AUTUMN ON THE CORONADO TRAIL

Most visitors are gone, fall color is due. It's the best time to explore this 118-mile desert-tomountain highway...

Nature heralds the debut of autumn in a hundred subtle ways along Arizona's historic Coronado Trail. The eye quickly notes the most obvious transformation from the verdant days of summer-the changing shades of forest colors. Here, dazzling and intoxicating, are the yellows and golds of the high country's towering aspens, breathtaking in their primeval beauty, their delicately balanced leaves quaking in even the slightest of zephyrs. Here, too, are the deep rich reds of the oaks, the eyecatching multihued splash of the sycamores and cottonwoods.

But there are other clues. Instinctively, hibernating animals scurry about in earnest now that summer has gone. They're searching for snug winter hideaways. Only time will measure how sufficiently they've worked during the season of abundance to provision their storehouses for the cold months ahead. High overhead flocks of migrants from the north wing southward toward winter homes of their own. Closer to the ground, a golden eagle alights at the crown of a stately ponderosa pine, imperiously surveys all about him, then just as regally flies away.

Daylight hours shrink day by day as the sun retreats to the southern hemisphere, and there's a bracing tingle in the air that excites mind and spirit. Some years, there's a snow flurry or two as early as mid-September; rare is any fall morning at higher altitudes without frost in the meadow or ice on the pond.

With vacations over and another school year around the corner, most tourists desert the Coronado Trail after Labor Day, leaving only a handful of permanent residents to button up against that inevitable first blizzard of the new winter. Yet what those visitors miss by leaving at summer's end is perhaps the most glorious seasonal spectacle of all in this narrow 118-milelong, desert-to-alpine section of eastern Arizona.

From the mines of Morenci to the pines of Alpine to the rolling prairies of Eagar and Springerville, autumn is Nature at her resplendent best, a sensual feast that once savored is not soon forgotten.

By broad definition, the Coronado Trail extends most of the length of Greenlee County and into a portion of Apache County. Most of it also lies within ApacheSitgreaves National Forest; so we can hope its virtually pristine wilderness will remain unmarred for future generations to enjoy.

The main artery of the Trail is twisting U.S. Route 666, from Clifton on the south to Springerville on the north. The road carries the motorist nearly a mile upward from the copper mining district of Clifton-Morenci to elevations of some 9000 feet. Mostly it winds through scenic high country, and it's a road tailored for leisurely poking about. In fact, you can't hurry along Route 666 without risking bruises or worse. It's not without reason that some have called it the "white-knuckle road."

Coronado Trail

high country, and it's a road tailored for leisurely poking about. In fact, you can't hurry along Route 666 without risking bruises or worse. It's not without reason that some have called it the "white-knuckle road."

According to a study by the Arizona Department of Transportation, a motorist on Route 666 will meet an oncoming vehicle on the average, year-round-only once every nineteen minutes. That makes the road the least traveled of any federal highway. And when you're negotiating the 460 curves between Morencí and the summit south of Alpine, you'll be glad you're not amidst a lot of competition.

Elevations along the road are marked here and there by signs posted by the state or the U.S. Forest Service. The latter identify stands of trees growing at roadside-side, and they give the visitor a good idea of which plants are common at any given altitude.

If you already know your trees, you'll recognize about how high you are without elevation signs or an altimeter. In the Lower Sonoran zone (to about 3500 feet elevation), for instance, grow the familiar saguaro, mesquite, sagebrush, catclaw, and paloverde associated with Arizona's desert. As you wind progressively higher, the conifers take over: juniper, piñon, ponderosa pine (the world's largest stand of these trees extends through this area), Douglas fir, and spruce. Look for the color of the deciduous trees, intermixed with the evergreens, on hillsides and along watercourses from 4000 feet on up to aspen country that sometimes approaches timberline.

A wide variety of mammals and birds is native to this region. Unlike the immovable trees, the animals wander occasionally through several life zones. Not long ago, for instance, my wife and I were surprised to see a roadrunner-which Hollywood cartoons had convinced me is a lowland desert creature-sprinting along a road in K.P. Cienega campground nestled among the pines between Blue Peak and Hannagan Meadow.

Another time, traffic stopped dead still just west of Morenci to allow a huge black bear to saunter leisurely across the road. These animals are classified as highaltitude residents but, noting the size of this one, we weren't about to argue. Old Coronado Trail hands will tell you a black bear seen in autumn at lower elevations means a particularly harsh winter is around the corner.

What the road signs do not tell you, here and in most parts of rural Arizona, is a community's population; you learn only the date of founding and the elevation. This matters little along the Coronado Trail, since the towns are few: Clifton, Morenci, Alpine, Nutrioso, and the neighbors Eagar and Springerville. In fact, there isn't enough population along the entire Trail to mention, and for many that accounts for much of the appeal of this region. (When I once asked an Alpine old-timer the population of his town, he replied with undisguised annoyance, "It's sufficient, son; it's sufficient.") Four centuries earlier, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado found even fewer souls when he led an expedition through these mountains in search of the elusive Seven Cities of Cibola. Taking leave from his post as governor of Nueva Galicia in western Mexico to explore the northern reaches of New Spain, Coronado met with armed resistance from the Indians and found no gold. The rugged wilderness described by Coronado's chronicler, Pedro de Castañeda, remains today largely as it was in 1540-and for modern explorers, it is a reward in itself.

Coronado Trail

Historians don't agree on the exact route followed by Coronado. But Stewart Udall, writing in Arizona Highways (see "In Coronado's Footsteps," April, 1984), supports the view that it was a few miles east of present U.S. Route 666. Latter-day prospectors arrived in 1846, but their bonanza was as imaginary as Coronado's seven cities. It wasn't until 1870 that the real riches of the Coronado Trail were discovered, and they weren't gold at all, but copper.

