ARIZONA 64

Did you notice how many earth tremors were reported in this country last year? They weren't very big ones, although one did splash water out of a swimming pool and another shook up a town. The others were so minor that only the seismographs really felt them. It made me wonder, though, if the Earth might be starting work on a new range of mountains, or was Texas making a bid for the title Hawaii had recently wrested from California: having the most recent volcanic eruption in the fifty states?

Not until September did the newspapers bring out the background story. You must have read it, too. The distance, we were told, between Chicago and Los Angeles has recently been short-by at least 160 miles. Flagstaff, Arizona, is 135 miles closer to Denver than it used to be. Travelers can now make a scenic beeline from Midwest to Pacific Coast, taking in Mesa Verde in Colorado and the Grand Canyon in Arizona, practically in one fell swoop. This magic was accomplished by the building of 160 miles of new pavement, out in the Indian Country, mostly in northeastern Arizona. As I figure it, those jars and bumps the seismographs recorded were just Mother Nature, taking a tuck here and a dart there, to smooth out the extra fullness.

Dateline for the story (which didn't say a word about earth tremors) was Cortez, Colorado, nearest city to the Four Corners, where, on September 16, 1962, four governors were on hand to unveil a monument and cut ribbons on a prize package. Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior, held a brief for the Federal Government and some thousands of delighted speectators watched and listened, while history was made to the boom of a 19-gun salute. Just how earth-shaking an event transpired will become abundantly apparent as passing years fulfill prophecies of advantage to everyone, spreading in ever-widening circles, away from the 24-square-foot monument, marking the only place in our fifty states where four of them meet.

Among the notables, present and articulate before a microphone, was Paul Jones, elected chairman of the Navajo Tribal Council. The larger portion of the road runs over their land. His own people will not be the least of those affected by the burst of progress which has already pulled Chicago closer to Los Angeles.

Not many months before this all happened, we ourselves had driven over part of this new route and scenery notwithstanding had found the surface under our wheels nothing to write home to Chicago about. Now, said the news story, it was not only paved, but more than one hundred trucks had already secured franchises and were rolling through the reservation. I don't need to tell you that truck drivers don't pick their routes merely for the scenic value. There must be something to that story about the distance being shorter. This, we would have to see for ourselves and, as it usually happens, we wanted nothing better than some excuse to be off, on the Trail of the Navajo.

In Arizona, The Navajo Trail, which carries the number of Arizona 64 for most of its delightful life, begins at Williams. Flagstaff, thirty-two miles east on the same route (US 89 & 66), offers an alternate starting point, for travelers coming from south, say from Phoenix.

After a night in one of the fine, big motels at Williams, you wake to find forested peaks surrounding the broad swale from which the town looks. Snappily clear air betrays the healthful altitude, on a platform over which an ancient volcanic field spreads for 3,000 square miles, with cones in graduated sizes, clear up to the big San Francisco Peaks, popping up all over the landscape. As we turn north to the Grand Canyon, that goal is sixty-one miles ahead, the day is young and the journey begun, most promising, with something to attract the

NOTES FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS CAMERA TOURING ARIZONA 64 FROM WILLIAMS TO THE FOUR CORNER COUNTRY WITH JOSEF MUENCH AND OTHERS OPPOSITE PAGE

"ARIZONA 64-ADVENTURE CALLING." Photograph taken along the East Rim Drive through the Kaibab National Forest, Grand Canyon National Park. Big western yellow pines, in open, sunny groves, lead the visitor by gentle curves, east of Grand Canyon Village, to more viewpoints on the South Rim. 4x5 Linhof camera, Ektachrome, f.14 at 1/50th sec., 6" Xenar lens, August.

FOLLOWING PAGES

"BUSY BROWN FINGERS." Navajo weaver and her children with the rim of the Little Colorado River Gorge in the background. Clinging to tribal customs, the Navajo mother still weaves her handsome rugs in "outdoor workshops" along the Navajo Trail, Arizona 64.

