TRAVELING ARIZONA

ARIZONA'S CAPSULE TOUR GUIDE ...a guide for winter visitors and primer for planning summer vacations.

The lavish beauty and majesty of natural embellishments combine with the state's historical past and progressive future to offer today's Arizona explorer a wealth of memorable experiences.

It hardly matters where you begin your explorations, since Arizona's continuing road construction and improvement programs grant easy access to almost any area. There are ample accommodations, restaurants and service facilities along the way.

We can begin at the Arizona Coast, where the Colorado River forms the western border of our state in a three-hundred-mile panorama of mountains, desert and shining waters that has become the fastest growing land and waterscape in Arizona.

The river towns and waterways boast marinas that can harbor cruisers, and there are resorts deep in greens and fairways. It is an area where communities seem to pop up in a finger-snap, a land full of parks, campgrounds, sandy beaches and restaurants that leave no palate unsatisfied.

Those who have a taste for luxury will find it in Yuma the Palm Springs of Arizona or in Lake Havasu City. Common to each are sumptuous resorts, superior motels, scenic country clubs, elegant dining and leisure living.

Yuma boasts a continental flavor because of its close proximity to the border, while further north, London Bridge combines with a sea-going flavor to give Lake Havasu City a distinction quite unlike that of any other Arizona community.

For fishermen, the lower Colorado offers Golden Cats up to 40 pounds in Lake Martinez, near Yuma; Black Bass to 10 pounds above Ehrenberg and in Lake Moovalya at Parker; Striped Bass to 50 pounds in Lake Havasu, and Rainbow Trout to 20 pounds at Mohave and Mead lakes.

Lake Havasu regatta entries number two and three hundred craft and Lake Moovalya, "the world's fastest water," swarms with power and ski boats the year 'round.

At Crystal Hills State Park, rockhounds have their personal mountain to probe. Over 50,000 of them have been known to congregate at nearby Quartzsite's annual gem and mineral pow-wow.

This is mining camp and ghost town country, too. Bullhead City and Kingman are convenient bases for explorations toward Gold Road and Oatman in the Black Mountains, or off toward the White Hills, Mineral Park and Chloride in the Cerbat Mountains.

A mile-long calendar of rodeos, art shows, Territorial Prison tours, boat races, Indian fairs and pow-wows, rock shows, water parades and festivals of every kind is at the finger tips of Arizona travelers.

North of Phoenix to the Utah line lies a wildly beautiful land which contains the state's highest mountains, the San Francisco Peaks, and the world's most profound abyss, the Grand Canyon.

A goodly part of the world's largest single stand of Ponderosa Pine, reaching grasslands and cool highland streams and lakes, also lies in this central range and canyon country.

It is splendid touring country, with two interstate highways and a reliable network of state and national highways. Below I-40, communities are close together and on the southern edge you find yourself confronting the Bradshaw Mountain complex.

Approached by two national highways via Wickenburg and Cordes Junction, this great "central massif" embraces much of Arizona's territorial gold-mining country, now a highland recreational playground for modern-day tourists and visitors.

These mountains also harbor Prescott, Arizona's territorial capital, site of Fort Whipple and old Fort Misery, where the territorial legislature met. On all sides roads and trails lead to towns and villages born as boom camps in the mining days.

They now thrive on the growing influx of people seeking diversion among the nooks and crannies of this historic range.

Northeast of Prescott, through Granite Dells and beyond Lonesome Valley where the eye strains with distance, rises Mingus Mountain, primary summit of the Black Range. On the northern slope, Jerome seems to hang in a fearful clutch above the steep descent toward the Verde River.

Once a thriving copper camp, Jerome has since gained emeritus status as our premier ghost town. Most recently the area has grown attractive to the artistically inclined and much attention has been given to restoration of period architecture.

From Jerome, a breath-taking overlook commands the Verde Valley where the modern communities of Clarkdale, Cottonwood and Camp Verde lie adjacent to the ancient ruins of Tuzigoot and Montezuma's Castle on Beaver Creek. To the north, the Mogollon Rim heaves upward from the rolling hills with its great red fascia pierced by Oak Creek Canyon at Sedona and its ultimate heights crowned with high forest and the San Francisco Peaks.

Flagstaff stands in this pine crown, where all trails meet, diverge and go their separate ways again. To the west lies the Grand Canyon, the world's most awesome chasm.

The South Rim, where U.S. 180 ends at Grand Canyon Village, is more convenient for the short-term visitor. It is more easily reached and perhaps more lively. But the North Rim, approached by driving north through Cameron, past the turnoffs to Page and gorgeous Lake Powell, around the Vermillion Cliffs, up through Ponderosa at Jacob Lake and down through cathedral solitudes of Hudsonian Blue Spruce, is more spacious and rewarding in other ways.

Lest we forget that Arizona's spectacle of contrast, so often displayed through climate, terrain and altitude, has other dimensions. We are soon reminded of the historical and cultural diversity that pervades the Sun-Border Country. This enormous southerly region is embraced by the Salt River Valley, the Papago Indian Reservation and all the geography that lies below the Gila River east to the New Mexico border.

Deep in Papago country, Ventana Cave gave shelter to early man 10,000 years ago just around the corner from Kitt Peak National Observatory where modern man looks beyond 100,000 light years into space.

In Maricopa County, the state's newest and largest metropolis, Phoenix, stands upon the ruins of a poor civilization that many believe began with the Christian era.

Sun-Border Country is also the land of Coronado, whose Quixotic entrada passed downstream through the San Pedro Valley in 1540, pursuing the impossible dream of the golden cities of Cibola.

