Organ Pipe at Fifty
ORGAN PIPE
Yesterday's Sonoran Desert outback, today's International Biosphere Reserve: Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument braces for its next fifty years...
Spring, 1937. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, now beginning his second term, signs a proclamation to preserve a unique section of Sonoran Desert for future generations. The action culminates years of study by National Park Service naturalists and other experts.
The document declares that “certain public lands in the State of Arizona contain...landmarks that have situated thereon various objects of historic and scientific interest,” and that it is in the public interest to set these lands apart as Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument....
Strokes of a presidential pen change lives as well as land designations. William Supernaugh's, for example. Fifty years ago, when President Roosevelt signed that proclamation, Bill Supernaugh was a hardworking young ranger in Rocky Mountain National Park, unaware that when funding came through (in 1939) for the new monument, he would be promoted to a pioneering post in the outback of the Sonoran Desert, a land entirely different from what he was accustomed to, yet singularly beautiful.
"Yes, beautiful," agreed Harold Smith, the current superintendent at Organ Pipe, as we talked on the telephone about plans for celebrating the national monument's fiftieth birthday. "Beautiful," he repeated. "And if you enjoy quiet backcountry mountain trails, camping under desert skies, watching sunrises and sunsets, looking at nature up close, at all the uniqueadaptations that the plants have gone through, at the patterns of the wildlife and all they have done to survive here, it can be fascinating. Sometimes spectacular!"
This golden anniversary, Smith said, would include some looking back. To Bill Supernaugh's time and then, in more recent times, to two important designations the park has received. "We are now an International Biosphere Reserve," he said, "one of only forty-three established thus far in the United States, one of 243 worldwide."
The primary objective of this world network of biosphere reserves is to conserve vital areas on our planet and the genetic material they contain. "For example," Smith continued, "there are twenty-one plants and animals whose only habitat in the entire United States is here at Organ Pipe."
The biosphere designation has brought unexpected benefits. "Last summer we had hundreds of foreign visitors, who came to experience this world-significant area for themselves. I've seen as many as twelve different foreign countries recorded in one day in our visitors' book."
Organ Pipe also has received the Federal Wilderness designation, another aid to conservation. Nevertheless, as experts become more aware of the delicate balance of ecosystems, concern for the future increases. At Organ Pipe, water is a continuing question mark.
The monument shares a thirty-mile border and underlying water table with Mexico. Since the advent three years ago of hydroelectric power on the Mexican side, there has been tremendous urban and agricultural growth there. The pumping of water from 150 Mexican wells runs around the clock, seven days a week.
"That is why one of Organ Pipe's major activities at this half-century mark," Smith said, "is the gathering of scientists who will do an evaluation of this area's ecosystem." As many as twenty-five specialists will be visiting in the course of the year.
My curiosity about the monument's early days increased. What must it have been like for the first superintendent, here in this remote region less than a hard stroll from the Mexican border?
I asked Smith about Bill Supernaugh. "Bill died in 1981," Smith said, "but his widow recently returned to Arizona to live. She could tell you more about the early days of the monument than anyone." As an afterthought, he added, "A little boy was born during their pioneering days." I found diminutive Anne Supernaugh, white-haired, smiling, and sharp as a cholla cactus, at home in Green Valley, Arizona. When I told her she didn't look like a one-time pioneer woman, she laughed and said, "Bill was the pioneer. Until we married, he was at the monu-mentment alone. Funds were very limited." His first tasks were to determine monument boundaries-not as easy as it sounds-and to locate a source of water. "Water, of course, was the big problem. He had to have it for the monument's headquarters, and he wanted headquar-ters to be as close as possible to State Highway 85." The closest house for Bill to rent was in Ajo, thirty-four miles to the north, and so it was to Ajo he brought his bride. "We were married the last day of 1941," Anne Supernaugh said. When Bill finally found water, he began work on a two-bedroom house with a large glassed front porch to serve as temporary monument headquar-ters. Anne helped. But World War II had begun, and Bill had to scrounge for materials.
"My husband went into the service, then was transferred to the reserves, and returned to Organ Pipe in 1943. Little by little, he finished the house." Anne remembers holding boards and straighten-ing nails. She showed me a faded photo-graph of the two of them in a framed, unwalled room. Canvas water bags hung from crossbeams.