"ALONG ARIZONA 64-MOENKOPI VILLAGE." This view shows a portion of Moenkopi (moe-en-koe-pee), Hopi village near Tuba City, as seen from viewpoint on Arizona 264 not far from Arizona 64. The Hopis (boe-pees), Arizona's only pueblo Indians, are among the world's finest dry farmers and their terraced fields are on the slopes of the wash with the flat-roofed houses clustered together."

"TSEGI CANYON-NAVAJO RESERVATION." Tsegi Canyon, Navajo (nah-va-hoe) Reservation, is between Tuba City and Kayenta, near Marsh Pass. It is in side walls of this rugged canyon that many prehistoric ruins have been found. The Navajo Tribal Council has established a wilderness area here to keep it in its natural state."

"RUINS OF OLD BETATAKIN-NAVAJO NATIONAL MONUMENT" BY DARWIN VAN CAMPEN. Betatakin (bay-taw-taw-KIN) is one of the great ruins in Navajo National Monument, a short drive from Arizona 64. Archeologists considered it one of the outstanding ruins in the Southwest. 4x5 Linhof camera, Ektachrome, f.18 at 1/10th sec., 90mm Angulon lens, bright sunlit day, early Sept.

"THE ELEPHANT'S FEET." This unusual and striking sandstone formation is on Arizona 64 just north of Tonalea. These sturdy stumps, about 70 feet high, have long been a landmark in the eastern portion of the Navajo Reservation."

"CHURCH ROCK-NAVAJO RESERVATION." Here is shown Church Rock and other outcroppings near Kayenta. This scene typifies the dramatic contour of the Navajo Reservation, bespeaking volcanic action in ages gone by."

"DRIVING THE HERD." The Navajos and their flocks of sheep add to the color and interest of the traveler on Arizona 64. This photograph was taken in Monument Valley. In the background are the Totem Pole (right) and the dramatic Yebechai (yay-bay-chi) Group (left), outstanding sandstone formations for which the Valley is famous."

"BABY ROCKS-NAVAJO RESERVATION." The Baby Rocks formation is found northeast of Kayenta, along Arizona 64. Quaintly carved by wind and weather, from red Entrada sandstone, these "nursery" figures are shaped like witches, or whatever you choose, not from the highway.

"CLOUDBURST OVER THE LUKACHUKAIS." The Lukachukais (loo-ca-choo-kies) form a mountain range on the Arizona-New Mexico border near Four Corners. Painted on a broad canvas, this range shows a summer storm reaching its climax.

"SHIP IN THE DESERT." This is New Mexico's historic landmark, Shiprock, south and a little west of the town of Shiprock. Rising 1400 feet from the desert floor, this huge volcanic plug was named for a resemblance to a square-rigged sailing vessel. The Indians call it "the Winged Rock."

LAST PAGE OF COLOR PORTFOLIO

"IN MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK" BY BOB BRADSHAW. This is a view of Cliff Palace Ruin in Mesa Verde National Park near Cortez, Colorado, to which Arizona 64 will bring more and more visitors.

Every in every mile. Burgeoning summer finds the glow of yellow rabbitbrush arranged in round clumps, saucy sunflowers and wooly leaved stalks of mullien or patches of blue asters, show now and then in off-the-shoulder bouquets. Meadows encourage settlements of little pines, like young people moving away from their elders to set up in a suburban area. Up ahead, over treetops or low desert vegetation, look for a line of straight-edged, white-ribbed cliffs. They are on the North Rim, higher by a thousand feet than the South Rim, and separated from us not only by some fifty miles, but by a "ditch" ten miles across and a mile deep. They are the only intimation the approaching traveler has of the Grand Canyon until he steps from his car at its very verge.

