CHIRICAHUA COUNTRY

Portals are usually inviting. They can lead to adventure, romance, freedom and new worlds to conquer. Of the portals I know, Portal, Arizona, is my favorite, for it is the gateway to the Chiricahua country-a land as varied, colorful and enticing as you can find anywhere.

I suppose all a well-informed person need know about the Chiricahua Mountains is that they are located in Arizona's extreme southeastern corner; that this name is pronounced cheery-cow-ah; and that the word is Apache Indian for "Big Mountain." At any rate, this information satisfies most people and they pass by, recognizing the distant Chiricahuas as a swelling line of lofty forested domes and pineedged ridges against the Arizona sky.

But these hurried, point-to-point travelers miss one of the state's top scenic areas. It is only the modern explorers those willing to take back roads and hike the trails-who discover that hidden away among the tumbled, sprawling Chirichuas are plunging canyons of tinted rock, fantastic labyrinths of standing stone, miles of high-perched evergreen forests, flowery parks, cascading streams, and vast-spreading panoramas out over mountains, valleys, hills and plateaus.

So if you are one who likes to explore stimulating, littleknown country, I strongly recommend that you head for Portal, Arizona.With the first view of the Chiricahuas, you will agree that the Apaches didn't exaggerate when they named their homeland. It is a big mountain. Forty miles long, twenty miles wide in its broadest part, and rising to crests almost 10,000 feet high, the range stretches north and south like a giant wall between the broad, grassy reaches of San Simon Valley on the east and Sulphur Springs Valley to the west. Within this complicated knot of deep canyons and soaring peaks is an area of six hundred square miles having a climate, vegetation, animal life and scenery as different from its surrounding as if it were an island far at sea.

But no long and difficult journey is necessary in order to explore the great land island of the Chiricahuas. Transcontinental U. S. Highway 80 and the Southern Pacific follow San Simon Valley, skirting the east base of the mountains, while north-south Route 666, between Willcox and Douglas, traverses Sulphur Springs Valley along the west side. From them, half a dozen spur roads penetrate scenic canyons along the flanks, and State 181 climbs over the crest of the range THE CHIRICAHUA COUNTRY IS COLOR COUNTRY. On the opposite page is a view taken by Fred Ragsdale of Chiricahua National Monument in the heart of the range. Photograph was taken last April 20 at 5 p.m., Graphic View Camera, 4 x 5 Daylite Ektachrome, 8 inch Ektar lens, one second at f.38, no filter. The panel following was taken by Weldon F. Heald. The view is looking east into the basin of Cave Creek from an elevation of 8,000 feet near Rustler Park. The road from Portal can be seen in the middle distance. Taken last August, 4 x 5 Crown Graphic Camera, 152mm Kodak Ektar lens, ½ second at f.11.

from east to west. This is the route you take to Portal and it is by far the most spectacular entrance to the Chiricahua country.

The road leaves U. S. 80 at Rodeo, just over the line in New Mexico, crosses into Arizona and gently ascends the broad valley floor toward the rugged barrier of the Chiricahuas. Ten miles from Rodeo it rounds a rocky corner, plunges into the canyon of Cave Creek and arrives at Portal. Certainly, the name of this place is an inspiration, for the transition from open, treeless rangeland to cliff-girt, timbered stores serve the highland ranches, guest lodges, and mines through a doorway into another world.

Portal itself, among green sycamores and cottonwoods along the creek, looks like a mountain community. Its two stores serve the highland ranches, guest lodges, and mines on the east side of the Chiricahuas for miles around, and fishermen, hunters and campers buy supplies and gasoline for their trips into the high country. If you are an outdoor lover, Portal will give you the buoyant and lightly anticipatory feeling that comes each time you are about to enter the mountains. Your lowland troubles and problems are checked at the gate, not to be picked up until you return.

The ever-luring backdrop to Portal is Cave Creek Canyon, a gigantic gash among the mountains which leads into the heart of the Chiricahuas. Many Cave Creek enthusiasts stoutly maintain that it is the equal of Arizona's famous Oak Creek Canyon. I have never taken sides, but I will admit that to me much of the charm of this southern canyon is due to its being uncrowded and little-known. The many tributaries of Cave Creek rise among the high peaks which rim a great horseshoe basin on the east side of the Chiricahua Mountains. They tumble down the steep, heavily-forested slopes in cascades and waterfalls to the basin where they join together in one murmuring, crystalclear stream. The combined waters then break through the lower, north end of the horseshoe in a narrow, six-mile-long canyon between Portal Peak, 8547 feet elevation, on the east and Silver Peak, 8020 feet, to the west. Here, the creek has cut a gorge through more than 3,000 feet of solid rock and now flows deeply entrenched between rough, precipitous walls which are broken by cliffs and bristle with towers, spires and pinnacles.

