VALLEY OF THE SANTA CRUZ

Valley of the Santa Cruz BY VIVIEN KEATLEY

Most cross-country travel through Arizona is east and west. But the real way to sample the infinite variety of the newest state is to travel it “up and down,” or north and south. One of the most rewarding U-turns you can make is to turn south at Mountain View, twenty-three miles east of Tucson on U.S. 80, for a brief side trip. You'll leave the desert quickly behind to encounter rolling foothills, luxurious grasslands, some of the world's most fertile irrigated acres-and a pocketful of history. Drive south from Mountain View over Arizona Highway 83 (later joined by Arizona 82), and head for Nogales via Patagonia, thirty-nine miles from Mountain View.

Near Patagonia you enter the main Valley of the Santa Cruz. Because of the abundance of waters early Indian settlers called this Enchanted Land, and with very little labor they raised a great variety of foodstuffs.

As you travel towards Nogales you're paralleling

the route of a quite remarkable river, because the Santa Cruz (Holy Cross) makes a U-turn of its own for a visit in Mexico.

It has its source in the lush, grassy San Rafael Valley, headquarters for the registered Hereford herd of Greene Cattle Co.'s San Rafael Ranch, about thirty miles north-east of Nogales. Tom Heady, long-time manager of Greene's San Rafael Ranch, loves to tell about how abundantly water flowed from the many springs that started the Santa Cruz on its course. He says that in the early days he had to have a wrangler on watch twenty-four hours a day to keep cattle from getting bogged down.

That was a long, long time ago. Today Tom Heady is retired and lives in Nogales, never lonely because he has his own private museum of relics, clippings and souve-nirs of cattle ranching in the West. And today there are no bogs where the Santa Cruz begins-but there are great trees which remind you more of the Midwest than a land a stone's throw from a desert trimmed with cactus.

Recorded history of the Santa Cruz Valley starts a long time before Tom Heady's memories began, for it was first known in 1539 and 1540, when Fray Marcos de Niza and Francisco Vasquez Coronado traveled this way. Whether they actually followed the river's route for part of their journeys is a moot question, but both were close by. The leading hotel of Nogales, Sonora, is named for Fray Marcos de Niza who appears to have been a more enthusiastic than accurate reporter of what he saw. At any rate, his accounts led to Coronado's fate-ful expedition to find the famed Seven Cities of Cibola.

It took nearly one hundred and fifty years for other Europeans to decide the journey was worth while. And these were searchers after souls, not gold, for they were Jesuit missionaries. They started the cattle industry in the Santa Cruz Valley, bringing cattle and horses with them.

They introduced cattle of Andalusian descent, called Mexican blackhorns. When Texas longhorns were driven in during the 1870s and 1880s, ranches were soon stocked with the new cattle. Then Herefords quickly replaced longhorns, and still account for about 90% of all Arizona beef cattle. But today, along the beautiful pasturelands fed by the Santa Cruz almost every known type of beef cattle thrives. There are black Angus, cherry-red Santa Gertrudis, the shorthorns, humped-back white, silver and cream Brahmans, big white French Charolaise, and many cross-breds. Some of Arizona's most beautiful cattle"AFTER A STORM NEAR PATAGONIA" BY PETE BALES-TRERO. 5x7 View Corona camera; Ektachrome; bet. f.16 and f.22 at 1/5 sec.; 8½" Commercial Ektar lens; October, late after-noon. The rolling foothills and numerous small mountain ranges which characterize the terrain of Santa Cruz County attract rain storms in late summer and early autumn. Such storms cause stream beds, usually dry, to flow briefly.

"OPEN RANGE NEAR SONOITA" BY RAY MANLEY. Manley aerial camera; Anscochrome; f.6.3 at 1/475th sec.; 8½" Symmar lens; October, early morning. Aerial view taken in "Singing Valley" midway between Sonoita and the Benson High-way. Picture was taken looking northeast over the H. B. Thurber Ranch. Some of the finest range land in Arizona is found in Santa Cruz County.

and cattle ranches-can be seen from the highways and byways near the Santa Cruz River.

The river takes off from its source and travels in a leisurely southern direction across the U.S.-Mexico border near Lochiel, waters ranch lands around Santa Cruz, then makes its own U-turn to head back for Arizona and re-enters the state about five miles east of the twin cities, Ambos Nogales. In some places it is under-ground. In some places it flows year-round. In other places it is wide, dry river bed-until flood time.As it heads north it is joined by Portrero Creek (also called Nogales Wash) and by the Sonoita River which heads on the east side of the Santa Rita and Patagonia Mountains. Its route is similar to U.S. 89's north from Nogales to Tucson, where the river traces its way northwest until it becomes a tributary of the Gila which, in turn, flows into the Colorado River.

