RECKLESS, ROMANTIC REDINGTON

To begin another trip to some other interesting spot on this great Reservation. On the road from Whiteriver to Tonto Lake, where the big trout live, one passes the Turkey Creek area.

Not the least of Apachelands attractions are its numerous pre-historic ruins. There is the noted Kinishba (Brown House) located eight and one half miles southwest of Whiteriver and four miles west of Fort Apache just off the road that leads towards the junction with U.S. 60.

Another interesting ruin called the "frying pan" can be found on a promontory on a bend in Big Bonito Creek near the upper crossing on the road to Maverick. It was cleverly rendered impregnable against attack from any side.

The Maverick area furnishes some thirty to fifty million board feet of logs yearly that are shipped to the mill at McNary on a standard gauge railroad. The Apache Railroad runs from the lumber town of McNary for sixty seven miles through scenic country. After it leaves McNary and crosses Bog Creek, it passes near the newly developed winter sports area on Big Cieniga Mountain, then on through beautiful mountain meadows past great herds of Herefords browsing on summer range. The two ribbons of steel wind around great grass and tree covered mountains of volcanic cinder left from eruptions of a bygone age. Down it snakes its way as it crosses the Little Colorado, with its many well-tended camp grounds, up again and around Big Lake across Black River and then into Pacheta Cieniga and the logging town of Maverick. Rail fans, Rotary Clubs and camera enthusiasts have enjoyed yearly excursions on this unique railroad that runs through the heart of the White Mountains.

For many years this vast mountain region was almost unknown to the White Man. Only the Indians fished the streams and hunted in the forests. It is true the Mountain Men hunted and trapped in this area but they were few and far between.

As the years passed and as more people learned of this mountain paradise the area attracted more individual sportsmen rugged enough to pack in. However, with the coming of paved roads and improvements in communications, more and more people came to hunt and to fish. The Tribe realized that something had to be done to protect this land and yet make it available to all who love the great outdoors.

The Tribal Council organized and financed the White Mountain Recreation Enterprise to develop their land as a playground for visitors. In the past few years much has been accomplished and plans have been made for other improvements in the years to come. Many improvements are being made on the Reservation which will provide more and better recreation facilities. Better fishing for more sportsmen will result from road and stream improvements. Over one hundred fifty new camp grounds have been developed with a total of six hundred fifty planned for the next four years. Trails and recreation roads are being improved with hundreds of direction signs erected for the traveler's convenience. Cottages are being built along some streams and lakes. The Williams Creek Hatchery (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) is planting hundreds of thousands of legal size trout each year. Trained young Apache Game Wardens travel the length and breadth of the Reservation to direct and assist visitors and sportsmen.

Reckless, Romantic

Last frontiers are scarce these days and getting scarcer. Yet Redington, Arizona, lying on the east slopes of the Catalina Mountains in the lush San Pedro Valley, stands with both feet firmly planted in the 1890's.

Just forty-five miles from Tucson over a rough mountain road, Redington has yielded, grudgingly, only to those modern accoutrements that have furthered its principal business, which is cattle ranching. Trucks and automobiles traverse its dirt roads, winding away through dense mesquite forests. But there is no electric line, no city gas, no modern plumbing and mail arrives only thrice weekly from Benson by rural carrier. Paradoxically, the little hamlet and the miles of juniper and oak-studded lands that surround it is as modern as uranium mining and television. One ranch, the ninety-six thousand acre Bellota, even has a radiotelephone to Tucson, the only means of communication with the outside world.

Redington's school house is a one room, weathered adobe whose average student body of eight or nine children of all ages and grades learn their letters from one busy teacher. Kenneth Chamberlain's school, like the community itself, is peaceful, isolated, hospitable. History records that Redington was not always this way. "Redington has had more killings than any place of like population in southern Arizona." So wrote the late Bernice Cosulich, pioneer Arizona journalist.

