Winslow

Winslow Portrait of an Arizona Travel Town

Linked to the past by the colorful Navajos and Hopis to whom this is the “big city,” Winslow is tied to the world with ribbons of steel and concrete and shining shafts of air travel which, last year, brought 5,500,000 people through her portals.

Winslow, an unpretentious little town of less than 10,000, sits flatly on a 4,900-foot desert plateau in northeastern Arizona, yet Winslow is an important travel town. Her airport receives nine TWA transcontinental flights daily. Served by the trail-blazing Santa Fe, she has twelve transcontinental trains daily. Continental Trailways schedules ten transcontinental bus trips daily and Pacific Greyhound Lines lists fourteen. U. S. Highway 66— Winslow's “main street” last year had a daily average count of 3,789 automobiles, and of this number, 1,345 bore out-of-state licenses.

By air Winslow is fifty minutes from Phoenix, two and a half hours from Los Angeles, eight and a half hours from Chicago and thirty-one and a half hours from London, England. Nor do you have to wait long for your plane.

By rail Winslow is twenty-seven hours from Chicago, ten hours from Phoenix and ten and a half hours from Los Angeles.

By highway, it is 265 miles from Winslow to Phoenix, 594 miles to Los Angeles and 1615 miles to Chicago.

Winslow's eleven auto courts and two major hotels have daily accommodations for 950 travelers. There are two trailer parks.

The tourist finds Winslow alive with human interest, the nearby reservation a place of fierce and rugged beauty, the Mogollon Rim and Tonto Basin the Zane Grey country of his youthful dreams. Carl Stilwell at the Chamber of Commerce in the Chief Hotel helps visitors plan excursions to scenic places around Winslow.

Charter trips by auto or plane are available, the charge being made for the trip regardless of the number of passengers.

Centuries ago a meteorite plummeted to earth a few miles west of Winslow. In seconds there was a yawning hole (570 feet deep and 4,150 feet across) large enough to hold twenty football games and seat two million spectators on its sloping sides. Pictures dwarf it so you only begin to realize its magnitude as you stand just below the rim in the shelter of the red rocks and hear its story over the loud speaker. This is visual education at its best. Last year 60,000 people visited Meteor Crater, six miles from U. S. Highway 66.

The American Meteorite Museum, displaying 5,000 meteorites from all over the world, is near Winslow. Dr. and Mrs. H. H. Nininger spent twenty-three years gathering this collection, one of the world's most important collections of meteorites. For all their scientific knowledge they tell the story simply enough to interest the layman.

The Hopi reservation lies within the Navajo reservation and a 180-mile loop drive from Winslow gives one a revealing picture of Indian life and a pleasant opportunity to visit both tribes.

The Hopis have set records for continuous inhabitation of their mesa villages-Oraibi was an old village when Columbus discovered America. Their famed snake dances attract hundreds annually. Less spectacular but equally appealing are their Kachina dances. They grow corn and squash and beans with no moisture other than the scant rainfall a real agricultural achievement. Their peach and apple orchards are unpruned and appear unkempt but the yield is astonishing.

The Navajos offer a striking contrast to the Hopis. These nomads follow their sheep across the sparse grazing land, living in crude hogans. They weave their wonderful rugs. To the trading posts they carry magnificent silver work, turquoise jewelry.

Two types of stores handle Indian goods in Winslow -trading posts and curio stores. Winslow merchants take pride in selling genuine Indian jewelry and are glad to explain the difference between the real and the commercially made products. In the trading posts one sees Indians selling and buying. The curio stores are gift shops.

Oldest trading establishment in Winslow is the Lorenzo Hubbell Company, started in 1873 and carried on now by the founder's son, Roman Hubbell. The firm has five trading posts on the reservation and two stores off the reservation.

R. M. Bruchman started with a trading post, but in 1903 came to Winslow where he operates a curio store with a work shop where Indians make jewelry.

Chief Joe, Hopi, has a small curio shop and in spite of his obvious ancestry is always explaining that he is a real Indian.

Babbitt Brothers Trading Co. is Winslow's oldest store. Started sixty years ago by brothers then engaged in a variety of businesses, Babbitts' have wholesale and retail stores in all leading northern Arizona towns besides seven trading posts on the reservation.

Winslow, in its desert setting, appears anything but a sportsman's Paradise, yet Winslow is a dream come true for men who like to hunt and fish. It's practically "closed shop" when a season opens because bosses and men are off to the woods, the streams and the lakes.

