Arizona's Fabulous Baron

Arizona's Fab By Joseph Stocker

They were tough, stolid men, those early settlers-not easily shaken. They had come into Arizona when it was raw and wild, fought off the Indians, swept up the rattlesnakes and transformed the desert into productive land. They had met and overcome all the dangers that could be put in their way. Now it was the early 1880's, and this new and promising land was theirs to keep.

But wait. Was it really?

For, throughout the territory, there was circulating a most disturbing piece of news. Somebody had claimed title to all their land. His name was James Addison Reavis. Nobody knew who he was or where he came from. But, in that one move, he had placed 40,000 settlers in peril of losing everything. And there was nothing absolutely nothing that they could do about it.

Reavis was claiming, by virtue of an old Spanish grant, nearly 11,000,000 acres of land in Arizona and New Mexico. The area was an enormous rectangle 225 miles long and 75 miles wide, larger than Connecticut and Delaware combined, half as large as Indiana. It stretched from a point just west of Phoenix all the way across the eastern half of Arizona and into New Mexico almost to Silver City. It included, along with the whole city of Phoenix, the towns of Tempe and Florence. It embraced thriving farms, some of the richest cattle land in the West, miles of railroad right-of-way and numerous mines.

James Reavis said-and exhibited evidence which, on its face, seemed to prove that he owned every bit of it.. Homesteaders, miners, farmers, ranchers, businessmen-- they were all his tenants. They had better pay up. Or get out.

For almost a decade then, James Addison Reavis kept central Arizona in a state of agitated worry. Many of the farmers and miners did pay up in an effort to keep a legal shadow off their properties. He extracted a contract for $50,000 from the Southern Pacific Railroad, granting in return permission for it to continue the use of its rightof-way. He likewise persuaded the owners of the rich Silver King mine to ante up $25,000 for the privilege of continuing to operate their mine. And to exploit the wealth of his barony, he organized vast enterprises to channel more thousands of dollars into his pockets.

What the landholders had no way of knowing, and, in fact, didn't find out for years, was that Reavis was perpetrating one of the most fantastic swindles of all time. Nothing like it had ever been attempted before, and nothing like it has been seen since.

He was able to pull it off because, in this new country, titles were sometimes cloudy and Spanish land grants were often bona fide. They were grants bestowed by the kings of Spain on favored subjects when Spain controlled this area. Subsequently it passed into possession of Mexico and in time became part of the American Southwest. But, meanwhile, the U.S. had pledged to recognize the old Spanish grants in both the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican War, and the Gadsden Purchase, which annexed lands south of the Gila River.

Claims based on the Spanish grants had already cast a cloud over land ownership in many cases. And so Reavis' claim, backed up, as it was, by sheafs of imposing documents, seemed credible. In fact, he was able to convince not only the unsophisticated settlers but some of the nation's most famous lawyers and industrialists that his claim was valid.

It was mighty high style for a man who had started out as a Confederate private and a street car conductor.

Born in Missouri, of an average family, Reavis was a mule-skinner during his youth. Then, while serving with the Confederates, he discovered that he had a unique talent. It was a talent for forgery. He forged his captain's name to some passes, and the passes were honored. He "kited" a furlough, to allow himself more time off than he was supposed to have, and got away with it.

When the Civil War ended Reavis went to St. Louis. Times weren't very good, even for an accomplished forger, so he took a job as conductor of a horse-drawn street car. Then he opened a small real estate office and

ulous Baron "THE PERALTA GRANT; JAMES ADDISON REAVIS AND THE BARONY OF ARIZONA" BY DONALD M. POWELL

It was a slim, rather worn volume, bound in black leather-a gift to the University of Arizona Library about ten years agothat first intrigued Donald M. Powell with the story of James Addison Reavis and the Peralta Grant. Faded green letters on the cover read, Exhibits "AAA" and "BBB" Royal Patents; also Wills, Codicils, and Certified Copy of Possession Given to Don Miguel de Peralta Baron of the Colorados "Inserted were other documents that bore the scarlet embossed seal and attached ribbons of the office of the Surveyor General for Arizona.

This battered treasure had passed through the hands of James Addison Reavis and had been filed by him as part of the evidence to prove his claim to the vast grant in central Arizona, the greatest fraud, one of his judges said, ever attempted against a government in its own courts.

