Willcox Playa

It's flat, flat, flat. The flattest slab of real estate anywhere. When it's dry the surface looks like billions of brown potato chips stretching away off into distance much farther than the eye can distinguish.

They are chips - mud chips. Where it is really dry, the chips are small, thin, and curled upward around the edges. They crackle, snap and pop when you walk on them.

Where the mud is not quite so dry, the chips are bigger and thicker and not quite so curly around the edges.

Where it is wet but still fairly firm, the chips become blocky, six or eight inches thick in places. If you step in the stuff, you'll sink up to your ankles in the gooey clay, and most likely fall flat on your face because the stuff is slick.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR UNLESS OTHERWISE CREDITED On the eastern side of the flat what looks like miniature mountain shapes are eroded sand dunes.

At night about all you can see is the indistinct flat black surface stretching off into infinity. And the stars. You can see stars you have never seen before. You get a funny feeling in your stomach wandering around this fifty square miles of flatness at night. There is nothing alive out here except you. You're alone. Just the stars above and the black below and the wind.

At first the idea was just a flash that was rejected as soon as it was thought. But it came back. And was rejected again. It kept coming back five, ten, twenty times: "This playa is going to swallow me up." The idea was absurd. Absolutely irrational. Without any foundation. Anybody who could entertain such a notion is off his rocker. "Maybe so. But I'm getting off this playa right now." And like a coward, like some ignorant savage afraid of the dark and whatever demons there might be around, you turn tail and run. Hard at first, and then later at a steady lope. You can't see your car out in the blackness a couple of miles away and you hope you are heading toward it. You catch yourself glancing back over your shoulder from time to time for what? You don't know. And you continue to flee the playa. Finally, back at the car, you look out over the flat black surface you escaped from and curse yourself for being a fool.

That I am. I know it for sure. And I've never been back on the playa alone at night.

Early one summer morning a few years ago I was standing at the very southern tip of Willcox Playa (known locally "Willcox Dry Lake"). I had very nearly gotten stuck driving across the drifting sand which extends around the east side of this dry lake in Cochise County near the southeast corner of Arizona. The sun had popped over the Dos Cabezas Mountains a few minutes before, putting a soft reddish tint on the light colored granite rocks of the Dragoon Mountains on the other side of the playa. I was wandering around looking for old shell casings or whatever else might be around as a souvenir of the time this was a bombing and gunnery range for the Air Force during World War II.

I glanced up to the northwest and saw a Southern Pacific freight train heading across the playa toward Willcox. It was about six or seven airline miles away. The train seemed to be a bit higher off the flat lake surface than its ten-foot roadbed would make it, particularly at this distance. I stood there trying to figure out if there might be a reverse curvature of the earth effect that was putting the train twenty or thirty feet up in the air when suddenly the lead engine dipped downward as if it were on a roller coaster and disappeared right into the dry lake. The other three engines behind dutifully followed their leader into extinction. And so, one by one, did the nearly 100 freight cars. The entire train vanished. I know because I saw it. This was the granddaddy of all the mirages for which this playa is locally famous. What bothers me about this mirage is I don't know if the train was real. Did I really see a freight train or was it as phoney as the disappearing act?

Ed Moyer first saw the dry lake in 1895 as a lad of thirteen years old. "I was raised on the Quarter Circle Wine Glass Ranch north of here and I got to know this valley and its mountains," recalls the large, raw-boned rancher who now lives in Willcox. "When I first saw the playa I was really puzzled because there was a strange mountain range across the other end that I had never seen before. I had never seen a mirage before so it was quite an experience for me to try to figure out where these new mountains came from."

Harry Parks is the man to see in Willcox if you want to know anything about the area or its history. "Passengers on the trains used to get a real shock as they they looked out their windows and saw the train heading for this huge lake," says the 82-year-old Parks, "but when they got close it turned out to be as dry as a bone." Other mirages include ranch buildings with tall cottonwood trees, entire towns, oddly shaped hills, herds of cattle and of course water. The best time to see these mirages is in the early morning, just before or just after sunrise.

