WELCOME TO LA PAZ

La Paz The people of Arizona's newest county fear neither omens nor statistics. If they did, they would never have voted by a two-thirds majority at a special election held May 25, 1982, to break away from Yuma County and establish their own La Paz County government. Consider the name, La Paz, that they chose for their creation. It was first applied, in Arizona, to a ragtag mining town located half a dozen miles north of present-day Ehrenberg. The place existed for one feverish decade and then, its aspirations gone, crumbled slowly back into the desert. Or consider statistics. On seceding, La Paz County took away forty-four percent (4430 square miles) of Yuma County's 9991 square-mile land basebut only eighteen percent of Yuma County's assessed valuation and 12,500 of its 100,000 people. Of the seven widely scattered small communities in the new county, Parker, far up in the north end with a population of 4290, is the only one incorporated. Inevitably, it was chosen county seat at the polls on November 2, 1982. Finally, there was the stigma of failure to overcome. A similar attempt at independence had collapsed during the 1950s. This time the leaders of the movement adopted as their battle cry the four short words "We Can Do It"-and they did. Since January 2, 1983, La Paz County, Arizona's fifteenth and the first to be created since 1909, has been on its own.

The roots of this brashness go back to the territory's gold rush days. In October, 1858, an intense, if short-lived, excitement had followed the discovery of placer diggings in the vicinity of the Gila River, twenty miles east of its junction with the Colorado. A little later, in April, 1861, farranging Johnny Moss uncovered rich quartz veins in El Dorado Canyon, Nevada, 365 miles up the Colorado from what eventually became the town of Yuma. The discoveries touched off a hurried examination of the whole bleak countrysidebetween the two points, and early in 1862, a famed Southwestern trapper and guide, Paulino Weaver, working with two other men, picked up several grains of gold from a gulch that dropped into the Colorado River a few miles north of today's Interstate Highway 10. To keep fine gold from being lost during transportation, early prospectors often shot a wild goose, plucked a quill feather from its wing or tail, and used the hollow stem as a sort of jewel case. Weaver did just that with his share of the gold. Later he showed the prize to José Redondo, leader of a party of Mexican miners who, with their families, were working at the Pot Holes, a few miles above the Yuma Crossing. The group immediately moved upriver, found gold within a mile of Weaver's strike, and called the place La Paz in celebration of Our Lady of Peace, whose feast day, January 12, may have been the date of Weaver's discovery.

between the two points, and early in 1862, a famed Southwestern trapper and guide, Paulino Weaver, working with two other men, picked up several grains of gold from a gulch that dropped into the Colorado River a few miles north of today's Interstate Highway 10. To keep fine gold from being lost during transportation, early prospectors often shot a wild goose, plucked a quill feather from its wing or tail, and used the hollow stem as a sort of jewel case. Weaver did just that with his share of the gold. Later he showed the prize to José Redondo, leader of a party of Mexican miners who, with their families, were working at the Pot Holes, a few miles above the Yuma Crossing. The group immediately moved upriver, found gold within a mile of Weaver's strike, and called the place La Paz in celebration of Our Lady of Peace, whose feast day, January 12, may have been the date of Weaver's discovery.

Because moving the gold-bearing earth to the river or river water to the diggings was impractical, the Mexicans winnowed out the precious metal by first picking as many bits of rock as possible from a shovelful of dirt and then tossing the rest in the air on a breezy day. The wind blew away unprofitable dust while the heavier particles of gold, worth sixteen to seventeen dollars an ounce at the mines in those days, fell onto a canvas tarpaulin or into a broad wooden batea, or pan. The worker, crouching on hands and knees, then used his own breath to blow off the remaining dross.

Rumors of what was going on soon trickled to Los Angeles. Merchants there extolled the diggings, a rush developed, and soon a chaotic town of adobe houses, tents, and huts of mesquite boughs sprang up beside a lagoon winding inland from the river. Population rose to perhaps 400. About 250 were male Anglos-there were only five American women in the town in 1864-as compared to sixty-eight Mexican men, fifty-eight women, and fifty-eight children. During La Paz's short life no effort was made to build either a church or school. There were numerous bars, however, and several shootings, some of them the result of clashes between North-ern and Southern sympathizers during the Civil War.

According to an estimate by the Arizona Bureau of Mines, no more than two million dollars was taken from the district between 1862 and 1936. Prosperity came instead from the town's strategic position as the gateway to the mines and Army camps of central Arizona. La Paz offered both a good docking site for river steam-boats and good ferry service for freight wagons rumbling out of California. To clinch the hold, local entrepreneurs developed roadside wells at Tyson, today's Quartzsite, on the way to Wickenburg and Prescott. Success was such that in 1864 La Paz became the seat of Yuma County, one of Arizona's original four governing units.

