Lost Garden of the Kofas

There they were again, blue in the southern distance -the cliffs and spires of Kofa!

But this time there was no hurrying past the scene, no business schedule that would keep me headed straight through Quartzsite on U. S. 60, fighting an almost overpowering urge to swing southward into the inviting fastnesses as far as wheels could roll, to tramp as far as feet could step, to climb until hands could reach only into the violet-blue above that castellated crest . . . .

Saguaro-studded desert sparkled in February sunshine. Arizona Highway 95 was a broad strip of earthen carpet stretched toward a fantastic horizon that might have been imaginatively cut out of cardboard. But the mountains took on a third dimension as the silent spaces sped back and disappeared behind our dust cloud. Highlights and shadows gradually appeared and I knew that these, like all desert mountains, deceived the distant observer with an illusion of shallowness and flatness. Each of those vague projections would be a long headland jutting far into the dry sea of flat desert, and each of those indistinct, shadowy recesses would be a tortuous canyon, offering a rough, winding passage back into a jumble of cliffs and mesas and craggy peaks. And in one of those canyons there was said to be a lost grove of tall palms, difficult of access and practically unknown.

Three days of exploring uncovered no sign of the legendary palms. Probing the Kofas from every possible point-forcing the car through thickets of creosote and over sandy washes, driving as close as possible to the great bulk of Kofa's central mass, and walking when the car could not be driven, pried, or shoveled farther-I found no trees except mesquite and palo verde. Deer there were aplenty, and hawks and lizards and rabbits and quail. and above the sheer precipices vultures sailed endlessly. Ocotillo, sage, saguaro, white buffalo grass, and a dozen kinds of small cactus decorated the sloping bajadas. In silence broken only by the sound of my own footsteps and the sweet, plaintive song of the canyon wren, I wandered through cool gorges and across flats where Monument Valley's sandstone buttes and spires are reproduced in

PAGE ELEVEN OF ARIZONA HIGHWAYS FOR FEBRUARY, 1948

MARTIN LITTON

In one of the narrow canyons of the Kofas is a strange garden peopled by palms whose origin is a dark mystery.

Flinty basalt. No "desert rat" could be disappointed in the wonders of the Kofa Range, yet . . . were there native palms in Arizona? If there were, the Kofa had kept them a well concealed secret.

The California fan palm (Washington filifera), used widely now as a street, park, and garden ornamental, is native to the shoreline of an ancient arm of the sea, which once extended northward from the Gulf of California. Much of the area it covered is below sea level, cut off from the present Gulf by the delta of the Colorado River. The sea-level contour is marked by occasional palm groves which have given names like Thousand Palms, Palm Springs, and Seven Palms, to communities and resorts where they were found. The Kofa palm (Washingtonia arizonica), found only in one place, a hundred miles from the ancient beaches, seems to have no direct connection with the California variety. If the Arizona specimens are remnants of a once-widespread species, there is no satisfactory explanation for the disappearance of the rest of the trees, for identical conditions for plant growth prevail over thousands of square miles of surrounding desert. and it seems unlikely that there could have been any range reduction by climatic changes, as happened to the red The turrets and pinnacles of the Kofa Mountains down in Yuma County arise bristling from the fair desert.

woods, without destruction of all the trees in question.

A year ago the opportunity came for another visit to the Kofa wonderland. With the exact location of Palm Canyon fixed on a sketch map, there was little chance ofmissing the spot this time, if it were possible to drive within walking distance of it.

Again the pavement was gladly left behind. Arizona desert and adventure were ahead. The Kofas hung suspended in the sky, separated from Earth by a shimmering mirage. A coyote trotted across the road and off amongthe creosote bushes. As I approached the mountains, thefluid band of light beneath them thinned, and one by one the turrets and pinnacles stabbed down beneath the mirage to fasten themselves to a quivering horizon.

An indistinct trail led off toward the Kofas at about the right distance from Quartzsite, approaching a massivecliff at the left of a deep notch on the outer surface of the range. At night, from camp at the end of the road, the cliff loomed big and black, its buttresses marked by silver lines as the moon rose over the rough summits and floodedthe still desert with clear white light in which even minor details of distant ranges could be seen.

In the morning, after a hike around the cliff and into the canyon, there was the sudden thrill of discovery as the uppermost palm fronds were sighted, bright glossy green against the purplish red wall of a narrow tributary gorge. A hurried scramble up a natural chimney required the use of fingertips and knees at one point, but after the chockstone was passed, I found myself in a little Garden of Eden, enclosed by sheer walls that shut out most of the sky. At the entrance to the rustling bower there was a waist-high barrier of scarlet firecracker flowers. Along a steep natural staircase that ended against a vertical wall, about a hundred palms were arrayed in graceful clusters, shading a deep, slippery mattress of fallen fronds.

The whisper of breeze-stirred palm leaves seemed to say, "Come back!" as I reluctantly slid down over the brink of the tiny paradise, feeling for footholds. Back in the main canyon, I went up to its head and out onto the first summit plateau of the range. The exertion of the dry climb was rewarded by the discoverey of three more small groups of palms tucked high in inaccessible side ravines, and by the sight of a bighorn mountain sheep, on a precipitous ridge only a few yards away, but separated from my position by a sheer-walled chasm.

The Kofa massif is something like Superstition Mountain in appearance, but wider and more extensive, and beautiful beyond description. Perhaps it is the very isolation of the range that has kept it out of Arizona's folklore. Its romance is of the present, not of the past. It has no history of lost mines, Spanish gold, or marauding Indians. It was explored first by practical, hard-headed American miners. The word Kofa has no romantic origin, but is a contraction of King of Arizona a mine on the south side of a connected uplift named the S. H. Mountains by prospectors.

In the past year the Highway Department has "civilized" Kofa by scraping out a road from state highway 95 to the base of the mountains, right at the mouth of the big box canyon that contains little Palm Canyon, bringing Washingtonia arizonica within easy reach.

With the introduction of the Kofas to civilization has come the need for protection of the area from damage by humans. A measure of such protection has come with the creation of the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, a federal preserve which encompasses the entire Kofa Range and large tracts of surrounding territory. It is hoped that no further protective measures will be needed; at present no poaching of the rare game species-desert bighorn, antelope, and brush deer has been reported. But a few careless campers have started an accumulation of tin cans and bottles at the road's end, and there are a few discarded cigarette packs and film cartons on the trail. Conservationists would like to see the area patrolled regularly by wardens or placed under the care of a permanent custodian.

Highway 95, between Quartzsite and Yuma, is a road through Arizona's past. Old ore wagons and an occasional adobe ruin are seen along the route, which for 87 miles passes through a waterless, uninhabitated expanse of unspoiled desert country. Twenty miles south of Quartzsite is a sign marking the beginning of the nine-mile side road to Palm Canyon. All around are imposing, colorful ranges -the Trigo, Castle Dome, Chocolate, Dome Rock, and Plomosa mountains that might well harbor a hundred gay winter resorts, but where, instead, the bright lights after dark are the stars thousands of stars, big and little, like silver nuggets and silver dust strewn thickly over the black sky an inspiring sight best seen from a sleeping bag, with music provided by far-off coyotes.