Curiously, neither the U.S. nor Mexico has ever asked for an international agreement covering the waters of the Santa Cruz although it changes its direction-and nationality-in midstream.

Mining in the Santa Cruz valley was important from the days of the Jesuits, and not far from the highway northeast of Nogales was the famed old Mowry Mine. Now a ghost town, it was once a thriving village and the site of one of the state's earliest American-owned mines.

Lt. Sylvester Mowry, an army officer at nearby Ft. Crittenden (now also in ruins), bought the mine in 1859. About $1,500,000 in silver and lead ore were taken from it. Mowry was accused of using some of the lead to make bullets for the Confederacy during the War Between the States, and was interned at Ft. Yuma. And of seventeen members buried in the cemetery at Mowry Mine, fifteen were victims of violence.

Just before reaching Nogales another road leads east to Washington Camp in the mountains bordering the Valley. This was the old smelting center of the Westinghouse group of mines, and ruins of fine homes of mining officials still stand. Once a thousand people lived at Camp Washington mining lead, silver, zinc and copper.

From the highest ridge miners could look down to the east and see the Santa Cruz flowing south; when they turned to look to the west, they saw it flowing north.

When you reach Ambos Nogales you're in the cleanest and most attractive of all border cities-and the fastest growing port of entry between Mexico and the U.S. The twin cities are located in the mountain pass on the road from Guaymas to Tucson, over which mining supplies were carried as the mineral wealth of northern Sonora and southern Arizona was dug out of the earth.

The name of the pass, for many years, was Nogales, Spanish for walnuts, which grew in profusion in the area. For a brief time the little settlement on what is now the American side of the border was called Isaacson, named for an itinerant peddler, Jacob Isaacson. He decided to open a store at the pass instead of selling to Valley settlers from his wagon, and from 1880 to 1883 the post office was Isaacson.

For your U-turn into Mexico you don't have to travel as far as the river. Just step across the International line, and you're in Old Mexico. The port of entry does millions of dollars in exports and imports in international trade. Chief imports to U.S. are winter

Salubrious Santa Cruz

It might seem on casual observance that Nogales, 65 miles south of Tucson would be warmer. But tiny Santa Cruz County varies in altitude from 3,100 feet in the valleys to 9,500-foot Mt. Wrightson in the Santa Ritas, fourth highest peak in Arizona-and altitude influences weather. Temperatures cool down about three degrees or better for every 1,000-foot rise of land.

Nogales at 3,800 feet is cooler than her sister cities in the heart of the semi-desert region. The main ranges of Santa Cruz County, lying across the flow of moist tropical air currents coming in from the south, are instrumental in triggering summer rainstorms so Nogales and Santa Cruz County are also wetter than Phoenix and Tucson. Phoenix, at an altitude of 1,083 feet has an average precipitation of 7.66", an annual mean temperature of 70.4 degrees. Tucson, at 2,538 feet altitude, has 10.53 inches of rain with a yearly mean average of 68.1° temperature. While Nogales sees 14.54 inches of moisture, some of it as regular short-lived snowfall during the winter months and a cool 60.1° average temperature.

Santa Cruz County, along with Cochise, lies on the northern rim of a broad semi-tropical belt to the south and it so happens that the Mexican border follows roughly along a high plateau which separates the Gila River drainage flowing northward from the waters that run south into the streams of Sonora, Mexico.

Winter visitors may not experience any appreciable change in temperature when they go shopping "south of the border" in Nogales, Mexico. In January the average high and low temperatures in Tucson are 63.1° vs. 36.3° and in Nogales 62.2° vs. 26.19° and humidity is often low. But come the hot summer months, Santa Cruz County is a summer playground for Tucsonians when the July average high of 99.4° vs. a low of 73.0° bring a relief of only 26.4° change. In Nogales the 92.1° high vs. a low of 62.7° marks an appreciable 30.4° change, with an even greater difference at higher altitudes. This cooler climate is a distinct asset to Santa Cruz County. When the summer Tucson sun climbs high in the sky early in the day and temperatures stay high until it goes down, relative cool valleys and foothills along Highway 83 (the back road to Nogales) through Sonoita and Patagonia provide delightful picnic areas among the live oaks and sycamores for comfort seekers who go early and stay late.

