OLD BILL WILLIAMS' FAVORITE MOUNTAIN

Legend has it that William Sherley Williams-better known as Old Bill Williams-lies in his grave at the top of Bill Williams Mountain in Northern Arizona. How this legend got its start is not known, but the Sante Fe Railway advertised it in some of its early tourist promoting literature. Many persons still believe it to be true in spite of several historical writers who have reported that Old Bill Williams died at the hands of the Ute Indians in Southern Colorado in 1849.

Whether buried atop his mountain or not, Old Bill certainly could not have asked for a more spectacular spot for his last resting place. George Wharton James in his book Arizona The Wonderland, which was published 38 years ago, really let himself go when he described the view from the top of Bill Williams Mountain. Mr. James, who had a wonderful command of description, called the view "incomparable," "the most comprehensive survey [the traveler's] eyes have ever allowed him to view," and asserted that "nowhere in the United States can [the traveler] find a more widely expansive view than this will afford." Coming from a man who had traveled and seen as much as George Wharton James had, this was really something. James went on to say:Imagine standing on a mountain top, a mile and threequarters above sea level, and then looking out over a varied panorama, with practically unrestricted vision over a radius of two hundred miles. It is bewildering in its stupendous

majesty and uplifting in its impressive glory.1

George Wharton James was not exaggerating, nor was he simply exercising his talent for writing powerful description; that is the kind of prose needed to do justice to the job of describing the view from the top of Old Bill Williams' favorite mountain. You can easily verify this by taking a look for yourself, now, since the opening in 1954 of a utility road to the highest point of the mountain.

This single track road zigs, zags, and winds its seven-mile length up the mountain in breathtaking fashion, affording anyone strong enough to sit up in an automobile the opportunity to view the unique scene which James described in 1917. Mr. James had to hike or ride a horse up a narrow trail to reach the top, but the fact that you can now drive your car up a fairly smooth road does not detract from the thrill the traveler feels at the top.

To find the road, turn south at Fourth Street and Bill Williams Avenue (U.S. 66) in the town of Williams, continue past the red sandstone Sante Fe dam and through lovely Sante Fe Canyon. The road is good blacktop. You will be skirting the eastern base of the mountain, and you will be offered many views of the rugged shoulder. If the light is just right, the peak will stand out in three-dimen-

Without unexcelled line of sight coverage of Bill Williams Mountain, radio communication using the high frequencies now used would be extremely erratic and spotty.

Another installation on the peak is a television antenna, booster, and conversion unit which picks up TV programs from the Salt River Valley and brings them down a cable to the town of Williams which otherwise would not have television reception.

A wooden cross with a red flag is erected over a bench mark at the highest point of the peak. This marker, which serves as a triangulation station for the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, can be seen from practically any point within sight from the top.

Today traffic flows by the base of the mountain in almost a solid stream on U.S. 66 and 89, and trains of the Sante Fe Railway follow each other in close order on both tracks of the main line paralleling the highway, but in the early days traffic was rather light. Light. Captain Pedro de Tovar of Coronado's expedition probably was the first white man to see the mountain-and from a distance, too-when he led an expedition from Zuni seeking the Hopi Indian villages in 1540. Cárdenas, who was sent out to find the Colorado River, retraced Tovar's trail and reached the Grand Canyon, probably near Grand View Point, about fifty miles north of Williams.

Espejo in 1582 led an expedition into the region seeking mines. This party reached a river which may have been Sycamore Creek, which has its source near or on the slopes of Bill Williams Mountain, and possibly followed down this stream to what must have been the Verde River. Some accounts place the mines on the Bill Williams River, the upper reaches of which were sometimes confused with the upper reaches of the Verde.

Don Juan de Oñate sent out an expedition under Captain Marcos Farfán which evidently passed to the south of Bill Williams Mountain about the year 1598. Oñate followed Farfán's route in 1604 while on his way to the Gulf of California.

In 1775 Garcés, the Franciscan Friar, left de Anza's expedition to California at the Colorado River to travel to the Hopi Villages. On his way he entered Cataract Canyon which is about seventy miles northwest of Bill Williams Mountain. After emerging from the home of the Havasupai, he must have come within sight at least of the peak. Cataract Creek has its beginnings on the north side of Bill Williams Mountain.

From the time of Garcés in 1775 until the American mountain men began their restless wanderings into the region, traffic was so light as to leave no record. William Sherley Williams-Old Bill-was with an expedition into the Gila Valley in 1826. Part of this large group, which included James Ohio Pattie, trapped up the Verde River. Richard Campbell led a pack train past the mountain a year later; and there is a rumor of Bill Williams' presence in the Hopi Villages about the same time. No doubt at least some of these trappers besides Campbell passed the mountain returning eastwards. In 1829 Ewing Young led a party of trappers, which included Kit Carson, up the Verde River to its head. The party split up in the forest south of Bill Williams Mountain, part of the men turning westward and the others turning eastward toward Taos. The latter group trod the slopes of the mountain shortly after the division.

