Deep Winter, Grand Canyon

INSIDE FRONT COVER

"Oak Creek Canyon near Sedona Lodge" Valdis M. Avots

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

VOL. XXX No. 9 SEPTEMBER 1954 RAYMOND CARLSON, Editor GEORGE M. AVEY, Art Editor

LEGEND

"DEER AT A DESERT WATER HOLE" FRONT COVER LEWIS WALKER, BEHIND BLIND AT DESERT MUSEUM, VIEWS QUARTETTE.

CAMP VERDE PORTRAIT OF A METROPOLIS IN THE HEART OF HISTORIC VERDE VALLEY.

AROUND THE CLOCK AT A WATER HOLE DESERT ANIMALS ARE FUN TO WATCH WHEN THEY COME TO QUENCH THIRST.

BROWN LEAVES FALLING DISCUSSION OF LIFE AND DEATH OF A LEAF-A MIRACLE OF NATURE.

DREAM HOMES BY THE DOZEN Low COST HOUSING IN PHOENIX IS ABOUT THE BEST IN ALL OF NATION.

RETURN TO PARADISE A VISITOR DECIDES TO SPEND A DAY AT RECOMMENDED SYCAMORE CANYON.

YOURS SINCERELY A PAGE FOR READERS WHO FIND A FEW THINGS TO DISCUSS WITH US.

HOWARD PYLE

Governor of Arizona

ARIZONA HIGHWAY COMMISSION

John M. Scott, Chairman . . . . . Show Low Fred D. Schemmer, Vice Chairman . Prescott Frank E. Moore, Member . . . . . Douglas Grover J. Duff, Member . . . . . Tucson C. A. Calhoun, Member . . . . . Mesa Glenn E. King, Acting Secretary . . Phoenix R. D. Canfield, State Hwy. Engr. . . Phoenix ARIZONA HIGHWAYS is published monthly by the Arizona Highway Department a few miles north of the confluence of the Gila and Salt in Arizona. Address: ARIZONA HIGHWAYS, Phoenix, Arizona. $3.00 per year in U.S. and possessions; $3.50 elsewhere; 35 cents each. Entered as second-class matter Nov. 5, 1941 at Post Office in Phoenix, under Act of March 3, 1879. Copyrighted, 1954, by Arizona Highway Department.

Allow five weeks for change of addresses. Be sure to send in the old as well as new address.

OPPOSITE PAGE "Sunlight in Autumn" Chuck Abbott

Homes in the West

The population growth in Arizona since the war has been phenomenal. As a matter of fact, in recent years Arizona has led all other states, including the Cinderella state of California, in percentage of growth according to population. Phoenix and Tucson are two of the fastest growing cities in the United States, and their growth has resulted mainly in the quite attractive growth statistics that Arizona can dangle with considerable pride before her sister states. Greater Tucson, with a population of 64,000 in 1940, now boasts a population of some 170,000. Greater Phoenix, with a population of 122,000 in 1940, has now seen that population figure soar to 290,000 in 1954. We use the term "greater" because much of what we now consider Phoenix and Tucson is not actually within the city limits of the respective communities. Lots of folks, apparently, in the past few years have decided that living in the sun is a lot more fun than living in places where the climate and other living conditions are less conducive to a full and happy life.

How can these communities take care of so many new people? We try to answer that question this issue with a rather complete dissertation, with pictures of course, on the housing situation in Phoenix. We refer you to our article, "Dream Homes by the Dozen," which will give you a glimpse of the achievements of our Phoenix home builders in the past few years, and what they have to offer to the future home owner. In Phoenix, and in Tucson and other places in Arizona, good homes cost less. We sound very much as if we were going into the real estate business, but we aren't. We merely feel that what our Arizona home builders have to offer cannot be equalled throughout this Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, and we thought you might like to know what is going on if you are interested in a home in the sun.

This issue the name of R. C. Perkins no longer graces our masthead as state engineer. Mr. Perkins died in early July, completing a long and distinguished career as an Arizona public servant, one whose life was dedicated to better roads for all of us. With his passing all of us in Arizona have lost a good and old friend.

WHAT'S NEW UNDER THE Arizona SUN

INTERESTING BOOK IN THE SUN: We have learned, and we are happy to pass the information along to our readers, that the American Anthropologist, official publication of the American Anthropologist Association, has produced a special issue which is the outgrowth of a day-long symposium (December 29, 1953) on the anthropology of the Southwest, held during the national meetings of the Association at the University of Arizona, December 28-29, 1953. Dr. E. H. Spicer of the University faculty was general program chairman and Dr. Emil Haury was chairman of the symposium. Eleven papers were drawn up, with two discussants, covering all phases of anthropology in the Southwest. Papers included in the American Anthropologist include such varied subjects as "Transition to History in the Pueblo Southwest," and "Spanish-Indian Acculturation in the Southwest" to "Major Contributions of Southwestern Studies to Anthropological Theory," all by eminent scientists. This Southwestern issue of the American Anthropologist is available by writing direct to ARIZONA HIGHWAYS, Phoenix, Arizona, $2.00 per copy. It can also be obtained from Frederick Johnson, Executive Secretary, American Anthropological Association, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts.