Also in the summer months people of Tucson look south for midsummer rains as the great towering stormheads roll into Nogales from Mexico, and hope that while they play over Santa Cruz County with titanic fury to the accompaniment of "Fourth of July" displays of lightning and distant roll of thunder as they drop their good rains at the 4,500-foot altitudes of the high valleys and their heavy ones in the foothills and mountains, that some rain will be left to wet the dry hot desert floor, to the north.

In to mention the town's other attractions, that Calabasas became a popular summer resort for Tucsonians. One enterprising promoter went so far as to sell considerable stock in a proposed venture to establish a steamboat line -between Tucson and Calabasas via the Santa Cruz.

Back on U.S. 89, and north of the Kitchen Ranch is Tumacacori National Monument. Restored, it is now visited by thousands of tourists every year. And don't miss the bar rail in Tumacacori bar across the highway. The reason it's an exact replica of the mission altar rails is that both were made at the time of the mission restoration.

North of the mission, just east of the highway, is Tubac, the state's oldest city-and now the first park in Arizona's new state park system. It was here that Juan Bautista de Anza assembled his exploration party to lay out an overland route from southwestern missions to California. Ross Stefan, young Arizona artist, has headquarters in Tubac, a quaint village highly regarded for its climate, picturesqueness, its arts and crafts. So highly regarded, in fact, that the purchaser of a nearby ranch has announced he is building a 1,000-home subdivision with a country-club floor plan.

Near the Carmen store is Ted Gould's trading postproudly labeled "All Kinds of Junk." It's a good place to make last-minute purchases of Mexican souvenirs, for he carries a fine line of these as well as antiques, and relics of the Old West.

Four miles north is Amado, on the highway, named for a Mexican settler and a trading center for ranchers. It is also headquarters of Santa Cruz Chili Company, growers and processors of fine chili products sold throughout the southwest. Sardina Peak is visible to the West, and to the East towers Old Baldy, 9,432 feet, the highest peak in Santa Cruz County.

Further north, on the west side of the highway is Kinsley Ranch, spreading out to the east side of the highway with a beautiful small lake. Otho Kinsley started out with a stop-over for those wanting food and drink. In an attempt to locate rumored hot springs to develop into a health resort, he found an unlimited water supplybut it wasn't hot. So he dredged out an area for a lake big enough for boating and built a big swimming pool. A rodeo enthusiast, he built a small arena and staged weekend rodeos, and for a time supplied cow stock, includingcalves and Brahman bulls, to other rodeos. Kinsley's is the gathering place not only for travelers but for the ranching country for miles around-especially on Saturday nights when a big dance is usually held. And not all the ranches in this area are for cattle only. Some of the state's oldest and finest guest ranches are in the Santa Cruz Valley. Some have cattle operations and "run guests" as well. One, near Amado, has been used during summer months as a finishing ranch for girls. Here young women combine ranch living with training to become ladies and homemakers. Near Continental a dirt road leads west to old Arivaca, 22 miles from the highway, established by early Spanish missionaries near the Ora Blanca mountains. Á few small mines still operate near Arivaca, and nearby Ruby. Others are operated near Elephant Head, and up in the Santa Rita Mountains. But the most popular "treasure seeking" in the Santa Cruz valley today is by "prospectors" looking for treasure and bullion said to have been hidden by the padres, and mine owners, during Apache raids. Best known treasures are La Virgen de Guadalupe, and the Treasure of Tumacacori. Both are "authentically" located in numerous histories. J. W. Davies, now 87, has been tunneling towards a "well known treasure" for many years, expects to come upon it any day now. Continental, 26 miles south of Tucson, is now bypassed by the new highway; it was named for Continental Rubber Company which established plantations in 1914 to experiment in making rubber from guayule, a desert shrub. Both Continental and nearby Sahuarita, 18 miles south of Tucson, are centers of extremely fertile irrigated acres. About 40,000 acres are cultivated in the Santa Cruz Valley. Potatoes, head lettuce, cauliflower, carrots, watermelons and cantaloupes have been grown commercially here. Soybeans, peanuts and castor beans are being tried. Grain and hay crops, with sorghum crops yielding about 1½ tons of grain and 14 tons of ensilage, are welcome crops to cattlemen. But cotton is the real king of the area with yields of two bales an acre. Long staple cotton, which can be grown in relatively few areas of the U.S., averages well over a bale per acre. It's difficult to believe that Sahurita, in the heart of this irrigated country, took its name from saguaro forests growing nearby when it was an early stagecoach station.

