ARIZONA'S HEARTLAND HIGHWAY

Fast and Easy Access To Southwest's Scenic Areas Arizona's HEARTLAND HIGHWAY

The recent completion of a few last links brought into being a continuous superhighway 299.2 miles in length, which makes it possible to drive from Flagstaff to Benson without stoplight or stop sign in something less than 299.2 minutes. Connecting as it does the metropolitan areas of Flagstaff in the north, Phoenix in the central area and Tucson in the south, it might well be called Arizona's Heartland Highway. Let us hasten to emphasize here, however, that except for the harried businessman in a hurry anyone who travels the full length of the Heartland Highway nonstop and at the posted speed limit is just plain wasteful. The principal virtue of the Heartland Highway is that it gives residents and visitors in one area of the state far easier access to the attractions in other areas.For example, and for the sake of brevity, let's examine what it does for the Phoenician. It is late in July, and admittedly it is slightly warm in Phoenix. Today, thanks to the Heartland Highway, the family simply has to step into its car and head north on Interstate 17, the Black Canyon Highway. An easy two hours and twenty minutes later, they can be in Flagstaff, with its cool, nearly 7,000-foot pine-scented air.

With Flagstaff as its base, anyone with a normal curiosity and the yen for exploring could spend months delving into the wonders of Northern Arizona.

Probably the best place to start would be at the Museum of Northern Arizona. Generally recognized as one of the finest museums of its size in the world, the Museum of Northern Arizona is a visual index of the myriad attractions of the northern part of the state. Its displays set forth in colorful and absorbing dioramas, paintings, fossils, artifacts, specimens and arts and crafts the story of Northern Arizona from the beginning of the earth to the modern Space Age. Owned and operated by the Northern Arizona Society of Science and Art, the museum's interests run a wide gamut.They include geology, zoology, botany, anthropology, archeology, ecology, and Indian tribal prehistory and current culture. A visit to the museum will suggest innumerable side trips from Flagstaff. The nearby Navajo and Hopi Reservations take the visitor back to another age and another culture. Theprehistoric cliff dwellings in Walnut Canyon National Monument make it easy for the visitor to envision life as it was lived by our prehistoric predecessors in Arizona.

For a change of pace, the whole family will get a thrill out of visiting world-famous Lowell Observatory and the more recently added NASA facility at Flagstaff. It was at Lowell Observatory that the planet Pluto was discovered, as was the now famous "red shift" of stars. This "red shift" was the fact upon which the widely held theory of an expanding universe was based.

Hard by Lowell Observatory is the NASA facility. It has played an important role in the United States space program and has contributed greatly to man's knowledge of the moon. It participates in the training of U.S. astronauts, who have not only learned there what they might expect to encounter when they land on the moon's surface, but who have been taken by the NASA staff to nearby terrain which is considered to be as similar to that of the moon as any on the earth.

While in an outer-space mood, the Flagstaff visitor might want to go out to Meteor Crater, a huge hole dug in the earth's surface by the collision with a giant meteor. It gives rather a startling perception of the size and power of the smaller objects which are hurtling through space. Even Sunset Crater, made by the most recent active volcano in Arizona, has its other-worldly aspects.

To get back to this earth and to see the grandest geology textbook ever created, the visitor, of course, will make the short trip from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon. The uncounted thousands of words which have been written about the Grand Canyon have not even begun to describe this stupendous spectacle of ever-changing moods and inexhaustible information. Or, if the visitor's preference is for things that go up instead of down, there are the majestic San Francisco Peaks. Often called the Fujiyama of America, these graceful peaks reach 12,670 feet into the azure blue Arizona sky. Snowcapped some eight months of the year, the San Franciscos are so imposing yet so serene it is easy to see why the Indians for centuries thought of them the same way the Greeks thought of Mount Olympus, as the home of gods. To this day they are sacred in the Indian tradition, and at their foot every summer during the Fourth of July holidays is based one of the greatest all-Indian Pow-Wows on this continent. There annually gather more than 10,000 Indians from scores of tribes to engage in their age-old ceremonial dances and tribal rituals.

