COLOR CLASSICS

The Frontier Community Called Pioneer Arizona is a Living History Museum

Living panoply of an important source of our present culture. It is dynamically different from the static displays of dusty artifacts arranged in "don't-touch" glass cases and alcoves. Costumed volunteer guides, under the supervision of Education Director Norma Hunter, emphasize different areas for different age groups. The younger visitors take special delight in hearing and seeing that the pioneers made their own dyes for clothing; beets and hollyhock flowers for red; marigolds, sunflowers and leaves of willow trees for yellow; and so on.

"Our rural tour for the first three grades concentrates on letting the youngsters churn butter or watch lye soap being made," says Mrs. Hunter. "They absorb a realization of the difference between life and modern, super-market living without having it crammed down their throats.

"They see the cow being milked, and they are told it is a cross between a Jersey and a Guernsey; it is not a Holstein, because back in the 1870's there were no Holsteins anywhere in the United States. They see and pet Brighty, the burro. Brighty came to the village when she was four days old, straight out of a wild herd of direct descendants of the burros which were the principal beasts of burden and companions of the prospectors who led the way into the West. The children easily perceive the difference between Brighty and a truck . . . and history has come very much alive for them."

The village of Pioneer is situated on 550 acres of state lease lands donated to the Foundation by Bob and Lois Lockett, members of a pioneering ranch family that dates its Arizona beginnings to 1881. A broad sweep of desert land rises abruptly into volcanic foothills and thus comprises a fortunate replica of Arizona's topographic variety.

Nestled in the lee of the mountain is the ranch of the 1860's. The ranchhouse, the barn, the poultryhouse all are original structures transplanted in their entireties from elsewhere in Arizona. The extensive family garden and orchard plot is guarded against invasion by wildlife and livestock by a four-foot dry-rock wall. It took 16 people a year and a quarter just to build this barrier! The springhouse is an exact replica in detail of Arizona ranch originals, a haven of coolness in the desert and the great-ancestor of today's refrigerator.

Plantings in the garden and orchard were made only after careful search of reliable records. Major John G. Bourk wrote, in 1871, of a visit to the Cooly ranch near present Show Low, "His fields and garden patches were yielding bountifully of corn, pumpkins, cucumbers, wheat, peas, beans, cabbage, potatoes, barley, oats, strawberries, gooseberries, horseradish and muskmelons . . . an orchard of apple, crab, dwarf pear,