True to this tradition, lynch law took the life of Lem Redfield, who, with his brother Henry, founded the village in 1875. Before the Redfields came, other white men had tried the area only to flee for their lives before vicious onslaughts of Apache Indians.

When Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino visited the San Pedro Valley about 1706, he found two thousand Sobaipuri Indians, peaceful agriculturists, living in twelve fine mesa villages. Marauding Apaches drove these quiet Sobaipuris to extinction, though Coronado may have seen them on his journeys of exploration, in 1540, hundreds of years before anglos set foot in the valley.

Inevitably the anglos came and so did their contemporaries, the Mexicans. Violence became the harddriving companion of these pioneers who fought the Apaches and each other with equal ferocity and abandon.

In December, 1865, six Tucsonians trekked to Red-ington environs to launch an agricultural and cattle em-pire. Mark Aldrich, John H. Archibald, F. Berthold, Jarvis Jackson, John Montgomery and H. Brown took over where the Sobaipuris terminated. The men reasoned that if these Indians could, as they did, successfully raise cot-ton, maise, beans, wheat, melons and pumpkins the whites could do it too and do it better.

Redington

ington environs to launch an agricultural and cattle em-pire. Mark Aldrich, John H. Archibald, F. Berthold, Jarvis Jackson, John Montgomery and H. Brown took over where the Sobaipuris terminated. The men reasoned that if these Indians could, as they did, successfully raise cot-ton, maise, beans, wheat, melons and pumpkins the whites could do it too and do it better.

By February, 1866, the six Tucson men were build-ing an irrigation canal. In April, they ploughed and seeded their fields. They erected houses to shelter their women and children, and the military at Ft. Lowell, near Tucson, sent troops to protect the growing community of one hundred people.

In late September, the giant cottonwood trees began to shed their leaves as fall crept over the land. Yet the settlers could look forward to a secure winter, for they had marketed four hundred thousand pounds of wheat, barley and corn in Tucson. Then, a year later, like a red tide, the Apaches swept from the hills, killing, burning, pillaging. The settlers, lacking sufficient troop protec-tion, fled from the San Pedro. For the next ten years it became an Apache preserve, shunned by white men except for a few hardy trappers and miners.

To New Yorkers Henry and Lem Redfield, and Henry's son, Leonard, Fate reserved the honor and the pain of establishing the first permanent Redington which exists today. With Mrs. Redfield, Henry's wife, the three men rode by horseback up the valley, in November, 1875, their journey beset by hardships that would have discouraged less formidable personalities.

By the time the trio reached Tres Alamos (Three Poplars), nine miles south of the community they would soon establish, they were so short of food that Henry traded his saddle for a sack of corn. He rode the last nine miles bareback.

At their new location, scarcely a mile or two from the banks of the San Pedro river, dry most of the year but a raging maelstrom during the rainy season, the Red-fields built a one room log cabin. That December, they blessed a Christmas dinner which featured a fifty pound wild turkey with corn meal dressing.

Soon, Redfield cattle, wearing the Triangle Dot brand, foraged on miles and miles of land covered by bear grass, manzanita, juniper and scrub oak. From their ranch, the Redfield men could look north to the rugged Galiuro mountains and south to the Catalinas and Rincons.

Redington, as they saw it, had perfect isolation. It retains it today. From Tucson, the traveler who crosses Cebadillo pass at an altitude of 4,300 feet, may drive all day without meeting more than one or two ranch trucks.

Modern Redington residents love this isolation, the untouched back-of-beyond atmosphere that permits them unhindered, gracious living. They detest the litterbug with his carelessly discarded beercans and recklessly strewn picnic refuse. Yet Redingtonians are entirely hospitable to those who respect their mode of life. In this manner, Redington has changed from the days of the Redfields and their neighbors who preferred to go their way with no interference from outsiders.