If more modern pursuits are desired, there are excellent golf courses in the area. The Flagstaff Municipal Airport serves private, charter and commercial aviation. Hiking, fishing, camping, hunting and skiing are unsurpassed in season. Northern Arizona University attracts a constant kaleidoscope of theater, ballet, concerts, art exhibits, intercollegiate athletic events, and stimulating lectures on a wide variety of subjects. From Flagstaff it is an easy drive up U.S. 89 to Page, Arizona, where is located Glen Canyon Dam, one of the master engineering works of recent times. Glen Canyon Dam creates Lake Powell, and Lake Powell in turn makes it possible for a family to spend a day, a weekend or a week or more cruising comfortably on a houseboat under cliffs and into canyons which are now fiords, seeing close up some of the world's most colorful and spectacular scenery. Until Glen Canyon Dam tamed the roaring floods, these sights were accessible only to the very most rugged few. Today anyone who can sit in a comfortable deck chair and bask in the sun while trolling a fishing line can see them in complete comfort.

This, of course, is only skimming lightly over the multitudes of attractions that are brought within easy reach of the Phoenician or Tucsonan at the top of the Heartland Highway. Reams of additional information await him at the Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce, while at the Museum of Northern Arizona is a comprehensive repository of every kind of information about the entire area that he might desire. As he proceeds down the Black Canyon Highway (Interstate 17) from Flagstaff, the motorist will travel through some of the best forest land and range land in the entire western region. The highway cuts through the world's largest pure stand of Ponderosa Pine. In mountain meadows just off the highway frequently will be seen deer and antelope and even, occasionally, an elk. In the spring and summer months, the lush grasslands are heavily populated by sleek beef cattle, while in the fall the lucky motorist will see cowboys rounding up cattle, driving them to log corrals for sorting and shipping.

Oak Creek Canyon is a scenic treasure worth all the time and film one can allot

Shortly after the Heartland Highway emerges from the forest, it begins to drop down off the Mogollon Rim toward the Verde Valley. About 40 miles south of Flagstaff, there is an intersection with Arizona 179, which runs almost due north through cactus and juniper-studded ranching country toward Sedona. But long before it reaches Sedona, the road penetrates the world-famed red rock country of the Sedona-Oak Creek Canyon area.

Dubbed many years ago Arizona's Red Rock Shangri La, the Sedona-Oak Creek region has attracted many developers and many residents in the last few years; yet the amount of land available for development is strictly limited by the fact that most of the land in the area is situated within the Coconino National Forest or the Sitgreaves National Forest. Thus, while development seems to crowd along the highway, only a little way back from the highway the land remains in its pristine beauty and ageless serenity, where the hiker or the horseman can meld into a never-ending phantasmagoria of lights and shadows, shapes and colors in this veritable fairyland.

Sedona itself combines the charms of a small-town market square, a lively artists' colony, an efficient tourist center, a cowboy meeting place, and a cosmopolitan clubroom where famous and near-famous people from all walks of life have chosen to live and think and grow.

Over the years, Oak Creek Canyon itself, nestled between towering cliffs in which nature has carved a gigantic gallery of great stone shapes, is a cool, green oasis little more than an hour and a half away from Phoenix. Here accommodations range from government campgrounds to gracious resorts. Fishing, hiking, riding, and just plain loafing are the principal attractions. The drive up the switchbacks at the head of Oak Creek Canyon is a delightful experience rewarded by spectacular views at every turn. At the top of the switchbacks you are on the Mogollon Rim, and U.S. 89A leads across the plateau back to Flagstaff.

Below its junction with Arizona 179, the Heartland Highway drops into the Verde Valley at Camp Verde. Founded in 1864 as a military encampment, this historic old town has reconstructed much of the original military post and made it into an outstanding museum of Civil War and Indian Wars.

