John Hance

variety, leading the listener along the paths of plausibility until suddenly he found that imperceptibly he had been introduced to conclusions and facts that were obviously impossible -or were they? Many visitors left his sessions convinced that John Hance's yarns were as logical and valid as the multiplication table. This delighted him beyond words, but he took great care that the visitors never learned about it.His stories were usually spontaneous, designed to fit the particular situation confronting him at the moment. One minute, to thrill a timid, fluttering schoolmar'm from the east, the Grand Canyon would be full of snakes-thousands of snakes at every turn in the trail, forming daisy chains to bridge themselves across chasms or down steep cliffs, and hunting in packs like wolves.

The next minute, for a new and different audience, E. O. Messimer relates that he would state"Snakes? No-there's no snakes in the Grand Canyon any more. Used to be, though-millions of 'em.

"One day, down at Indian Gardens, I must've seen four hundred snakes at once. They were all in a big ring, single file, just going around in a circle. I watched for about twenty minutes and they just kept right on playing follow-the-leader. But at noon, when I looked again, the ring was smaller-just about half size. I couldn't see where any snakes had left, so I looked closer; and do you know, every snake'd swallered the tail of the snake ahead of him and they were all crawling and swallering just as steady as a 21-Jewel Swiss movement.

"By evening they were all gone-they'd eaten each other all up!"

And he would walk away to look for new groups to confound.

John Hance's early history can be authenticated in part; although like most specialists in "windies," a list of the things he said he had done would make him a centenarian early in life. However, certain facts can be ascertained. He was born in Tennessee-probably at Cowan's Ferry. The year is uncertain. In his guest book, on September 7, 1898, J. K. Hare of New York City, has entered: "Captain Hance's birthday; forty-eight years old. May his years to come be as many as the tales he tells, but this we are afraid would prolong his life far into the millenium."

From this it would appear that he was born in 1850. However, this in turn would have made him only 68 years of age at the time of his death, had him in the Confederate Army (if he ever was in the Confederate Army) at the age of 11 or 12; an Apache scout in New Mexico or with Quantrell's Guerillas (if he ever was an Apache scout in New Mexico or with Quantrell's Guerillas) at 18. Thus we can only assume that he saw a chance to get Mr. Hare to stage a party, and the birthdate was another of his spontaneous inventions. Residents at Grand Canyon, where their beloved "Cap" Hance spent his last years, swear that he was well into his eighties at the time of his death; and the Arizona Republic, reporting his death, lists him as 84 in 1919. This would place his birth in 1845. However, his own official statements are further contradictory-probably deliberately so. Voting records show that in 1906 he claimed to be 64 years old, and 60 years old in 1908, or a loss of four years of age in two years' time. Take your choice-His family moved to Missouri in 1852; and the Prescott Journal Miner, in writing his obituary, lists him as entering the Confederate army from that state and spending his war years as a prisoner of the Union army. However, his niece, Mrs. A. P. Rose, questions this particular point, since she states that her father, George (John's brother), was an ardent abolitionist; and she is certain she would have known had there been a secessionist in the family.

Following the war, again we find John Hance's statements conflicting and unreliable. He was a dispatch rider out of Fort Leavenworth in 1865, according to the Prescott Journal Miner. He was an Apache fighter in New Mexico, according to his own statement when he wasn't claiming to have spent the same years in Texas or Missouri. Again, his niece comes to our rescue. She writes of her father, George Hance, later a leading citizen of Camp Verde-after the Civil War: "He and John Hance were employed by Lorenzo Butler Hickok (brother of Wild Bill Hickok and called 'Tame Bill' in contradistinction, although neither one was named Bill, Wild Bill's name being James Butler Hickok) when Hickok was transportation boss of a large wagon train, thirty-four wagons with six mules to a wagon hauling supplies to forts under the United States Army. I have heard my father tell of this wagon train always having military escort because of Indians. John Hance was employed as 'mule skinner' as my father called it, meaning he had charge of one outfit. After I was old enough to remember, Mr. Hickok spent two winters with us at Camp Verde and I often listened to him and my father talk of those events. I tell you this as it would seem to me to refute the idea that John Hance was at anytime a Confederate."

