East Verde: River of Mystery

EAST VERDE River of Mystery Story and Photographs by HAL R. MOORE INSIDE FRONT COVER

"TINTED ROCKS ALONG THE VERDE" BY HAL R. MOORE. This deep pool is below Cold Spring Falls on the East Verde River. Here water is from ten to fifteen feet deep, moving slowly between tinted canyon walls. Minotta Autocord camera; Ektachrome; f.18 at 1/100th sec.; Rokkor 75mm lens; bright day in June.

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"COLD SPRING FALLS ON EAST VERDE" BY HAL R. MOORE. Cold Spring Falls, approximately 1½ miles upstream from first camp ground on Houston Mesa Road, 8½ miles from paved highway north of Payson. Photo was taken on the east side of the canyon. Kalimar S/L Reflex camera, 2¼x2¼ Ektachrome f.18 at 1/25th sec.; Kaligar 80mm lens; July day with bright overall, but deep shadow around falls.

OPPOSITE PAGE

"EAST VERDE REFLECTIONS" BY HAL R. MOORE. Photo taken on the East Verde River about half way upstream from first camp ground on Houston Mesa Road on way to Cold Spring Falls. Minolta Autocord camera; 2¼x2¼ Ektachrome; f.22 at 1/50th sec.; Rokkor 75mm lens; bright October day.

FRONT COVER

Photographic explanation for this photograph is given on page 27.

The feeling is, perhaps, inevitable. Traveling through the populous areas of Arizona the conclusion becomes inescapable. And as we read daily of growth and building and larger and ever faster population increases in the state no other answer seems possible.

Arizona, it can be said, in tones mournful and dismayed, is filling up.

So it is. The world itself is filling up, so how can we expect less for Arizona? But, no matter how fast the world and state are filling, there is still a world and plenty of space remaining.

To prove the thesis in Arizona, one might simply point to the immense domains of the Tonto, Sitgreaves and Coconino National Forests, to mention only three. But this thundering sweep of land is too huge, entirely too spreading and vast, even to encompass in the imagination. Paradoxically it is possible to imagine this gigantic preserve filling up more easily than it is to imagine its size.

There is a remedy for this popular new depression, however. Those who feel that Arizona is on the disastrous brink of filling with people need only select a tiny area of one of our national forests and try to explore that area. Try it afoot or on horseback or by four-wheel-drive vehicle. Just try it. Whatever the other results of such ex-

ploration, those who have tried it will come hurrying back to their insignificant speck of a gigantic city convinced that it may yet be generations before Arizona is filled up. One such exploration, and one leading to the above thesis, has been conducted, intermittently, for the past three years now. It is still far from finished. The participants have been Walter Dornin, Roy Erwin, and the author, all of Phoenix. The area which came to our attention was the East Verde River.

Now the East Verde is not a big stream. It is a mere tributary of the Verde River, which itself is not the largest stream in Arizona. Rising among the piny woods under the very edge of the Tonto Rim, the East Verde travels only about thirty-five miles, give or take a few, to its confluence with the Verde in a lower corner of Gila County. All of it runs within the borders of the Tonto National Forest.

Thirty-five miles? We drive that distance in thirty minutes on our new super highways. It seemed like a pleasant little hiking exercise for us. Even allowing for natural hazards to be found in the wilderness, we calculated that we could easily explore the entire river in easy stages. Perhaps three or four trips of about ten miles of stream each trip. We would explore, fish and photograph the entire stream, from headwaters to mouth. And we figured we had better hurry before hot dog stands sprang up along the entire route.

So it was with high hopes, shiny new fishing lures, and yards of film that we began our adventure in the spring of 1959. Three years later we had yet to reach the mouth of the river, and huge gaps in the middle still remained to be seen. Though plainly enough marked on road maps and Forest Service maps, it developed that the East Verde traverses some of the roughest, wildest, most nearly impassable terrain in the entire state. When we also discovered that historical information relating to the river is extremely difficult to come by we christened the East Verde our River of Mystery.

We decided, illogically as it turned out, to start at the bottom and work up. The mouth of the river, or the confluence of the Verde and East Verde would be our first target. It is still a target, unmarked by a single hit. Many were the people we met during our quest. They were ranchers, mostly, some miners, lumbermen, rangers. All of them lived either full or part time in what we citybred men felt were the deepest wilds of the state. Never will we forget the quiet hospitality of the rancher at the Baby Doll who figured we could hardly get there from his place. The best way, he said, was up through Cave Creek. (We still have not figured that out, but when a man has lived long in the country you are interested in you listen quietly and intently and think a long time about what he says.) He was surely right about one thing: we could not get to our destination on the road that passed through the Baby Doll. So that trip was technically a failure, though we would never have missed seeing the wild, open country for anything else in the world.

Then there was the rancher somewhere in the vicinity of Payson. He stopped his work of digging a stump out of pasture land, regarded us for what seemed an eternity from eyes paler than the noon sky. Apparently he was satisfied with what he saw, because he gave us detailed instructions about how to cross his property the easiest way. He told us how we would cross Polle's Mesa (he