Between the years 1825 and 1841 Old Bill Williams left his tracks in Northern Arizona on more than several occasions, but because of a tendency to travel alone, little is actually on record of his wanderings. There is a report of his having spent a winter on the slopes of Bill Williams Mountain about 1833, and there is also a reference to his presence on the mountain in 1837. There is a rumor of a ruined log cabin somewhere on the side of the peak in which the old mountain man spent a winter. The writer has not been successful in finding it, however.

Whatever traffic flowed past Bill Williams Mountain in the next ten years left little record. Possibly Jacob Hamblin may have passed on one of his trips to the Hopi villages. After the discovery of gold in California in 1848, the government began to send out expeditions seeking Bill Williams Mountain looks cool and serene after an April storm in the high country.

routes for wagon roads and railroads to California. Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves made the first of these government expeditions in 1851 leading a party of American military men chiefly from the Corps of TopographMedical Engineers. The Sitgreaves party passed around the southern base of the mountain, camping two nights before leaving it. According to James R. Fuchs it was at this time that the mountain was named. When the expedition came to the bed of a small stream (probably the upper reaches of Hell's Canyon, which flows into the Verde River), Antoine Leroux, the expedition's guide, told R. H. Kern, topographer with the surveyors, that he had met Bill Williams there in 1837. When Kern later prepared James R. Fuchs, A History of Williams, Arizona. Social Science Bulletin No. 23. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1953, P. 14.The town of Williams lies at the foot of Bill Williams Mountain.

the map, he attached Bill Williams' name to the mountain to show his and Leroux's regard for the old trapper.

Others passing near the mountain were Francois (or Felix) Aubrey, Lieutenant A. W. Whipple, Lieutenant E. F. Beale, and Lieutenant Joseph C. Ives. Whipple, who headed a party traveling in a train of wagons, camped close to the mountain; Aubrey drove a band of sheep across the thirty-fifth parallel route while leading a group of sixty men from California to New Mexico in 1853. Lieutenant Beale passed to the north of the mountain with his famous camels in 1857 and again in 1858, probably watering these animals in Cataract Creek, which begins on the north slope of Bill Williams Mountain. The route that Beale marked out has been used for almost one hundred years and is essentially that which is now used by the Santa Fe Railway and Highway 66. Lieutenant Ives, who explored the Colorado River in a steamboat in 1857, camped at the base of the mountain after visiting Cataract Canyon (Havasupai Canyon). Ives was very favorably impressed with his campsite on Cataract Creek, very close to where the town of Williams is situated now.

In 1863 members of the Walker Party, a strong organization of miners located near the present site of Prescott, made one trip to the mountain but retreated after finding more Apache Indians than they cared for.

After the Civil War General W. J. Palmer laid out the route which the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad (now the Santa Fe) followed. Palmer followed approximately the surveys of the 1850's. From 1876 until the railroad reached Williams in 1882, there were only a few isolated settlers in the region, although Williams' post office was established in 1881.

The first trail up Bill Williams Mountain was built by Esau Lamb in 1902. Lamb charged a small fee for using his trail and rented horses for the climb. The United States Forest Service opened a trail, utilizing part of theold Lamb trail, from Camp Clover Ranger Station to the top in 1909. During that year H. L. Benham and Willard Sevier, the original forest rangers for the district, used the peak as a lookout, climbing a tree that still grows on the summit to use as a lookout tower. The existing lookout tower was packed up in sections on the backs of mules, as was the airplane beacon, which once blinked from the summit, and its power station.

The greatest charm of Bill Williams Mountain is its wildness. Since most of it is inaccessible except to the foot-climber, one may step out of civilization and see the same type of country that Old Bill Williams and his cohorts saw if one is willing to travel the mountain on foot. Indian ruins are numerous on the lower slopes. Many of these have never been touched by white men because they are so well camouflaged that one can pass over them without recognizing them for what they are. One old timer has a story of a mine which he stumbled across once while hunting deer high on the upper slopes. The mine had a fairly large pile of waste and other evidences of considerable work having been done. The mine opening was sealed with a huge slab of rock which had evidently been put in place by means of cables running through iron eyebolts forced into the cliff wall above the entrance. As with Bill Williams' cabin, the writer has never been able to find this mine; and the old-timer who tells the story has never been able to return to the mine, either. Without being too romantic, one can imagine Espejo sealing off the entrance in the sixteenth century, intending to return but never succeeding in doing so.