Closer at hand is antelope count country, the favorite, open rangeland of the swift-footed pronghorn. When the fun of counting volcanic cones begins to pall, you might offer this more challenging game to the youngsters, for it takes sharp eyes to spot the animals. So well camouflaged by their coloring that you may not notice even one until, startled, he flips the danger signal, his tail, exposing a most conspicuous white rump. Thus alerted and set into rapid motion not just one, but a whole group, may dash across the plains and be lost to sight before you can count them. Gradually mounting the even slope of the plateau toward the Rim's 6800-foot elevation, the Ponderosa pine forest begins to command our whole attention. Light catches the rosettes of needles, like so many starbursts or light-tipped candles. Underfoot, a deep needle-carpet is soft and bouncy, while the whole outdoors breathes out a stimulating fragrance.

Reaching the South Entrance of the Grand Canyon National Park, each car must surrender a dollar for a one-day permit or $2 for the season, surely a bargain. What you see there depends, of course, in some measure on what you bring to it. It also depends, more than most people realize, on the time of day and the mood of the Canyon at the moment. In common with most Southwest scenery, this panorama is as mercurial as a primadonna, and with reason. The Grand Canyon, without sidelight, that "mother of shadows" to give depth and perspective, is as flat as a billiard table and about as thrilling. People who look then go away, saying: "I just can't see what there is at the Grand Canyon for people to rave about so."

Of course they can't, but try getting up in the dark of early morning. From any point along the Rims watch dawn sneak up from behind the far eastern Palisades to catch Old Lady Grand stretching and yawning, pulling the nightcap off first one butte and then another in the big dusky bowl. Feel the deep hush which flows from one rim to the other. There will be at least one pair of dark wings floating high above and the echo of a throaty note in the chilly air. It will be as though you yourself were remaking the great gorge, fitting Vishnu Temple and Wotan's Throne into place, winding the Colorado round your finger to squeeze it into that narrow, twisted, channel far below. Long before the day-trippers, the stayabeds and hearty-breakfast-first-folk are abroad, you'll feel that you own the whole place, lock, stock and barrel, as, indeed, you do.

Just now, we're on the Trail of the Navajo and so will not follow out to the many viewpoints, each adding

Hopi dancers at South Rim Visitor Center, Grand Canyon The Canyon from Lookout Point

Tuba City Trading Post

would probably still not look right at you, as she gives her own hand and a smile. The children may look away, too, as the ceremony is repeated, even with a fat-cheeked baby, if one happens to be propped, mummy-wrapped in a cradleboard, against the loom.

Whether Navajo or non-Indian, you need just one word for the occasion. Like the Hawaiian "Aloha," it means many things. The correct low voice will cover your pronunciation. It is the thought behind, not the word itself, which will be clearly understood. Just say: "Yet-a-hay." (There are numerous spellings for it, but this is how it sounds to me.) Of course, if you were a Navajo, your well-behaved children would stay close to you, watching quietly, and they might even step forward to repeat the charming little ritual. It would be proper to offer a modest model fee (don't overdo it) after some pictures are taken, but perhaps sharing some food you have in the car would be even more friendly and appreciated.

We drop finally to the junction with U.S. 89, running south to Flagstaff among the pines, and north to the new town of Page, where the big dam is rising in Glen Canyon. A mile and a half to the left is the important trading post and Hotel Court of Cameron. Two worlds meet here, as double-barrelled cement trucks go by every few minutes to the dam, and all the varied shapes and speeds

Tuba City Navajo Community Center A Look at Tuba City

Tuba City must have been born on Saturday. The poem says "Satur-day's child works hard for a living," and "Tuba" as we call it, is certainly a working tawn, though seldom in the limelight. You probably know the kind of person who gets things done quietly, without fanfore, feaving the talk to people with more time for it. While he isn't seen around much, you know he will be on hand to help, when the need arises. Tuba City is rather like that. It sits well back from the rim of Moenkopí Wash, while the highway whizzes by, touching only outskirts which have reached out for it.

The new, paved Navajo Trail does by-pass the town now, but it was a little apart even when the old road came into town. Whenever we were heading southwest, after leaving Kayenta, the first hint that the wide Shonto Plateau wasn't really endless, would be the black tip of the Tuba City hospital smakestack, usually puffing a wisp of white cloud into the blue. Coming the other way, off US89 into the broad trough of Moenkopi Wash, between cliffs, what did we see? It was fields in the bottomiands with workers forever ploughing or planting, weeding or harvesting. The valley is lush and green, a true oasis in the desert in summertime.