Near Camp Verde are Montezuma Castle National Monument and Montezuma Well, both outstandingly well preserved and interesting prehistoric cliff dwellings. Only a short drive across the Verde Valley is the ghost city of Jerome, once a thriving, booming copper mining camp and now one of Arizona's most interesting tourist meccas. Site of an unusually good mining museum of the State Park System, Jerome hangs precariously on the side of Mingus Mountain and remains as a monument to the hardiness of the men who mined copper in the early days.

From Camp Verde the Heartland Highway crosses the Verde Valley and climbs gracefully and easily into Copper Canyon, at the top of which it crests out onto a high plateau of open grasslands and vast vistas of distant mountains. At Cordes Junction it offers easy access, via Arizona 69, to Prescott, first territorial capital of Arizona and now one of the favorite summer home locations for people from the lower, warmer parts of the state. A visit to Prescott is like a visit to a transplanted New England town which has been shot through with wild but true tales of its early days as a frontier post and a center of great mining activities in the surrounding mountains.

The traveler on the superhighway will be intrigued by direction signs that reflect the old and the new in Arizona place names. One points to Bloody Basin, another to Bumble Bee and Crown King. You can go to Horsethief Basin, a rugged recreation area, and to Maggie Mine. After you have passed by Black Canyon City and Rock Springs, you will come to New River, where you can turn off to the west to Lake Pleasant and Castle Hot Springs, the latter one of the oldest and most famous of Arizona resorts. To the east the road leads to Cave Creek and nearby Carefree, the name of which reflects modern Arizona's emphasis upon the creation of ideal retirement communities.

Seven miles below the tiny settlement of New River is a new highway exit which provides access to the village of Pioneer, Arizona. This is one of Arizona's most interesting still-building attractions. It is a living history museum consisting of a re-creation of a typical Arizona town of the period 1870-1910. The concept is very similar to that of Old Williamsburg, Virginia; Greenfield Village at Dearborn, Michigan; Sturbridge, Massachusetts; and Mystic, Connecticut.

Opened in February, 1969, Pioneer, Arizona, is a major educational facility created for the purpose of preserving for present and future generations an authentic, physical record of the lives led by the pioneers of the great Southwest. At this writing its facilities consist of more than 15 buildings, some of which are originals which have been carefully removed from their initial building sites and reconstructed in exact detail at the museum. Others are faithful replicas of historic buildings which once stood in various parts of the territory. It is the first undertaking of its kind in the intermountain west and already is heralded as a most significant contribution for the preservation of the accurate interpretation of Arizona's territorial days.

Just south of the Pioneer, Arizona exit is an exit which leads eastward to Carefree and to the west to Lake Pleasant. This is a large, mountain-girded body of water created by Carl Pleasant Dam. Around the lake, Maricopa County is leasing some 6,000 acres from the State of Arizona on which to create a major, new recreation grounds. Now rapidly building are picnic facilities, campgrounds, fishing boat docks and other facilities.

One of the favorite pastimes for visitors to Arizona as they drive down the Heartland Highway is to count the number of different varieties of cactus they can spot along the route. These range all the way from the low-growing cholla and prickly pear to the towering saguaro, stately sentinel of the desert. To add enjoyment and some authority to this diversion, it is recommended that participants consult some botanical guide. Many such are available, but perhaps the most readable and entertaining is Reg Manning's now classic "What Kinda Cactus Izzat?"

Very shortly after the Pioneer, Arizona, and CarefreeLake Pleasant exits, the motorist finds himself in the northern outskirts of Metropolitan Phoenix. Here vast acreages of the desert have been leveled, and brought into bloom by irrigation. Having just crossed miles of desert, one cannot help but marvel at the miracle of the desert's fertility when life-giving water is brought to it. Lush crops of grains, vegetables, citrus, seeds and flowers stretch as far as the eye can see. Here and there pastures nourish large numbers of fat cattle and sheep. At Deer Valley and other little farming centers through which the highway cuts, one catches glimpses of the modern machinery which makes it possible to farm such vast acreages of once arid desert.