John Hance, his brother George, and a party of others, came to Prescott, Arizona, in November of 1868. Soon both John and George located at Camp Verde, where George ran the sutler's store and purchased a farm, later being Justice of Peace for the community for many years. While in Camp Verde, John handled many contracts for wood and hay for the soldiers at the camp, employing Mexican labor usually to cut galleta grass with cotton hoes to fill his hay contracts. He and George also owned a number of "bull" teams at this time. Together, they had a train of eight teams which were hired to move the baggage and the helpless Indians when 3,000 Apache Indians were moved from the Verde Valley to the San Carlos Reservation.

Between 1883 and 1886, John Hance came to Grand Canyon, settling on the south rim about sixteen miles east of the present Canyon Village. From then on, the Grand Canyon was his home and his major interest in life. Here, with William ("Bill") Ashurst, father of Senator Henry Fountain Ashurst, Niles Cameron, Pete Berry, and other pioneers, he was extremely active in mining ventures. By 1886, his trail to his asbestos claims at the mouth of Red Canyon, near famous Sockdolager Rapids in the Colorado River, was completed, and he began advertising for tourists. As all mining men, he had a good working knowledge of geology; and based on that and his astonishing vocabulary, he began telling visitors of the canyon formations to increase their enjoyment of their trip, soon branching out into his enormous improbabilities, to thrill and confound those who were easily impressed.

He was a tall, very slender man-probably about five feet, eleven inches tall, weighing about 155 pounds. He walked unusually érect, well back on his heels, and by all reports was a person of unusual neatness and cleanliness, considering his mode of life.

But his stories were his main interest. Most of them changed from day to day-almost hour by hour. His old white horse, Darby, was in many of them.

"I was riding Darby down around Red Butte one day," said John Hance, "and Darby could smell an Indian for forty miles. From the way he acted, I knew there were Indians ahead, so I started to go around to the east. But there were more Indians there-more on the west. I was surrounded on three sides! So I turned Darby back towards the canyon rim. and started at a dead run, with Indians in close pursuit. There must've been fifty of them. Darby was fast-we kept ahead. but we couldn't get far enough ahead to get around them or to stop and make a fight of it.

"Soon we were at the Canyon Rim-coming at a dead run -no time to stop-no time to hide-no time to get over to the trail. I saw there was only one thing to do to jump the Grand Canyon!

"Old Darby took off in good shape-up and over, in a truly magnificent jump. But about halfway across I saw I couldn't make it, so I turned around and went back. "Meantime, the Indians had started down the trail to get me when I got to the bottom of the canyon, and when I got back to the South Rim they were all so far down the trail that I got clean to Flagstaff before they could get back out."

There are dozens of alternate endings to this. In one of them, Bob Fix reports that Darby miscalculated the higher elevations on the North Rim and landed in a big cave across the river. This cave is clearly inaccessible to everything but a bird.

"How'd you get back out?" asked an interested listener. "Why, I reckon I starved to death right there," replied Hance.

Another ending of this, furnished by Charles J. ("White Mountain") Smith, has Hance holding enough of a lead on the Indians that he made the head of his trail and started down it. Part way down, Darby tried to short cut between two huge rocks, and it was too tight. He got stuck. The Indians were coming closer and closer"Yup, they scalped me," Hance concluded.

Still another time, according to Homer Woods of Prescott. Old Darby kept trying on his cross-canyon leap, but fell short. Near the bottom, (Darby being well-trained), Cap hollered "Whoa!" Darby stopped just three feet above the ground, and Cap climbed off unhurt. However, Darby had fallen three thousand feet and was killed, while Cap himself dropped only three feet and was unhurt.