The brothers Redfield prospered on cattle and the by-products of cattle. Henry carried butter sixty-five miles to Tombstone where he sold it for a dollar a pound, making the trip by buckboard. His son, Leonard, rode the pony mail between Tres Alamos and Redington. Most of the valley people saw Tucson no more than once a year and some never bothered to go at all.

As the years flowed on, the federal government built a supply route from Ft. Lowell to Camp Grant, passing near the Redfield ranch. Over Cebadillo pass rumbled mule-drawn ambulance wagons, military troop transports and the inevitable settlers, on horseback, in buckboards, and even in prairie schooners.

By 1879, the valley folk felt they needed a post office and asked Washington to establish Redfield. This name, however, was already taken, so they coined "Redington." On October 7, 1879, they got mail service with Henry Redfield their first postmaster. Somewhere in the back-wash of history, Redington lost its post office so that nowdays rows of rural mailboxes are the only reminder of this link with modern civilization.

It was after the post office came to Redington that Lem Redfield met trouble, "big trouble" the cowmen called it. In August, 1883, road agents held up the stage from Florence to Riverside (now called Ray), killing a Wells-Fargo messenger and stealing about $2,700. One of the bandits, Joe Tuttle, showed up at the Redfield ranch where the law cornered him. For good measure, Sheriff A. J. Doran of Florence, pulled in Lem Redfield,

although there was no real evidence to suggest his implication.

For Redfield, the end of the story is told in a terse headline from the Tombstone Republican of September 8, 1883: "Anticipating the law's delay, Redfield and Tuttle hanged by citizens of Florence. Redfield dies game, but Tuttle weakens."

In pioneer Redington, human life was cheap, and the six-gun was law. Two Mexicans killed Riley Bennett, a cowhand, in an argument over ownership of a calf. Two other Mexicans killed each other over a forty-cent difference in a crop division. A rancher named Wheaton died under torture by unknown parties who sought to extort from him the hiding place of his money. At the Dead Falls saloon, two Latin rancheros fired up on redeye. Then they chased each other round and round a huge cottonwood, shooting as they ran. Ultimately, both died of lead poisoning.

Naturally, this casual attitude produced many “characters,” most of them callous, cynical, predatory. Now and then a gentle soul like W. H. Cureton, stage driver, played a lighter role, giving Redington folk pause to chuckle. For twenty-four years, Cureton drove a stage through the San Pedro valley. For most of that time the line bore the improbable name of the Te-He Flyer, acquiring it when a passenger became irritated at the old man's habit of ending all his remarks with a girlish titter.

One who found the valley and its people anything but laughable was Frank Marion Pool who moved there from Tucson in 1883, making the trip by covered wagon. The valley stirred Pool as it does those who now live there or who visit it today. In his unpublished memoirs, Pool wrote: “It is one of the most beautiful valleys I ever saw, the river a living stream. When I arrived, a few farms were already under cultivation, grass everywhere. Fine cattle ranged from the Mexican line to where the San Pedro river joins the Gila. There was wild game in abundance: deer, antelope, wild hogs, beaver, raccoons, foxes, wildcats, mountain lions, bear, rabbit, quail, doves, ducks and geese. The river teemed with fish, suckers and Gila salmon, some of them weighing as much as fifteen pounds.” In 1888, Apache raids ceased and the valley became safe from Indian war parties. Other dangers of catastrophic proportions persisted.

In 1885, the Bayless family of Tucson established large ranching interests at Redington. To keep their cowhands sober and work-worthy, the Bayless men bought out and closed the Redington saloons. Then, between 1888 and 1890, another kind of drought descended on the valley. As though in a giant furnace, ranches withered, forcing their owners to sell. The Bayless family bought most of these spreads, consolidating them into the sprawling, twenty-thousand acre Carlink ranch. Now owned by Mr. and Mrs. Kingston Smallhouse, the Carlink is, today, in a sense, Redington itself, for the school house, the general store, and the teacherage sit on Smallhouse land.