Kerley's Trading Post, a little back from the road, at the foot of the hill and a new shopping center at the top near the junctien, have the feel of outskirts. A simple sign with the name, "Tuba City," is all the invitation you'll get to drive into town, but you are welcome.

One of the first sights, from either entrance, is the old Tuba City Trading Post, established in 1870. Most of you don't remember that far back, but Tube can. (The name belanged to a Hopi chief who served as guide to Jacob Hamblin, famous Mormon missionary and scout.) The Navajo Reservation, only two years old, hadn't started to sprout from a narrow rectangle on either side of the Arizona-New Mexico line covering three million acres, to its present almost eighteen million. The area around Tuba City was public domain and the government paid $45,000 to a Mormon settlement for the school site. This, however, was not until the turn of the century. Up to 1871 all Indian tribes were regarded as sovereign nations, with whom the War Department negatiated treaties. Later, they became charges of the Federal government.

Several blocks on is the million-dollar Community Center, opened by the Navajo Tribal Council in 1960. World-renowned artists perform in the gymnasium-auditorium which is also adapted for wrestling matches, basketball, movies, and dances. The Council has built a Chapter House, too, a kind of Indian "club." grassroots center for tribal government. (Instead of names on a ballot, which many of the older Navajos couldn't read, they vote for familiar faces, photographs of candidates running for the Council.) Next, of interest, is the Western District Tribal Police Headquarters with smartly uniformed officers porking their patrol cars. About here, a tree-shaded street might be off in some remote colonial possession. Official residences with screened-in porches in the midst of green lawns have that look and several-storied redstone school and office buildings across the way, complete the impression. You can almost trace the profound changes which have come throughout the Reservation, in Tuba City's architecture.

An enlarging hospital, sprawling, functional classrooms and homey dormitories with the very up-to-date structures being added by the Indians themselves, tell the story. Saddle horses tied to a tree, blanketed figures huddling in a wagon at the hospital entrance are giving way to the automobile age.

As you pass along the Navajo Trail, just a few minutes for a look at Tuba City will show the working side of the Reservation where Indian and government cooperate as a new day comes to these people who were Americans before the ward was coined.

Sandal Point

So soon that it may be now, pavement will leave the Navajo Trail, Arizona 64, between Tonalea and Marsh Pass, to reach the Navajo National Monument. Blanketed under that name are three of the most eye-filling cliffdwelling ruins in all the Southwest. Each as individual as Detroit, Sacramento, or San Antonio, they predate our own nation by at least five centuries. If you had been numbered among Christopher Columbus' yachting party of 1492, and hurried, post-haste, overland to Segi Canyon in northeastern Arizona, you would still have missed a chance of discussing the current water shortage with one of the builders, by some two hundred years. Their descendants had already drifted eastward and set up housekeeping in villages, (Pueblos is the Spanish word), some of which are still occupied along the Rio Grande River in New Mexico. Yet, even today many walls of their little houses stand firm. Some of the brush-and-wattle roofs are still intact. The charm of the settings, in water-sculptured cliffs, catches at our throats, as it must have at theirs, when yucca-sandaled feet brought a hunting party along a trail, and they saw suddenly, across canyon or through leaf-frame, the marvelously fashioned, miniature cities we call: "Betatakin," "Keet Seel," and "Inscription House"

Betatakin, translated as "hillside house," or more reasonably as "houses in the rock shelves" (Arizona Place Names), includes 150 rooms. Groundfloor chambers, strung for 450 feet within a stream-meander carved cave, are high in the five-hundred-foot northwall cliff of a box canyon.

Seen, as from the dress-circle on Sandal Point, a great proscenium arch is topped by dark green juniper and pinyon growth, stunted to Bonzai proportions. The orchestra pit is occupied by "wood-winds:" aspens, box elders, Douglas firs.

