Journey to Yesterday

(Above) The main entrance of the Arizona Historical Society headquarters in Tucson. The portal and rose window are from Arizona's first Catholic cathedral, San Agustín, completed in 1883.

(Left, top) An Historical Society diorama recalls the period from 1857 to 1861, when camels were used in southern Arizona to carry supplies and mail. The experiment ultimately failed, (Left, below) An old post office comes to life in the Society's permanent transportation, communication and postal history exhibit.

Photos by Ray Manley Studios "History lives here," shout scarlet red letters on a white background. "Free museum, library, gift shop."

The banner hangs from the front porch railing of the venerable Arizona Historical Society in Tucson. It's a little flashy as museum signs go, but one can't accuse the historical society of false advertising. For the visitor with a sense of adventure and a little imagination, an afternoon at the society museum and library can be the closest thing we have to a time-machine trip to the untamed West of a century ago.

Here is a lifelike diorama of blackrobed Spanish missionaries meeting with nearly naked Indians. In the Western Postal History section a typical territorial post office is surrounded by large oil paintings and dioramas depicting the perils of Pony Express riders as they carried mail through dangerous Apache country and dealt with cantankerous mules. Visitors this year will see the fascinating current display on sheep ranching, which was big business in Arizona from 1870 to 1890. Not a detail has been left out of the reconstruction of an isolated sheepherder's camp, with its horse-drawn wagon, spare white tent, and bed of blankets and pelts. The rough camp contrasts sharply with the velvet upholstered furniture and fine carpets in the office sitting room of the town-based ranch owners.

In the Historical Society's library it is easy to get lost for an hour or an entire day in the true-to-life adventures of Arizona's pioneers. In addition to the more than 50,000 bound volumes, there are 2000 manuscripts of private reminiscences and business and professional records the raw stuff from which historical novels are written.

From 1901 there are Dora Osgood's remembrances of how, as a girl of 15, she traveled with her family from Provo, Utah, to Cottonwood, Arizona Territory, in two horsedrawn wagons.

Also carefully filed and indexed is an original interview with Hilario Gallego who was born inside the walled Tucson Presidio in 1850 and later fought against Geronimo.

The books range from L. Hennepin's A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America . . . 1695 to the 1881 Tucson City Directory in which we learn something about early municipal financing when we read that the village council purchased for city use a wagon, harness, and two good mules, only to sell them a few months later "by reason of being too expensive to operate.

But of all the captivating displays and printed materials at the Arizona Historical Society, the best is yet to come. Scheduled to open in 1979 is a mining exhibit which will be the largest and most expensive museum display in the state, if not the entire Southwest.

To help tell the story of early mining activities in Arizona the Historical Society is constructing this 5000-foot permanent exhibit. It will include a walk-through tunnel, a milling area, a mining town and 20 interpretive panel exhibits. The mining Hall will be completed in the fall of 1979.

Funded by a no-strings grant from Arizona's mining industry, the exhibit will take the visitor back to a typical 1910 mining town. After exploring the blacksmith shop, the assay office, the doctor's office and a miner's tent home, viewers will enter the dark, dank mine shaft. Although the tunnel has been constructed not of rock but of 100 tons of steel, concrete and lumber, old-time retired miners brought in as consultants swear that the display has the look and feel of the real mines in which they spent so much of their lives.

The mining display fills a third of the floor space of the museum's 1975 addition, which more than doubled the museum's storage and display areas. The new wing was specially constructed to support the authentic 12-ton stampmill (a mammoth device used to crush ore) which was dismantled at its original site, brought into the museum piece by piece, and reassembled inside the mining town.

Museum-goers can watch the town construction through a special window and on some days the growing town is quite a busy place. But it's not nearly as bustling as it will be when it is com-pleted and visitors have a chance to step back nearly six decades into history. All this doesn't sound, look or smell like the typical dim and dusty halls that have given museums a reputation for dullness. That in large part is due to the vision of Arizona Historical Society Director Sidney Brinkerhoff. "A state historical society always suffers. Because we deal with things that happened a long time ago, we sometimes have a problem getting people interested. We want to reach out and make the museum experience so vital that it becomes part of their lives."

Arizona's ranching industry in the early West is a permanent exhibit at the Historical Society, complete with firearms and tools of the trade.

says. “A museum ought to be a vital community center. We want our museum to serve everybody, from the fourth grade school kid to the professional historian.” To make sure that visitors are participants as well as viewers, the major displays, which are changed yearly, always include items to touch and hold. An early exhibit of Mexican folk crafts featured a small room full of folk toys. The room was designed with children in mind but adults had as much fun as the youngsters. The current saddles exhibit invites visitors to climb up on several authentic saddles to get a taste of what it was like to spend all day on a horse.