Several years passed during which Powell read scattered accounts of the story. Suddenly he realized that here was a story worth telling, a story whose true outlines were obscured and whose sources were almost forgotten. Then began a concentrated search for the materials which eventually he wove into the recently published book, The Peralta Grant; James Addison Reavis and the Barony of Arizona. Published by the University of Oklahoma Press; Norman, Oklahoma. $3.75.

The search started in the University of Arizona Library but quickly spread to the library of the Pioneers' Historical Society and on to the U.S. Land Office in Santa Fe, the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, to many other libraries in the Southwest, and eventually to the National Archives in Washington. It is one of the miracles of modern research that the great national document repository is no farther off than the nearest mailbox. Its documents relating to Reavis and his gigantic hoax were copied on microfilm for Powell's use in Tucson.

Much credit is due Tucson's Rosemary Taylor who generously placed at Powell's disposal notes and material she had gathered as the result of several season's work on the same story some years earlier.

Powell claims he became a westerner when he went to Fort Collins, Colorado, to teach in 1938. His conviction was strengthened by a year under the Midwest's too-often cloudy skies while he worked for a degree in librarianship at the University of Michigan. The war, and a year at the New York Public Library intervened before he turned toward Arizona where he has been head of the University Library's Reference Department since 1946. He has left Arizona only for one extended period when, for six months, he was library consultant at the Iraq College of Agriculture at Abu Ghraib near Baghdad.

He has both traveled extensively in and read widely about his adopted state. His enthusiasm for Arizona books has resulted in the compilation of a ten-year bibliography of Arizona publication, An Arizona Gathering, which will be issued shortly by the Arizona Pioneers' Historical Society.

Educated in the East, in Connecticut and at Swarthmore and Duke, he had never been west of Durham, North Carolina before 1938. Now, half seriously, he says he no longer willingly goes east of a north-south line drawn through Denver.

Embarked on his real career. Very shortly he had opportunity to put his talents to work. One day he discovered that he had purchased an imperfect title to some valuable St. Louis business property. To clear the title would involve months of search, complicated court proceedings and great expense which would surely eat up any profit he could expect to make.

Emboldened by his earlier success he carefully altered the title papers. A word changed here, a phrase altered there and the title was legally sound. As he thought, no one questioned its authenticity.

But this was a passing trifle for a man like Reavis, who dreamed of really big things. And the opportunity for them seemed to present itself one day when there came to his office a bush-league con man and swindler from California named George M. Willing, Jr.

Willing was a physician who had forsaken his profession for adventure in the West. Somewhere in his wanderings he had acquired a sheaf of worn Spanish documents that appeared to relate to a vast land claim in Arizona. He suggested a partnership if Reavis would undertake the development of this princedom of 11,000,000 acres. Reavis was intrigued, and after disposing of his St. Louis properties he agreed to go west. Willing was to go overland, while he was to proceed to San Francisco by way of Panama in order to pick up some additional papers they needed in evidence.

Doc Willing went to Prescott, the territorial capital, where he filed his claim to the gigantic piece of property. He backed it up with a deed which purported to show that the land was involved in an old Spanish grant and was deeded to him by one Miguel Peralta, heir of the original grantee.

Then, most accommodatingly, Willing died. Though there were rumors of poison, no one was ever able to prove it; but the death was at the very least a convenient happenstance.

In due time Reavis appeared in Prescott, introducing himself as a reporter for the San Francisco Alta Californian. What Reavis was really after was Willing's luggage and in it the Peralta deed. He found it, and found also that there was a blank space in the deed for it to be made over to a third party. Willing had drawn it up that way to provide an escape in case of trouble.

It was a simple matter for Reavis to write his own name into the blank space. Now, to all appearances, the land grant had been deeded by Miguel Peralta to George M. Willing, Jr. and then to James Addison Reavis.

But that, Reavis knew, was just the beginning. Much work had to be done to provide the evidence needed for substantiating the claim and the deed. He must go to Mexico where other documents might exist, he must follow clues which might take him to Washington, even to Spain. And he must buy off the Willing heirs -- which he did with high sounding but vague promises, and very little cash. Meanwhile he must have been practicing penmanship, copying old writing and the flourishes of

eighteenth century signatures until, in his opinion, he could write them easily and fluidly.