The stage itself, set with terraced houses and seeming to have been chiseled in cameo-intaglio, along with supporting pylons of sandstone, has the air of waiting in the breathless quiet, for action to begin. Only you, as participating audience, can call the actors out from the wings, to tread hand-carved toe-holds, clamber by primitive pole-ladders to a second-floor room, and make the rafters echo with a language no living man has heard.

(Notice to ticket holders: Full of the Moon is the time the finest performance takes place.) With the new road, a trail, in part a hanging metal stairway, will give access to guided tours in the cave, presently gained only by a trail from the mouth of Betatakin Canyon, where it breaks into the big Segi.

Still reached only by an eleven-mile trail, enlivened by quicksand traps, for which Indian ponies are recommended, Keet Seel ruins (Navajo for "Broken Pottery"), has over 250 rooms. Arizona's largest, it falls short by only a few, which could be a technical matter of how counted, of Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde, spoken of as the largest known cliffdwelling. Less visited than Betatakin, it was discovered more than a decade sooner and may have been occupied later, if the excellence of brightly colored potsherds is indicative.

Another forty miles away, in Nitsie Canyon, Inscription House Ruins adds an historic puzzle to its ancient mysteries. Who was the Spanish explorer to engrave on one wall of its seventy-five rooms, à now defaced name and the date of 1661?

Many other ruins of exceptional interest and quite different conformation, (Scaffold House, for example), are scattered throughout the area and will soon be clamoring for accessibility and protection. of cars shuttle back and forth. Among them you can notice pickups driven by black-hatted Navajos, the roomy back crowded with blanketed family or friends, headed either to their big city of "Flag" or coming home, weighted with supplies and maybe more friends.

Cow Springs Trading Post

of cars shuttle back and forth. Among them you can notice pickups driven by black-hatted Navajos, the roomy back crowded with blanketed family or friends, headed either to their big city of "Flag" or coming home, weighted with supplies and maybe more friends.

Cameron serves both worlds. While you get gas, or eat in the restaurant, admire rugs or jewelry in the post, you will see many Indian families. They may be gathered in little groups outside or clustered at a counter making their purchases. You can stay overnight in the hotel or one of the little motel units.

The post stands at the edge of the Little Colorado Canyon that is crossed by two bridges; the old one, turned out to pasture and carrying only pipelines, and the modern span, strong enough to carry heavy equipment headed for the dam. For another fourteen miles, Arizona 64 merges with this traffic, turning right on a short stretch of old 89, then right again to head for Tuba City. On either side are the strange shapes of tinted clays in the Painted Desert. To the left, a big black mound of volcanic cinder looks as though the sun never struck it, so they call it "Shadow Mountain."

As the Echo Cliffs come closer, several patches of bright green, that mellow to gold in autumn, catch the eye from embayments in the towering red walls. Four miles over dirt road, from a small sign pointing left to Moenave, will take you to them, about a hundred years back, before this was reservation. Mormons were then searching out farming land, anywhere near water. A few houses are hidden under cottonwood trees and tall exclamation points of poplar trees. Fields and orchards are nourished by a bevy of earth-dammed reservoirs, fringed by tamarisk, willow, cottonwood. Narrow lanes overhung by trees lead past sites of early homes and redwing blackbirds can be heard in their watery chuckle. A wild duck or so splashes across the surface of a little lake, a rooster crows in the otherwise heavy silence. Navajos farm here now, in a secret little oasis which few outsiders ever visit.

The Navajo Trail goes up a long rise to come into Moenkopi Wash, its broad bottomlands patterned with fields. Like a frieze expounding the significance of corn and melon patches beyond, figures along the north side move back and forth in a round of simple tasks. Men chop wood with free-swinging axe, women in swishing skirts move about the camp, children play and dogs bark at a passing wheel. Not even a pickup at a hogan, a short haircut amid long, knotted locks, new wooden one-room houses next to crude bough shelter, removes the scene from its pioneer aspect. Ways may be changing, but the Navajo are still inimitably Navajo.