If you should decide to do a bit of exploring on Bill Williams Mountain on foot and perhaps keep an eye open for old cabins, Indian ruins, and mines, you might not find any of the three; but you would certainly find something else that is becoming quite scarce and hard to find nowadays: country that has not yet been spoiled by man.

ON DISPLAY IN GERMANY:

Thanks to the generosity of friends, I have been reading your wonderful magazine now for over five years. Having traveled in America myself as a former exchange student from Germany, I feel very pleased to have a collection of fine Western landscapes here in my study. As a geographer, the interest for landscape and people is my highest field of work, and your magazine becomes a leading source of it.

Let me add today a little picture which might show you how our German children.

look at your fine photography. Regularly I have the best prints posted on the walls of my classroom at Koblenz High and our students love to study them.

Dr. Hans Rosenberg Nassau/Lahn Berghaus, Germany

WARNING TO LITTERBUGS:

After a long and pleasant automobile journey through your state I have only one complaint to make. Can't something be done to do away with litterbugs? In places there was so much debris scattered along the roads that the beautiful scenery suffered.

Adam H. Hodgson Cleveland, Ohio

OF CONTENTMENT: ETC.

I am a photographer and like your contributor, Carlos Elmer, an amateur. I find photography a most satisfying hobby and 1 feel Mr. Elmer expressed the philosophy of the camera excellently in your February issue.

A. C. Holmes Seattle, Wash.

Mrs. Opal Brownsley Dallas, Texas

S. T. Sabens Bozeman, Montana

BOOKS OF THE SOUTHWEST:

I found Dr. Powell's article in your February issue. Heart of the Southwest, of great interest. I have spent some time and effort collecting books pertaining to our area and will certainly use Dr. Powell's article as a guide in the future.

Samuel Y. Xonos Tucson, Arizona It is refreshing, indeed, in this age of blatant television to find someone who still reads and loves books. I refer to Lawrence Clark Powell and his article in your February magazine. Modern parents are concerned with "Why Johnnie Can't Read." No wonder. You can't pry the little jerk away from teevee! Gives us more of Dr. Powell.

Mrs. A. D. Addington Wilmington, Delaware

I KNEW A DAY

I knew a day that planned just what to doIt would begin with pinkest clouds, then change, By slow, but sure degree, to azure blueNot counting on the winds that rearrange The best laid plans of mice, and men, and days. Toward noon, escorted by a silken mist, That split the cyclops sun to paling rays, A breeze became a wind that made a fist Of blackened clouds above the shadowed plain; And, though the day held to a patch of sky No bigger than a splattered window pane, It did admit its plans had gone awry; In short, as days are known, it was a fizzle, About to lose its dignity and drizzle.

REEVE SPENCER KELLEY

THE LAND OF CROSSES

This is the land of crosses, timbers Standing on brown churches Between flowering pines; Rising above plazas of sandLow with adobe housesDividing the sun by four.

They are in every wild and feverent sky; Cried out to when the stars and night Move, without end, to towering mountains; Needed when the earth becomes so big It nullifies the soul of doubtful existence.

REEVE SPENCER KELLEY

COUNTRY CHURCH

With folded hands the faithful folk, In love-worn pews of golden oak, Await their pastor's private prayer. Gravely he mounts the pulpit stair And looks benignly down among His Sunday flock, the old and young. Then falls a hush-expectant, still, Unmarked by cough or stir, until As if on silent, sacred cue The morning sun breaks softly through The old stained glass, to light the Word Through which the Shepherd leads His herd.

BETTY ISLER

AT NIGHT

At night Above the reach Of desert farness, God Fills all the empty space among The stars.

GRACE BARKER WILSON

SILVERMAKER

The wind is a Navajo silversmith Shaping his cloud silver into frames For turquoise of the sky.

HELEN INGRAHAM

BACK COVER

"GRAND CANYON FROM MORAN POINT"-BY ESTHER HENDERSON. The normal tendency of photographers is to photograph Grand Canyon during storms, sunsets and special effects and the object of this picture was to show the canyon on just a plain bright morning when the colors were vivid but skies were placid above. 5x7 Deardorff View Camera, Ektachrome film, Goerz Dagor lens, 1/10th at f.22. The photograph shows Grand Canyon is truly a shrine of scenic beauty in all moods and weather.

OPPOSITE PAGE

"THE COLORED SPIRES OF BRYCE CANYON"-BY JOSEF MUENCH. In Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. Taken with a Speed Graphic camera, 6" Ektar lens on 4x5 Ektachrome film. Exposure: 1/5th second at f.22. Late one afternoon as the photographer hiked along Sunrise Point Trail, this colorful view opened, full of reflected light and weird forms. Bryce is another National Park which travelers reach via "89." The lodge at Bryce is operated by the Utah Parks Company.