Local mythology adds that La Paz also came within one vote, during an early legislative session, of being chosen territorial capital. Well, yes but the high-sounding remark needs qualification. The struggle for the capital in the 1860s was between Prescott and Tucson. La Paz was offered for consideration in an amendment to a complex and controversial bill designed to embarrass Tucson. La Paz's three delegates in the legislature had so little interest in acquiring the honor for their town they all voted against it and thus helped assure Tucson's eventual victory. How much credit should you get for losing what you want to lose?

A truer resource for Yuma County was the Colorado River Indian Reservation, established in 1865 for the Mohave, Chemehuevi, Hualapai, and Yavapai tribes. (The latter two declined to settle there.) Over the years, the reservation's size was gradually increased until it stretched for forty-five miles along the river and embraced 264,245 acres 226,000 of them in Arizona, the rest in California. In 1867-1868 Congress appropriated $100,000 in two instalments to build an irrigation canal on the reservation, so the Indians could support themselves farming. Much of that federal money went into the hands of La Paz suppliers, contractors, and workers. The taste of prosperity died almost as quickly as it had come. In 1866, just as the local placer mines were playing out, the temperamental Colorado River changed its course, leaving La Paz half a dozen miles inland. Freighters and merchants, the Goldwater brothers among them, moved their establishments downstream to Ehrenberg, the new gateway to central Arizona, and in 1871 Arizona City, soon to be renamed Yuma, captured the county seat. Meanwhile the irrigation canals on the Indian reservation caved in; wells and waterwheels collapsed. The people around Yuma got out of the habit of even thinking about the northern part of the county. Nothing, it seemed, happened up there. The future brightened in 1905 when the Arizona & California Railroad pushed west from Wickenburg to join the main Santa Fe line in California. Wherever groundwater could be found, trackside farming communities took root. Wenden was one; Bouse, originally a supply town for mines, was another. A man named Pratt and two brothers named Hall founded a third. Folklore says that when Pratt's wife, Grace Salome, jumped barefooted from her wagon at the townsite, the hot sand set her hopping, whereupon Dick Wick Hall, some of whose humor was later published in the old Saturday Evening Post, named the town Salome - Where She Danced. An annual community picnic, Dick Wick Hall Day, held every September, still commemorates the genial jokester, publisher of the one-page Salome Sun and operator of the Laughing Gas Station. The spot that the railroad picked for crossing the river lay four miles above the boat dock and Indian Agency center at Parker Landing. When the bridge was finished in 1908, steamboat traffic ended, and miners, farmers, and Indians had to look to the railroad for supplies. Foreseeing prosperity, a handful of would-be residents prevailed on the federal government to carve a 973-acre trackside townsite out of the reservation. They named the site Parker, either for a railroad official of that name or for the abandoned steamboat landing downstream. Lots did not sell as rapidly as expected, and in the 1930s those that remained unpurchased reverted to the reservation. The result was a unique town that is still surrounded on the outside and peppered on the inside by Indian land. The construction, during the 1930s, of a series of dams-Hoover, Davis, Parker - to control floods and allow the transporta-tion of water and power to Southern California marked the beginning of change. Water levels were stabilized, and the once chocolate-colored river became a spark-ling blue. In 1941 Headgate Rock Dam was built a little north of Parker as part of a new irrigation system for the reserva-tion. A side benefit was Lake Moovalya, which further stabilized the river and brought into being the Parker Strip, a 14.4-mile stretch of scenic, mountain-bordered riverbank between Headgate Rock and Parker dams. Most of the Strip lay outside the reservation and was controlled by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management, commonly called BLM.Placid waters seldom disturbed by wind and striped bass that grew to prodigious size were just beginning to attract power-boat enthusiasts and fishermen when World War II intervened. Afterwards, in 1945, one of those racing aficionados, Marion Beaver, attended a meet in Long Beach, California, and returned home more impressed with Lake Moovalya's potentials than ever. Helped by other enthusiasts, he opened a boat-launching site among the then dense arrowweeds on Blue Water Lagoon and made possible the first formal motorboat race on that section of the river.Events proliferated, culminating in 1963 with the inauguration of the famous En-duro, an endurance race that draws speed-sters from most of the United States and several foreign countries.But it is not all slam and dash. On a night shortly before Christmas, dozens of boats of all kinds are bedecked in colored lights and drift lazily down past the Strip's

La Paz

La Paz Entertaining 750,000 Rockhounds BY SAM LOWE

It was mid-May. The Season had ended. The shelves in the stores picked clean by the itinerant bands of Iowans, Dakotans, and Saskatchewani, who flock to this western Arizona haven annually like the swallows return to Capistrano. With their departure, the old Quartzsite returns. The one with the population of less than 500.