Another multiple-ending yarn has to do with Cap's matrimonial ventures. "Captain Hance, were you ever married?" one visitor asked him. "Married? Why, yes, I was married once. But we couldn't get along, and we decided to split up. So we divided the stuff we had. I kept the house and gave her the road." Another version of this concerns Cap on one of his Inner Canyon mule trips down the Bright Angel Trail after he began guiding for Fred Harvey. They passed a small wooden cross erected by an early mining claim locator. "What is that cross for?" asked one of the lady dudes.

"Why," began Cap, "That's where my wife fell off a mule fifteen years ago. Poor thing-she broke her leg. My wife, not the mule. We couldn't get it set-we couldn't get her out!" At this point, Bob Fix relates, tears would gather in Cap's eyes and roll slowly down his cheeks. "What did you do with her?" asked the tourist sympathetically. "It was terrible," John continued, "We had to shoot her."

Bob Wingfield, of the Wingfield Commercial Company at Camp Verde and a long-time acquaintance of John and

PAGE SIX OF ARIZONA HIGHWAYS FOR JUNE, 1949

George Hance, has still another story about this. John was peering over the canyon rim one day, when a dude approached and asked about the interest of that particular spot.

"Well, right here is where I lost my first mate." John replied. "She fell over the edge and I couldn't get her out. Broke her leg, and I had to shoot her. Hardest thing I ever did!"

After suitable concern and horror had been expressed by the listener, John would finally admit that it was only a burro.

Hamlin Garland, in writing of John Hance, says in part "The man who ought to be remembered with the Grand Canyon of the Colorado is not a scientist, nor a painter, nor a poet. He is only an old pioneer who has summered and wintered with the Grand Canyon for twelve years. His name is John Hance. Some people call him Old John Hance; and he calls himself, at times, Old Captain John Hance, and I believe he has a military record to back up the title. It doesn't matter, he holds a better one.

"Your friends who have been to the Canyon will say: 'See the canyon, of course, but don't fail to see old John Hance,' and I hereby celebrate, also, the personality of the man who made this canyon his home when it was practically an unexplored wonder.

"There are those who laugh at John Hance and see nothing in him. Others acknowledge him to be a powerful and astonishing fictionist. Consciously, he is a teller of whopping lies. Unconsciously, he is one of the most dramatic and picturesque natural raconteurs I have ever met His gift for telling phrases is as great in its way as that of James Whitcomb Riley. His profanity is never commonplace. It blazes out like some unusual fireworks and illumines his story for yards around. It is not profanity; it is dramatic fervor "He does not fear to be out of the world, for he has beside him the one incontestable wonder of God's earth. If he waits long enough, all the world will come to him. All the poets and scientists and geologists all the people really worth knowing will come to see old John and his canyon, and I hereby say deliberately they are both worthwhile."

Homer Wood has more of John's stories. If Baron Munchausen and John Hance had been alive at the same time, the Baron would have been John's secretary, Homer asserts.

One time John saw a fox chasing a rabbit. The rabbit was unusually elusive and the fox couldn't catch it. After several hours, both animals were so tired that they lay down to rest. By a curious coincidence, both were females and each gave birth to young during the rest period. When they recovered, they started on, with the mother fox chasing the mother rabbit and four little foxes chasing little rabbits.

Another time, Homer Wood says, John was approached by a stranger to the canyon rim who asked about deer hunting in that vicinity.

"Why, it's fine," John replied. "I went out this morning and killed three all by myself."

"That's wonderful," exclaimed the stranger. "Do you know who I am?"

"No, I don't," admitted John.

"Why, I'm the game warden, and it looks to me like you've broke a few of the game laws!"

"Do you know who I am?" asked John Hance.

"No, I don't," replied the game warden.

"Well, I'm the biggest so-and-so liar in Arizona!"

Charlie Wingfield of Prescott has another yarn which must be added to the Hance collection.

One morning on the rim of the canyon a party of visiting

was fixing my breakfast. At noon, when I looked again, the middle of the fish was just going through and just at sundown his tail went by.

"I caught one of those fish once, and tied it up to a tree with a five-sixteenth inch rope. I ate on him for six weeks!"

