Crossroads of the Cow Country

A fellow sportsman would stage a matched horse race up Central Avenue past the hotel. The guests found this sort of thing highly diverting.

In 1910 the hotel burned down. It was a corker of a fire, quite the most spectacular Phoenix had ever had, and rumors reached Tucson that the whole city was in flames.

The building went with extraordinary speed. But the verandas served as fire escapes and there were no fatalities save that of a health-seeker from the East who was not even a guest at the hotel. He watched the fire from an alleyway across the street and got so excited he had a heart attack and died.

Among the guests of the Adams at the time of the conflagration were "Hoot" Knox, son of Philander C. Knox, secretary of state under President Taft, and Territorial Gov. Richard E. Sloan and his family. When the fire had died down, Sloan offered a young man $10 to go back and look for his trunk. The young man returned with a trunk and collected the $10. The trunk turned out to be one belonging to a chambermaid.

Tendrils of smoke were still curling upward from the ruins when J. C. Adams set about to build a new hotel. Again the familiar rallies of local men of means. Again the persuasive speeches. Again the subscriptions. And in 1911 the new Hotel Adams was opened to the public, having risen from its own ashes like the phoenix bird whose mythical feat inspired the name of Arizona's capital city.

The new building was five stories high and constructed of reinforced concrete. The first guest to check in was a salesman who became a fast friend of J. C. Adams. Adams betrayed the sentimental side of his nature by stipulating in his will that the salesman was to be allowed to stay free at the hotel for the rest of his life, if he so wished. The salesman is still living and still at the Adams.

In 1928 a $500,000 nine-story annex was added to the hotel to keep up with the competition. Surviving cronies of J. C. Adams point out that, so long as he lived. the hotel had no serious rival. J. C. saw to that, they say admiringly. Not until after his death in 1926 did new hostelries spring up in the growing city.

When Adams died, his close friend and political compatriot, Dr. R. W. Craig, took over the direction of the hotel. It may have been his long association with Doctor Craig that stirred in Adams an uncommon interest in medicine and medical research. It is told that whenever Adams read of a new remedy-pill, potion or injection-he persuaded the good doctor to try it out on an Indian-Mexican janitor at the hotel. If the janitor survived, Adams decided it was a good remedy.

In the early 30's, Adams' daughter, Mrs. Margaret Rockwell, assumed management of the hotel. She steered it gingerly through the depression which plunged 85 per cent of the American hotel industry (excluding the Adams) into receivership. Mrs. Rockwell also appears to have inherited her father's predilection for politics, Republican species. She is G.O.P. national committeewoman for Arizona.

Control of the Adams is now in the hands of the third generation, with John Rockwell, the founder's grandson, as its directing head.

Responding once again to the demands of progress, the hotel recently built an elaborate "auto lobby" where guests may drive in, register and be whisked to their rooms.

It's been a problem, though this thing of progress. The Adams is perpetually walking a tightrope. If it fails to keep up with the times, it loses the patronage of exacting winter visitors. If it gets too lacy, it loses the patronage of the cowmen, who are terribly allergic to lace.

So far the Adams has negotiated its tightrope with nice dexterity. It still ranks in the forefront of American hotels. And its reputation as a cow country crossroads of a half-century's standing is quite intact the Arizona cowboy would sooner desert his horse than abandon the Adams.

This makes it a sort of lone guardian of Western traditions, in a time when the West is slowly yielding to the pressures of modernism and sophistication. It was a Phoenix newspaper which remarked recently, with sorrowing nostalgia, "Phoenix . . . is so rapidly becoming a city of metropolitan airs. It might get so that the only time we see a cowboy is when we take a stroll through the Hotel Adams lobby."

Springerville Gateway to the White Mountains

Round Valley, up in Apache County just north of the White Mountain timber, is about the last place you would expect to find a congestion of towns. But there they are. Springerville and Eagar, huddled together as though still fearful of Indian raids, when there is room for a dozen uncrowded towns in the surrounding country. Early in 1948 (not having heard an Apache war-whoop since along in the '80's) and having grown almost into each others incorporation, sharply defined "city limits" were resorted to as a precaution against one neighbor swallowing up the other. Alpine, Nutrioso and Greer are in the immediate area.

Town partisanship and the social philosophies which made two towns desirable in the first place are still strong. In the early '70's outlaws from many sections were riding into Arizona Territory. Cattle rustling, stage robbing. and horse stealing were recognized occupations; many outlaws were very nice people, otherwise.

Round Valley, with its grassy rolling hills and the Little Colorado River running down the middle of it, was ideally suited and situated to hold large numbers of horses and cattle that had been driven too far and too fast, and were being looked for elsewhere. The present site of Springerville was an outlaw camp, a very nice one too, where man and beast could rest unmolested. Round Valley

sits right up against the White Mountains, and it is only a short ride from Springerville and Eagar into the heavily timbered country where horses and outlaws could be well hidden when posses appeared on the scene. If pursuit became too spirited it was easy to escape into New Mexico.

The Clanton gang operated here after they were run out of Tombstone. Ike Clanton was killed and buried on the Black River, south of Springerville. Fin Clanton was killed by Springerville people across the line in New Mexico. The Clanton boys had a sister who operated a boarding house in Springerville and the gang used this area for some of their more desperate operations.

In time a few honest settlers moved in and the commu-