So, too, does another operation, as modern as the dude patio and as ancient as the Turkish brazier. Ten minutes from the Redington store, over a dirt road enclosed in sections by mesquite trees so dense as to form a veritable tunnel, lies the Carlink charcoal kilns. Here mesquite logs are burned to form charcoal so popular nowdays in preparation of steaks for picnics or backyard dinners. Each month, the Carlink ships an average of thirty tons of finished charcoal to markets in Tucson and California. Huge semi-trailer trucks haul it away over roads that are scarcely less primitive than the wagon ruts of the eighties.

About eight miles east of the Carlink, fronting the Redington road, is the Hope Jones ranch where crossbreeding of Herefords and Angus cattle is producing a white-faced, black-bodied critter whose beef rivals that of the storied Hereford itself. In early times, the C Spear, as the Jones ranch is called today, belonged to Antonio J. Soza who named it the San Antonio ranch, after his patron saint.

On his ranch, Soza built Redington's first church, which he dedicated to St. Anthony. He also created Redington's first school. Now only rubble remains of this historic structure where children learned their three "R's" in an atmosphere of violence. Once, according to the late Señora Dona Jesus Moreno de Soza, the notorious Apache Kid abducted a ranch boy. On another occasion, the Soza family clearly heard a gunshot outside their ranch house. When one of their sons, Manuel, failed to return home that evening, the family investigated. They found nothing. Two months later, range riders stumbled across the boy's boy' body, lying where he had been gunned down by some thief who had stripped him of his money. Antonio Soza buried his

son on the spot, thus founding the San Antonio ranch cemetery.

A terrifying detonation, according to Mrs. Soza, rocked the San Pedro valley in 1881 when a powder house blew up. Heard all over the valley, the roar even terrorized Chinese in Tucson. Fearing that death was upon them, these orientals came scurrying to the church, crying: “Me Catoleek.” Whether the padres granted them sanctuary and last rites history does not record.

Further disaster struck on May 3, 1887, when an earthquake ripped a deep river gorge in what had been merely a surface stream on the San Antonio ranch. The Sozas and their fourteen children shrugged and went about their pioneer life which included such chores as grinding their own flour from wheat and corn.

In 1890, the elements struck again, this time in the form of a devastating flood. When their adobe house crumbled before mountains of water, the Sozas took refuge in the stables. The stables held, but their flour mill and all their hogs churned away to oblivion.

Five years after this holocaust, the military abandoned its wagon road from Ft. Lowell, and access to Redingtonton and the ranches could be had only from the east slopes of the Catalinas. Loss of the road effectively cut the community from Tucson except by a roundabout route through Benson.

As recently as 1930, Redington citizens had to travel seventy-five miles to vote at Tanque Verde. To reach Tucson, they had a choice of a hundred mile trek via Benson or a seventy mile journey by way of Oracle. In wet weather, the Oracle route became impassable.

Mrs. Eulalia Bourne, then Redington's blue-jeaned school marm, traveled the Oracle route to Tucson about twice a month during the “thirties.” The rest of the town got to Tucson only once or twice a year.

Coming from the Old Pueblo late one night, after attending a concert, Mrs. Bourne drove her car over the treacherous road, thinking, perhaps, about the relative comfort of bed in her rustic teacherage. Suddenly, the wiring system of her automobile burst into flame. Quick action on her part prevented the car itself from burning but left her, miles from help, with an unlighted vehicle. In true pioneer fashion, she refused to quit. She drove on, lighting brush fires at intervals, traveling as far as she could see by one fire before lighting another. At four A.M., she arrived in Redington, many hours and twenty-two bonfires after leaving Tucson.

So isolated was Redington that most of its inhabitants had never seen an airplane until one made a forced landing in 1929 on the Carlink ranch. Other residents saw their first movies in 1934 when the Pima county supervisor showed a few reels at the Redington school. Electricity to operate the projector flowed from a generator turned by power from the back wheels of the school administrator's car. Through decades of prosperity, Redington struggled on without a direct link to Tucson. Ironically, the depression of the thirties created an opportunity for the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to give Redington a new Tucson road. However, the road did not spring fullblown without a bit of dramatic propagandizing by a few stalwart Redington men.