Bob Fix relates that on another occasion, when the canyon was full of fog, John told a party of dudes that it was almost heavy enough for him to ski across.

"I do it every once in a while," he told the open-mouthed party. "But the last time I tried it. I got about halfway across when the fog began to lift. I hurried around from one patch of fog to another, but I just couldn't make it. I finally hit a hole in the fog, and wound up right over there on the top of Zoroaster Temple. I was marooned there for four weeks be-fore there was enough fog again for me to get out! It was a light fog but I was lots lighter by that time, too!"

It was perhaps anti-climatic to add that, during this time, he had only one teaspoon full of parched rice to eat! Drink-ing water wasn't mentioned.

That Cap's yarns were effective is attested by "Curly" Ennis, now manager of transportation at Grand Canyon for Fred Harvey.

"Back in the days when I was just another mule wrangler for Fred Harvey," Curly relates, "I was talking to a couple of eastern school teachers, who asked me if it was safe to take a mule trip into the canyon. I told them that it was and that we hadn't had any accidents for months.

"In a few minutes Cap Hance came around and the two girls asked him the same question. I was around behind the mules out of sight and neither Cap nor the school teachers saw me, but I sure heard what they said!

'Why,' Cap said, "That's one of the most dangerous things you can ever do! They've killed four people already on that trail this week, and if I remember right it's fourteen so far this month.' "There-you see!,' one school teacher said to the other. 'I knew all the time that guide was lying to us!' "There wasn't a thing I could do about it," Curly said. "But those two sure didn't take the mule trip!"

The Los Angeles Herald once carried a yarn which was reprinted in the Coconino Sun for December 27, 1902, titled "John Hance Tells Winfield Hogaboom How That Place In The Grand Canyon Got Its Name," dealing with the naming of the Bright Angel Trail.

This is a long-winded yarn which probably sounded better than it reads, crediting the trail name to Bucky O'Neill. A poor, lost little girl is involved.

"We never did know where she come from ner how she got here, but all at once she was here, an 'peared like she'd come to stay. She was always sickly; you could see that, but she never complained none; she was always as doggone cheerful as a sunshiny mornin'.

"Gad! But she was beautiful. She had fluffy hair that was like a streak o' sunshine streamin' through a winder an' her skin was soft as velvet, an' just white and pink, an' she didn't look like a person that was intended to live on earth; leastwise, in no such outlandish place as this.

"Bucky used to say she was an angel; he knowed she was, an' he turned out t'be right, fer one day she went down the trail an' never came back. There was sort of a haze-like hangin' in the canyon that afternoon an' 'long about sundown the light struck it slantwise an' colored it up like gold. You couldn't see fer into the canyon, but Bucky claimed he seen somethin' floatin' up through the mist, white an' sort of transparentlike, but he knowed it was her.

"There wasn't no doubt about her bein' an angel after that, an' so he named the trail Bright Angel Trail, an' that's how it come.

"Y'see, Bucky was a sentimental feller anyhow, natcherly. an' we'd been callin' her the Bright Girl after we found out 'twas Brights disease that ailed her, so Bucky says: 'We'll make it Bright Angel!' University of Arizona General Bulletin No. 6, July 1, 1942, under the title "More Arizona Characters" by Frank C. Lockwood, gives many of Cap Hance's favorite stories.

One related to Lockwood by Mr. Godfrey Sykes, concerns a young lady botanist who was in a party John Hance was guiding down the trail. As she went along, she was picking leaves from various trees and talking about them. Finally she said: "You know, Mr. Hance, the tree is a wonderful organism -it really breathes."

John thought a moment. "Why, yes," he said, "it does." Again he reflected. "You know, that explains something that has puzzled me for a long time. I used to make camp under a big mesquite tree, and night after night that thing would keep me awake with its snoring."

Sykes continues to quote John Hance: "A tourist person came up to the canyon one morning and looked over the rim. The day was damp and he had on a pair of rubber boots. He leaned out a little too far and fell over. He was able to keep an upright position, so when he struck the bottom he bounced. Naturally, he came up past the rim again. The experience was repeated several times, but he was never able to grab hold of the rim. "In the end," said John, "we had to shoot him to keep him from starving to death."

