A Southwest Century

A Southwestern Century

BY LAWRENCE CLARK POWELL DRAWINGS BY ROSS SANTEE The welcome given my bibliography called “Heart of the Southwest” led to this companion list of non-fiction about the same region. “You have given us the best works of fiction,” readers declared, “now give us the best works of fact.” This implies that fact is better than fiction. What is best is truthfulness to life, and sometimes an inspired novelist comes closer to it than so-called factual writers. To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength.

In choosing, I have sought the works which in my taste and judgment best embody the special qualities and characteristics of the lands lying west of the Pecos, north of the Border, south of the Mesa Verde and the Grand Canyon, and east of the mountains which wall off Southern California and make it a land in itself. For twenty-five years I have been reading and writing about the books of the Southwest, and for an even longer time I have been living the life of a Southwesterner, based in Southern California and making entradas into the lands of the sun and little rain where, as Ross Calvin said, Sky Determines. These are the lands I love best, and these are the books which seem to me best to represent the things about them which make so many of us homesick when we are exiled elsewhere on earth.

Of the making of bibliographies there is no end, and mine is another link in the chain which binds writers and readers together. I have profited from the work of other compilers, but I have not let my choices be determined by theirs. I believe this is the first Southwest bibliography to be limited to a hundred books. It is harder to narrow than to widen the field. To extract the essence is always a laborious process, and in this instance also a joyous one.

In answer to the inevitable question as to why I included this and omitted that, I will reply only that this is my choice, conditioned by my own inescapable biases of taste and judgment, and that there is nothing on earth to prevent you from making your choice-and taking the critical consequences, as I am prepared to do.

If I were to classify the selections my headings would include History and Travel, Biography and Memoirs, Natural History, the Range, Arts and Crafts, Archaeology and Ethnology. Emphasis is on primary source works rather than on secondary versions. There does not seem to be a comprehensive work on Geology and Mining in the Southwest, including the rush for uranium, nor is there a book about the proliferation of the urban centers-two powerful factors of determination. There isalso an understandable lack of popular literature about atomic bomb development in New Mexico. It is noteworthy that although only eighteen women writers are among the hundred, of the five authors who are represented by two works each, four are women. The University of Oklahoma Press with eleven choices leads a total of fifty-one publishers.

Henry R. Wagner, dead last spring in his ninety-fifth year, was the dean of Southwestern bibliographers, and his The Spanish Southwest and The Plains and the Rockies are cornerstones in the field. Mary Tucker's Books of the Southwest is the best single bibliography of the Indian, Spanish, and Anglo periods, arranged by subjects, and Lyle Saunders' Guide to Materials Bearing on Cultural Relations in New Mexico is the best bibliography about a single state; Francis Farquhar's Books of the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon the best about a single area. A good work on a single subject is Ramon F. Adams' Six Guns and Saddle Leather, a bibliography of bad-men literature. J. C. Dykes' Billy the Kid: the Bibliography of a Legend is a model work on a single person. J. Frank Dobie's Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest, though strong on Texas and the range, weakens as it moves west; yet it has more color and flavor and personal authority than any other work of its kind. Glen Dawson's priced and indexed catalog, Southwest Books, is useful as a guide to values, although it also includes items from the Northwest to the South Pacific. Mildred Harrington's The Southwest in Children's Literature is an excellent bibliography of juveniles. Rader's South of Forty, Campbell's Book Lover's Southwest, and Kurtz's Literature of the American Southwest feature “shotgun bibliography,” which means firing broadside without knowing precisely what has been hit, and Campbell ludicrously sly rules Arizona out of the Southwest.

The reports of the great nineteenth century government surveys and expeditions are encyclopedias of the Western expansion. Because of their bulk, their costliness, and their general availability in libraries, I have not included the War Department's thirteen-volume Reports of Explorations and Surveys to Ascertain the Most Practicable and Economical Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, 1855-60; Wheeler's twelve-volume, plus four volumes of atlas and album of fifty photographs, U. S. Geographical Surveys West of the tooth Meridian, 1873-84; Emory's Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, 1857; Ives' Report upon the Colorado River of the West, 1861; Simpson's Report of the Route from Fort Smith, Arkansas to Santa Fé, New Mexico, 1857; Sitgreave's

Dear Friends:

To our many new acquaintances who have joined us this year, we are proud to offer these ARIZONA HIGHWAYS by-products as gift suggestions we believe you will be proud to give to your very special friends.

These gifts, as always, uphold the high standard of quality maintained by ARIZONA HIGHWAYS. If we may be of assistance to you on any gift occasion, we will be most happy to give prompt and proper attention to your order.