Robert Metcalf was looking for neither gold nor copper when he spied an outcropping of the latter in that year. Accompanied by his brother, he was tracking a band of outlaws believed to be hiding in Chase Canyon on the San Francisco River. History doesn't record whether Metcalf ever collared his villains, but of the impact of his discovery of copper there is no doubt.

Underground mining in Clifton and Morenci gave way to open pit operations when the Phelps Dodge Corporation resumed production in 1937 after a Depression-caused hiatus. Since then, the open pit mine at Morenci has become the world's second largest; when it merges with the newer Metcalf pit just to the north, the combination will become the largest.

It is estimated that almost 800 million tons of ore will be removed from the Morenci-Metcalf pit before the lode is exhausted. In the peak year of 1955-56 alone, 105,646,000 dollars' worth of copper was mined in Greenlee County.

All has not been easy pickings for the citizens of Clifton and Morenci, however. A protracted copper strike, the closing of the Morenci smelter for environmental reasons, a disastrous flood on the San Francisco River in October, 1983, and the teeter-totter of copper prices have combined to make life difficult. But Cliftonians and Morencians are known as a rugged lot, and they persevere. Certainly they have some of Arizona's most gorgeous scenery near at hand in consolation, and some engaging historical anecdotes to tell to all who come to listen.

The Morenci one sees today, however, is not the Morenci of years past, a Wild West outpost where shopkeepers once made deliveries by pack burro and ladder, and where children were tethered to prevent them from falling on the rocks below their cliff-hanging homes. Since the pit opened in 1937, Morenci has been rebuilding, and the old town is no more, devoured by machines unearthing the coppery riches below the footpaths and donkey trails that formerly served as streets. A couple of miles southeast of Morenci, Clifton sits between towering canyon walls on the banks of the San Francisco River at an altitude of 3464 feet. Both communities, wedded to copper, are well worth a visit. Autumn is an especially pleasant season here.

Gazing down at Morenci's huge open pit gives one a better appreciation of its size than ten books of statistics. Those ore-haulers you see from the overlook on U.S. Route 666 aren't Tinkertoys; they're real full-scale trains, tooting and chugging twenty-four hours a day as the mine's bottom drops ever deeper into Mother Earth.

Steeped in history, the Clifton-Morenci district represents one of three very clearly defined "economic zones" one finds along the Coronado Trail.

Agriculture prevails at the extreme southern end. Autumn, of course, is harvesttime.

Coronado Trail

The farms merge with the copper industry at Clifton and Morenci. Farther north, cattle ranching and logging provide the lion's share of payrolls in the high country.

Flanking the Trail for most of its length is the incomparable Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, 2,003,552 acres in all, ranging in elevation from 5000 to 11,500 feet. Here are found some of Arizona's most beautiful wooded rivers and lakes, including Blue River, Big Lake, Crescent Lake, Chevelon Canyon Lake, Luna Lake, Greer Lake, and Woods Canyon Lake.

Wildlife is abundant. Don't be surprised if you have to yield the right of way on Route 666 to elk, deer, antelope, turkeys, or squirrels, not to mention a cousin of the huge black bear we saw. Not long ago, I had to stop my car for eight whitetailed deer which apparently knew all about the road's least-traveled reputation.

Paving of the last six miles of Route 666 was completed in 1962. Much earlier, as the last graded-though-unpaved link in the nation's first ocean-to-ocean highway, the route was formally dedicated as the Coronado Trail on June 19, 1926.

In 1971 Harold T. Shortridge, then a court stenographer in Phoenix, recalled witnessing that ceremony as a young boy. "Many of the contractors and people who had worked on the road were present. It was entirely constructed using mules and drags and dynamite." Understandably proud of their achievement, the road crewmen were somewhat perplexed when Governor George W. P. Hunt declared from a bunting-draped platform at Hannagan Meadow: "This is a wonderfulpiece of work. If I didn't have the best car and the best chauffeur in Arizona, I'd never have made it." Commented Shortridge in his memoirs: "Nobody today knows whether [Governor Hunt] was saying that in a humorous way or not, but it was not taken that way by some people."

With or without chauffeur, allow at least three hours to drive from Morenci to Alpine. Even that is crowding things a bit; four hours is better, and since you have to concentrate on the dozens of curves andswitchbacks, dawdling an entire day is better still. There are many places you can pull over to savor the scenery and photograph plants, animals, and birds.

You'll find no food, lodging, or gasoline between Morenci and Hannagan Meadow. The popular and venerable Beaverhead Lodge was sold and moved nearly two years ago; so now there are no services between Hannagan and Alpine, either.

From Alpine to Springerville, northern outpost of the Trail, things get a little busier. But not much. In fall many cattle ranches turn their bunkhouses over to hunters (elk, bear, deer, turkey, and mountain lion hunting are popular here). With the steady if gradual population growth, stores that once closed in winter now remain open year-round. Too, autumn visitors will find it's often still warm enough for camping or picnicking, both permitted almost everywhere in the national forest. There are, in fact, more than 800 developed camp and picnic units here, along with 800 miles of hiking and riding trails.

The natural experience along the Coronado Trail can be enjoyed any time of year, but it is its most rewarding in the fall. Some insist, in fact, that nowhere else in the West are the colors of the autumn forest so pleasing to the eye, the sound of the autumn breeze in the pines so sooth-ing to the ear, the smell of damp autumn earth so pungent to the nose.

And they may well be right.