado River yours for the State of Arizona. I, a native of the State of Colorado, would like to know on what you base that. Perhaps it has slipped your mind that the Colorado River originates in the Rocky Mountain National Park near Denver, Colorado, and drains water from about two-fifths of the state that has over forty peaks towering over 14,000 feet in altitude, many of which are snow capped the year around.

The Colorado River flows in a general south-westward direction for about 2,000 miles through Utah and Arizona into the Gulf of California. It also forms part of the boundary between Arizona and Nevada and Arizona and California. The Gunnison River of Colorado, the Green River of Wyoming, the San Juan River of Utah, and the Gila and Little Colorado Rivers of Arizona flow into it. However, the Gila River does not flow into the Colorado until it is very near its mouth, the Gulf. Nevada, New Mexico, and California can be credited for some of the water of the Colorado since many of the creeks that head these rivers are in these states. Therefore, I am at the con-clusion that since there are seven states of the United States that can be called part of the Colorado River Basin, Arizonans have very little, and in my estimation no reason, to call the Colorado River theirs. If any one has that right, I would say it was we, the Coloradoians.

Vinson L. Porterfield Buckeye, Arizona.

PICTURE BY O'SULLIVAN

I desire to add my word of high praise to the innumerable ones you must receive daily. I have just read the May number and looked a hundred times at the marvelous pictures. Not the least, the Canyon de Chelly taken by O'Sullivan in 1873!!

I have been there many times, have taken many photographs of it and the White House but have never been able to approach the effects shown in the May number.

H. M. Gorman, Ojai, Calif.

CAPRICE

At some unbeaten spot, far removed from the trails, Where the timber and verdure are lush, Nature often will conjure a picture that pales Any work of a great master's brush. Where the balm of the sunlight beats down all the year And no human has preyed on the scene, Lofty trees, spreading limbs in abandon, appear To give thanks for their setting serene.

After rains in the summer the wild grass stands high And verbenas and poppies will grow On a foreground of green, framing clouds driving by That cast scurrying shadows below. Here a patriarch tree, bowing low as it grew, Gives mute signs of long seasons of peace And sets vibrantly down on a canvas of blue The result of sapling caprice.

STAN ADLER.

SAND PAINTING

The wind is rising. Tamarisks weave and whisper. And the cottonwood has turned its leaves to dip The last fool's silver from the moon.

Across The dune a coyote hears the faint wind-whine And turns back to the sawtoothed rubble Of the hills. The lizard presses closer To the rock. A jewel blinks. A throat pulse quickens As the palo verde showers him with poor Man's gold. Uneasily the smoke tree moves To join the whirlwind down the river bed Hunched soundlessly along the fronds.

The wind Is rising on the dunes, is roaring down The draw, and all the shining land is bent Before the silken sifting of the sand.

MARJORIE CLUM BARTER.

RESERVOIR OF BEAUTY

I often wander to the desert edge My eyes on rugged peaks not twice the same; Their morning blues may summon forth a pledge Of higher aspiration. Clouds of flame Around bronze crests at sunset warm my heart And fill me with a glow of quiet bliss. Here I find new strength. Trouble cannot thwart The soul that stores up beauty such as this.

HELEN L. TONER.

THE JOSHUAS BLOOM

Joshua trees in bloom are like lovers, finding each other late in life. The grotesque giants hold their bride-white flowers exultantly, in close packed clusters; no showering, loose extravagance of beauty, long and dearly sought, but rather, a fierce cherishing as if in premonition of their brief, too sudden withering LORRAINE BABBITT.

THE SANDSTORM

Suddenly flashing out of its black cloudscabbard, The sky dagger knifes the freak darkness, Kidnaping the sun From the desert. Then the storm gong thunders The lizard scurries for a rock. Only the ghostly silhouette of a herder Scuffles forward through the mist Like some strange, unearthly spirit Piloting the flock.

G. RAPHAEL SMALL.