Sincerely, ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

BOUND VOLUMES $9.85

For truly fine gifts of lasting quality, give the handsome brown leatherette bound volumes of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS magazine. These 12 copy volumes may be sent to you or to your friends direct. As they must be specially packaged for mailing, please indicate if your order goes directly to the recipient and the name that you wish signed on the gift card we will enclose for you.

COLOR ALBUM $5.00

Here is a treasured gift, a library keepsake, a true collectors item for anyone who appreciates things beautiful and artistic. The ARIZONA HIGHWAYS COLOR ALBUM for 1957 contains all the 244 full-color reproductions, on premium enamel stock that have appeared in the magazine during the past year. This outstanding volume contains a preface by Raymond Carlson, editor of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS. Footnotes and camera data are also included for interested photographers.

TWELVE ISSUE BINDERS $3.00

Here is a useful and inexpensive gift for those to whom you send subscriptions to ARIZONA HIGHWAYS magazine. In this stoutly constructed, brown fabricoid covered binder, copies of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS can be kept fresh and undamaged for future binding in permanent volumes. This binder is attractively lined inside with full color ARIZONA HIGHWAYS reproductions.

COLOR CLASSICS

A selection of over 1000 subjects on 35mm color slides made from original color photographs that have appeared in ARIZONA HIGHWAYS magazine is available to choose from. A complete Color Classics catalog and order blank will be sent at no charge upon request. Price schedule for Color Classics slides is as follows: 1 to 15 slides, 40c each; 16 to 49, 35c each; 50 or more, 3 for $1.00.

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS LEGEND A SOUTHWEST CENTURY

ONE HUNDRED DEFINITIVE BOOKS WHICH BEST TELL THE STORY OF THE SOUTHWEST.

ARIZONA COTTON-ANCIENT AND MODERN

WHEN BETTER COTTON IS GROWN, YOU CAN BE CERTAIN ARIZONA WILL GROW IT.

DESERT ODYSSEY

FOLLOWING THAT MADCAP SEASON, SPRING, THROUGH THE HEART OF THE ARID LAND.

MESQUITE

CLOSEUP OF ONE OF THE WEST'S MOST FAMOUS OR INFAMOUS DESERT DWELLERS.

Parade of the Wild Flowers...

Ho! Hum! It's spring again! If it rains real hard (and it seldom does out our way) there'll be flowers, millions of flowers, raising their saucy heads out of the desert floor. And if it doesn't rain (who can tell?) there'll only be a patch or two here and there, but even that patch will be worth investigating, because when did a wild flower or two be unworthy of one's effort or time to pause a minute or so in the sun?

As you can see, we're wild-flower-happy this issue, and, through the efforts of two dedicated Nature lovers and two wonderfully qualified photographers, Willis Peterson and Bill Bass, we bring you herein a wild flower bouquet which, we doubt, you can pluck any place else in the world.

And then the eternal question arises: When is the best time to see the desert in bloom? That depends on several variable factors-rainfall and elevation. Generally, however, late March and April is wild flower time in the desert regions of the state. In midsummer of last year the mountain areas were at their dazzling best.

One of the "C's" for which Arizona is justly famous is "Cotton." Rich Johnson, an expert on the subject, tells us about cotton in Arizona beginning way back long ago. From him we learn that the finest cotton ever grown was developed in this state and that our cotton growers get much more cotton per acre than cotton growers elsewhere. Soil, climate, irrigation and know-how spell the answer.

Without seeming to be crassly commercial, we would like to call to your attention some of the items produced by this publication (opposite page). The Color Album, 1957, turned out, we think, to be a handsome volume. In it are offered all of our color pages for last year, including covers without our cover signature. There's a heap of color wrapped up in that book... R.C.

FRONT COVER

"WILD FLOWER BOUQUET" BY WILLIS PETERSON. Upper Left-Yarrow, Achillea lanulosa; Upper Center-Aster, Aster foliaceus; Upper Right-Zinnia, Zinnia grandiflora; Middle LeftSand Verbena, Abronia villosa; Desert Dandelion, Nemoseris neomexicana; Middle Center-Bindweed, Convolvulus arvensis; Middle Right-Vervain, Verbena bipinnatifida; Lower Left-Goldenrod, Solidago sparsiflora; Lower Center-Red Gilia, Gilia aggregata; Lower Right-Mariposa Lily, Calochortus kennedyi.

OPPOSITE PAGE

"BRITTLE BUSH IN BLOOM" BY CHUCK ABBOTT. 5x7 Deardorff View camera; Ektachrome; f.32 at ½ sec.; Goerz Dagor lens; early May, 1957; bright morning about 10 A.M.; Weston Meter Light value 400. Scene along road through Saguaro National Monument. The yellow flowers are Brittle Bush (Encelia farinosa) which are at their best in years after generous spring rains in desert areas around Tucson.