Santa Cruz Calendar Santa Cruz Valley

Santa Cruz County is tailor-made for the traveler hunting for scenes of the early west. Rolling grasslands provide good pasture for cattle raising, once a major activity in most of Arizona-today concentrated in the "green grass" country. Nogales on the border has never lost its Spanish overtones. A good round calendar of events brings back frontier days. Early in the fall, usually about the first weekend in October, ranchers and visitors converge on Sonoita to celebrate a real western rodeo and the Santa Cruz County Fair with emphasis on feeder and beef cattle and horses. Agriculture and livestock exhibits fill the County Fair barns and an RCA-approved rodeo draws a crowd of 4,000 or more spectators. Then, just to prove they are up to date, in the early spring following right on the heels of the close of Tucson's racing season Sonoita has three Sundays of state supervised racing-eight races each Sunday with pari-mutuel betting. Following the races, with one Sunday intervening is the Annual Quarter Horse show, also at Sonoita and one of the best known in the southwest for this is quarter horse country. The 23rd annual show in 1959 will attract capacity crowds and the best horses from Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California will all compete for the nationally known Rose Fulton Trophy. For the history and culturally minded visitor, Cinco de Mayo or the "Fifth of May" in Ambos Nogales brings out all the color and romance of our southern neighbors. Usually 40,000 or more crowd both cities on either side of the border to celebrate Mexican freedom from French domination. From the crowning of the queen on a platform astride the international fence, through the two miles or more parade of floats and celebrants to the star-studded bullfight at Plaza de Toros all will be happiness and carefree gaiety.

For more quiet souls who shrink at the violence of cowboy brawn against animal strength, for the non-sporting and non-gambling, or those that retire from exuberant gaiety and informality of a Mexican fiesta and look for their relaxation in Nature, let them go to Patagonia. Here on a major North-South flyway of Nature's winged creatures may often be seen more than one-fourth of all the 650 full species of breeding birds and many of the rarer and little known kinds plus throngs of transients.

On Sonoita Creek, just south of Patagonia in the Audubon-sponsored Sonoita Wildlife Sanctuary, in early June may be watched the nesting of the rare and often thought to be extinct Rose-throated Becard, Be it a working cattle ranch where the "dude" may play cowboy, a rugged mountain to climb, a thrill-packed wild west rodeo or a Mexican fiesta, Santa Cruz County has them all.

Cattle herd in Santa Cruz County

West of Sahuarita and near Twin Buttes is the Pima Mine, an outstanding example of how modern methods have enabled operators to bring out ore today which was bypassed as not worth producing by their predecessors. In a little over two years, Pima Mine operation has developed from an exploratory shaft to a highly efficient open pit employing over 200 men handling 25,000 tons a day. High grade-ore is concentrated at the plant site and shipped to the smelter. Banner Mine and Duval Potash and Sulphur Co. are also successfully operating in this area.

East of Continental are summer resort areas for Tucsonians in the Santa Cruz Mountains. This recreational area, including Madera Canyon, is in Coronado National Forest. The Bliss solar house, a University of Arizona experiment that has won national attention, is in this area.

From Sahuarita the highway quickly stretches north to the outskirts of metropolitan Tucson where, at the southern edges, the great Hughes plant is in production. Just north, airplanes roar up from the municipal airportand a road, directly west from the airport, leads to Papagoland.Until recently you could use this road only during dry months for it crosses the Santa Cruz River which, in the rainy season, becomes a roaring torrent.

Today the Santa Cruz is bridged-on the approach to San Xavier del Bac, Tucson's beautiful mission-as it heads towards the Gila.

Which is as it should be.

For the Santa Cruz itself is a bridge between Mexico and the United States and between the earliest European settlements and the nation's youngest state.

U-turns on downtown streets will bring you a traffic ticket. But a U-Turn from U.S. 80, at Mountain View, which includes Nogales before returning to Tucson, will bring you only satisfaction and a host of pleasant memories.

ST. THOMAS REVISITED:

My husband and I have just finished reading the June issue of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS. We want to tell you how very much we enjoyed this special issue about the Colorado River.

In 1930 my father, Mr. W. A. Davis, was photographing Hoover Dam as a free-lance photographer and writer. He saw the first surveyors stakes stuck in the sand to mark the site of the future Boulder Canyon Project.