Lockwood also quotes Dr. D. T. McDougal on John Hance's soap story. It was fall, snow was heavy, and Hance decided to go to Flagstaff for the winter.

"It was a delicate job to know just when the winter was actually beginning. Each season I timed my departure with reference to two things; the lowness of my grub supply and the near approach of a heavy snowfall. One night when I was all set to get out, a terrible storm came. It lasted two or three days. I contrived a pair of snowshoes and started from camp. After a few hours' travel with these snowshoes fashioned from split pine, I fell and hurt my ankle so bad that I could not go any further. However, I managed some way to work my way back to the cabin.

"When I got there I found there was nothing left but half a jar of sorghum molasses and a box of Babbitt's Best Soap. I prepared a mixture of soap and molasses in a skillet, slicing the soap into flakes and adding a few shavings from an old boot leg to make the mixture as tasty as possible. Ladies and gentlemen, that was all I had to eat for a week when the snow melted. I tell you frankly, and I expect you to believe me, I have never liked the taste of soap from that day to this."

Every morning, McDougal states, he would tell that story at the breakfast table. There would be a dead silence when he had finished the people not knowing whether to laugh or not. Bob Fix relates the same yarn as Cap told it to him, only this time he-Hance-was an Indian scout between Tucumcari, New Mexico, and old Fort Grant.

Here is one of John's scientific gems, McDougal continues. He was commenting on the water of the Colorado River. "It was so thick with mud," he said, "that it was positively tough. One noon 1 kneeled down for a drink, and when I tried to stop I was almost drowned before I could get my knife out of my pocket and cut it off."

Two good bear stories are credited to Mr. Edgar Whipple by Lockwood. After an introduction designed to give credence to the events which followed, the first story continues: "When he-Hance-got out to the edge of the canyon, he saw that the bear was moseying on toward the San Francisco Mountains. He moved up to where he could get a good shot and said to himself, 'When Old Betsy pops, it will be meat in the pot and it's already half done.' "He fired and the bear dropped down. At this, John was so tickled that he laid down his gun and began to dance a jig. 'But,' said Hance, 'the first thing I knew the bear was closer to the gun than I was, and he was coming after me. I clumb a tree and got as far as I could out on a limb. Would you believe me that bear picked up the Winchester and begun shooting off the branch I was on! He popped away a couple of times, and then, as there were no more cartridges in the gun, he threw it down and started for the San Francisco Peaks again. I do believe that if there had been one more load in that gun, he'd have got me."

The other of Whipple's bear stories is equally exciting.

"Hance was out hunting his pack animals. Trailing them over to where Red Horse Wash enters the canyon, he came up with a band of Supai Indians who were hunting rabbits with bows and arrows. They were on horseback and had a large supply of arrows. They came across the track of an old bear that had wandered out that way; and having spotted him, one of the hunters shot an arrow into him. The bear at once took after the Indians; but he was no sooner in pursuit than up rode another brave and discharged an arrow at him. Again the bear wheeled to chase his latest assailant-only to receive a shaft from a third Indian who now entered the fray. So it went on for a long time, until the enraged beast looked like a huge porcupine and bellowed and frothed with fury.

"'In chasing back and forth,' said Hance, 'They got up near where I was, arid the bear was now so mad that I began to think it might take after me. And sure enough, after me it came. I made a dash, with the old bear right after me. Every minute I thought he'd get me by the Levi's. I sighted a big pine ahead with a limb about thirty feet up, and I concluded that I would have to get that or the bear would get me. So I made a big jump for that limb-the biggest jump I ever made in my life. I missed it entirely! That is, I missed it going up. but I caught it coming down.' Also of real merit is the explanation furnished to the mother of William Randolph Hearst and some other ladies, as to why Hance was called "Captain." On the canyon rim they came to a spot where a tree had once fallen, leaving a mound of dirt like the top of a grave.