Floyd Bingham, Delbert Bingham and Angel Arrandules set out in an ancient Chevrolet in September, 1932, traversing the old road to prove that the route was feasible for a more modern highway. After an all day struggle, they succeeded in reaching Tucson, forty-five miles away, theirs the first passage over the pioneer wagon trail in twenty-three years. In completing the trip, the men actually set set a a record, reco for passage passage by by horse or wagon used to require two entire days through hostile Indian country.

In January, 1936, the new Redington road opened to traffic, thirteen miles of it winding through the picturesque Coronado National Forest. The advent of the road inspired one historian to write: “The last frontier school of the Southwest and the most isolated and inaccessible town in Pima county will pass away in January.” Actually, only the inaccessibility passed. The isolation remains, and the Redington school still classifies as “frontier.” One of three remaining one-room schools in Pima county, the Redington school was established in July, 1907. It served until 1921 when school authorities discontinued it for lack of pupils. For the next twelve years, Redington had no place in which to educate its children. Then, in 1933, the school board reactivated the district. Presently, some of the eight or nine pupils at Redington must make a round trip of twenty-four miles per day for their learning. As the number of students dwindles, the community is disturbed by reports that their school may again be discontinued, moved, in fact, to San Manuel, the new mining community near Oracle.

In the valley, other changes are threatening or actually taking place. From San Manuel, the Arizona Power and Light Company is pushing an electric power line down the river. Working from the other end, the power companies of Willcox-Safford are setting poles to meet the push from the northwest.

Two years ago, a flurry of uranium mining interrupted the tranquility of the ranch country. The cowmen, disturbed by the miners, were happy when the strike petered out before discovery of ore in commercial quantities.

Even if ore were there, it would appear something of a sacrilege to scar the beautiful grasslands with the ugly burrowings of mining. This is cattle country, and the fabulous Bellota ranch typifies the way of life of the cattleman. In Spanish, Bellota means, "acorn, carnation bud, or perfume box." Truly, the ranch is as sweet a spread as ever envisioned in a cowboy's most imaginative dreams.

Two thousand Herefords, the whitefaces of the west's historical trail drives, graze on the one hundred and fifty-one sections of Bellota grass. Four miles off the main Redington road, hidden in a tree-studded pocket, lies Bellota headquarters. Built in 1890, the old house stands idle today, but next to it, the new home, constructed in 1934 of adobes made on the spot by Mexican artisans, stands as a monument of grace and hard work.

On the Bellota, the very new mingles with the very old, as workers for the Amerind Foundation eagerly excavate a Sobaipuri Indian pueblo hundreds of years old. Now and then, to the annoyance or amusement of Redingtonians, other excavators-city dwellers with gold fever-stir up the ground in an effort to uncover treasures which rumors say outlaws, heading for Mexico, buried in their haste to escape pioneer posses.

As recently as 1918, Deputy United States Marshal Haynes, with Sheriff Frank McBride and other lawmen, fought a gun battle in Rattlesnake Canyon. Two World War I draft evaders chose the canyon as their hideout. When Marshal Haynes and his men surprised Tom and John Powers, six-guns barked, wiping out the Haynes party to a man, only the marshal himself escaping. It took the efforts of a thousand man posse to catch the brothers and bring them to justice.

Ultimately, the gun-slinging tradition of Redington died. Though no longer reckless, Redington is still as isolated, still as romantic as its history. Moreover, in spring and fall, the San Pedro valley, which cradles the tiny hamlet, is as beautiful a canvas as ever produced by the artistry of the Master Painter.

BEAVER DAM

The jostling stream stands quiet here, Tamed to a limpid pause By a hydraulic engineer Whose tools are teeth and paws.

