Arizona's Shrine of St. Joseph

Mountain stream, chocolate Niagara, scenic tributary... the LITTLE COLORADO RIVER

The Little Colorado River has had several names. That is fitting, because it's a river of many faces and many moods. It begins as three mountain streams, and ends as a canyoncutting tributary of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The inconsistent flow along its course ranges from a mere trickle in late spring and early summer to a torrent of brown after summer thunderstorms or drenching winter rains. It has a drainage area of more than 20,000 square miles, but most of the time runoff is slight and it's only an intermittent stream.

The river originates on Mount Baldy in what used to be known as the Sierra Blanca. Now that range is called the White Mountains, and the three sources are known as the stream's east, south, and west forks. They join at a point south of Greer to form the river proper.

As the crow flies, it's about 200 miles from the river's headwaters to its mouth in the Grand Canyon. But if the crow walks along the riverbank, the distance is about 350 miles. As it winds its way toward the Colorado River, the Little Colorado gathers water from the Zuni River, flowing out of New Mexico, and from Arizona's Rio Puerco and Lithodendron Creek, along with a variety of other tributaries, mostly washes and small streams. On its twisting, turning journey, the river touches or passes near a number of Arizona communities, including Greer, Eagar, Springerville, St. Johns, Woodruff, Holbrook, Joseph City, Winslow, Leupp, Sunrise, and Cameron.

Its ancestry probably dates back to the Cenozoic era some 70 million years ago, when a great river drained the western Rockies, dropping downhill through what is now the Four Corners area. That prehistoric river used much of the channel of the present Little Colorado, but then it flowed toward the Rio Grande. Something, perhaps geologic upheaval or a massive lava flow, dammed the ancient river and created a huge lake over much of what is now the

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(FOLLOWING PANELS, PAGES 24 AND 25, 26 AND 27, 28 AND 29) Luxuriant wildflowers brighten grassy banks along the West Fork of the Little Colorado. On the way to join its mighty namesake, the river gambols past conifer-covered mountain slopes, crosses high desert, spills over the cliffs of Grand Falls, Arizona's Niagara, and cuts its own dramatic chasm before linking with the Colorado in Grand Canyon National Park. LARRY ULRICH/DICK DIETRICH/JACK W. DYKINGA

Text continued from page 23 Navajo Indian Reservation. When the lake waters finally receded, the channel remained, later to become that unusual phenomenon, a northerly flowing river.

It's not known who gave the river its first name, but the Navajos once called it Tol Chaco (Red Stream), suggested by its muddy floodwaters. Don Juan de Oñate, the first governor of New Mexico, came upon it in 1604 and dubbed it Colorado, the Spanish word for red. Later, in 1776, Father Francisco Garces encountered the river and referred to it as Rio Jaquesila (Unruly River) and also Rio San Pedro (River of St. Peter). Farfan named it Rio de la Alameda (Tree-lined River). It Amiel W. Whipple in 1854 reported that it had been called the Flax River and was "lately known as the Colorado Chiquito" (Little Colorado), in obvious deference to the by-then-famous Colorado River itself.

The potential of the Little Colorado as a source of irrigation water was first explored by settlers in the 1880s. Heroic attempts were made to create a dam at Salado Springs near St. Johns, but it was washed out by a flood in 1905. Later another dam was built 12 miles upstream, but it too proved faulty and in 1915 "poured down death and destruction," causing a dam at Woodruff to burst. In 1917 a storage project once again was undertaken, and in 1923 the first water was delivered from Lyman Dam and its reservoir, now the site of a state park. Today there are five dams in use on the Little Colorado's main stream and five on its tributaries.

Despite its capricious ways, the Little Colorado also harbors places of beauty. Its canyon system is somewhat similar to parts of the Grand Canyon, much less extensive or massive but imposing enough to gratify modern-day explorers. Perhaps its most impressive sight is at its very end: the view from Cape Solitude, 3,400 feet above the junction of the rivers. When not muddied by recent rains and runoff, the Little Colorado is a lovely pale blue where it meets the dark green of the Colorado, and the contrast is dramatic.

Southeast of Grand Canyon National Park, near Sunrise on the Navajo reservation, is another Little Colorado River spectacle: Grand Falls, where the channel abruptly drops 185 feet. Centuries ago when molten basalt blocked a canyon the river had cut through the plateau, the diverted water wore a second gorge nearly 60 miles long around the tongue of lava, then plunged over a high rim of its former canyon into its old course.

Viewing the falls in all their splendor, however, is only a once-in-a-while opportunity, for a full channel of water occurs infrequently. But after a heavy rainstorm upstream, the usually dry river roars to life bearing a turbulent, muddy flood, and the Grand Falls become a chocolate Niagara.

That's the Little Colorado-often engaging, potentially exciting, but somewhat fickle.

Sam Lowe is a daily columnist for The Phoenix Gazette and a long-time contributor to Arizona Highways.

(OPPOSITE PAGE AND RIGHT) The Little Colorado joins the Colorado deep in the Grand Canyon. The brilliant turquoise of the smaller river-stained muddy brown after heavy rains-is created by mineral deposits along its course. About four miles upstream from the junction is the sacred formation Hopis call the Sipapu, a travertine mound through which their ancestors emerged into a new world. LARRY ULRICH/TOM BEAN