"There was no refrigeration, of course. The sweating canvas cooled the water in those bags. To get a drink, you had to get friendly with the bees that covered thecanvas! But I loved it all." To hear Anne, a native of Evanston, Illinois, describe those days, the newly-weds lived in a desert Eden. She still does not seem to view the conditions under which they raised their baby boy as primitive: no neighbors, no telephone, no air-conditioning (summer temperatures at Organ Pipe soar above 100 degrees Fahrenheit); only limited electricity; a washing machine run by kerosene engine. Their child slept in a crib screened all around to protect him from scorpions "that sometimes dropped from the ceiling."
Her husband's work regularly took him away overnight, but, she said, "I can't remember ever being frightened or lonely. He'd be off on inspection trips-cattle still grazed in parts of the monument, and there still was some mining."
Occasionally Bill traveled with famous photographers (one of whom was Ansel Adams), who came to capture on film the austere beauty of the desert, the mountains, and the stands of organ pipe cactus. She remembers Adams in particular because he took her favorite photograph of her husband.
More often, Bill Supernaugh traveled on horseback into remote areas with scientists who wanted to study the ways plants and animals adapted to the arid environment.
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Anne greeted all visitors during his absence, even those not welcome, such as the rattlesnake that sunned outside the little back porch where she did the wash. She pulled little Bill in his red wagon for their daily walk, she told me, and he soon learned what he could and could not touch. Her face alight, she recalled the one-eyed coyote she named White Eye and the family of foxes who came for dinner scraps at her call. "But everything is different now. No one is permitted to feed the wildlife."
After the war, physical development at the monument came quickly. A separate headquarters building was constructed; the little family no longer had to share their house. Scenic drives were extended. Visitors increased. So did staff. A primitive campground near the Supernaugh house was cleared; many campers returned year after year. When Bill was promoted to superintendent of Platt National Park (now Chickasaw National Recreation Area, in Oklahoma) in 1954, air-conditioning was being installed in the headquarters building.
The pioneering Supernaughs are still in my mind as I drive west from Tucson to visit the national monument, but so are the people who knew this desert long before them: the Indians and the Spanish. West of the Tucson Mountains, State Route 86 unrolls, straight as if shot from a bow, through what appears on most maps as the Papago Indian Reservation. The early Spanish called these Indians the Papagos, "the bean eaters," and today archeologists are edging ever closer to the conclusion that these peaceful agricultural people are descendants of the ancient Hohokam. The Papagos are now legally known as Tohono O'odham, "the desert people." The name distinguishes them from their close relatives, the Pima Indians, known as the river people.The document President Roosevelt signed fifty years ago expressly protects "the rights of the Indians of the Papago reservation to pick the fruits of the organ pipe cactus and the other cactus...." This is in recognition of a custom centuries old.
In 1698 when the tireless Spanish priest and explorer Father Eusebio Francisco Kino traveled this desert on foot and horseback, he recorded in his diary frequent meetings with ancestors of the Tohono O'odham. He was touched by their gifts of water and fruit of the stately saguaro and organ pipe cacti, fruit he called pitahayas. "The chiefs came out four leagues to receive us, and more than 400 souls re-ceived us with the greatest expression of friendship, as had the previous ones, giving us still more pitahayas on the road, as also at the rancheria."
The Tohono O'odham still live in many of the villages, or rancherias, where Father Kino found them. Houses have been updated, as have life-styles, but the desert people still pick the cactus fruit and maintain other of the old traditions.
Another mountain range looms ahead as I near the center of the reservation. On the summit of one rocky peak the telescopes of world-famous Kitt Peak National Observatory shimmer in the morning sun. Beyond them, to the south, is a still taller peak, majestic Baboquivari, a mountain sacred to the O'odham.
I pass the turnoff to Sells, the reservation headquarters, where the tribe has recently opened a modern shopping center. In another hour and a half, I am in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and parked at the visitor center.
Superintendent Harold Smith is ready for my first question: where are the organ pipe cacti? "You'll see them on Ajo Mountain Drive and on the way to the campgrounds. That cactus loves the sun of our south slopes."
The monument is aptly named, because these 330,000 acres contain most of the stands of organ pipe cactus (Lemaireo-cereus thurberi) in the United States. The name is derived from the cluster of arms rising from ground level, an image remi-niscent of the pipes of a huge theater organ. Unlike the towering saguaro, whose night blooming continues into the daylight hours, the organ pipe blossom is strictly nocturnal, and each flower is open only one night.