It was an enormous thing that Reavis was envisioning. But he was well-equipped for it. As somebody was to observe years later, his was "one of the most original and capable minds that this generation has produced."

He went to Mexico City and Guadalajara. Again masquerading as a San Francisco newspaperman he gained admission to the government archives where ancient records were kept. Here he managed to spend hours alone among the documents, using the quaint penmanship he had been practicing. Sometimes he found it necessary to substitute a new and spurious document for an old, bona fide one. He'd hide it between the pages of a newspaper carried under his arm and, when the archivist was absent, slip it into a bundle of records. Then he would call the official's attention to it and request a certified copy which he shortly received.

Back in the United States he found and examined the record books of the old Spanish mission of San Xavier del Bac, south of Tucson. From these he miraculously produced the will of the first Baron of Arizona which left the magnificent Peralta Grant to his son Miguel.

Now Reavis was ready. He filed his petition with the surveyor-general of the territory, claiming as his an area in which lay four-fifths of the wealth and population of Arizona and some of New Mexico's richest farm and mining country.

His story was this: In 1742 King Philip V of Spain sent one of his loyal subjects, Don Miguel de Peralta, to Mexico on a confidential mission. Don Miguel performed so well that the king decided to reward him by granting him a huge piece of property in New Spain. The king also made him a baron-the Baron of Arizonaca, sometimes called Arizona.

Don Miguel had a son to whom he bequeathed the land in question. But the second baron had no heir. And so, just before he died, he deeded the land to his old friend and physician, Dr. Willing. Willing subsequently found himself a little strapped for money and sold the land to James Reavis. And here, said Reavis, was the deed, along with notarized copies of the proper documents backing it all up, which could be found in the archives of Mexico and Spain.

Everywhere there was one subject of conversation: The Peralta-Reavis claim. And the more the settlers talked about it, the angrier they became. Threats of lynching could be heard. Federal officials were appealed to. But they only lifted their shoulders helplessly. The claim looked valid on its face.

But as all this transpired, the federal government began to look more closely at the Peralta-Reavis claim. Reavis grew uneasy. He needed a new link with the Peralta family, stronger than a deed purportedly signed by an obscure doctor named Willing. He needed a human link.

He already had one. Her name was Sophia and she was dark and pretty, with black hair and large hazel eyes. She might be part Indian, but she could pass easily as Spanish or Mexican. Best of all, her background was obscure and impoverished. She was almost a waif, nothing better than a servant when Reavis found her working for a dressmaker in San Francisco.

Reavis gradually broke the good news to her. She wasn't Sophia Treadway, a poor servant. She was Sophia Loreta Micaela Maso y Peralta de la Cordoba, the greatgranddaughter and lone surviving descendant of Don Miguel de Peralta, the original Baron of Arizona and grantee of the Peralta tract. She was, in a word, the heiress of the Peralta Grant, the third Baroness of Arizona.

For several years Reavis had gradually been preparing Sophia for the role she was to play. He taught her fine manners and coached her in her genealogy, so she would know who she was, whence she came and who were her ancestors. Finally he married her and together they set off for Spain Western Pygmalion and his creation.

The work in Mexico was repeated in Spain. The couple-Sophia traveling as his ward-visited the axchives of the Indies in Seville as casual American tourists, thrilled to see the stovely buildings and the old manuscripts and eager to take pictures. Then Reavis confided to the archivists that he did have sone interest in Spanish lands in America and would appreciate the opportunity to exατιîne documents relating to them. Permission was graciously granted.

Days passed while Reavis pored over meticulously kept land records. Then one day he struck oil He "found" the will of Jesus Aligoel, the second Baron. The Reavises hastened to return to Arizons.

They arrived in Tucson in 1887 with considerable pomp accompanied by Peralta relatives from California and a platoon of servams. They were elegantly dressed, and Reavis had grown a splendid pair of mattonchop whiskers. He was no longer plain James Reavis. With the condescending air of royalty he signed the hotel register James Addison Peraltareavis.

One link in the claim, however, ranained to be forged. To accomplish this the Reavis party hired curriages and went off on a gay expedition of search. At the base of the Sierra Estrella mourtains souninwest of Phoenix, they succeeded in locating a great rock on the face of which was a rude carving which resembled a пер. It was, said Reavis. Here the first Baron had taken passes sion of his graut. To establish ownership he bad cansed to be carved on the stone this map se the initial nitial point of the survey. Mes. Resvis was photographed by the rock, smiling happily.