While doing feature articles on the government's settlement for water-doomed farms and homes, Mr. Davis became acquainted with the residents of St. Thomas, Nevada. Here in the town of St. Thomas he was married. Later this Mormon community was covered by the backwaters of Lake Mead.

Twenty-three years later, my husband and I were married over St. Thomas aboard the cruiser, "Barracuda." Below us we could see the remains of St. Thomas and although my parents walked to church, we had to go by boat.

ROSE: THE NATIONAL FLOWER:

The article, "Arizona-America's Rose Garden of the Future," in the January issue 1958, of ARIZONA HIGHWAYs has been such a help to me in promoting the idea of making the Rose the National Flower of the USA that I want to express my thanks for this informative article.

This magazine was given to me in January by my district representative's wife. I have used many points from it for talks, papers, etc. Then I asked Mrs. W. J. Sutter, president of the Arizona Federation of Women's Clubs, to bring extra copies to our Detroit convention for distribution. She did and they were distributed, and one delegate from Mississippi used the magazine in her talk to speak for the resolution on the Rose-endorsing it for our National Flower. All these contributions helped the Gardens Division to get this resolution endorsed.

We are hoping now that we can soon get action in Washington (Senate and House) and have the Rose officially declared the National Flower. Thanks for the beautiful magazine, and for the timely article on "Arizona-America's Rose Garden of the Future."

INDIAN ISSUE:

As I finished your issue telling of the Indians of Arizona, I said to myself: "We can never prove ourselves a great people until we have solved our own Indian problems." Our treatment of the American Indians in the past has been disgraceful.

We usurped their lands, robbed and cheated them, and in some cases all but exterminated them. I hope that in the future, the world will see in our Indians a most important segment of our citizenry and that all of us will come to realize the American Indian has much to add to our civilization.

AERIAL ATTACK

The clouds dropped down a deep black screen

The lightning struck with saber thrust,

The wind tossed high the whirling dust Then dropped it on the startled town.

The thunder roared, the rain came down.

Cold, ice-hard bullets of pelting hail

Attacked in the wake of a screaming gale

That shattered the windows and pounded the

eaves,

And stripped the trees of their trembling leaves.

And when it was done and the battle over The fields lay dead in the crushed sweet clover.

THE BLUSTERER

The wild and lonely, unreasoning wind,

Lost in his longing for his own kind,

Drives down with fury warrior and fool; But even such anger as his must cool.

Then, seeking the peace he cannot find, He looks for sleeping babies to mind.

THE SEARCHERS

They comeOld prospectors,

To sweep the desert floor;

Still seeking gold. Disguised as gray Whirlwinds.

NIGHT SCENE

Last night the sky brought forth An aureate moon Whose gleaming pigments swirled A golden halo round The Desert world.

REVEILLE

When dawn's soft fingers hush The lips of night, Each gypsy star snuffs out Its campfire light, And little wings of song Curl over day As a thousand feathered throats Sound reveille.

CLOUDBURST

Dark clouds roll up, The horizon dims, The smokey depths Show luminous rims.

Lightning flashes,

The thunder roars,

From mourning heavens The torrent pours.

The blue prevails,

The sun breaks through,

Of the storm remains But gentle dew.

OPPOSITE PAGE

"PENA BLANCA LAKE" BY JOSEF MUENCH. 4x5 Linhof Super Technika camera; daylight Ektachrome; f.20 at 1/10th sec.; 54" Zeiss Tessar lens; Apr., sunny day. This small lake is located on the Ruby Road in the Ruby Mountains of Santa Cruz County, sixteen miles from Nogales and ten miles from U.S. 89. This lovely artificial lake traps water from Pena Blanca (white rock) Canyon and holds it for visitors' pleasure among brilliantly colored rocks-few of them white. This lake was built by the Arizona Game and Fish Department. It will cover, when full, between 50 and 52 acres and has been stocked with fish but will not be open for fishing until probably in the spring of 1959. The lake has become a popular boating center for residents of Santa Cruz County.

BACK COVER

"VIEW OF THE SANTA RITAS" BY WESTERN WAYS. 4x5 Graphic View camera; Ektachrome daylight; f.16 at 1/10th sec.; Ektar 8/½" lens; good direct light; 400 FC meter reading. View taken at Kinsley's Ranch lake looking cast towards the Santa Rita Mountains. Elephant head rock in foreground. Kinsley's Ranch is on U.S. 89 about half-way between Nogales and Tucson.