Then, blending in almost subtly, come the modern manufacturing plants which since World War II have helped make Phoenix one of the electronics component manufacturing centers of the nation. With their modern architecture, their gracious lawns, and their aspect of blending quietly into the surrounding beauty, they are a far cry from the smoke-blackened structures usually associated with the word "factory" in other parts of the country.

To the east, at the Bell Road exit, the motorist can see the grandstands and clubhouse of Turf Paradise, an outstanding and exceptionally beautiful horse racing facility. Beyond it, and a little to the north, can be caught glimpses of the Four Peaks of the Mazatzal Mountains. Reaching 7,645 feet, the Four Peaks are well-known landmarks rising in the heart of a rugged and picturesque terrain, a large part of which has been set aside in the National Wilderness Preservation System.

To the west of the Heartland Highway and accessible by exits marked Surprise or Peoria are the now-famous retirement towns of Youngtown and Sun City. Youngtown was one of the first communities in the Nation, if not the very first, built on the concept of accommodating retirees. Immediately adjacent to it is the later development of Sun City which many people throughout the nation regard as the epitome of the retirement community.

As the Heartland Highway penetrates Metropolitan Phoenix, the visitor is faced with much the same problem as the writer: what to select from among Phoenix' myriad attractions. At the end of World War II, Phoenix was still essentially an overgrown cattle town and farming town, enhanced by the fact that it was the capital of the state, albeit one of the least populous states in the nation. It had a few famous resorts, a few good motels and hotels; it had its agriculture and its cattle; it had its salubrious climate and its azure skies. But, for many, its principal attractions were its informality and the mañanaesque pace of its life. A great many people wanted to keep it that way.

Despite their efforts there was no way the Phoenix growth could be stopped. To paraphrase Babe Ruth's favorite old song, "How Are You Going to Keep Them Back on the Coast After They've Seen Phoenix?" Tens of thousands of servicemen were trained at Luke, Williams, Thunderbird and other air bases in the vicinity. They fell in love with the area and vowed they would return. Return they did, by the thousands, and they brought with them such a variety of enterprise, expertise, brains, imagination and aspirations that within a decade of the war's end, Phoenix was well on its way to becoming one of the nation's most cosmopolitan cities and the hub of the great Southwest.

Today it is not only an important electronics manufacturing center, it is also the warehousing and distribution center of the great Southwest, an aggressive financial center, an important cultural center, and a solidly established resort and retirement center.

It is impossible in the space available to offer here even a semblance of a representative summary of Phoenix today. Perhaps the best alternative is to cite a few examples of attractions simply for the purpose of indicating the scope and variety available. For instance, in contiguous Tempe, on the campus of Arizona State University, is Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium, the last major work of the late Frank Lloyd Wright. This magnificent building has been acknowledged the world over as one of Wright's greatest accomplishments. Here, the year around, are presented symphony, opera, ballet, theater arts, and every other type of program deserving the finest in acoustics and visibility.

Just off the freeway in Phoenix at the State Fairgrounds is the Memorial Coliseum, a vast, modern building with a roof shaped like an inverted saucer, where the Phoenix Suns basketball team of the National Basketball Association, the Phoenix Roadrunners, of the Western Hockey League, threering circuses, horse shows, and similar events keep the schedule constantly crowded.

In downtown Phoenix, there is currently under construction the new Civic Plaza's Convention Center. When this is completed it will be one of the most modern and flexible facilities of its kind in the West and will anchor one end of the east-west continuum of office buildings, parks and malls to accommodate the legal, financial and governmental agencies and their employees. It is part of an overall, long-term plan to establish in the heart of downtown Phoenix a solid core to prevent Phoenix from suffering the downtown decay which has plagued so many cities across the country.

Near the heart of downtown Phoenix is the beautiful, modern complex of buildings housing the Phoenix Public Library, the Phoenix Art Museum, and the Phoenix Community Theater. All three are noteworthy institutions. Phoenix Public Library houses one of the finest collections of Arizoniana in the state. The Art Museum has been acknowledged one of the best in the entire West, and the theater has an outstanding and embracive schedule of activities throughout the year.