In due time he summoned and renewed his claim to the great slab of land. In explanation of these newest developments, he said that while investigating and sub-stantiating Doctor Willing's title, he had made a discovery: The second baron, son of the original grantee, had not died childless after all. He had had a daughter, who married and had twins, a boy and a girl. These births took place on a rich near San Bernardino, Calif., while the family was traveling from Sonora to San Francisco. The boy died. The girl survived, but her life was marked by mishap and tragedy. For both her father and mother perished soon afterward, her father having had the fore sight, however, to attach codicil to his will, stipulating that his daughter was to get all his property. The little girl and her grandmother were placed in the home of a man named Alfred E. Sharwood. Then the grandmother passed away. She sons became a waif, tossed from pillar to post, losing her identity, ignorant of her birthright, mallt Reavis, in his travels, chanced onto a record of her birth and was able to locateher.

Documents to prove it all? But of course, said Reavis. There were birth and baptismal records for the twins in a mission near San Bernardino. Anybody could go and look at them, (Reavis was on safe ground. He had forged and planted the records there himself.) And here were copies of affidavits from people who were present both at the birth of the twins and the burial of Sofia's brother. The originals could be found on file in San Francisco. (Reavis was safe there, too. He had bribed a San Francisco lawyer to find witnesses who would doa little

perjuring for a price.)

If, in the eyes of a few ambivious doubters, the Reavis case appeared strange, it appeared scarcely any more strange than some of the other Spanish land grant cases of the period. And, anyway, Reavis seemed to be swimming in proof.

Then, too, the sheer audacity and pretentiousness of what he was doing helped him to pull it off. Would any body dare to invent a claim of such dimensions, for a prize so tremendous, and fabricate evidence so complex and impressive?

Even more significantly, Reavis had allies - highly placed allies. They were men who had examined his claim and his proof and, apparently with complete honesty and conviction, pronounced the whole thing valid. Among them were such eminent figures as Robert Ingersoll, famed lawyer, orator and agnostic; Collis P. Harrington and Charles Crocker, California millionaires; Roscoe Conkling, U.S. senate from New York, and John W. Mackay, San Francisco banker.

Reavis not only collected his tribate from the land-holders tot lamehed big business enterprises, incinding Lumber companies and mining ventures. La several states and territories he set up Peralta grant development com-panies, in which he sold stock. He also organized irriga-tion projects and made plans to dam the Gils River, to provide both power azid water. He was a good rwenty years ahead of his time. In 1906 the federal government did build Roosevelt Dam on the Salt.

In Arizona, meanwhile, agitation against the Peralta-Reavis claint was mounting. Federal officials searched in-tently for chinks in Kuavis case out could find none. Then, one day, a printer on a smelltown newspaper in the territory made an extraordinary discovery while he was exzmining Reavis' documents. One of them, isted 1748, wes printed with a type face that had not been lo-vented until 1871. Another, dated 1787 in Madrid, bore the watermark of a Wisconsin paper mill founded in 1866 The federal government, emboldened by these finds, dug deeper and came up with several more indications thar all was not as Reavis said it was. The surveyor-general then published As Adverse Report on the Alleged Peralta Grant.

A swindler made of less steen stuff might have taken this as a sign that the lig was up and headed for the hills. But not Heavis. Obviously determined to brazen it through, he filed a $10 million suit against the government in the US. Court of Special Land. Claims. His grounds wors that the government wrongfully had given to others cet rein lands belonging to his wife and himself.

And so the issue was joined for a definitive test of the Peralta-Reavis claim. The government, desperately anxious for evidence to back up its suspicions, sent three special agents forth to examine the original documents. Severo Mallet-Provost traced Reavis tracks through the archives in Mexico and Spain. Will Tipkan and Levi Hughes were dispatched to do the same in California.