TREE PORTRAITS

A palo verde is sunlit laughter when Spring walks desert ways . . .

A pepper tree is a lace mantilla through which the moonlight plays . . .

The eucalyptus has gypsy breeding that laughs at wind and rain, And sycamores sing where canyons are deep, a restful calm refrain; But high on mountains, the pines stand praying, their voices hushed and low, They chant together an ageless measure, “Reach out and up, and grow!”

EACH IS BOTH

Wind is a butterfly In gipsy bright shawl Annexing, spectrum-tipsy, All colors that enthrall.

Wind, a puritan, A fluttering gray moth, Skims a nightly river In monochrome cloth.

Although these winds seem separate Individual airs, Might not they really be hyphenated Nun-sun affairs?

THE WHIRLWIND MAIDEN

The lovely desert maiden, Gowned in sand-chiffon, Pirouetted in the wind Until her strength was gone.

MYRTLE VAN CAMPEN

COMMUNION

“We thank Thee, Father,” two men cried, In humble tribute side by side, “For all the wonders that proclaim The glory of Thy blessed name.” And one was young and raised his eyes To mountain peaks against the skies; And one was old, and in his hand He held a tiny grain of sand.

COLOR ALBUM:

I became a subscriber to your splendid magazine in January and was so delighted with the first issues I immediately sent for your Color Album, containing all the color pages in your publication for 1957. I have never seen such fine color reproductions, and so many of them, produced in one book. It is a contribution to American graphic arts. You have solved my Christmas shopping problem if you plan a similar Album for 1958.

WILD FLOWERS:

This is a fan letter. For many years it was my privilege to travel the highways and byways of Arizona by automobile, and as a camera hobbyist I have quite a collection of color slides.

For two or three years now I have been receiving ARIZONA HIGHWAYS, and each month I thrill to the wonderful color photos of the beauties of the desert country in all its glory.

It is difficult to say that one issue is greater than another, but right now I am of the opinion that your March issue is completely outstanding. It is good for the soul to regard and contemplate such beauties of nature.

You and your entire staff are to be highly complimented on the consistent excellent job you are doing and the most surprising and pleasing accomplishment is that no two issues seem to duplicate each other.

BOOKS:

Lawrence Clark Powell's A Southwestern Century, which appeared in your March issue, is another valuable document. All of your readers who are interested in books, and I am sure there are many, will treasure it as a reference for years to come. Dr. Powell may have omitted some books I would have included in the list, but that is only a minor point. Incidentally, I have ordered an extra copy for our local library.

The article, A Southwestern Century in March ARIZONA HIGHWAYS interested me very much. How could a person wanting some of the titles out-of-print acquire such books?

OLD COCHISE:

Thank you for the coverage you gave my favorite county, Cochise, in your April magazine. Old Cochise has everything: climate, scenery, history. Douglas and Bisbee are two of the friendliest towns we have ever visited and the only regret I have is that my husband is not an electronics engineer so we could move to Fort Huachuca. All this and Heaven, too, as they say.

OPPOSITE PAGE

“BECKER LAKE NEAR SPRINGERVILLE” BY WAYNE DAVIS. Graphic View II camera; Ektachrome; f. 16 at 1/10 sec.; 6½” Ilex Paragon lens; September 2, 1957; middle afternoon. Becker Lake is on U. S. 60 approximately two miles north of Springerville. This lake is noted for its fine fishing but is privately owned and few permits are issued. Water stored in this lake is used for irrigation in farming areas near Springerville.

BACK COVER

“MEADOW AT SHEEP CROSSING-WHITE MOUNTAINS” BY WAYNE DAVIS. Graphic View II camera; Ektachrome; f. 22 at 1th sec.; 6½” Ilex Paragon lens; August 25, 1957; mid-afternoon light. This meadow is near Sheep Crossing on the Big Lake road between Greer and Big Lake. The summer of 1957 was wet and the flowers and grass were plentiful throughout most of the White Mountain area.