Today's visitor accommodations range all the way from commercial hotels and motels to ultra-modern, luxury hotels and the plushest resorts anyone could desire. There are many superb parks for mobile homes, while the heart of the city and suburban areas alike offer a wide range of apartment accommodations.

The Phoenix Zoo, in Papago Park, in recent years has become truly outstanding. It draws its attendance from casual adults, enthusiastic children and serious scientists alike, and all emerge from their first visit amazed that a zoological collection in the desert could boast such diversity, such imaginative display, and such uniformly high quality and conditioning of specimens.

Adjacent to the zoo is the Phoenix Botanical Gardens, a fascinating display and explanation of many, many types of desert flora. On the other side of the zoo, just across Van There is much more to see and enjoy including some of the west's most photographed scenery

Superstition Mountain and desert foothills

"Interstate 10 looking east - halfway between Tucson and Benson"

Sky and natural settings combine to continue rewarding the seekers of environments of serenely beauty Buren Street, is Phoenix Municipal Stadium, home of the Phoenix Giants baseball team of the Pacific Coast League. Here during the season can be seen first-class ball, featuring players who will go on, like so many of their predecessors, to fame with the parent San Francisco Giants. In nearby Mesa is one of the most beautiful ecclesiastical buildings in the world, the Mormon Temple. The free, guided tour of the formal gardens surrounding the Temple is a delightful experience which no one should forgo. And a few miles east of Mesa, a city which was founded and laid out by the Mormons many years ago with gracious wide streets and many old homes, are the fabled Superstition Mountains. En route to the Superstitions and Apache Junction, the visitor passes through or near other retirement communities which are growing fast to occupy the once trackless desert. At the foot of the Superstitions the Apache Trail, one of the most scenic drives in Arizona, snakes up past Canyon and Apache Lakes to historic Theodore Roosevelt Dam and the beautiful lake behind it.

HEARTLAND HIGHWAY

To the east of Phoenix lies the colorful town of Scottsdale. Just a desert village only a few short years ago, Scottsdale is today the third largest city in the state, boasting many fine resorts and superb shops of all kinds. It is contiguous with the northeast section of Phoenix, in the shadow of famous Camelback Mountain.

And so the list could go on endlessly. Suffice it to say here that Phoenix today is in every sense a cosmopolitan metropolitan area, Its economy is broadly based; its attitudes are lively and progressive; its future, dynamic and almost mercurial. Yet, deep in its heart, Phoenix still retains the charm of the casualness and grace of its earlier days. In this fact lies the assurance that its charm will never die.

The Heartland Highway turns east for a few miles on the south side of Phoenix, passing through Tempe, and then heads generally south by southeast toward Tucson. A few miles past Tempe, it skirts Chandler, a ranching and agricultural center where is located the famous San Marcos Resort. Here also is situated a major plant of the Spreckels Sugar Company, where are processed the hundreds of thousands of tons of sugar beets grown in the area. The freeway crosses the Gila River Indian Reservation just south of Chandler and skirts Sacaton, the headquarters for the reservation. At the junction with Arizona 387 is an exit to the northeast which offers access to Casa Grande Ruins National Monument near Coolidge. This multi-storied adobe ruin is an outstanding example of the architectural and engineering skill of the Hohokam Indians, the people who inhabited this entire area before the arrival of the white man. It was they who laid out many of the irrigation canals and ditches still in use today. The name Hohokam is a Papago word which translates roughly, "The People Who Left."