It was a monumental detective job. The documents were all there, just where Reavis said they would be. And they looked authentic. It seemed that what the government had hoped would be Reavis undoing might prove instead to be his vindication, But then the agents gave the documents a closer look, using microscopes and magnifying glasses. And bit by bit there began to emerge an unmistakable pattern of chicanery of names, dates and places erased and new ones forged in their place. There were genealogy books with first and last pages genuine but whole quantities of forged pages tucked in between. Bona fide documents written with the quill pens of the 18th century were found to contain forged interlineations written with steel pens, which did not come into general use until the 19th century. Original documents written with iron ink contained forgeries written in dogwood ink.

look, using microscopes and magnifying glasses. And bit by bit there hegan to emerge an unmistakable patverts of chicanery of names, dates zed places erssed and new anes forged in their place. There were genealogy books with first and last pages gemmine but whole quantities of farged pages tucked in between. Bona fide documents written with the quill peos of the 18th century ware found to contain forged interlineations written with stoel pens, which did not come into general use until the 19th century. Original doennents written with iron ink contained forgeries written in dogwood ink.

In one document Mallet-Provost unearthed the most significant evidence of all. It was a document constituting the very basis of Reavis' elaborate tale about the first Baron of Arizona. The document purported to be a royal decree appointing the baron as Royal Inspector of New Spain. But on close examination the investigators found that in its original form it was quite something else. It was a decree appointing the Count of Fuenclara as Viceroy of New Spain. Reavis had erased "Count of Fuen chata" and substituted "Baron of Arizona." And he had rubbed out "Viceroy" and written in the words "Royal Inspector."

The special agents went then to California. At the mission, near San Bernardino they found where Reavis had faked an entry showing the birth of the twins, Sons and her brother. He had overlooked the small but revealing detail. The padres indexed all births, but he failed to center the twins names in the index. And at San Francisco the investigators uncovered the perjuries which a lawyer had arranged for Reavis.

The evidence was devastating. The original Baron of Arizona, his descendants, the hardness, the Peralta grant itself -all were a hoax. With nothing but pen, ink, paper and a prodigious imagination, and an ex-horse-car conductor from St. Louis had created one of the most convincing myths of all time. He had conjured up a huge land grant. He had created out of nothingness the families involved in it. He had connected himself with those families. And he had established recorded evidence to prove the whole thing.

Historians later were so prodaim it the "greatest hoax ever perpetuated in this country." And Jim Reavis had almost made it stick. For if he wasn't the nobleman he pretended to be, he was still a nobleman of sorts, and not merely a baron but a prince-a prince of imposters. Either unaware of the case that had been amassed against him or thinking to run out his bluff, Reavis allowed his lawsuit to come to trial. It was held in June, 1895, at Santa Fe. The devoted and innocent Doña Soña was in the courtroom with her husband, and as the irrefutable evidence piled up, she went pale. Now she knew the truth. The fraud perpetrated upon the U.S. government and 40,000 settlers of Arizona and New Mexico was likewise a fraud perpetrated on her. She was not a baroness, an heiress, possessor of great landed wealth. She was a nobody, possessor of nothing. (As it turned out, Sofia née Carmelita Belita was actually the half-breed daughter of a man named John Treadway, by a California Indian known only as Kate.) The judges handed down their decision, inevitably rejecting the Peralta-Reavis claim in its entirety and with it Reavis suit for $10 million. Shortly afterward Reavis was arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit fraud.

He was tried and convicted. His sentence was two years in a federal penitentiary and a fine of $5,000.

The disillusioned Sofia filed suit for divorce on grounds of non-support, an allegation proved without too much difficulty since Reavis was in prison. Then she took the twins and went to Denver. Nothing more was ever heard of her.

Reavis served his term and came out with five dollars and a suit of clothes. He tried various new promotion schemes. But the old dash and bravado of his Peralta days were gone, and nothing quite came off. Now and again he could be seen prowling the streets of Phoenix or in the public library poring over old newspaper stories about his Peralta triumphs. Then he dropped out of sight. His death, when it finally occurred, went unnoticed.

Today nothing remains of the grandeur which was once the Peralts-Reavis empire. Hacienda Peralta has vanished into dust. Even the rock on which Reavis carved a map of his claim has disappeared, apparently smashed to bits under the banners of angry settlers. That's really a pity. It might have served as a fitting monument to one of the strangest episodes in the history of the South west and to one of the most ambitious and imaginative scamps who ever lived.

MR. MARS

blue-green coloring-especially in the spring or after a wet season. And they frequently appear gray or brownish-gray during a dry time.