Forty miles south is the Coconino forest, offering fine deer hunting. The Arizona Game Commission keeps a careful check and count on animals and elk hunting is limited to "over-stock," permits being issued to winners in a drawing. A similar plan is used with buffalo and it is possible that some of the herd thirty miles to the west may be “harvested” next year. Turkeys flourish to the southeast toward the Rim but the season is short. Lions lurk in the Tonto Basin where they are a menace to other game and live stock. It is best to hunt lions with dogs, and incidently, there's a $100 bounty. Bob cats are not uncommon. The rabbit season is open five months.

As for fishing there is Soldier Lake, Long Lake and Annex Lake, where bass, catfish, blue gills and crappies are found. Chevelon and Clear Creek have rainbow trout.

People with no interest in hunting like the Rim drive for its scenery. A 2,000 foot rim of rock extends more than 100 miles dividing the plateau and the Basin. Below the rim is the Tonto Natural Bridge, the largest travertine bridge in the world with a five acre farm sitting smugly on it. Along the rim and in the Basin are the mighty Ponderosas America's largest stand of pine.

Indians, Meteor Crater, Mogollon Rim, Tonto Basin and other nearby scenic areas give Winslow tourist appeal, but they have not made her a travel town. Happily Winslow's founders chose a natural travel route-used and mentioned by many generations of travelers. Unrecorded history tells still undeciphered tales of early civilizations.

On the east bank of the Little Colorado, a mile north of the bridge, the wind and curious people have uncovered rock and adobe walls believed to have been made by an ancient Hopi tribe. The whole area is dotted with bits of bright pottery their colors undimmed by the centuries. These ancient ruins are unmarked and for the most part unknown.

Espejo came this way in the 1580's and returned to Spain to publish his adventures. Juan de Oñate crossed the Little Colorado while searching for the South Sea.

Before the Civil War, Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale came this way with Uncle Sam's Camel Caravan testing the Jefferson Davis theory that camels would speed desert Transportation. Early day explorers followed Lt. Beale.

In 1879 Lot Smith, a Mormon leader, settled at Sunset Crossing on the east bank of the Colorado River, three miles from what is now Winslow. His followers built a fort, a dam, a woolen mill. At one time 200 people lived there. All that remains today is a half mile of the red earthen dam still topped with the brush thicket the Mormons planted, and a tiny cemetery on the crest of the highest knoll.

Destined as it was to be a travel town, it is fitting that Winslow's first business should have been a hotel which "Doc" F. C. Demerest set up in a tent in 1880, and that the new town should have been named for railroad president Capt. Edward F. Winslow. In 1882 it was designated as a division terminal which made it, from the beginning, a self-supporting town with purpose and importance.

Today almost half the town's population derives its income directly from the Santa Fe. March's payroll was $400,000 and went to 1,300 employees. The depots, roundhouse, machine shops, division offices and ice plant are part of the Winslow Santa Fe installations.

Ice refrigeration is vitally important to cross-country freighting and the Santa Fe ice plant is a big business employing in the summer 150 men and turning out 200 tons of ice daily. Passenger trains, freight trains and Winslow residents get their ice from this plant, which has forty winter employees. Power for the Santa Fe installations is generated at the ice plant.

The Santa Fe's Famous All-Indian Band has become this railroad's most colorful advertisement and the best answer to questions of Indian abilities and cooperation. Started in a spirit of fun at a shop picnic by Charles Erickson, who first directed it with a yard stick, and is now its manager, the band last year traveled 11,000 miles making 53 appearances before half a million people. This year the band has representatives from eight tribes-Hopi, Zuni, Isleta, Jemenez, Santo Domengo, Apache, Navajo and one Flat Head from Montana. During the summer the band plays in Santa Fe band shell on La Posada grounds.

La Posada, the Fred Harvey hotel in Winslow, with its old world charm, would fit in any large city, and is one of America's most delightful smaller hotels. Planned, designed and furnished by Miss Mary Jane Coulter, now in her eighties, this stuccoed adobe is a Spanish rancho of 150 years ago come to life. In the early day Spanish hacienda only a few of the furnishings were imports, the rest were "home made" by Mexican or Indian labor. The same is true of La Posada. The hotel was host to the State Shriner and Rotarian conventions this spring. It averages some 30,000 meals a month, including the TWA and bus passengers. The grounds cover six and a half acres in the heart of Winslow. It is maintained by a staff of 75 employees. When La Posada was built the Santa Fe made a two hour train stop to accommodate passengers who desired scenic bus trips. Since the war the trains make a ten minute stop, but even yet the newsstand sells almost half a million post cards a year.