A few miles beyond the Sacaton turnoff is the Casa Grande exit. Casa Grande is a thriving city which bids fair to grow soon into one of Arizona's larger communities. It is the trading center for the large and prosperous farming and ranching areas nearby, but more recently it has been attracting new residents who love the desert climate and topography where Casa Grande is situated. It has also won wide publicity as the home of the Francisco Grande Resort and training center established there by the San Francisco Giants. Here a multi-storied hotel and a gracious motel accommodate visitors as well as the entourage of baseball players, trainers, coaches, managers, and others who comprise the functioning personnel of a major baseball club. The desert has been carpeted with green, not only for a number of baseball diamonds, but also for an excellent, 18-hole golf course on which guests of the hotel and motel are privileged to play.

South of Casa Grande the Heartland Highway passes the little town of Picacho and, seven miles beyond, Picacho Peak. This rugged but graceful peak stands out sharply from the desert floor and is one of the best-known landmarks in the southern part of the state. Nearby is Picacho Peak State Park, access to which is gained via an exit at the foot of the Peak. Seven miles south of Picacho Peak is Red Rock, near which is said to have been staged the only "battle" of the Civil War fought in Arizona. Actually, it was not much of a battle at all. Rather it was a skirmish between two very small forces representing the Union and the Confederacy, and it scarcely marked a turning point in the war. However, since this was the only formal confrontation between the opposing factions on Arizona soil, there is at Red Rock a memorial to mark the site. South of Red Rock the Heartland Highway passes by Marana Air Base, a still active reminder of the fact that Arizona during World War II was dotted with many air training facilities. Arizona's exceedingly high percentage of good flying weather made it the nation's preeminent training grounds for Air Force personnel.

Between Marana and Tucson the Heartland Highway traverses some of the most beautiful desert scenery in the state as well as more acreage that has been brought into blossom by irrigation.

Like Phoenix, Tucson presents problems to both the visitor and the writer. It, too, has grown spectacularly since World War II, although it has not yet assumed the magnitude of Metropolitan Phoenix. In other words, it has managed successfully to combine the intimacy of the smaller city with the advantages of the metropolitan complex. Its downtown area is still a thriving business center, while its gradually spreading suburban areas have gone up into the foothills of the surrounding mountains to make homesites with glorious views interrupted only by the forms of the stately saguaro with which the area abounds.

Indeed, both to the east and to the west of Tucson are the two segments of Saguaro National Monument in which are preserved the finest stands of these ancient giants of the desert in the world. Within the western section of the Monument is the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which is an absolute must for anyone who has the slightest interest in desert flora and fauna. Well worth at least a full day's time, this museum has attained world-wide recognition both among visitors and scientists alike. Its displays of the plants and animals of the southwestern desert of this continent are unsurpassed anywhere.

A few miles south of Tucson is the San Xavier Indian Reservation, on which is located San Xavier del Bac Mission. Known as the "White Dove of the Desert," San Xavier is unquestionably one of the most beautiful buildings in theentire Southwest. Still active as a church and serving the Pima and Papago Indians on whose reservation it is situated, San Xavier Mission was founded by Padre Kino, the intrepid Jesuit missionary who penetrated this area in the late 1600's. San Xavier was taken over by the Franciscans and the present building was constructed by them, completed in 1797. A photographer's paradise, San Xavier is still surrounded today by the little houses, the cemeteries and the mundane activities of descendants of the people it was originally founded to serve.

Tucson today is only 66 miles, via U.S. 89, from Nogales, at the Mexican border. The distance will be even less when Interstate 19 is completed. Either route will take the visitor close to one of the world's most productive copper mining areas. Indeed, Arizona production is the equal to that of any nation in the free world except the United States. Some 95 percent of this production comes within a radius of 125 miles of Tucson, and Tucson is the hub of the most intensive copper exploration activities in the world. The city proudly claims the title of "The Copper Capital of the World."

The area between Tucson and Nogales, the Santa Cruz Valley, is rich in history. It was first explored by the white man in 1539 when Fray Marcos de Niza, guided by the giant Moorish negro slave, Estevan, was sent by the Viceroy of New Spain to search for the fabled Cities of Cibola. Later the great Padre Kino founded a chain of missions which extended as far north as San Xavier and included San Cayetano (now San Jose) del Tumacacori, the ruins of which are now preserved in a national monument on U.S. 89, about twelve miles north of Nogales.