"This is the place, right here," he said.

He began to put rocks at the head of the mound and to scatter flowers over it, the ladies sympathetically assisting him.

"There's the tree right over there.' He then went on to tell a story of the splendid horse he had owned-probably old Darby-and of a raid that he and his gang had made into Mexico-a trading trip, he called it.

"There was no one in the outfit could keep books, and we wanted a bookkeeper bad. After a while we came up along

PAGE TEN OF ARIZONA HIGHWAYS FOR JUNE, 1949

The border and struck the Southern Pacific Railroad; and there was a boy who was a wonderfully bright likely chap, and we persuaded him to come and keep books for us. Well, we got up to the canyon and took the horses we had collected down where we saw a big, flat mesa not far under the rim. There was only one way to get down to it, and nobody knew it but us. The officers were after us and we were in a pretty hot place. Well, do you know this boy objected to staying with us. He said he wasn't going to be bookkeeper to a gang of horse thieves. I had let this young fellow ride my spanking horse all the time, and had fitted him and the animal out in the best style. Well, the boy started on the dead run across the mesa toward the rim; and I saw I would either have to shoot the horse or our bookkeeper. I chased them across the rim, and just when they got to where this tree stood, I concluded I would have to kill the horse. But when I drew a bead on that horse, my nerve failed-that's the grave right there and from that time on I was always called 'Captain'.

Bert Lauzon reports that after John sold his homestead to Martin Buggeln in 1906 he moved to Grand Canyon village where Fred Harvey Company provided him with board and lodging at the Bright Angel Lodge as long as he lived, asking only that he follow his natural bent for talking to the park tourists. This was dead easy for John-the problem would have been to keep him from talking to the tourists.

At the time he moved, he had a horse which he had named Woodrow due to John's strong bias for the Democratic party. This was a surprise in itself as John had long followed the custom of naming most of the horses he owned "Darby" for ease in remembering their names.

As time passed and John could not use Woodrow, the suggestion was made that he sell the horse to save the feed bill. Bert Lauzon bought the horse, paying $75 for him. Some time later, Bert talked to John about Woodrow.

"You know, John," Bert said, "Woodrow likes to eat bread-just plain loaves of bread."

"Sure," said John, quick on the pick-up as usual, "he likes bread. But Darby liked sandwiches. Ham sandwiches at that."

He thought a minute.

"With mustard!" he added.

The price John received for his place when he sold it is variously estimated at from $3,000 to $10,000. Whatever the amount, there is fairly general agreement that upon receiving the money, John did not keep it out of circulation for long. spending most or all of it on the one glorious trip to Williams and on to San Francisco and return. This famous celebration was often referred to later, some of his friends asserting that in spite of previous warning, John blew out the gas light in the hotel room in San Francisco. John scornfully rejected these comments.

"I fanned it out with my hat!" he proudly asserted.

John had a garden at his camp, in the early days, and one year had phenomenal success with his vegetables. Emory Kolb says that one dude asked John how he watered his garden. John just pointed to the Colorado River nearly 5,000 feet below in the canyon and said, "I get my water down there."

"You mean you carry it up here to irrigate your garden?"

"Oh, no," John replied. "I have a very good pair of field glasses and when I want to water the garden I just look at the river through these glasses. They make the river look like it's only about six inches below the rim and I can siphon it."

Back in 1898, Wallace W. Atwood, later head of Clark University, visited Grand Canyon with a class of geology students, and they camped on the Tonto Plateau with John Hance as their guide and packer. In the evening around the campfire, one of the students idly asked about the origin of Coronado Butte nearby.

Before the geologists could answer, John who had doubtless had his fill that day of theories about faults, erosion, structure, and the like, spoke up.

"I used to have my garden right there on the rim above that Butte," he said. "One year my squash were unusually fine. They grew very large and they grew very fast; in fact, they grew so fast that the vines dragged the squash along the ground so far they got hot and would sometimes explode. One day one of the smaller ones exploded, and half of it was blown over into the canyon by the blast, and now it's called Coronado Butte."