NOTES IN THE SUN: Glory be! Maverick, Arizona, high in the White Mountains, turned in the coldest temperature recorded any place in the United States in early July. When this was written the Cleveland Indians and the New York Giants, major league baseball teams which train in Tucson and Phoenix respectively, were leading their respective leagues. But we might as well be honest. The Chicago Cubs and the Baltimore Orioles, which trained in Arizona last spring, weren't doing so well.

MOVIE IN THE SUN: As this is written the cast of "Oklahoma!" is busy making outdoor scenes in the San Rafael Valley, not far from Nogales. This is one movie we will recommend sight unseen. The director is Fred Zinneman, Academy Award winner for his superb "From Here to Eternity." The San Rafael Valley is probably the best place in the world to be background for the lyrical theme, "O What a Beautiful Morning, O What a Beautiful Day." (Oklahoma papers, please copy.). R.C.

FRONT COVER "DEER AT DESERT WATER HOLE," BY LEWIS WAYNE WALKER. The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, in the Tucson Mountains near Tucson, is a remarkable place, as thousands of visitors each year will attest. We refer you to our article this issue, "Around. the Clock at a Water Hole," and how the Museum has made it possible for visitors to observe nocturnal habits of desert animals.

Camp Verde BY BONNIE AND ED PEPLOW

Imaginative or not, that story illustrates very well the feeling of most Camp Verdians that the future of their community in the southern end of the Verde Valley will be without the economic ups and downs of its illustrious past when the new north-south thoroughfare is completed.

Appropriately, Camp Verde owes its founding as well as its future to its location on important travel routes. Back in the 1860s immigrants to the West traveled an extension of the old Santa Fe Trail. This route ran southwestward from Santa Fe, through what is now Holbrook, across the Rim, down into the Verde Valley, across the Black Hills, through Prescott and on to the lower Colorado River and the Gulf of California.

In those days, the Apache Indians and other tribes in the northeast quarter of Arizona were hostile to the white immigrant. Soldiers from Fort Whipple, outside of Prescott, had the job of protecting these travelers; but the rugged mountains and the long distances to be traversed made it advisable to establish a fort nearer the Mogollon Rim, as near as feasible to the rough rim country in which the Apaches made their ambushes and yet in a place where there were more natural assets and fewer liabilities than the cold and forested highlands offered. A site in the valley of the Verde River just north of where the Black Hills on the west and the Mogollon Rim on the east draw close together was chosen in 1864 for the building of Fort Lincoln. It was near the points at which Beaver Creek, Clear Creek and Cherry Creek empty into the Verde, thus affording plenty of water both for domestic as well as irrigation purposes. There fertile river-bottom land made excellent pasturage for the cavalry horses; in fact, in those days, wild hay belly-high to a horse grew in profusion even on the higher ground in the river valley.

The volunteers from Fort Whipple who manned Fort Lincoln encountered a problem which today seems almost unbelievable. There was too much water, at least around the fort site. The consequent marshy lands bred disease-laden mosquitoes, and, as a result, the original fort was abandoned and the garrison was moved across the river to a dry mesa, the present town site. and there it was renamed Camp Verde.

At about the same time, in the late '60s immigrants in the wagon trains that stopped to rest at Camp Verde began to succumb to the combined attractions of the place. The presence of the company of soldiers, of course, provided a ready market for farm products. Dirt farmers and cattlemen alike saw in Camp Verde the answer to their dreams. Among them were three brothers by the name of Wingfield, whose descendants still today are among the town's leading citizens.

Indeed, Camp Verde has enjoyed a remarkably stable population throughout the years. A great many of the families in and around Camp Verde have been there for generations, virtually since the town was founded. It has never been a spectacular boomtown, and, perhaps for that very reason, it has stayed solvent even despite a number of severe economic cycles.

The first of these ended before the turn of the century. During the previous years, the basic market for Camp Verde produce had been the garrison. Then there were in addition sales to the wagon trains that passed through and, for those who would make the rather rough trip through Grief Pass, there was a ready market at Fort Whipple and in Prescott.