The jumbled geology of the Chiricahua Mountains is enough to baffle the most expert jigsaw puzzle fan. For more than half a billion years nature has been stockpiling materials on the site, and the granites, gneisses, schists, limestones and lavas which make up the range show almost every kind of earth-building activity since the misty dawn of the Paleozoic Era. At least once, and probably twice, the region was inundated by primordial seas. Cave Creek Canyon is carved out of a volcanic rock geologists call latite. It was laid down as a series of vast lava flows in the Tertiary Period, some twelve million years ago, and subsequently lifted bodily into the air by the growing Chiricahua Mountains. The rock is basically buff-colored, but it shades into streaks and patches of glowing salmon and bright pink. These brilliant, warm tints are striking and give the appearance of being daubed on at random with a mammoth paint brush. In fact, there is a local movement to CHIRICAHUA NATIONAL MONUMENT in the Chiricahua Mountains is rightly called "The Wonderland of Rocks." Nature has done a fantastic job of sculpturing here. Hubert Lowman's photograph was taken from road near campgrounds in Bonita Canyon. Stan Kershaw's photograph was taken near Massai Point, a most scenic viewpoint in the area. Barfoot, Monte Vista, and Fly Peak fire lookouts. The last named, 9,795 feet elevation, five miles by trail from Rustler Park, shares top altitude honors with equally high Chiricahua Peak, further south, and the breath-taking panorama from the sixty-foot steel tower on the summit of Fly Peak embraces thousands of square miles in Arizona, New Mexico and over the border into northern Mexico. The Forest Service has wisely set aside 18,000 acres of this unique high mountain country as the Chiricahua Wild Area, to be preserved in its natural, primitive condition for the enjoyment and inspiration of trail travelers, campers, fishermen and outdoor lovers generally. We, who number ourselves among this group, fervently hope that many years will pass before snorting, voracious bulldozers invade the fascinating, untouched wilderness of the high Chiricahuas.

From the Rustler Park junction at Onion Saddle, the Portal road twists and turns down thickly-wooded Pinery Creek canyon on the west slope to Sulphur Spring Valley and Highway 666. There are several highly scenic spots on that side of the range. To the south is Rucker Lake, a man-made trout pond in Rucker Canyon, popular with Douglas and Bisbee fishermen. Further north is Turkey Creek Recreation Area, with improved campgrounds among oaks and pines in an impressive 4,000-foot amphitheater beneath Chiricahua Peak. And just north of lower Pinery Creek, reached easily by blacktop road from Route 666, is by far the best known and most visited area in the entire rangeChiricahua National Monument. Last year fifteen thousand people from every state in the Union entered this famous southern Arizona Wonderland of Rocks. This area, like Cave Creek, is a Tertiary lava field, hundreds of feet thick, which are uplifted and tilted along the west slope of the Chiricahua Mountains. The stresses and strains of its upward journey cracked and shattered the hardened lava, and thousands of years of erosion have carved it into an unbelievable multitude of towers, turrets, pinnacles, spires and needles. The rock is rhyolite and basalt, darker and duller than Cave Creek latite, but lichens stipple the naked stone with patches of green and yellow, and thick vegetation threads the defiles between the standing rocks, softening the severity of the weird landscape.

Seventeen square miles of the finest formations were proclaimed a national monument by President Coolidge in 1924. The National Park Service, which administers the preserve, maintains fourteen miles of excellent trails, improved campand picnic-grounds, a small museum, and provides a ranger naturalist who explains the highlights of the region's geology, botany, animal life and human history. Riding horses can be hired and overnight accommodations are available. Beyond the attractive fieldstone monument headquarters, where all visitors register, the road ascends Bonita Canyon between 600-foot walls sculptured with concentrated clusters of natural statuary, then climbs to the crest of the Chiricahuas and ends at Massai Point, 6,850 feet in elevation. There, spread out below you is the Wonderland of Rocks-a wilderness of stone chimneys, steeples and columns rising in bewildering profusion from every canyon, slope and ridge. In the distance Sulphur Springs Valley spreads a vast carpet of grass to the rugged Dragoon Mountains, and dominating the Wonderland to the north is the massive granite profile of Cochise Head, 8,100 feet elevation, an enduring memorial to the great chief of the Chiricahua Apaches.

From Massai Point an easy four-and-a-half-mile hike takes you on a loop through Rhyolite and Echo canyons. Shaded by oaks, pines and cypresses, the trail follows little streams which tumble down in miniature waterfalls, and it traverses some of the most startling rock formations in the monument. Another eight-mile round trip from Massai Point can be made to Heart of Rocks, an area crammed with bizarre stone figures, such as "Balanced Rock," "Thor's Hammer," "Punch and Judy," "The Old Maid," and "Duck on a Rock." Other trails reach the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain, 7,308 feet altitude, Inspiration Point, and the Natural Bridge-all well worth seeing.

These, in bare outline, are some of the things you can see in the Chiricahua country. But you will discover as many more for yourself. Even the human history is interesting and picturesque. They were once the stronghold of the most ruthless and warlike Indians in North America, and in the 1880's, when Galeyville thrived, the Chiricahuas sheltered the roughest, toughest, trigger-happy outlaws Arizona ever knew. There was mining around the old town of Paradise, lumbering and cattle raising. Today, you can listen to brave tales of early day Chiricahuans, and you can still meet a few of the last pioneers. There is the tang of the old West in these mountains: the wind blows fresh, and the land has an exhilarating sweep of spaciousness under the blue Southwestern sky.

So take the road to Portal some day and explore the fabulous, paradoxical, enchanting Chiricahua country. I promise you-you won't be wasting your time.