Arizona's Scenic Byways: Nobody Stops at Alto Anymore

If any road was bound for glory, Josiah Bond was convinced it was the one that passed near his front door at Alto, a community in the foothills of the Santa Rita Mountains. Today Alto consists of an adobe ruin, a U.S. Forest Service marker, and a great silence. Bond, a mining engineer, schoolteacher, and poet, was so enamored of the road connecting Alto with nearby Patagonia that in 1935 he wrote a letter extolling its virtues to a Nogales newspaper. It ended with this observation: "The road I have here talked about is headed for the pass of the two great peaks of the Santa Rita Mountains, and, as these are [among] the highest in the state, there is here a chance to develop a great scenic route across the range and connect Nogales and Tucson, which will be an attraction for tourists from other states." Bond's idea for a scenic route, based on what he knew about the area, was a good one; but nothing was done, and, by the time he died in 1938, the idea was all but forgotten. Bond had lived at Alto thirtythree years. His wife, Minnie, was postmaster there as well as the schoolteacher at nearby Alto School. In 1922, while riding home from the classroom on horseback, Minnie was caught in a late afternoon thunderstorm, struck by lightning, and killed. Bond continued to occupy their large adobe house, a remnant of which remains standing, until his death.

The Forest Service road that branches off State Route 82 and eventually passes near Bond's house today remains remarkably picturesque and a little eerie. Located about eighty miles southeast of Tucson, the road bisects a rich silver mining district that is more sparsely populated today than it was a hundred years ago. In the middle of the last century, Bond's road was a wagon route connecting Patagonia and Tubac, and the scene of bloody skirmishes between Mexicans and Apaches. Later, the Indians' victims were often Anglo miners and ranchers. The main point along the road was the headquarters of the Santa Rita Silver Mining Co., a subsidiary of the Sonora Exploring and Mining Co., established in 1858. Old maps identify this site as the Hacienda de Santa Rita; it was 7.5 miles east of Tubac. Raphael Pumpelly, a native New Yorker fresh out of college, took his first job as a professional mining engineer with the Santa Rita company in 1860, at which time the company owned twenty-four veins of silver in the Santa Rita Mountains. Josiah Bond would have enjoyed the acquaintance of Pumpelly, had the two been in the area at the same time. Pumpelly was not only a knowledgeable mining engineer; he also was a literate, intelligent, and sensitive observer. In his later years, Pumpelly traveled widely and eventually recorded his experiences in a highly readable memoir. In 1965 a portion of that work was extracted by Andrew Wallace of Tucson and published as Pumpelly's Arizona, a book that has already become a collector's item. In the memoir, Pumpelly described his base in the Santa Ritas with an eloquence that would have pleased Josiah Bond: "No other part of the world is so strongly impressed on my memory as is this region, and especially this valley. Seen through its wonderful clear atmosphere, with a bright sun and an azure sky, or with every detail brought out by the intense light of the moon, this valley has seemed Once proposed as a scenic highway between Nogales and Tucson, the Patagonia-Alto road is today little more than a dirt track winding through the high desert. It passes evocative ruins left behind by pioneers and later residents. The adobe home of Josiah and Minnie Bond (BELOW) was also the post office.

Text by Sam Negri Photography by Randy Prentice

Alto

A paradise; and again, under circum-stances of intense anxiety, it has been a very prison of hell." The "intense anxiety" was a reference, primarily, to Indian attacks. Pumpelly lived in almost constant fear of attack from Apaches, narrowly escaped death during at least one such encounter, and recorded with great emotion his discov-ery of the body of Horace C. Grosvenor, a close friend and his supervisor in the Santa Rita mining operation, for whom the nearby Grosvenor Hills were named. Pumpelly found Grosvenor within min-utes after he'd been killed by Apaches. He wrote: "The injured man lay in a pool of blood; two lance wounds through the throat had nearly severed it from the body, which was pierced by a dozen other thrusts. A bullet hole in the left breast had probably caused death before he was mutilated with lances. I have seen death since, and repeatedly under circumstances almost as equally awful, but never with so intense a shock...." Pumpelly's is only one of several horror stories in which settlers and Apaches suffered brutal deaths. The area, not surprisingly, has become the stuff of legends because of its real and embroidered past.

One such tale involves the Salero Mine, a short distance southeast of Bond's house at Alto. The Salero was mined by Span-iards when Arizona and Mexico were still ruled as New Spain. A Forest Service sign in front of the house, which also served as the Alto post office, claims that Jesuit priests from Tumacacori Mission (just south of Tubac) also extracted silver from the Salero's veins-though the historical record indicates that was unlikely. It has also been said, by Bond as well as others, that the Salero Mine was given its name by a visiting bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. The missionaries at Tumacacori, the story says, gave the bish-op a saltcellar-salero in Spanish-made of silver extracted from the mine that came to bear that name. But that story, like several others about the Alto area, remains undocumented. A more recent dweller along the Alto road was a different sort of legend. Mark Lulley, who with his brother Louis ran a bar in Nogales called the Casino, re-opened the Alto mine in 1875 and later established another in the same area which he named "The Wandering Jew." Lulley was reputedly a wheeler-dealer in mining properties and offered his so-called expertise to anyone who requested it. "Lucky Lulley, the Wandering Jew" -as he advertised himself in a Nogales news-paper-was a colorful character, who was also remembered for allegedly capturing and taming a pair of bear cubs. He sup-posedly marched up Pennsylvania Avenue with his trained bears during the inau-gural parade for President William McKin-ley in 1897. Later, Lulley said, he was "decorated" by the President himself.

Alto

That, at least, was the story Lulley told the Nogales newspaper when he returned home to Arizona.

In more recent years, the terrain that was home to Lulley, Pumpelly, and Bond has appeared tranquil, a verdant landscape of rolling hills covered by high desert scrub. Most of the area now falls within the Coronado National Forest. Only one relatively new sign along the road hints that the place may not have outrun its violent past. The sign, erected by the Salero Ranch, warns visitors against carrying firearms, and notes that two ranch employees were murdered in the immediate area. The Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Department says the sign was erected after James T. McGrew, a ranch hand, and Fernando Estrada, an undocumented alien who was working with him on a fence, were shot and killed by two men during a robbery attempt on October 18, 1982. A Mexican citizen was subsequently convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to Arizona State Prison; a second suspect is believed to be living in Mexico.

Such incidents are extremely rare, of course, and the area attracts far more birdwatchers, hikers, and campers than thieves. The unpaved road is accessible with a two-wheel-drive vehicle as far as Alto, though it is not advisable to drive it in a low-riding sedan. Beyond Alto you will need four-wheel-drive. As Josiah Bond wrote in 1935, "This road has hadmany ups and downs." The ups and downs are still there, smoothed out most of the way but rippled with rocks in places. In early spring and during the summer months, Sonoita Creek and other washes-dry most of the year-may be running streams, and you may have to ford hubcap-deep water in places. But there usually is no danger in doing so, as long as you are not in heavy rain and no cloudburst has occurred farther upstream. In such cases, stay well clear of desert streambeds.

As a feature writer for The Arizona Republic, Sam Negri frequently roams the back roads of southern Arizona. He has also published articles in The New York Times, The New York Quarterly, and the Yale Alumni Magazine.

Selected Reading Travel Arizona, by Joseph Stocker, Arizona Highways Books, Phoenix, 1986. Available for $8.95, postage included, from Arizona Highways, 2039 West Lewis Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85009.

Back Roads of Arizona, by Earl Tholander, Northland Press, Flagstaff, AZ, 1978.