Easter on Horseback

Easter morn is greeted on horseback at Wickenburg. There are not many places where a predominant number of worshipers would go to an Easter sunrise service on horseback; but Wickenburg, with the many guest ranches and corrals of horses, is a place where it is done.

Before the first gray streaks of morning light faintly appear on the desert rim, wranglers at the guest ranches are busy saddling the horses, and other helpers are knocking on doors calling rider-worshipers to be up and about.

As the first shafts of dawn light touch the surrounding mountains, the riders move out from the various ranches over the mesquite-covered swells and saguaro-studded hills to the little knoll lifted skyward by a rugged cross-the meeting place for Wickenburg's Easter sunrise service.

If, perchance, you are fortunate in being an early arrival for the service and gain a vantage point looking out over the surrounding landscape coming to life with sweet bird calls as the gray streaks begin to turn a soft iridescent pink, you will see a modern pageant not soon to be forgotten. From out of the far reaches of the desert will appear, instantaneously, as a leader of a line of riders comes from behind a hill, the mounted worshipers bedecked in the colorful holiday dress of levis, varied tints of shirts, and topped with Stetsons-modern crusaders of the faith making the annual dawn pilgrimage to a modern shrine in the desert. Your eye will scan the horizon, and other riders will appear; singly, in pairs, and long lines from various directions. They reachout as spokes of a wheel all moving slowly toward the hub, the cross-topped hill, in the desert's vastness.

Then, as the desert floor becomes blanketed in the quiet hues of morning light, and the far-off mountains stand alerted in purple uniform, the riders gather around a great campfire below the altar-hill. The silence is broken by a voice"And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun."

Another Easter day has been greeted in the beauty of the Arizona desert.

This observance is sponsored by the Wickenburg Kiwanis Club in keeping with an objective of the International organization to "support churches in their spiritual aims." It is done in the tradition and colorful cowboy fashion adopted by this community as "official dress" for all activities, and which have made it one of the most unique of all Arizona towns. During the annual season from September to May the several guest ranches and motels accommodate hundreds of guests from all parts of the United States and from foreign countries. This "Guest Ranch Capital of the World" has geared all of its economy and setting to this business of being host to these visitors, all of it in the spirit of Western life and in Western dress. It has worked. Townsfolk and visitors alike share the fun of "going Western."

Only a few days before Easter comes the annual trek of

"Easter on Horseback" came into being in 1951. In 1952, this writer was the speaker as a former Governor of the Kiwanis Clubs of the Southwest District. The fine fifty-voice Air Force choir from the Air Base at Luke Field gave the musical setting, and brought a sense of the reality of today's tragedy of international strife to the very foot of the "Cross of Calvary" on this Easter morn.

Several hundred persons formed the reverent congregation. Many came in cars, some early morning travelers were lured off the main highway for the service. It was, however, the riders on horseback who gave uniqueness to the occasion and made "Easter on Horseback" another Arizona tradition.

The congregation standing, on horseback, and in cars, greets Easter morn.