Twenty-five other cacti are included in the vegetation here. Depending upon the pattern of rainfall, there are cacti in bloom almost every month of the year. As in oth-er parts of the country, spring brings the most wildflowers to this arid landscape. Superintendent Smith explains what he meant when, during our telephone con-versation, he used the word "spectacular." He was thinking of some of his "favorite things": summer thunderstorms that pro-duced sudden, dramatic waterfalls in the mountains; the annual but brief appear-ance of thousands of Colorado River toads-"they sound like a herd of sheep"; a once-in-a-decade spring that had followed record winter rains. "You couldn't go out-side without stepping on a flower. We had tremendous groves of poppies, magen-ta carpets of owl clover, and the orange globemallow-normally eight to ten inches -grew as tall as your head!"
In addition to his gathering of scientists, Smith says his staff is planning events during April that will involve nearby schools and communities. "We've been in touch with Lukeville and Sonoita, which is just over the border in Mexico, and with Why and Ajo. We hope we can get to know each other better." As I tour the monument, first with Interpretive Ranger Valerie Naylor, a biologist, and later alone, it becomes clear why visitors return to Organ Pipe year after year. Like the sea, this vast desert provides the quiet needed for spiritual refreshment and the time needed to see. Around any bend, the motorist or hiker may discover a breathtaking landscape, spot an unusual cactus or bird or reptile, or glimpse one of the larger animals: javelina, coyote, deer, pronghorn ante-lope. Here, vegetation and wildlife change with the elevation, which varies from 1000 feet on the southwest boundary, across two mountain ranges, to a peak of 4808 feet in the Ajo Mountains on the east boundary.
The proclamation President Roosevelt signed five decades ago mentions special “landmarks.” One is a protected oasis called Quitobaquito, with a spring-fed saline pond where an endangered species, the tiny desert pupfish, still exists.
At Quitobaquito the ghosts of earlier travelers can easily be imagined at rest under the cottonwoods, from ancient Indians to such Europeans as Melchior Diaz in 1540 on his way to the Colorado River; Captain Juan Bautista de Anza and Father Francisco Garcés, who in 1776 guided some 200 colonists northwest to San Francisco; Father Kino, who called the oasis San Serguio and wrote, “It has water which runs in many places...and ducks and birds from the marshes....” Ghosts, too, from the last century. What a refuge for the Forty-niners on their way to the gold fields of California, finding this green island on the man-killing trail known as El Camino del Diablo, “The Devil's Highway.” The Sand Papagos, too, are here in the shadows. When Bill Supernaugh moved to the monument, he reported a small group of Sand Papagos from Mexico were in residence here at Quitobaquito. He said they still ground grain, using a molino or grist mill and a harnessed donkey just as their forefathers had been taught by the Spanish.
My return drive is crowded with new images. And something more: new admiration for those who long ago recognized the special value of this vast and arid land, and for today's guardians who are displaying the wisdom of Janus, protector of ancient Rome, as they look both to the past and to the future to protect this heritage.
Postscript: About the Supernaugh baby who spent his childhood at Organ Pipe: Today Bill Jr. is better known as William R. Supernaugh, chief of the Division of Resource Protection and Visitor Management, Mid-Atlantic Region, National Park Service.
Selected Reading
Sonoran Desert Spring, by John Alcock. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1985.
Gathering the Desert, by Gary Paul Nabhan. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1985. Available for $20.95, hardcover, from Arizona Highways, 2039 West Lewis Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85009; telephone (602) 258-1000.
House in the Sun, by George Olin. Southwest Parks and Monuments Association, Tucson, 1982.
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
Organ Pipe is located near the southwest corner of Arizona on State Route 85, approximately 160 miles from Tucson, 150 miles from Phoenix. Entrance fee is $3.00.
Visitor center: Open 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. every day but Christmas. Rangers are on hand to answer questions and offer trail suggestions. A brief audio-video program offers an overview of the park. Pamphlets are available for guide-yourself tours. No restaurant. Picnic tables, water, and grills nearby. Stop at visitor center for camping permit.
Activities: Two scenic loop roads: twenty-one-mile Ajo Mountain Drive winds through the monument's eastern section; fifty-three-mile Puerto Blanco Drive, west of the highway, provides excellent views of the Sonoran Desert environment plus Quitobaquito. Hiking trails for close-up views of cactus and wildlife. A nature trail at the visitor center can be negotiated by wheelchair.
In winter, schedules are posted for guided walks, interpretive talks, cowboy coffees, and evening programs in the amphitheater. Both scenic drives have picnic areas with tables and pit toilets (wheelchair accessible) but no water. Only the visitor center and campgrounds have water. Carry emergency tools, including a flashlight; take drinking water plus water for your vehicle; avoid flooded areas, and never drive off the road. Dress comfortably and wear walking shoes.