Dr. Slipher has traveled widely. Often, when Mars swings close to Earth, our Northern Hemisphere is not the most advantageous spot to view it. This is because here, the Red Planer lies close to the southern horizon, and one most look through many more miles of "trembling air" (which makes for poor seeing) than if the planet is directly overhead. Again, being close to the horizon allows considerably fewer hours of observing time per night. So, astronomers must often journey to the telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere for best views of the planet, longest. This was the case in 1954, when Mars came within forty million miles of Earth.

There are not many telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere. Recalling that the largest part of the land area of Earth lies in the Northern Hemisphere, this is not surprising. The vast majority of populated centers-hence a larger proportion of the world's wealth-lies above the Equator. But in South Africa there is a telescope-a 27inch refractor-the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. This telescope is under the direction of the University of Michigan. It is known as the Lamont-Hussey Observatory, Bloemfontein, South Africa. It was to the Lamont-Hussey Observatory that Dr. Slipher journeyed to better view Mars in 1954. He was the leader of the National Geographic-Lowell Mars Expedition. During this stay at Bloemfontein, he took more than troenty thousand photographic exposures of Marsboth in natural color and in black and whitel Many of Dr. Slipher's photographs were taken through a wide variety of colored "filters." These showed millions of acres on Mars to be a blue-green, come with the springtime melting of its southern polar ice-cap. Over the Intervening years since first noted, these large green arèas appear to have grown in size!

Much of Mars' surface seems a reddish, ochre color. This is believed to comprise desert portions of the planer and these cover a great deal of its Northern Hemisphere.

Mars is the fourth planet from our sun. Its journey around our "big heat" requires 687 days. Earth's is 365 days. The orbit, or path of Mars about Old Sol is quite eccentric. When closest to the sun, Mars is 128 million miles from it, when farthest away, it is 155 million miles from it. Earth's orbit is ninety-three million milks, plus a little. Every fifteen years Mars and Earth are only thirtyfive million miles apart, other times we are as much as 234 million miles separated.

Mars has two moons. They are not much for moons when compared to ours. Phobos, closest to the planet, is ten miles in diameter. It revolves near Mars, which closer than our Moon whirls about us. Deimos, Mars' second moon, is five miles in diameter, is farther from Mars than Phobos, and circles in the opposite direction! Deimos is slow, requiring sixty hours to rise and set. Phobos orbits Mars in seven hours and forty minutes! The desert planet itself is some 4220 miles in diameter, slightly more than half that of Earth.

Some astronomers believe any planet must be of a certain size and mass before it can possibly "enjoy" volcanism. Mars is very close to that borderline size. A few astronomers think Mars knows volcanic action today! Perhaps the changes we note there are somewhat due to this force. Other astronomers hold the opposite view, believing Mars is too small a planet, and has no mountains. Dr. Sipher made many careful photographs at Bloemfontein, in an effort to determine the exact size of Mars. When his results are completed they may shed new light on its volcanic possibilities.

The length of Mars' day is twenty-four hours, thirtynine minutes, and thirty-five seconds-a little longer than our own day. But its seasons are almost twice as long. On Mars, the autumn lasts 164 days, the winter 160 days, the spring 199 days, and the summer 182, days!

Surface temperatures are believed to vary much more widely on Mars than on Earth. Probably, the high summer-time, mid-day temperature on Mars may rise to 75° F. The winter night temperature must fall well below minus 150° F!

It seems to be astronomical consensus that Mars has little "air," or atmosphere as compared with Farth. A still smaller amount of that atmosphere's content is oxygen. It should be borne in mind, while Percival Lowell believed Mars held "intelligent life," he did not think that life necessarily resembled "human life"! Thus, does it seem too outlandish for us to begin to prepare our thinking for the possible meeting of intelligence other than in human form? It does not seem so to me.Dr. E. C. Slipher was born in Mulberry, Indiana, March 25, 1883. Now, at 77, he does not look within ten years his age. His step is quick, his speech finent, well-chosen, and spiced with the idioms of the day. One cannot think of him as an "old man." Can we credit fifty years in the high, dry, pine-sconted climate of Flagstaff with any of this?