Bookshelf

by Mary Lu Moore Inquiries about any of these titles should be directed to the book publisher, not ARIZONA HIGHWAYS.

An area map of Wyoming and a few credits for the black and white photographs of McCoy and many of his Indian associates would have been helpful. Nonetheless, this readable narrative, completed shortly before his death, gently reminds us of the passing of far more than Tim McCoy.

"pedal fever." Our writer/artist's selection of back roads is fairly inclusive and representative (we know of others, but aren't telling). If you heed Thollander's warnings concerning low-slung vehicles and overlook a few misspellings of proper names and the rather high price, you are all set. Put a copy in your baggage and head for the Back Roads of Arizona!

Tim McCoy Remembers The West; An Autobiography. By Tim McCoy with Ronald McCoy. Doubleday & Co., 501 Franklin Avenue, Garden City, N.J., 11530. 1977. 274 р. $8.95.

In January this year came word from Nogales of the death of Tim McCoy. "Who?" younger people may inquire. Others will recall McCoy as an early movie and television cowboy star and Wild West show and circus performer. His childhood was spent in Saginaw, Michigan, where he grew up around horses and played drum and bugle. "Buffalo Bill" Cody was his idol and Owen Wister's writings filled his mind. At 18 he quickly departed college and the Midwest for points west, ultimately landing in Wyoming. There he embarked on his life-long love - cowboying, ranching and close association with Plains Indians, especially the Arapaho. He broke this idyllic chain to serve in the cavalry in World War I and later as adjutant general of Wyoming. It was really by accident that he became involved with Hollywood. Sought out by agents who knew nothing about Indians, cowboys or the West, McCoy became deeply committed to interpreting all of these to the celluloid world and the public. His adventures with his Indian friends across the U.S. and abroad make for interesting reading. Tim McCoy's autobiography does not claim to be an historical treatise nor an ethnological study. Far from it. It is a sincere outpouring of observations and experiences over 86 years, mostly in his younger days among real cowboys and Indians. One learns little of McCoy's family, other than his second wife, or of inner circles of Hollywood or the Big Top. Perhaps this is just as well. Tim was much more than a goodnatured showman. He was truly a bridge between the real Old West and what movie producers chose to portray; between Native American elders born before reservations became their ghettos, and white men who knew little about them or their lifeways.

Back Roads of Arizona. By Earl Thollander. Northland Press, P. O. Box N, Flagstaff, Arizona 86002. 1978. 168 р. $12.50 paper.

His dedication gives credit to those who first gave native Californian Thollander "courage to draw a book." That's right draw a book. The author/illustrator of rural settings and back roads has free-lanced his way across the U.S. and other countries. He doesn't just see Arizona, he feels and senses it via his backroading. He divides Arizona into quadrants. Pensive introductory comments by well known southwestern author Edward Abbey precede each section. Each page seems to flow into the next, all adorned with plants, animals, mountains and distinctive architecture, signs or artifacts. Thollander's remarks and mostly sepia sketches remind one alternately of scientific field journals and travelers' post cards sent home to family and friends. His funny little area maps are amazingly accurate. The legend notes delightfully that "arrows indicate my route (routes may certainly be reversed should you desire)" and "NORTH is always toward the top of the page". There is even a notation that there wasn't a sign at some location. Abbey is right, we need more back roads and not so many front roads (would that it were possible!). This lowkey sketchbook will no doubt give you Tanque Verde; The Story of a Frontier Ranch, Tucson, Arizona. By Cornelius C. Smith, Jr. Rubidoux Printing and Photoengraving Co., 3605 Market St., Riverside, California 92501. 1978. 187 p. $5.00 paper.

Tanque Verde Ranch and vicinity have long merited historians' attention. Southwestern historical writer Smith, descendant of early Tucsonans, has made a contribution which will please the Ranch's many admirers and visitors. Readers who like a general approach will enjoy consuming Tanque Verde Ranch lore spiced with many anecdotes of southern Arizona pioneers. More avid Arizona history devotees desirous of in-depth treatment of the Tanque Verde region will find this history diluted with extraneous though interesting events chronicled elsewhere by historians, including Smith himself. These digressions, often containing lengthy quotations, enlighten and enliven, but detract from a more concise account. The author is really at his best when he details more succinctly the later activities of the many occupants of the Tanque Verde Ranch and its surroundings. Lively pen and ink sketches by the author and well selected black and white photographs enhance the text, which is slightly marred by typographical and grammatical errors. Chapter notes, a regional map and an index are helpful and the "Bibliographical Sources" contains interesting primary and good secondary sources. Smith is most gracious in acknowledging those who aided his research. We would be remiss, however, in not chiding author and publisher for omitting publication date and name and mailing address of the publisher on the title page.