It is the country of Father Kino, a pragmatist by comparison, who brought grain and livestock to the sedentary desert tribes, founded the Santa Cruz Valley missions of Tumacacori and San Xavier del Bac, and laid the groundwork for this issuance of Spanish grants which brought haciendas to the southern Arizona valleys and placed cattle on a thousand hills.

It is territorial country, too. It boasts of names like Cochise, Jeffords, Poston, Crook, Geronimo, the Earps and Holiday. The ruins of old forts mark the landscape where Yankee settlement took root at Crittenden near Patagonia, Breckenridge and later Grant on the Arivaipa and famous Fort Bowie in Apache Pass, where the Butterfield Stage passed through in haste and dread. In the space-age city of Tucson, Fort Lowell has been restored in part as a public park and Fort McDowell, east of Phoenix, is on an Indian reservation which bears its name.

The raw edges of early day mining are celebrated by various restorations in Tombstone, still going strong as the “town too tough to die,” and in the south, down Brewery Gulch, in Bisbee, known the world over for the ethereal beauty of the Lavendar Pit.

Much of the region's natural history has been gathered for living display at the extraordinary Arizona Sonora Desert Museum.

One could easily spend more time than he has available in pursuing the diversity of this great southern desert land, whose austere, unchanging beauty endows the past with an enduring viability.

A concentration of copper mines and high country fun makes Arizona's eastern mountain region highly intriguing for exploration.

Much of it is Apache country. The San Carlos Tribe is renowned for raising prime white-faced Herefords, along the grasslands of the Gila River. More lately they have been developing San Carlos Lake's famous bass and catfish water.

Northward at Fort Apache, toward the Mogollon Rim, the White Mountain Tribe has been steadily pursuing a longrange program to realize the recreational and economic values of its vast river, lake and forest domain. Current emphasis is on expanding the facilities of a four-season sports complex at Big Cienega.

The Rim country heart of the eastern mountains, used to be a howling wilderness of forest, mountain and soaring promontory. But today, man-made lakes, swarming with trout and fishermen, fill the draws and canyons from Strawberry east to the Arizona-New Mexico border. Communities built on ranching, lumber and agriculture are devoted to hosting visitors. A rash of motels, resorts, restaurants and even country clubs has broken out in recent years.

In the summer months a circa 1920 steam train hauls passengers from McNary.

This skyland playground is easy to reach from any direction. On the west, the. Beeline Highway goes north through Payson, itself the heart of a large vacationland in Tonto Basin, and on toward Heber, Overgaard and Snowflake through the pine and aspen above.

Passing through the old silver town of Globe, U.S. 60 bridges the Salt River Canyon at Seneca before topping out on the Rim at Show Low. A branch from Superior, on State 177, threads off through copper country, past the mighty Ray Pit and the smelters at Hayden and Winkelman. State 73 bears right at Carrizo bound for Fort Apache and Whiteriver.

On the Rim, branches fork off from U.S. 60 toward Lakeside, Pinetop, Indian Pine, McNary and all the great White Mountain outdoors. Several highways descend from I-40, skirting the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest, and a most dramatic drive on the south follows the storied Gila through Thatcher and Safford. It continues up U.S. 666 and the historic Coronado Trail on to Clifton and Morenci on the edge of the newly opened Metcalf Pit.

Here true wilderness extends for 60 miles until the road breaks into aspen glades at Hannagan Meadow, the route to Eager, Springerville and Greer. Winding up the spiny ridges of the Apache National Forest, the prospects open onto sheer, eye-stretching emptiness. Ample evidence that Arizona, although the nation's fastest growing state, still retains its solitudes.

For the true meaning of solitude, one should tour the Upland Desert Plateau, homeland of the Hopi and Navajo. It is a dramatic terrain of painted deserts, crimson obelisks and iron-stained canyon walls, and of people whose religions link them to the earth as firmly as the green fists of juniper and pinyon on their silent mesas.

Keams Canyon, Second Mesa, Window Rock, Chinle, Kayenta, Tuba City, Wahweap and the towns on I-40 all make convenient base camps from which to explore the reservation lands.

For most, entry from the south is easiest. Traveling from I-40 at Holbrook and Winslow, state routes 77 and 87 terminate at the Hopi towns, the first at Keams Canyon and the other at Second Mesa, where Hopi artisans display silver and pottery at their cultural center.

Further east, State 63 goes north from I-40 at Chambers to Ganado and the Hubbell Trading Post National Historical Site on the Navajo Reservation. Here it crosses State 264, the east-west artery that connects Tuba City on the west with the Navajo capital, Window Rock.

Both Navajos and Hopis hold religious ceremonials and other festivals during the summer months.

At Chinle, State 63 offers entry to Canyon de Chelly National Monument, a spectacular system of branched canyons where many Navajo families summer in their fruit orchards, tending livestock. Guided tours provide examination of prehistoric cliff-dwellings and ruins which are among the finest Anasazi construction to be found.

State 63 ends at Mexican Water, where it forms a “T” with U.S. 160, the Navajo Trail. Trending southwest from Four Corners, this fine trans-reservation route forms a junction near Tuba City at U.S. 89, with the latter going north to Wahweap and the watersports on Lake Powell. Enroute, it passes through Kayenta, gateway to Monument Valley and by the Navajo National Monument, another stunning complex of prehistoric dwellings.

The reservation lands differ greatly from any other region of our state and in a manner that is felt as much as it is observed. Such awareness brings a new dimension to the riches that belong to Arizona.

RIGHT This one inch crystal pocket of chalcoalumite, a copper-aluminum silicate, is one of the newest minerals to be identified from the Bisbee area. From the Al Voirin Collection. JEFF KURTZEMAN BELOW The Babacomari Ranch, near Elgin in southern Arizona, dates back to the early 1700's. This old Spanish land grant lies along the Babacomari River with the Mustang Mountains in the background. JOSEF MUENCH