However, in 1882 the last local battle with the Apaches was fought on Battleground Ridge, on the Mogollon north and east of the camp. The peace which followed the battle has continued ever since, and, a few years later, the government decided it was no longer necessary to maintain the garrison on the Verde. While every Camp Verdian rejoiced in the peace, the removal of the garrison also constituted the removal of the primary market for the farmers and cattlemen.

For the next few years Camp Verde economically was able just about to hold its own. The Whipple market remained, as did the wagon train customers. A few prospectors and a slowly growing community of cattle raisers in the Verde district bought a little farm produce. But mostly Camp Verde farmers had to be content with being selfsustaining and little more.

Suddenly, about the turn of the century, Camp Verde's economic fortunes brightened. The fabulously rich copper mine at Jerome was brought in, and almost overnight a thriving, booming, roaring mining camp sprang into being on the side of Mingus Mountain in the Black Hills some thirty miles north and west of Camp Verde. The calls of the hungry miners for food, food and more food replaced dozens of times over the lost garrison market for Camp Verde.

For half a century thereafter Camp Verde's economy was intimately related to the copper market. When Jerome and the smelter towns of Clarkdale and Clemenceau were in heavy production, so were Camp Verde's farmers; when the copper market slackened, so did the farmers' market.

State Route 69, the Black Canyon Highway, now being paved, will put Camp Verde on the travel map.

to truck their produce to Phoenix or to Flagstaff, Winslow and points north, thus opening up new and profitable markets.

And third, there were the climate and scenery which had gradually, over the course of several years, attracted people of means to build homes and guest ranches in the area. Each new home, each prosperous guest ranch, indeed each carload of tourists that could be attracted to the area meant that much of a boost for the local economy.

Of course, when this appraisal of the community's potential was made, one big question that arose was: how was Camp Verde to keep its youngsters down on the farm when lush-sounding jobs were plentiful all over the country and Camp Verde was, for the moment, suffering a setback?

The answer was a vocational agriculture course instituted at the Camp Verde high school. Begun in 1949, it has two purposes: to show the student the opportunities for a good life and a good living there are in agriculture; and to equip him to handle not only general agricultural problems but specifically the problems he will encounter in raising produce or stock in the Camp Verde area.

In 1951 the vocational agriculture course was one of the most popular in the high school among both boys and girls. Its success was dramatically demonstrated in the results of a poll of its students taken at the end of the '51 school year. One hundred percent said they had made up their minds to stay in Camp Verde as farmers or stockmen.

A highly successful corollary course is one in vocational home economics. Here again the dual effort is to give a girl a sense of pride in a career of homemaking and to equip her to be a successful homemaker anywhere, but especially under the particular circumstances she is likely to encounter on a Camp Verde ranch.

a sense of pride in a career of homemaking and to equip her to be a successful homemaker anywhere, but especially under the particular circumstances she is likely to encounter on a Camp Verde ranch.

So far as a method for inducing people of independent means to come to live in and near Camp Verde is concerned, Camp Verdians seem to have hit upon the most effective method of all. It can best be described as neighborliness, the spontaneous, sincere, old-fashioned kind. The merchants, the ranchers, the business people everyoneare ready and happy to give that little extra service and advice a dollar can't buy and which make life in a community easy and happy.

In most cases this neighborliness proves to be reciprocal. For example, Charles A. Ward, wealthy advertising executive from St. Paul, whose Rancho Roca Roja is a Camp Verde showplace, has responded to the cordiality of his

neighbors in characteristic fashion, building a new community church and helping to support it. The original church was a small frame building erected many years ago, long before Scottsdale became the leading art center of the Southwest and a mecca for winter visitors of wealth and standing. The new edifice is modern in every respect, costing upwards of $75,000 and representing the ultimate in architectural beauty. The structure is designed along early Spanish lines with a tall square bell tower.

It was just a trickling leak in the line supplying the new Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum with water which drew attention-not only mine-but also the attention of various desert animals. When I first came upon it, white-winged doves by the score were dropping to the muddy area, taking a few furtive sips and then flying away. Further examination showed that the surrounding ground was pockmarked with the tracks of deer and other animals which visited the place at night.

During normal times this concentration of animals at a spot where human activity was carried on around the clock would have been extremely unusual! However, four months of drought had stricken the Tucson Mountains and had dried up most of the natural tanks thus forcing wilderness creatures to this spot where people were numerous.

Above, "THE BOBCAT," BY LEWIS WAYNE WALKER. The bobcats visit the water hole two or three times a week. Below, "THE HOODED SKUNK," BY LEWIS WAYNE WALKER. This was one of seven different kinds of skunks seen at the water hole. Graphic View camera, 5½" focal length lens, flashbulb synchronized shutter speed 1/100th second, light source four 5B bulbs on blind 11 feet from subject, lens aperture F7.