Yours Sincerely DON'T BLOW YOUR TOP

Volcanism in Arizona, it would appear, is still an explosive subject. After talking to a number of geologists, there seems to be several areas of ambiguity in the so called "science" of geology. Not everyone agrees on how certain volcanic formations came about. But whether you are an amateur geologist or geological engineer... a photographer, writer, or just everyday person .. a visitor to Arizona or a permanent resident. Our mail bag and telephone lines would indicate that you probably have more than a casual interest in this subject. And therefore, after careful consideration, we firmly and confidently state, with regard to the following letters, "...isn't that interesting?"

Your July issue has come to my attention, with its most interesting discussion of volcanism in Arizona, and its spectacular photographs.

I am startled and disappointed to find a glaring error repeated several times in your texts and captions: The craters of the San Pinacate are, with the exception of the Cerro Colorado, generally thought to be collapsed calderas, not diatremes (Jahns, Gutmann, Ives, Wood, et al). The Cerro Colorado appears to be a diatreme which developed after some outpouring of lava from the magma chamber below.

A diatreme is formed by the outrushing of steam, superheated gases, etc., rather than by outpouring of lava. The Cerro lies directly over the underflow of the Sonoyta River, and presumably the steam was formed when the underlying magma came in contact with the water of the river at depth. Steam may have been somewhat involved in the formation of the collapsed calderas, but appears not to have been a major factor.

On page 40 you term Agathla Peak a diatreme. Obviously this is an error. It is a neck, or plug. Again, on page 34, you make the same error.

Best wishes, Julian D. Hayden

Editor:

Geology has its own language and, as with any language, a word will mean different things to different people. The word "caldera" from Latin for "pot" was defined by Howell Williams, dean of American volcanologists, to include any large "basin shaped volcanic depressions, more or less circular..." of explosion, collapse or erosional origin. The Pinacate craters fit this very broad definition but the name "maar crater" is more precise. Maar is from maare, a German word for lake, since craters of a similar steam blast origin in the Eifel district are filled with water. I wished to emphasize the origin of the Pinacate "calderas" in the photographs. I would rather save the word "caldera" for the magnificent mountain top depressions like Crater Lake."Diatreme" is best restricted to those rare volcanoes with highly gas-charged magmas as Arthur Holmes proposed. The African diamond pipes are diatremes and we have a few in northern Arizona and adjacent Utah, like Mule Ear rock on the San Juan River. Diatreme lavas are fragmental so the name was casually applied to the fragmental dike set that makes up Agathla peak. Reaction of water with normal basalt magma also makes a fragmental material but this does not make a diatreme and the term is incorrect when applied to either the Hopi Buttes (a common mistake) or the Pinacate steam blast craters. The American Geological Institute "Glossary of Geology and related Sciences" is the best source for these definitions because it quotes original papers.

Editor:

...with respect to "diatremes," the definition for their formation by superheated gases (and molten rock) is the generally accepted one in geologic circles. However, the term "maar" has been used for those shallow, round, pitlike craters that are surrounded by ejecta blankets. Certainly, this term fits in the Pinacates. When eroded, the maar discloses its feeder pipe, or volcanic neck, which is referred to as a diatreme.The first wide-spread usage of the term was with respect to the "diamond pipes" of Kimberley, South Africa. A fine example, in the southwestern United States, is Shiprock in New Mexico. In Arizona, Agathla Peak seems to be of this same nature.

N.B. Certainly, many of the craters in the Pinacates are "collapse caldera" rather than maars.

Definition:

"Diatreme" - a volcanic vent filled with breccia by the explosive escape of gases.

AND FURTHER MORE...

On page 1 of Arizona Highways for July, 1978, the description of the inside front cover says "Volcanic debris lays helter-skelter on the red rocks of Oak Creek Canyon." Hens lay eggs. A person may lay something down. But the objects, e.g. debris, lies helterskelter, etc.

Now that, Art, is really an error on our part. Not only do we not know how the world "got made," but just when we get one little corner of it figured out we used the wrong form. Have faith, however, because if the rest of the world has problems this big we may correct them all on next month's Letters to the Editor page.

All kidding aside, we probably received more mail from our subscribers on that one thing than you can possibly imagine... but the geologists missed it altogether.

Thanks for keeping us on our toes.

35mm COLOR SLIDES

This issue: 35 mm sildes in 2" mounts, 1 to 15 slides, 40 each, 16 to 49 slides, 35 each, 50 or more, 3 for $1.00. Allow three weeks for delivery. Address: Slide Department, Arizona Highways, 2039 West Lewis Avenue, Phoenix, Arizona 85009.

(Inside back cover) Oil painting by young Navajo artist James King of Shiprock, N.M., portrays the essence of life on the Navajo Reservation.

(Back cover) Conversation on the San Francisco Peaks, a major element in the story of Arizona's Big Land. David Muench