Monument campground: Open all year on no-reservation basis. There is a 208-site tent and RV campground, plus a group camp for up to twenty RVs and twenty-two tents. Maximum stay during peak season (January through Easter) is fourteen days. Grounds have water, restrooms, grills, tables, parking pads for trailers, and a dump station. Pets are permitted but restricted. Fee is six dollars per night. Golden Age Passports permit fifty percent discounts for U.S. residents over sixty-two.
Weather: From October through April, expect sunny days in the 60s and 70s (Fahrenheit) with occasional light rains. Nights can be quite cool. Temperatures rise in May through September, often to 105 degrees Fahrenheit and above. Summer thunderstorms may be brief but can be violent.
Overnight pack trips: Campers and climbers must register at the visitor center. Permits are free. Backcountry camping is permitted one-half mile from any maintained road. No camping at historic sites or near wildlife watering places. Carry water and a cook stove; wood fires are not permitted anywhere in the monument.
Area lodging and services: Motels, gasoline, groceries, trailer parks, laundries, post offices, and other services are available in Lukeville, five miles south at the border crossing, and north in Why, where state routes 85 and 86 meet. For a wider range of lodging and services visit Ajo, thirty-four miles north.
For more information: write Superintendent, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Route 1, Box 100, Ajo, AZ 85321; or telephone (602) 387-6849.
ARIZONIQUES PATTON CAMPS
The popular movie Patton opens with the controversial general already at war in the searing desert of North Africa. But to ready his men for the rigors of desert warfare, General George S. Patton trained his soldiers in the deserts of Arizona and southern California. Now veterans who trained with Patton stateside have teamed up with the Bureau of Land Management and plan to preserve and interpret the camps where U.S. armored units learned the tank tactics that helped Allied forces win in North Africa, Italy, and Germany in World War II. The plan proposes restor-ing rock mosaics and street alignments within the camps and collecting histor-ical documents and photography of the area from the men who served there. For more information, write to the BLM Needles Resource Area, 101 West Spices Road, Needles, CA 92363.
GOLD DOUBLES
Production from Arizona's largest open-pit gold mine, the Cyprus Copperstone Mine south of Parker near the ArizonaCalifornia border, is expected to double the output of gold for the state. Scheduled to be on line this summer, the operation will ultimately include a pit three-fourths of a mile long, three-eighths of a mile wide and 300 feet deep.
Arizona currently ranks fifth in the nation in gold production with Nevada, South Dakota, California, and Montana leading.
ENDANGERED PRONGHORNS
Early explorers and hunters first reported pronghorn antelopes on the Gran Desierto of southern Arizona and northern Sonora, Mexico. But it wasn't until 1945 that these desert pronghorns were described as a separate subspecies, Antilocapra americana sonorensis, the Sonoran pronghorn antelope.
And the Sonoran pronghorn truly is different from other subspecies, A. americana americana and A. americana mexicana. The coat is more apricot in color, rather than the butterscotch of the northern antelope, giving the animal an overall paler look. The Sonoran antelope also is considerably smaller and has a narrower skull. The horns on the bucks sprout hair year-round, making them appear as though they are growing continuously. The Sonoran females, unlike other pronghorns, have no horns at all.
These small antelopes breed in midsummer, much earlier than other antelope, and bear fawns from late February to April, allowing the babies just a few precious weeks to feed on desert forbs that sprout only if winter rains have been plentiful. In dry years, new forage grows only after the thunderstorms of midsummer, and few fawns survive.
The animals once roamed from Tucson to the Californias and as far north as the Gila River; but early settlers hunted them for meat, and ranching depleted their already sparse range. As a result, the Sonoran pronghorn is now an endangered species. The estimated 100 animals remaining in the United States live on 2.5 million acres of protected habitat that includes Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. But no protection is afforded to 200 to 300 animals in Mexico, where grazing livestock and hunting are steadily taking their toll. Whether the small U.S. population will be enough to sustain the subspecies, not even wildlife experts can predict. On the Sonoran pronghorn's range, the desert is the game manager.
EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT DESERT LAKES
Spring is here and there's no better time to head for central Arizona's desert lakes. Whether you're fishing, boating, or just camping at the water's edge, you'll want to take along a recreation guide to your favorite lake. Desert Charts, a division of Wide World of Maps, Inc., 2626 West Indian School Road, Phoenix, publishes handy guides to Lake Pleasant and Horseshoe, Bartlett, Canyon, Apache, Roosevelt, and Saguaro lakes. Each contains a short history and description of the lake, recreational facilities, fishing information, available services, and rules and regulations. A detailed map includes water depths, coves, beaches, hazards, trails around the lake, roads, camping areas, and surrounding landforms. The boating and recreation guides sell for $3.95 each.
HOLLYWOOD, ARIZONA
Well, there isn't really a Hollywood, Arizona, but that doesn't mean the state isn't big in the movie business. Actually, the name Arizona has been used in more than fifty motion picture titles. Many movie goers the world over equate Arizona with the wild West because most movies with an Arizona moniker were Westerns. The majority of those were hour-long B-grade "oaters" that furthered the careers of such stars as Tom Mix, Johnny Mack Brown, Ken Maynard, Tim McCoy, Tim Holt, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers.
Although not all movies with Arizona titles were filmed in Arizona, over the last seventy years more than 300 motion pictures and thousands of television shows and commercials have been made here.
Why is Arizona such a popular location for moviemakers? According to William MacCallum, Arizona's Program Manager of Motion Picture Development, it's the weather (the state has the highest percentage of good filming days in the nation), a variety of locations that can resemble almost any part of the country, close proximity to the industry's headquarters, Los Angeles. And Arizona appreciates the film industry and welcomes its representatives back.
SAVVY SAYIN'S
"A man can learn a heap of things if he keeps his ears washed," or his eyes open for a book like Savvy Sayin's: Lean & Meaty One-Liners, by Ken Alstad. During his thirty-five years as a writer in the West, Alstad collected thousands of pithy sayings, and now he's poured the best of them into this 165-page book illustrated with woodcuts by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell.
Memorize a few of these sayings, and you'll never be stuck for a no-nonsense western-flavored observation or comeback around the corral (or punchbowl, or wherever).
A few favorites: Every jackass thinks he's got horse sense.
A dead man's shroud has no pockets.
A brave man doesn't admit courage. Cowards don't admit fear.
A stone stops rollin' when it finds the kind of moss it wants to gather.
A wishbone ain't no substitute for a backbone.
Savvy Sayin's is available for $6.95, postage included, from Ken Alstad Company, 9096 East Bellevue, Tucson, AZ 85715.
CALENDAR
April through June 21, Ragstaff. Navajo Weaving Exhibition. The Museum of Northern Arizona displays its exquisite collection of Navajo rugs and shows the series of films the museum produced on that art form's history and various styles. Telephone 774-5211.
April 3 through 5, Phoenix. UA Art '87. The University of Arizona Alumni Invitational Art Show features works of fifty professional artists. Sunday's session includes a quick-draw competition. Sale benefits UA scholarship funds. One Columbus Plaza. Free. Telephone 266-4820.
April 17 through June 28, Phoenix. American Western Photography: The First 100 Years. The Phoenix Art Museum presents this exclusive exhibit highlighting the history of photography in the West through selected images from the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. Telephone 257-1880.
April 19, Grand Canyon. Easter Sunrise Service. Churches serving the Grand Canyon community sponsor the nondenominational service at dawn at Mather Point on the South Rim. Telephone 638-9304.
April 24, Tucson. San Xavier Pageant and Fiesta. This spectacular event celebrates the origins of the Tohono O'odham (Papago) culture, the coming of the Spanish, and the introduction of the Christian faith. The scenario includes robed missionaries, costumed pilgrims, Indian dancers, and an impressive fireworks display at the 200-year-old Mission San Xavier del Bac. Telephone 622-6911.
April 24 through 26, Bisbee. La Vuelta de Bisbee. A weekend of world-class bicycle races draws thousands of fans to this turn-of-the-century mining town. Telephone 432-5991.
April 25 and 26, Scottsdale. Culinary Festival '87. The Great Arizona Picnic, a huge array of food, wines, and beers at Scottsdale Mall; Le Tour Culinaire, a black-tie trolley tour of Scottsdale restaurants; Mayors' Culinary Cup Dessert Competition; and the Wine Country Brunch. Proceeds benefit the Scottsdale Center for the Arts. Telephone 994-2301.
April 29, Tempe. Lecture by Jane Goodall: "In the Shadow of Man." Arizona State University brings this distinguished speaker to Grady Gammage Auditorium at 7:00 PM. Telephone 965-3434.