A report on John Hance would not be complete without mention of his brother George, who lived at Camp Verde for around half a century. George Hance had a dry humor of his own, which gained him considerable local fame and was closely akin to the whimsy practiced by John.

Bob Wingfield of Camp Verde reports that George had a strong habit of talking to himself. Many times you would come up to George's house, and think he had company, Bob states, only to find that it was George carrying on a conversation with himself.

One time George was walking briskly up the street by Bob Wingfield's home where Margaret Wingfield, then a small girl, was playing in the yard. As usual George was muttering to himself.

Margaret asked him: "Why do you talk to yourself like that, Mr. Hance?"

George stopped abruptly. "Well, Margaret, I'll tell you. There are two reasons. The first is that I always like to hear a smart man talk; and the second is that I always like to talk to a smart man!"

Perhaps the best conclusion to any article on Captain John Hance is another quotation from his guest book. James S. Nies of Brooklyn, New York, August 11, 1897, writes: Full many a song and dance I've heard Upon the vaudeville stage; But none can beat the yarns you'll get From Captain John Hance, I'wage.

The woman fat, between the rocks By giant powder savedThe mare who jumped two thousand feet. And other dangers braved.

But to appreciate him best. Just hear him for yourself, And let him guide you o'er the trail, And don't you spare yourself.

And, on October 1, 1898, R. and E. E. P. Skeel enter another poem: Farewell to the gorge And to Captain John Hance, Whose mendacious inventions can outdo all romance. With his fibs he can charm you, with his yarns he enchants, And as if these great gifts to still further enhanceWith a bolster he is going to learn how to dance. Oh, may we return-by some rare, happy chance.To this spot, and be welcomed by Captain John Hance.

OAK CREEK CANYON ...Meeting Place of Mountains and Desert BY CHARLES FRANKLIN PARKER

Each year additional thousands of motorists crossing the continent of North America via routes U. S. 66 and 89 are turning aside to preview (because they always plan to return) Oak Creek Canyon of northern Arizona. All tourist guides and motor clubs have long been conscious of the Grand Canyon whose entire length is in Arizona, but Oak Creek, whose intimate wilderness beauty of towering walls, lush verdant growth, and deep channeled mountain stream, has eluded the mad mob rushing from shore to shore and kept its bounty of beauty, peace and satisfying quiet for those who are prepared to digress from the tailor-made plans of sight-seeing.

With the turn of the century, long before automobiles and a good highway made entree to this opal studded emerald canyon a matter of convenience, Oak Creek was a haven for the rugged seekers of the wilderness who would struggle over harsh terrain and suffer long tiresome trips with pack trains and buckboards. Even the intrepid pioneering motorists, who broke the trails for the modern highways, were lured to the waters abounding with trout. Still unspoiled this old Indian garden is easily accessable by auto and bus to the modern traveller, via Alternate U. S.

89 from either Flagstaff from the north or Prescott and Verde Valley from the south. New accommodations of lodges, cabins, and free forest camps, developed in a manner as not to detract from the natural beauty, afford varied facilities for stopping over for a few hours, days, weeks or months. The normal season for these operators is from April 1 to November 30 and is defined largely by the winter snows and high waters Oak Creek Canyon and the surrounding country has been called a "photographer's paradise." The interesting canyon walls, the generous color in the red cliffs around Sedona, the picturesquely-situated ranches, farms and lodges, combine to attract the eye of the pictorialist. Here the seasons record their change: so each season brings with it a new picture. Here is scenery that has been compared to Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce, but here the scenery is more intimate and understandable. You do more than look in awed wonder. Here you become part of the scene and you feel that you belong. The country is a friendly country, the kind of a place where you feel at home.

Mr. Deaderick's photograph was taken with a 5 x 7 Ansco View Camera, 9½ inch Goerz Dagor lens, C¹½ Harrison filter, Norwood meter reading, onefifth second at F22, Ektachrome. He was in a beautiful place at the right time.