But when November comes the snowbirds return. They are the first wave, the forerunners of February, when the world's largest rock and gem festival - the Quartzsite Pow-wow-rolls into town in four-wheeler and camper, Airstream and Winnebago, pickup truck and U-Haul trailer. Seven-hundred and fifty-thousand rockhounds arrived for the 1985 show.

They come from anywhere and everywhere to sell, trade, and look at rocks. And things pertaining to rocks and the beautification thereof.

Full-time gem dealers, rockhounds, mom and pop operations based in the open trunk of the family car, they offer rough and cut stones, lapidary equipment, finished jewelry, and hundreds of other items.

Those who can't find room in the community proper spill out onto desert and into Bureau of Land Management campgrounds. Or anyplace else not occupied.

Newcomers ask about where the best deals are and how to recognize them. The old-timers talk about cabochons and gem lathes and rock saws and how big this thing has grown and the friends they've made coming here every winter. And they all talk about how cold it is back home this time of year.

The end of the Pow-wow does not signal an immediate retreat, however. Many stay on for the next two showsthe Gemboree and the Sell-o-Rama-on following weekends. And some stay on until mid-May.

Sam Lowe is a daily columnist for the Phoenix Gazette.

Quartzsite is a tiny unincorporated community at the junction of Interstate 10 and U. S. Route 95. The Los Angeles Times has named it "Rock City." But it's really Mecca for rockhounds the world over, particularly in February, when the Quartzsite Pow-wow, now in its eighteenth year, gets under way. Main attraction during the four-day event is gemstone and polished rock from around the world. Bill Sperry photos Text continued from page 30 crowded patios and picnic tables, as an introduction to the holidays.

Land events have grown with equal exuberance. Grueling "Score 400" races are held early each February for motorcycles, three-wheelers, four-wheel-drive vehicles, heavy pickup trucks, and the like. First motorcyclists and then the drivers of cars and trucks pound down the California side of the river for an hour or so before crossing to Arizona. There they spin through a ninety-mile loop, reverse directions, and tackle it again the opposite way. These are tough courses through jagged mountains and across sandy flats, and the exhaustive contest lasts until about 1:00 Sunday morning. To protect the environment from both the vehicles and the 50,000 or so spectators that cluster at choice viewpoints, the BLM has laid down rigid rules about procedures.

Agriculture remains king in La Paz County, most of it centered on the Colorado River Indian Reservation. As the result of a Supreme Court decision in 1963, the Indians have available 717,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water, enough to put 107,000 acres under cultivation. The Indians, however, lacked enough money to clear and level the land and build the needed canals, and the federal government declined to contribute. The impasse was broken in 1964 when President Johnson signed a bill authorizing the tribal council to grant long-term leases to non-Indian farming corporations. Today 80,600 leased acres bear crops, and each spring columns of smoke rise from piles of uprooted brush, signals that more acres will soon be producing cotton, alfalfa, wheat, barley, lettuce, and melons. About 3000 non-Indians work on these huge farms, most of them on a seasonal basis.

The Indian population on the reservation numbers 1648, according to the most recent census. (The figure includes several Hopis, Navajos, Chemehuevis, and Mohaves, who have settled there and have become members of the Colorado River Indian tribes.) The tribes themselves farm about 8200 acres. A dozen or so individual Indians cultivate a total of 6000 or more acres. The tribes also have developed a big shopping center on reservation land just north of Parker. They have leased land to the county-rental one dollar a yearfor a hospital, school, and swimming pool. The tribe runs the only landfill in the county and operates the Parker sewage plant in conjunction with the town. The tribe's governing body is contemplating resort development, and there is occasional talk of excavating and restoring the old mining town of La Paz, which lies on Indian land. Once a month, the Parker City Council and the Tribal Council meet to consider common problems.

32/Arizona Highways Magazine Growth has been accompanied by pangs, especially along the Strip. After the war, "squatters" moved in. Some obtained one-year leases from the BLM; others just set up housekeeping where they pleased. Lack of pride went with lack of permanency, and eyesores dotted the riverbanks. Then, in the 1970s, the Strip became an "in" place for raucous carousers. Even the hottest of summer weekends saw as many as 125,000 visitors jammed as tightly as possible along the fourteen-mile stretch. Radios blared, discos throbbed, boats collided, while thoughtless throngs floated around in inner tubes, their coolers bobbing beside them full of beer cans.

