Baldy: The Mountain and the Myth

Riding day groups also are limited to fewer than 25 members, and no more than 50 people may use Baldy Wilderness at one time.

Beneath the clear headwaters of the Little Colorado, in a broad, willowed valley, is the small Mormon settlement of Greer, first known as Lee Valley. Named after the pioneer, America Vespucius Greer, the community lies at the 8560-foot level, in the lap of the mountain. The early settlers called it Mt. Thomas. To them the mountain meant lumber and shingles for their cabins; game for their tables; wild berries and honey; water for their fields and gardens; and the mountain meadows a pharmacy of medicinal herbs, roots and bark.

Greer was a close community. Of necessity, families helped each other. Their only source of income was from the grain which they sold to Becker Mercantile in Springerville. Becker contracted with the government to sell oats to the cavalry at Fort Apache, and hired wagoners to haul it across the trail which is now State Highway 273. When occasional bands of Apaches would harass the settlers, they would move to the fort in Round Valley for protection.

In summer, children of the settlers made excursions to the top of the mountain, fishing, hunting, berrying, exploring every canyon and stream. Boys ran horse races from the top to see who could find the fastest way down. Baldy was their world. They knew no other.

No one came to know the mountain better than George Crosby, who was born in 1900. His father had been sent from Silver Reef, Utah, to engineer the three Greer reservoirs and the irrigation canal to Round Valley. Burning with patriotic zeal, but too young to enlist in the Army, George Crosby, the only Boy Scout in the White Mountains, applied for the job of Forest Service lookout in the spring of 1917. His mother protested that the work was too lonely and dangerous, but George convenced her it was the only way he could serve his country. Since most Forest Service personnel were fighting in the trenches of France, George was hired. On May 28th, Forest Supervisor Frederic Winn rode his big black horse from Springerville to Greer to accept George's application, give him instructions, and tell him his salary would be $90 a month.

George had two days to get an outfit together and comfort his mother. He made a sleeping bag out of quilts and a heavy tarp. His Uncle Cleveland lent him a 30-30 Winchester. On the last day of May, he and his stepfather took two stout packhorses up to the trail to Baldy.

On the way, they found a dead buck and the enormous tracks of old "DoubleKiller," a grizzly bear with a habit of killing two beeves at a time. The huge bear had caused so much damage to livestock, the Cattlemen's Association was offering a reward of $200 for his demise.

That night, George was alone in his 10 x 12 foot log cabin. His furniture consisted of a rat-proof chest, a pole bunk, a wood stove, and a wall telephone. In those days, the Forest Service maintained a telephone line connecting Springerville with all the lookout towers and fire patrol stations. Each May, the Forest Service would send a pack train to pull the old wires out of the snow, rewire the line and install insulators. It was the lookout's only communication with the outside world for three months.

The lookout station on the summit was an eight-sided affair with a central chart stand, a small stove and a chair. When he spotted a fire, George would ring up the supervisor and tell him thedegree and general location of the fire. From his perch, George could see north to the Hopi Mesas; east to Zuni Pueblo and the Mogollon Mountains; south a hundred miles to the Graham Moun-tains; and west all the way to the Sierra Anchas.

After work hours, he chinked the walls of his cabin with mud, because, he said, “You could sling a cat out through the logs.” He cut and stacked firewood, cooked his simple meals, hauled water from a spring, and for amusement, listened in on the telephone conversations between Forest Service men and their mountain sweethearts. During his lunch breaks, he would hunt for arrowheads and beads.

His sister Hannah rode up from Greer to bring supplies and to keep him com-pany for a while. They were surprised one night by a knock at the cabin door. A young Hopi, a graduate of Carlisle University, introduced himself and explained that he had come with four old men of the Flute Clan to pray for rain. They asked the young people to keep their presence a secret. Camped by the spring, with no articles of the white man on them, they performed their rituals and sang. The young Crosbys attended their final rain cere-mony, and later watched northern Ari-zona drown in a general downpour.

As the year wound down, George and his Hopi friend shot old “Double-Killer,” who was prowling around their camp one night. The boys scraped and dried the hide, collected the $200 reward and sold the skin at Grand Canyon for $450.

At 17, George Crosby's adventures were only beginning. The next summer he worked as a fireguard on Green's Peak, while his sister Hannah took on the station at Baldy, becoming Ameri-ca's first girl lookout. The following year, George drove 21 saddle horses to Phoenix on his way to Thatcher to attend Gila Academy. But his real edu-cation came from the mountains.

Over the years, George Crosby was to become well-known as a hunter and guide, at one point leading the U.S. Geologic Survey parties and setting up their camps.

During World War II, George hiked through a blizzard to locate a missing plane on Baldy. Drifts were 20 feet high, but he made it to Coulter's Cabin, where he spent the night. The following day, the main party met him. They found the plane with nine bodies aboard, and carried them down the mountain, along with a suitcase containing $20,000.

In later years, while running an elk camp on Baldy, George and his sons fed the deer grain and hay along with their own stock during hard winters and watched for poachers and other game violators, Today, George Crosby's son Harris operates a general store in Greer, which remains a small mountain settlement drowsing under the wing of Baldy. Fat horses and cattle graze in fields of hay. The scent of pine, spruce and fir over-lies the valley and the pure cold smell of water tumbling out of snowfields rises to meet it. A few resorts, a few modest summer cabins, neighbor the old log cabins of the settlers. The road to Greer goes nowhere. There are only trails, leading to the mountain.

Baldy is a living mountain . . . accessible, vulnerable, open to all. Aging slowly in the eons, she draws energy from the sun, rain and lightning from the clouds. She gives life and takes life. She is the Mother Mountain to all who live in her shadow, a holy place . . . forever.

(Right) An impressionist's pallet colors the sunset on Big Lake in the White Mountains, southeast of Mt. Baldy.

Photographs by Wayne Davis (Following panel, pgs. 20-21) Alpine pastures, lush with summer grass, embrace the west fork of the Black River, south of Mt. Baldy. Dick Dietrich

(Above) A summer bouquet enhances a gentle cascade on the Black River in the White Mountains, on the southern approach to Mt. Baldy.

(Left) In a lush mountain meadow near the top of Mt. Baldy an old creek slowly wends its way down to lower elevations.

(Right) Autumn on the east fork of the Black River a high country paradise of meadow, stream and tree.

(Right) Nestled beneath Mt. Baldy, one of the four sacred peaks venerated by native Americans, are the softly rounded hills of the Bonito Creek Drainage, with Mt. Graham on the far southwestern horizon.

Photographs by Wayne Davis