In the early '30's the TWA chose Winslow as an air base. The government established a weather bureau in 1932 giving added importance to the infant airport, but to most people planes were still playthings.

In 1942 the city fathers took over the airport, doubled its size by whittling nine holes from the Municipal Golf course. Then Uncle Sam stepped in and today Winslow has the largest commercial airport in the state with two 7,500-ft. hard-surfaced runways and one runway 6,500 feet long. Instrument landing facilities were installed and the Civil Aeronautics Administration keeps nine communicators and three maintenance men here to relay weather information to aircraft.

During the war the Navy Air Transport based 100 men here and the Army Transport Service had 150. Some of these pilots returned in February to fly in the Navajo food relief and hay lifts. Navy planes took off from Litchfield Park with their first cargo, picked up their second and third loads from Winslow then returned to Phoenix for the night.

Shortly after the war Ted Willey inaugurated the Winslow Flying Service with Roy Williams as manager. Already they have trained 215 pilots and have 25 students. Their tourist charter trips are increasingly popular and the Arizona Game Commission engages them to make wild game surveys.

Winslow's squadron of the Civil Air Patrol with its 65 active members and 45 cadets under eighteen is another proof that this railroad town is air-minded. Pleasure trips to scenic spots are only part of the CAP activities. These fliers made surveys for Navajo relief flights last winter. delivered medicine and needed supplies to places inaccessible to larger planes.

There are ten privately owned planes in Winslow. This is a scheduled stop on Skyways No. 30 and throughout the summer the field is dotted with private planes from all over the country. There is 24 hour mechanical service, a cafe is planned and the airport is only a mile from the heart of the town.

Aviation's popularity has been fostered by the good weather. Maximum average temperatures are 90 to 95 degrees in the summer and the nights are always cool. Most of the 8.79 inches of rain comes in the late summer. The light snowfall usually melts quickly. The weather bureau employs seven people, keeps hourly records and works closely with the CAA. To quote Willard Shinner, manager, "Spring winds bring our only unpleasant weather. Sunshine is so constant it has never been measured."

It took the war to make Winslow lumber conscious. Now three lumber companies employ 220 men and market 2,500,000 board feet monthly. Being soft and of fine texture most of this is used for cabinet work and interiors. Lumber is harvested from the Ponderosa Pine forest on the Mogollon Rim.

The Hashknife outfit once ran 60,000 head of cattle on ranges around Winslow. Today herds number from 100 to 1,000 with few larger. Government regulations limit the size of Indian livestock holdings so individual herds on the reservation seem insignificant, but taken as a whole they are another big business.

Building is active. A large apartment house is nearing completion, the Valley National Bank is constructing a new building on Third street and a number of new residences are being built.

Recent addition of a subdivision gives Winslow an area of about two square miles. The city has a lighted ball park and a 50 by 130 foot municipal swimming pool.

The Junior and Senior high schools have 660 students and twenty six teachers. The grammar schools have thirty-seven teachers.

Each of Winslow's fourteen churches representing as many denominations, owns its own building. Social life centers around the churches and the Municipal Golf Club, which has 200 members. Built during the depression the club house is valued at $100,000. Of rambling Spanish architecture it has a friendly air, a good dance floor, and the main room has a hand carved six foot native pine wainscoating. The lounge walls are covered in squares of raw hide in alternate shades of brown and tan, and the room has a copper hooded fireplace.

It is the "greens" which catch the visitors eye and incite his misgivings, but doubters who linger to play find the well oiled sand "greens" are really smooth. Invitational tournaments never go begging for contestants.

All of which adds up to this Winslow is a middle class town, a working man's town. Here lightly marked lines separate classes, and creeds and races. Winslow has no dreams of future grandeur. She wants simple things like a new city hall. There is talk of designating Third street as alternate Highway 66, relieving congestion and encouraging the town to spread. Another dream is the construction of dams on Clear and Willow creeks, thus opening 15,000 acres for agricultural purposes.

Winslow looks to the future for an increasingly important place in the world of travel. Whatever mode of transportation Tomorrow will stress, Winslow is certain to profit thereby. It is a perfectly located travel town.

Fred Harvey's La Posada is one of the West's noted hotels. It takes up over six acres in the very center of Winslow.