Also on this same road is the little town of Tubac, an ancient Spanish presidio from which the de Anza party of Spanish explorers started the journey which led them to Cali fornia and northward to found San Francisco at the Golden Gate.

Nogales itself, of course, is a fascinating place to visit. A great many people still call it their favorite border town, a pleasant place to spend a day, a weekend or a week.

Tucson itself is one of the nation's growing centers of astronomical activity. The Kitt Peak Observatory was built by the National Science Foundation on the Papago Reserva tion southwest of town. Operated by the Association of Uni versities for Research and Astronomy, Inc., its 84-inch tele scope is the largest in the world designed for solar observations.

It is open daily for visitors.

Nearby is the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona, while on Mount Hopkins, south of Tucson, the Smithsonian Institution is building a major observatory and astro-physical laboratory.

The University of Arizona has many claims to fame, not the least of which are its College of Agriculture and College of Mines, both of which served important pioneer functions when Arizona was a struggling territory and both of which continue today to make important contributions to Arizona's basic industries. Most recent of its colleges is a College of Medicine, the first in Arizona. The U. of A. also is extremely proud of its Kress Collection of Renaissance Art and its Gal lagher Collection of Modern Art. Both are open to the public.

On the University of Arizona campus there is also situated the Arizona State Museum, with outstanding archeological displays relating to Arizona and the Southwest. Here also the visitor can learn about the science of dendrochronology, the science of dating by the use of tree rings. This science was pioneered and developed at the University of Arizona and has been an important tool of archeologists throughout the world.

Immediately adjacent to the University of Arizona campus is the Arizona Pioneers Historical Society. The Society had its beginnings in 1884, and in the succeeding 85 years has done an outstanding job of preserving the records and many of the relics of Arizona history. It is now the official state historical society and has erected and equipped an outstanding museum. Its program has recently been expanded, and it is rapidly assuming a position as one of the most important sources of Arizona and southwestern history in the nation.

Tucson, of course, for a great many years has been one of the Nation's best-known resort areas and one to which health seekers have flocked. Today, however, its economy is broadly based, with copper mining its number one foundation, closely followed by tourism. Manufacturing, principally in the field of electronic components, became important with the location there during World War I of the Hughes Aircraft Company plant, and today more electronics manufacturers are moving into the area, especially since the location in the last few years of the headquarters of the U. S. Army's Strategic Communications Command at Fort Huachuca, southeast of Tucson.

From Tucson, the Heartland Highway runs southeast and east past Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, a major facility of the Strategic Air Command of the U.S. Air Force. About 15 miles farther there is a turn-off to Colossal Cave, at Vail, 28 miles from Tucson. It is a series of caverns carved in ages past by underground waters now dried up. The Heartland Highway itself continues another 19 miles, still without stop sign or stoplight to Benson, a charming ranch ing and agricultural center in the heart of beautiful desert. Benson is the gateway to historic Fort Huachuca, which is now the Stratcom headquarters, and to the Tombstone-Fair bank-Charleston area, so rich in the colorful lore of the West.

In only a short time the two remaining unfinished links of the Heartland Highway within Arizona, totaling only about 20 miles, will be completed to add another 108 miles before crossing the border of New Mexico at Roadforks. When those are finished, the Heartland Highway from Flagstaff through Phoenix and Tucson to the New Mexico border will be a total of 407.2 miles without stoplight or stop sign.

The area penetrated from Benson to Roadforks, in the southeastern quadrant of Arizona, is one of the most scenic, most historic and most interesting, albeit one of the least known,of the state. It deserves a separate article of its own.

Meanwhile, the Arizonan and the visitor alike already have access, via the Heartland Highway, to enough fascinating attractions opened up by the highway to keep them occupied even if completion of the system took another hundred years. Providing, of course, they don't elect to drive its entire 299.2 miles in 299.2 minutes.