On the hill above this green oasis is Tuba City, slanted entirely for service to the Indian. Schools, hospital, community center, police headquarters, trading posts all revolve around his life. Outside of town, at a junction, 264 leads right, bisecting the Hopi Reservation, which is surrounded by the larger one, and continues to the Navajo capital, Window Rock, almost at the New Mexico line. A mile in this direction to an overlook will provide your camera with a picture of the Pueblo of Moenkopi where, years ago, the Hopis from Oraibi built flat-roofed houses and set out terraced fields. There are no better dryfarmers than these children of the desert, old hands at the art before the Navajos first drifted down from the north. Their proud lineage has been fairly certainly traced to the builders of Mesa Verde, Betatakin, and Hovenweep. They set peach trees at cliff-feet to catch all the run-off, and husband like jewels every drop of water the creek brings. As withdrawn and picturesque as a huddled hilltown in Italy, the square adobe houses now have window glass and from the point, the sun picks out catch-lights on car-chrome, parked close to the winter woodpile, or the rounded walls of a ceremonial kiva (for men only).Our Navajo Trail drives northeast from the junction, into a vast open plain where mesas and mountain shapes have been pushed far back to distant horizons to make room for more desert; endless nothing when the sun dries vegetation to dry puffs, and a shimmering sea of green, patched with nosegays of flowers, after the ardent summer rains. The Tuba City campground in a greenshaded hollow at a reservoir, a uranium mill, the Red Lake boarding school, of which only a funnel-shaped water tower shows from the road, completes the list of places for some miles. Between are some Indian camps and wagon tracks which, disappearing into low hills, hint at a few others. A flock of sheep may move slowly, herded by a solitary horseback rider, a handful of cattle feed hungrily on thinly-scattered browse and that is all.

The scene shifts at Red Lake, come upon abruptly from a high point overlooking a basin, surrounded by dunes, its water drained off into a cool green swale. Poised on the slope is the old, two-storied Tonalea Trading Post. Upstairs a hospitable old dowager of a living room dwells in the past, and downstairs is the trading post store. It reminds me of all the old posts, built on the shifting sands of time, at the end of a wagon road, behind the "Turquoise Curtain."

Kayenta, Town at the Crossroads

Kayenta started as a solitary trading past back in 1909, long before there were any roads at all on the Reservation. Today it finds itself at a junction, with black-top winding north to Monument Valley on "464," and new Arizona 64 shooting off northeast like an arrow aimed at the heart of the Four Corners Country.

I never think of this once-remote outpost without being reminded of a little finger-game which children always like. Perhaps you'll remember it. Interweaving the fingers so only the knuckles show on top, you say: "Here is the Church, (and as the index fingers pop up): Here is the Steeple, Open the Doors, (hands furn over to show fingers) And here are The People!"

In Kayenta, the lost line should read: "But where are the People?" Because the doors in this town open into only schools and offices, trading posts, motels and restaurants. There is a Public Health Clinic and headquarters for guided tours, and, of course, quarters for the individuals manning all the varied public and private services. Including their families, they add up to about three hundred residents. "The People," which is what the Navajos call themselves (Dinch is their own word), all live somewhere else. As long as school is in session, a thousand of their children fill the dormitories, scattering like autumn leaves between terms. The porents come, as do suburbunites to the nearest shopping center, only now and then. Their camps, with hogans or little wooden houses, cind small flocks of sheep and goats, are dotted over the rugged canyon and mesa land for miles and miles around.

Even the name of this strange town is puzzle. Not Indion, English, or Spanish, it may be just a twisting of "Tyende," which belongs to a nearby creek. Kayenta it is, however, a place with a magnificent setting, a fascinating past, and an incredible future, if you lend an ear to forecasts pouring through the Reservation grapevine.