After years of vacillation, the BLM ejected the squatters, not without noisy battles, and granted long-term leases to whoever would develop projects serving the general public-trailer parks, resorts, stores, and the like. Law officers cracked down on the roisterers. Tourist and real estate promotion took to featuring family life beside the river, and the Strip is taking on a quieter and far neater look.

Throughout all this, the people in the northern part of Yuma County felt that those in the south still ignored them. They believed they did not get a fair return for their tax money, and they were sure they could get along better with the Indians than "outsiders" could. The long drive to Yuma to attend to business in the county seat was an exasperation. A vote to authorize bonds for a new jail, which inevitably would be built in or near Yuma, brought discontent with their neglect to a head. Petitions to break away from Yuma County circulated and the rest is history. Independent La Paz County was a reality.

Even trouble turned out to be a blessing. Damage caused by exceptionally high run-off water in the Colorado River in 1983 caused consternation for a time, but again the county rolled up its sleeves. The result was a spurt of new construction along the Parker Strip-buildings relocated farther from the water's edge, floating boat docks, raised sundecks, sand imported for larger beach areas, visible symbols, all of them, of La Paz's slogan, We Can Do It.

David Lavender is a respected writer of the West with more than twenty-five books and numerous magazine articles to his credit.

Selected Reading

The Chemehuevis, by Carobeth Laird, Malki Museum Press, Banning, 1976.

Indians of Arizona: A Contemporary Perspective, by Thomas Weaver, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1974.

Gem Trails of Arizona: A Field Guide for Collectors, by Bessie W. Simpson and Harry M. Simpson, Gem Guide Book Co., Pico River, 1984.

Roadside Geology of Arizona, by Halka Chronic, Mountain Press Publishing Co., Missoula, 1983.

A Reconnaissance in the Kofa Mountains, Arizona, by Edward L. Jones, Jr., Government Printing Office, Washington, 1915.

Southwest Arizona Ghost Towns, by Stanley W. Paber, Nevada Publications, Las Vegas, 1981.

La Paz

(OPPOSITE PAGE) The Colorado River provides a water sportsman's paradise of recreational activities. Bass fishermen trolling lazily among the cattails along the banks of the river near Parker are a common sight. Jack Dykinga photo (LEFT) The quiet water of Lake Havasu, the forty-five-mile-long reservoir created by 320-foot Parker Dam, is perfectly suited for the marina which serves as the starting point for much of the river's recreational offerings. At least half of the one-quarter million Lake Havasu fun-seekers last year were from out of state. Peter Kresan photo (ABOVE) The phenomenon of sitting in an inner tube and floating leisurely down the Colorado River spawns an annual June event-Parker's Budweiser Chamber Inner Tube Float. Bill Brennan photo

Where & What

Arizona's newest county must necessarily labor over the years to establish its own identity, personality, and character. An acquaintance with the following will give a visitor more than a start in understanding the present La Paz County.

PARKER DAM-Built primarily to form a reservoir (Lake Havasu) for thirsty Californians, this structure happily and coincidentally made possible the Parker Strip. Drive across the dam and take the self-guided tour with recorded lectures and views of dam and power plant. THE CENTRAL ARIZONA PROJECTIn December the CAP's Pumping Plant twenty miles northeast of Parker will start forcing water up the sheer face of the Buckskin Mountains through a sevenmile tunnel and then via canal down the length of La Paz County enroute to fulfilling the water needs and dreams of Arizona's population centers.

THE PARKER STRIP - Here are the motels, camps, resorts, state and county parks, bars, restaurants, boat ramps, a complete package of river recreation on fifteen miles of blue water between Parker Dam and Headgate Rock Dam, a cool ribbon of boating, skiing, and swimming, winding among dramatic desert and mountain scenery...for the action oriented.

THE SECRET RIVER - Below Headgate Rock Dam wanders forty miles of water on the Colorado River Indian Reservation. It's a largely unused river for explorers, nature lovers, fishermen, bird-watchers, tube floaters, and weekend philosophers. Facilities are limited below Big River, California, five miles south of Parker. Solitude, watering deer, splashing beaver, and wading birds highlight a river known to few. Tribal game and fish permits are needed.

Where to Go; What to See in La Paz County

(OPPOSITE PAGE, TOP) Alamo Lake State Park. Five thousand acres of desert and mountain scenery make this haven for lunker bass fishermen a vacation or weekend place to be. Facilities include boat rentals, recreational vehicle sites, primitive campsites, and a camper supply store. James Tallon photo (OPPOSITE PAGE, BOTTOM) All eyes are on the annual Parker Enduro in March, a seven hour powerboat race with speeds averaging 100 miles per hour and more. James Tallon/Paul Kuhn photos.