I rather invited myself into his office the last time we met. Dr. Slipher did not evince any objection. This office is the kind of a room every boy has envisioned as a scientist's headquarters. It is the sort of room a movie director would try desperately to reproduce if he were doing a picture of such a man as Dr. Slipher. It is the type of room totally beyond my powers of descriptionand I feel sure is a janitorial headache! Mars is king hore-and Dr. E. C. Slipher, its Prime Minister! Mars smiles, frowns, glowers-glows in vibrant color, stares in dusky black and white from many photographs all around the walls. There are drawings too, in pencil, in ink, in pastel tints. Quantities of books, from which small paper markers peek, are on shelves, in book cases, and on the floor. Magazine articles and clippings are stacked and cached in a myriad of places. Photographic plates, films and prints are everywhere-thousands of them-in steel files, in envelopes, on desk and table, even in cigar boxes! A large, flat-top desk centers all of this. It is systematically cluttered with the work of running a large astronomical observatory and carrying on a tight schedule of research. This room holds Time-countless hours of it-frozen in matter, welded in knowledge, moulded into human thought. If there were any way to express these things in dollars, Dr. Slipher and the Lowell Observatory would both be trillionaires! Like Schiaparelli and Lowell, Dr. Slipher has always enjoyed keen eye-sight. Even today he wears glasses only for the closest work. Slight color-blindness is not his. This is important to any astronomer who does much actual observing at the eye-piece, and does not depend heavily upon photographic observation alone. As wonderful as modern film emulsions are, they still cannot catch, or hold all a good eye does. A man should not be blamed too much for that which he cannot see-nor should another be overmuch chided for that which he does see, by others who cannot see it! Truly, good eyesight is not common among men-nor among astronomers either, strange as it may sound! Despite the slow increase noted in the blue-green areas of Mars, about five eighths of its surface is consid ered desert. Some astronomers believe violent and frequent windstorms traverse these desert areas. However, violent windstorms bespeak a heavy atmosphere, do they not? But we are told little atmosphere exists on Mars! Do we have a paradox of high wind in a rarified atmosphere on the Red Planet? This, and many, many other problems of Mars are yet to be solved. And how intriguing are the answers we do not know! Dr. Slipher still searches for these answers. With his telescopes, his merry eyes, and his persistent method, he is tracking them down. Perhaps he has found some of the answers and has not yet said. His pen has always been more quiet-with less reason-than those of many of his fellows! At present Dr. Slipher and a special staff are engaged in a critical overall study of more than fifty years of photographic record of the planet to trace out the changes that have occurred and to learn more about the properties of Mars. Yes, I think Dr. Slipher is "Mr. Mars"! At least in our world! And if you meet him someday, you will think so too!

GHOST TOWN

Is this what is left of desires and dreams And sounds of yesteryear? Is this what is left of the women who smiled Or all that men hold dear? And what has become of the miner's rich lode And what of the widow's tear? The only things left are but fallen grave stones To show that men lived here.

HOUSE ON THE DESERT

A lone light in a lonely land can be Of all life's friendly things the friendliest: A tiny island in immensity, Welcome and warmth, a refuge and a rest. Not all the winking candles of the sky, So close above the desert, can dispel Earth's skulking shadows like this single eye That beckons to a place where people dwell.

Though howling winds may sweep the landscape clean Of summer dust and winter's drifting snow, Against the dark this little house will lean And those who dwell secure within will know: Not all the terrors of the coming night Are strong as love and laughter-and a light.

ARROYO

He laughed at what we called a water-course, The new-come stranger in our western land. This fantasy he couldn't quite endorse, Naming "arroyo" a stretch of sunny sand.

One summer day a cloudburst struck the hill, Came down the rocky slope in a sweep of flood. In moments he saw the placid windings fill With a roaring madness of water, stones, and mud.

And now the stranger does not hesitate To call "arroyos" the bands of sand that lie, Drained in a day of the fury of the spate, Empty and dry beneath a sunny sky.

GREEN TWEED

Scrub oak, juniper, piñon, Short and stout and clumpy, Trees by nature mostly grown Where the land is lumpy: These begreen the arid west, Stubborn at the duty Of keeping canyon, slope and crest Jacketed in beauty.

HACIENDA RUINS

Abandoned now, old mud walls crumble, Rotting vigas sag and tumbleRelics picturesque and lonely Of a time long gone. Now only One small lizard plays the host To some occasional ghost.

NIGHT FIRE

Sunset, along the edge of town, In the far hills and falling down, A crimson collar, fashioned tight, Against the dark, descending night.

Fire in the hills above the town, Burning the tapered dusk lights down, Below, the ashes of the night, Flooded in the moon's dim light.