For a more complete calendar, free of charge, please write the Arizona Office of Tourism, Department CE, 1480 East Bethany Home Road, Phoenix, AZ 85014. Unless otherwise noted, all telephone numbers are within area code 602.
Edited by Robert J. Farrell Special thanks to Gary Boulanger, Bob Boze Bell, and Jerry Jacka for movie and gold mining memorabilia.
BOOKSHELF THE HOPI PHOTOGRAPHS: KATE CORY: 1905-1912, by Barton Wright, Marnie Gaede, and Marc Gaede. Chaco Press, 5218 Donna Maria Drive, La Cañada, CA 91011. 1986. 164 pages. $35 hardcover, $19.95 softcover, plus $1.50 postage.
The dreams of visionaries frequently fail to come to fruition but the concepts they create and their continuing influence are often well worth the dream. In 1904 Kate Cory, a shy, sparrow-like woman, attended a social gathering of the New York City Pen and Brush Club, an organization of artists. There she met and visited with Louis Akin, a gifted painter, who had just returned from a year of field study on the Hopi mesas in northern Arizona. Akin was fresh with enthusiasm about the artis tic offerings the area afforded and wanted to establish an artist colony in Hopi country. The following year, 1905, Kate Cory stepped off the train at Canyon Diablo, some fifty forlorn miles south of that much-storied land.
Akin's vision never came to pass, but for the next seven years, Kate Cory lived among the Hopis. How this quaint little lady worked her way into the affections of a normally xenophobic people we do not know. She spent her time painting and photographing. The selection of her photographs presented here is a gift to cherish.
Eighty years ago, the camera was still considered little more than a novelty. In the hands of Kate Cory, it became a tool of both artist and ethnologist. In the pages of this book are sixty-eight black and white photographs of Hopi life as it was: a record at once intimate and honest, possessing the drama of a time that will never return.
While several photographers of various degrees of artistic ability wandered in and out of the Hopi villages between the mid-1880s and 1912, only three made signif-istory offers one constant lesson: no single factor changes the character of wilderness more than man.
MAN AND WILDLIFE IN ARIZONA: THE AMERICAN EXPLORATION PERIOD, 18241865, by Goode P. Davis, Jr. The Arizona Game and Fish Department, 2222 West Greenway Road, Phoenix, AZ 85023. 1986. Second printing, 231 pages. $7 softcover, postpaid.
In 1829 Ewing Young and his nineteen-year-old companion, Kit Carson, trapped beaver up the Verde River to its headwaters in
THE HOPI PHOTOGRAPHS KATE CORY: 1905-1912
Significant contributions. Adam Clark Vroman first came to the mesas in 1885 and did excellent work. Jo Mora took his first Hopi photographs in 1903, and returned frequently for a decade. Like Cory's, his work spanned the ceremonial year of Hopi life, but Mora's images lacked the sensitive composition and intimacy of Cory's photographs.
In 1917 the reserved, sequestered Hopis banned cameras from their villages.
This well-designed publication was created by a trio of talented people working closely together. Each has contributed an essay to orient the reader and put the subject in perspective. Marnie Gaede gives us a perceptive picture of the artist, her character, courage, and idiosyn crasies. Barton Wright, a well-known scholar of Hopi and Pueblo cultures, sets the scene of people and place. Marc Gaede, who is both an anthropologist and a professional photographer, tells of the challenges he faced in making new prints from Cory's negatives. The patience and expertise devoted to the reproduction process has resulted in a volume of remarkable quality.
Each of the sixty-eight Cory photographs selected for this publication was printed on a single page, with no adornment needed. A caption shares the opposite page with an appropriate quotation from a well-known author. The sources include Walter Hough, Leo Crane, Gene Meany Hodge, and Frank Waters.
The three specialists who produced this book can take pride in a significant achievement. They have preserved the graphic images and suggested the distinctive ambience of the life and land of a distant people.
then-pristine Chino Valley. Here the party separated. The other trappers returned with their furs to Taos; Young and Carson headed west toward California. In what is now prime deer and antelope country, Young and Carson found no game or water and nearly perished before they reached the flowing fountain of Peach Springs. Later, after ranchers developed stock tanks, deer and antelope flourished in the area.
Obviously, not all of man's activities have brought about such positive changes.
Man and Wildlife in Arizona offers us a concise account of Arizona and its natural history as they were before the first settlers had made any significant impact. The author supplements excerpts from boundary survey reports, military and scientific records, and private journals with his own interpretive text. The result is a fascinating, sometimes saddening picture of Arizona as it once was-and of what has been lost.
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