Wetherill Inn, on the hillside, perpetuates the name of the man who brought his family here and whose story is told by Frances Gilmore in Trader to the Navajas. From that first stane building, Joan Wetherill, guide and discoverer of many ruins, could see the cliffs of Skeleton Mesa behind the settlement, and the beginning of Comb Ridge's 100-mile line of teeth. It erupts into jagged shapes, one group of them forming the "Sinking Fleet," with only upthrust prows visible. From under his shade trees can be viewed "Dzil-le-jini," Black Mountain, Navajo name for the great mesa that sweeps away to the east. Not alone spectacular to look at, the mesa is rich with coal for which developers are said to be willing to pay the highest royalty ever offered for coal-mining rights. Out on the plains at its feet, power lines stand ready to carry current generated in the new Glen Canyon Dam turbines, while under the ground, oil and natural gas are being tapped.

If Progress has been tardy in putting a finger on Kayenta, she seems now about to take it vigorously in hand. A big high school, newer and larger matels, and staggeringly heavy traffic, trucks and tourists, are foretold for the newly laid roads.

Coyotes, baying at the moon in the neighboring Sagi Tribal Wilderness Area will have stiff competition from singing wires and rumbling tires. My only hope is that the Navajos themselves will continue to find enough open space to gather for the traditional winter chant ceremony, "When the Thunder Sleeps," that has been celebrated after the first frost, through untold generations.

On Utah State 47, entering Monument Valley

They are brighter places now, stocked with fewer items for the sheep camp and more for the automobile age, but still the most colorful spots on the reservation. Rainbow colors-but of a very bright rainbow, are stacked on the shelves; the gay velveteen and sateens, the cotton cloth used in their skirts and blouses. Western shirts and jeans for the men in piles, maybe a saddle, and ropes, galvanized tinware hanging from the ceiling, hundred pound sack sacks of flour, sugar, potatoes.

Everyone drinks pop, and shopping is a long, joyful affair, with everyone enjoying the fun, for no one loves a joke quite as much as the Navajos. The whole family comes, from wrinkled grandmother to the cradleboard seer, having a siesta out in the shade, between bouts of buying or selling. Why do it all at once? The farther they've come from home, the more gala is the day, and so, the more elaborate the jewelry. Nowhere outside of a museum will you see as many rings, necklaces, plus the concho belt, earrings, and perhaps a design of coins or silver buttons sewed to the blouse, on one figure. "Longhairs" as the men who keep their locks away from the barber, are called, still wear earrings and necklaces, with perhaps a silver arınguard and hatband for finish.

Beyond Tonalea and just around a turn in the road, are the Elephant's Feet. This pair of stone monoliths, some seventy feet high, are water-carved at the base into pachyderm toes and cut off to a flat top where hawks nest. A highway roadside rest with tables and stoves is set by the fading pony trail and the white sandstone within reach, is beginning to show names and recent dates, scratched not, take note, in Navajo.

On our right, as we come into Klethla Valley is the Black Mesa and soon, on the left, a dirt road signed: 53 Miles to Navajo Mountain Trading Post Trips to Rainbow Bridge.

This is the overland route to the biggest of natural stone spans, reached finally by trail on horseback, an experience wonderful beyond telling. Inscription House Trading Post is along that road, near the head of the trail to the third ruins of Navajo National Monument. We reach the main monument turnoff farther along on 64, after passing the new Cow Springs (Begashinito) Trading Post, moved to be alongside the realigned Navajo Trail.

The road to the Navajo National Monument may even now be paved the fifteen miles to Betatakin, where the cliff ruins have a setting as fine as the ancient architecture. A new trail will take visitors right into the cave city but the cross-canyon view from Sandal Point will remain the picture spot, picture spot.

Upon entering Long House Canyon, the Black Mesa inches closer on one side and rock walls edge in on the other, near enough to show intricate pock-markings of erosion. You must look closely for Long House, a pre-historic ruin sitting on a blade of rock off to the left as well as the pretty little cave ruins that begin to appear as the world erupts into canyons and Marsh Pass is reached. A trading post and a big view into Segi Canyon sit in the pass, at a spot once dreaded by those who used the road after a rain. Steep slope and slick blue clay, conquered by the new road now will be remembered for the outlook in the rugged and yawning canyon mouth.