KCEE:

One of the outstanding highway maps available anywhere in the United States is the one published through your efforts, and we can do nothing but compliment its interesting art work, photographs and general design.

We found a serious mistake in the listing of radio stations in your 1960 тар. КСЕЕ, Southern Arizona's "Beautiful Music Station," was omitted. We like to think of it as the first station in Arizona to program entirely without rock and roll and other raucous and tasteless types of music. Instead, we program a pattern of music including everything that is of lasting interest from Como to Kostelanetz, with the inclusion of some of the light classics, Broadway Show music, and popular tunes, provided they measure up to our standards of quality. Our library, of over twenty thousand High Fidelity selections, is coded so that the listener finds an excellent variety and balance. You might, for example, in a fifteen minute period, hear a selection by Carlos Montoya, one by Doris Day, one by the Pittsburgh Strings, and possibly something from the latest Broadway production. KCEE can be heard, by the way, from Nogales to Casa Grande and from Willcox to a point about seventy miles west of Tucson. The dial number is 790KC. Some listeners report good reception at greater distances, and I understand that we have listeners in Phoenix, and in the MiamiSuperior area.

RECEPTION IN NEW JERSEY:

It may be a rash assumption on my part that ARIZONA HIGHWAYS has not many New Jersey subscribers. To those of us who live here where the 'flora' comprise largely dandelions, and the 'fauna'-homo sapiens, the unparalleled richness of Arizona in both categories is only a matter of a rather detached contemplation. For some years now, I have managed to rise about our insularity and get to Arizona every summer or two. I have seen much,

Yours sincerely

and have yet much, much more to see. Many of our Easterners have counted the sands of Bermuda, the Riviera, etc., but have never ventured west of the Delaware River and perhaps not gone downtown in Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell. My thought is that while there is yet a canyon I have not trod, or a century plant, some petrified rock, or a dry wash yet unvisited, I have no business frequenting foreign shores.

MEXICAN HAT EXPEDITIONS:

Your beautiful and fascinating June number came just at the right time as I plan to take that river boat trip down the Grand Canyon this coming July. I was accordingly most interested in the Katie Lee's article and pictures, but I was also surprised to find that while most of the pictures show boats of the "Mexican Hat Expeditions" your terminal "note" gave Harris Brennan River Expeditions as the one and only reference.

Unless I am very much mistaken the "Mexican Hat Expeditions" are owned and managed by Gay Staveley of Mexican Hat, Utah. I know Gay quite well as I took his San Juan-Colorado float trip with him in 1958. Gay is a very capable and worthy young man working hard to make a fair living in an always demanding and often most capricious business. Not only is Gay a most capable river man in his own right but he is also the heir to Norman Neville, who was the first to successfully pioneer and organize those Grand Canyon-Colorado boat trips, and the first to design and build the boats that made the trips enjoyable and safe. Not satisfied with getting the benefit of Neville's experience and equipment, Gay also managed to marry Neville's daughter, now the capable (and very charming) secretary of the organization.

OPPOSITE PAGE

"RIGGS LAKE-GRAHAM MOUNTAINS" BY R. P. BRACKE. 4x5 Speed Graphic camera; Kodak Ektachrome daylite E-1; f.16 at 1/25th sec.; 127mm f.4.7 Ektar 1 lens; July; bright and clear; Weston Master III 600 meter reading; ASA rating 12. Photograph taken on the Swift Trail Road on top of Mount Graham approaching Riggs Lake and Riggs Flat. About 35 miles from Highway 666. Taken about 3:00 P.M. Riggs Lake is one of the outstanding fishing spots in Southeastern Arizona and is stocked periodically by the Arizona Fish and Game Commission. Mt. Graham itself is one of Southeastern Arizona's outstanding playgrounds, attracting people from far and wide.

BACK COVER

"GLEESON-DRAGOON MOUNTAINS" BY JOSEF MUENCH. 4x5 Linhof camera; Ektachrome E-1; f.22 at 1/10th sec.; 8" Zeiss Tessar lens; April; sunny day. Gleeson, an Arizona ghost town, is reached on a gravel road off U.S. 666 in Cochise County. This old mining town was named not for a prospector or miner, but for a cattleman. It was on the El Paso & South Western Railroad-now only a name-a lovely old spot where a few people still live among the remnants of the past.