The playa is not always dry. In 1905 it rained off and on for a week. More than twenty inches of water fell at Willcox and up to fourteen feet of snow was dumped on the nearby Pinaleno Mountains. Everything in this entire Sulphur Springs Valley was wet and if it wasn't tied down, it was floating around somewhere. Water on the playa stood 4/2 feet deep. The railroad bed and track sank more than one foot into the gooey clay. SP officials rushed a crew of 150 men in and they dumped literally hundreds of tons of rock, gravel and cinders along the nearly three mile stretch of roadbed that is on the lake, building it up to its present height of ten feet above the level of the playa. This crew also put in a couple of culverts so that the runoff draining into the lake from the northwest would not back up. But even today when the rest of the playa is dry, many large ponds of stagnant water can usually be found standing on the north side of the tracks.

Geologically speaking the playa began to form about 100 million years ago when alluvial deposits from the nearby mountains were carried toward the center of this closed basin. The Sulphur Springs Valley is actually two basins: the northern Willcox Basin which has no surface (and possibly no underground) outlet, and the Douglas Basin which drains into Mexico. The entire valley is some 1,500 square miles. Since there was no river running through the Willcox Basin, the surface water and the alluvial deposits were carried to the lowest point the playa. By about 10,000 years ago Lake Cochise was nearly four times as large as the present playa and the water was about forty-five feet deep. But as the climate got drier, so did the lake until now it is about fifty square miles. The elevation on this entire surface does not vary more than one foot from 4,136 feet above sea level. After rainy spells some or all of the lake has water on itbut only up to six inches deep under normal conditions. Occasionally, the wind will whip water from one side of the playa to the other. The playa is heart-shaped with the tip at the south end. It's ten airline miles from north to south and nine miles east and west. Runoff from summer rains and winter snows does not flow over the surface of the Willcox Basin; it percolates into the groundwater table. The water on the playa in almost every instance fell there in the form of rain or snow.

The quality of the water right under the playa is terrible. The U.S. Geological Survey has made water quality studies in the valley. One observation well on the northwestern part of the playa had a fluoride content of 282 parts per million for human consumption the fluoride should range from .7 to 1.2 parts per million. "This may be the world's highest reported fluoride concentration in groundwater," the report states. "The presence of 282 ppm fluoride in natural water is extremely unusual and probably could occur only in an environment where groundwater, originally rich in fluoride, is exposed to continual concentration by evaporation and transpiration." Other concentrations reported from this well include 106,000 ppm dissolved salts, 39,700 ppm sodium, 40,500 ppm chloride, and 8,970 ppm bicarbonate and carbonate. In other words the stuff would curl curl the hair on a cue ball.

The groundwater table right under the playa is very close to the surface no more than five feet below. But it is a different story at two large agricultural areas nearby: Kansas Settlement to the southeast and Stewart to the north. These two areas have been using increasing amounts of groundwater for irrigating cotton, lettuce, grain sorghums and other crops. As a consequence, the water table in these two areas is up to 140 feet below the surface. One potential problem is that the highly alkaline water under the playa will gradually flow into Miniature mountains appear impressive. the vacuum left by the pumped-out irrigation water and resulting in "bad" water filtering in to the present "good" water. This could have serious consequences both to the agricultural industry and to the domestic supply of Willcox.

In 1961 the Sundt Construction Co. of Tucson was awarded a $446,062 contract to build a Radar Geometric Fidelity Facility on the playa. What this means in laymen's language is the construction and installation of sixty-five concrete pedestals which would "float" at a constant level on the surface of the playa, regardless of the weather conditions and the presence or absence of water. Tetrahedron-shaped targets were placed one mile apart in a grid pattern. "The centers of these targets could not be more than three inches off from absolute zero in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal direction," William Mayo, Sundt program manager said. The reason for such close tolerances was that high flying aircraft would use the facility to test the accuracy of their radar the targets had to be right on the dot.

This is not a mirage. It is very much the exception to the usual dry lake bed. Water on the playa is rare, but a private recreational facility not more than two miles away maintains a lake most of the year.