Another few miles and a gentle slope brings us into Kayenta, standing at a junction and backed by Skeleton Mesa, where the many-toothed Comb Ridge begins. To the left, 464 skirts the town and starts a final twenty-five miles to Monument Valley. It must first cross Laguna Creek on a low bridge and mount through a cut in Comb Ridge for the breath-stopping view of Agathlan and Owl Butte, the Gateway to Monument Valley. The big volcanic plug, looking like a magician's castle-Mer-lin's by preference, is a splendid piece of stage-setting and its companion is of red sandstone. Beyond, after turns and drops, the desert skyscrapers come into view -in the Valley of Valleys. A pleasingly functional visitor center and observation roof sits at the Rim, for this is the first of the Navajo Tribal Parks. Entrance fee is $1 per car and fourteen miles of "trail" can be negotiated in your own car, but camps of Indians living there are out-of-bounds, unless you take a guided tour. Navajo-speaking drivers, in proper cars for this terrain are avail-able and the fun of really meeting the Navajos, talking with them (through the friendly interpreter-guide) will continue to be the one way to really "see" Monument Valley, the essence of whose charm is these people against the background of mesa and butte.

Tours are offered at both Goulding's and at Kayenta. Goulding's Trading Post and Lodge, a mile and a half from the park's entrance road has modern motel units and ranch-style meals. The Gouldings, Harry and "Mike" have been here for forty years, part of the Valley. With them are Maurice Knee (Mike's brother) and his petite wife, Rosemarie. Behind the post is the remarkable hospital-clinic built by the Seventh Day Adventists.

preted.

ARIZONA TER 1863 by ROANNA H. WINSOR

Although Arizona was the last area within the continental limits of the United States to become a territory -she didn't achieve that status easily. Her destiny and problems besetting her development stretched far, far back into history as this nation counts it. A Mecca today, Arizona, for centuries, presented natural barriers, desert and mountains to all who would conquer her-first Spain, then Mexico and finally expanding United States in her march westward. From the tenth century and perhaps before, Arizona aborigines lived, built homes, worked the soil by irrigation and enjoyed the colorful, sunny land untroubled by the outside world. Then in the middle 1500's came Spain with banners flying. For two and one-half centuries she explored the region as best she could. The country was vast and inhospitable, the Indians defiant. Missions were founded by Jesuits, then Franciscans. Indian mines were discovered in the north but not worked by the Spanish. In the south two small presidios were established-Tubac and Tucson. Bigger things were in the offing. Arizona lay neglected. Spain demanding more and more from her colonial outposts lost them by revolt. Mexico declared herself independent and made it stick by 1821. Now the new and audacious Mexican Republic was hard put to hold her far-flung gains to the north, which fanned from the shores of the Pacific to Santa Fe. Outposts in California were separated from Sonora and Pimería Alta by desert. Colonies of Nuevo Mexico were separated from California on the west by mountainous, unexplored Arizona and Indians-from Nueva Vizcaya on the south by marauding Comanche and Apache tribes. No communication-no progress. The Mexican constitution of 1824, with high hopes and plans, made Nuevo Mexico a territory of the new republic with four partidos or counties (later changed to two districts and seven partidos). And so, with Arizona undeveloped, Santa Fe trade with eastern United States was sanctioned. The land to the west (Arizona) was opened to trappers who made foot trails to the Colorado. But Mexico had not reckoned with the manifest destiny of the United States and her relentless march westward. Texas set up housekeeping and, in 1845, was admitted to the Union. Trouble was really brewing. Mexico reacted immediately to such an extent that the United States declared war in 1846. By late fall Gen. Kearny and his Army of the West rode into Santa Fe and declared it American property. Mexico met her match. Two years later the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo transferred from Mexico to the United States all of Arizona north of the Gila, New Mexico, California, Nevada, Utah and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. Back in the early days the founding fathers of the United States had passed the Ordinance of 1787 as a