(ABOVE) Monument to camel driver Hi Jolly (Hadji Ali) in Quartzsite recalls the period in the Old Southwest when the Army experimented with camel travel in the desert. Jack Dykinga photo TRIBAL MUSEUM-LIBRARY-Two miles below Parker at the Colorado River Indian Tribes' headquarters complex: Indian books, tribal archives, and local historical and archeological displays, background information on the resident four tribes Mohave, Chemehuevi, Navajo, and Hopi.

DEER LAKE - Federal river channelization made a narrow, shallow reservation lake of an old Arizona channel, five miles below Parker, resulting in an outstanding largemouth bass fishery. Trolling motors only.

THE BILL WILLIAMS RIVER CANYON-The Bill Williams is La Paz County's northern border. Beautiful everywhere, it is magnificent on the western end with mountains, canyons, thick river-bottom growth, and beaver dams. A National Wildlife Refuge, this is a land of bighorn sheep and birds unlimited to observe and photograph.

ALAMO LAKE STATE PARK - Easily accessible to Central Arizona fishermen, this 3500-acre isolated lake and park are thirty-eight paved miles north of Wenden. There are facilities for RV's, camping, and fishing.

QUARTZSITE - A rock hunter's delight and a mecca for winter visitors. The Hi Jolly Monument here honors the Arab camel driver who, 125 years ago, led caravans across Western Arizona.

Arts, crafts, history of the Anasazi, Hobokam, Patayan, and Mogollon cultures plus traditional arts and crafts of the Mohave, Chemehuevi, Navajo, and Hopi Indians are displayed at the Colorado Indian Tribes Museum. Guided tours of the museum and the reservation by appointment. Phone: (602) 669-9211, extension 213. Jack Dykinga photo

Where & What

SPECIAL EVENTS - Sunday, March 2, 1986, will see the twenty-fourth annual running of The Parker Enduro, and boats, owners, drivers, crews, and fans will be on hand in large numbers in the small desert community of Parker on the Colorado River.

Spectators will see sixty-five to eighty-five large powerboats erupt en masse at exactly 8:00 AM. from the pit area in a fantastic medley of engine roar and white water. They will also see a variety of powerboat hulls: GN flatbottom in boards, V-bottom inboards and outboards,outboard tunnels, hydroplane and jet inboards, huge inboard tunnels, and even experimental craft. These boats will be powered by one or more inboard or outboard engines of varying sizes or a combination of inboard and outboard power plants. Entries (the survivors anyway) will pound for seven punishing hours nonstop, except for accidents and pit stops. And the winner will travel about 700 miles, averaging 100 miles per hour or better. Peculiar to the Enduro are the national and international aspects of the race. Perhaps no other American powerboat race in 1986 will attract boats and crews from twenty to twenty-five states plus boats and drivers from Mexico, Australia, Canada, Holland, England, and Italy.The late Cecil Florence, Jr. and the Parker Boat and Ski Club started this event in 1963 when marathon or enduro racing was common. They decided on a nine hour non-stop race open to anything that floated. A six-and-one-half mile stretch was laid out on the twisting Colorado River. This thirteen-mile lap course is essentially unchanged today though race headquarters has been moved upriver to a large site at mile-long La Paz County Park. The method of starting has evolved over the years to a modified LeMans (drivers sitting in their quiet boats until the countdown at 8:00 AM.), causing every starter to crank and every boat to leap forward for the wild first lap. The first Enduro, in 1963, had forty starters and fifteen who finished. Winner Tom Davis averaged sixty-one miles per hour. The second race had 117 entries but only ninety-nine starters, after a oneday delay due to high winds, and thirty three finishers. The highlight of the '85 Enduro was the stunning victory of Mitch Lembke of Orange, California, in a huge inboard tunnel. Leading for forty-and-one-half of his fifty-one laps. The winner was powered with a twelve-cylinder inboard coupled with a stern drive outboard.

Some call the Enduro the Indianapolis of boat racing-for its speed and distance, its spectacular accidents and percentage of non-finishers, its expenses, and its contribution to the racing industry and the boating public. Other special events in La Paz County during the year are: the Parker SCORE 400 two-state Off-Road Race in February....

Parker's Inner Tube Float in June.... Salome's Dick Wick Hall Days... Parker's Indian Day in September... Parker Rodeo in October...and boat and ski races during most months of the year.

Bill Brennan, a retired English teacher, has been a free-lance writer/photographer along the Colorado River for twentyfive years.