Modern engineering and construction techniques make such a project a fairly simple task on normal ground. But the Willcox Playa is no normal piece of ground. Test borings were made and the results showed stratified wet clay down to forty-seven feet. This was much too deep to hold any promise of using a stable subsurface to anchor the pedestals. The clay varied in color but locally it was known as Black alkali. Being highly organic, it “stunk to high heaven” when it was exposed to the air. Mirages played tricks with the survey crew causing many of the sighting shots to “jump” ten to twenty feet. Afternoon dust storms added to the problems. Finally Mayo decided that all work would have to be done at night.

In order for the pedestal and target to remain at a constant elevation of 4,140 feet above sea level, the entire structure including even the nuts and bolts had to weigh exactly the same as the wet clay it replaced. Or as Engineer Mayo explained, “a unit load equal to the unit load of surcharge removed must be used.” If you drive or walk out on the playa today, you can see these pedestals and targets. And Mayo still guarantees they are not more than three inches off.

Willcox residents had a gay old time during and right after World War II when the playa was used as a bombing and gunnery range. Downtown Willcox is three miles from This was great for the residents of Willcox and the surrounding area. It gave them something to do and talk about other than the rather grim stories of American troops in the war zones. Taking a hike out on the playa to look at the giant bird became one of the popular pastimes. Theories on how to get the seaplane unstuck and up in the air again were almost as numerous as the people who swarmed around her. Since the groundwater table was just a couple of feet down, many people thought the best thing to do was to dig down far enough so the plane would float and then extend this waterway out far enough so the plane could take off. Others thought it better to winch the plane on to dry land where a runway could be built. Navy personnel from San Diego and Air Force experts from Davis-Monthan wrestled with the sticky problem for nearly two months. They finally decided the best thing would be to first free the plane from the clay, put runners under it so it could glide across the playa like a giant sled. It worked. “The Mirage of Willcox Dry Lake” took off early one morning in the spring of 1944 with three good luck mascots who had found their way on board and were adopted by the crew as good luck omens. What three field mice were doing out on the barren dry lake is not known but their progeny are probably thriving in Southern California today.

There is one kind of wildlife found on the playa in addition to the occasional coyote, bobcat, rabbit and even mountain lion that are seen there. A few years ago Paul Martin, a fossil-pollen specialist, was on a field trip in the area and he stopped by one of the ponds on the northwest end. He found three different kinds of fresh-water shrimp: fairy, clam and tadpole. Although these tiny crustaceans are well known to biologists, no one really knows how they can survive for weeks, months, and even years near the surface of a sun parched dry lake bed and then suddenly come to life during a wet season. Most of the shrimp were no larger than a pin head although the tadpole, which looks like a miniature crab, may get up to two inches long. Scientists speculate that shrimp like these found at the playa may date back in time many thousands of years when permanent lakes stood in their present habitats and as the climate changed, so did the shrimp.

The Air Force people didn't really believe all of that talk until he invited a few of the high ranking officers over for lunch. “They saw how the bombs exploding rattled their coffee cups and shook up the town. After that we were never bothered by any more bombing,” Parks said.

There was another incident that happened during World War II that the oldtimers still talk about. A 26-ton U.S. Navy seaplane was flying cross country to San Diego when it developed engine trouble over Southeast Arizona. The pilot made an emergency landing on what he thought was the dry, hard surface of Willcox Playa. The surface was dry, but just a few inches underneath the clay was wet. When the huge plane touched down it immediately plowed a furrow a couple of feet deep in the gooey clay and got stuck just as if it had landed in a giant pot of glue.

In its own weird way the playa is beautiful, whether wet or dry. Sunrise or sunset are the two best times to capture the immensity and flatness of this dry lake. Some of the sand dunes on the eastern side have been eroded into miniature mountain ranges. Because it is so big, it's impossible to “see” the playa from the ground. A flight over it in an airplane is well worth the time and money. Or if you prefer, you can climb high up in the Dos Cabezas or Dragoon Mountains and see the playa spread out in the valley below with perhaps a few dust devils stirring up things along one side.

Willcox Playa is not on any tourist guide list of places to see in Arizona. That's a shame. It certainly ought to be.