High Country Getaway: Crown King and the Bradshaws

HIGH COUNTRY GETAWAY Rustic Crown King is the cool summer capital of the Bradshaw Mountains

On a typical map, they appear as small gray smudges in the left middle of the state. But on the physical landscape, Arizona's Bradshaw Mountains form a mighty mass rising to heights of almost 8,000 feet. From the desert below they loom a shadowy blue in the haze of morning; then, in the glare of midday, they turn brown and gaunt along the flanks, piney green on top.

In this highland retreat about 40 airline miles northwest of Phoenix (twice that by road), you're likely to wear a sweater in early morning even in midsummer and build a fire in the stove or fireplace as soon as night falls. Half a century or so ago, in the days before air-conditioning was common, the City of Phoenix leased from the U.S. Forest Service a 1,830-acre tract in the Bradshaws called Horsethief Basin. Here the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built a dam to form a lake and put up cabins and a store-and Phoenicians had a city-sponsored wilderness resort in the cool pines.

A journalist of the period rhapsodized about how “this perfect spot, the historic and romantic old Horsethief Basin, lies waiting like a vast upturned hand just under the sky, a forgotten hand patiently holding out to Phoenix, the Salt River Valley, and to all of central Arizona the answer to all their summer vacation problems.” The citizens agreed with the assessment, and Horsethief Basin became so popular that would-be visitors had to make cabin reservations a year in advance.

As Phoenix burgeoned into a metropolis, the modest facility located well beyond its borders and capable of accommodating only a tiny fraction of its citizens no longer seemed an appropriate municipal service. The city relinquished its lease in 1966. But there are still a few cabins there as well as a Forest Service campground, and Horsethief Basin continues to attract vacationers appreciative of its isolation.

The Bradshaws occupy an area roughly defined as north of Lake Pleasant Regional Park, west of Interstate Route 17, south of Prescott, and east of the hamlets of Wilhoit and Wagoner. The mountain range encompasses perhaps a third of Prescott National Forest's 1¼ million acres.

Prospector William Bradshaw gave his name to these mountains. He came up from La Paz on the Colorado River in 1863, made a small strike, and left. What happened thereafter-Bradshaw died too soon to know it was one of the biggest gold and silver booms in the West. Mining camps sprang to life and prospered and, just as suddenly, faded away. Bradshaw City itself once had a population of 5,000. All you'll see now is a clearing in the pines and part of a building foundation.

Why, in light of their great natural beauty and pleasant climate, are the Bradshaws not overrun with people? Once south of the community of Groom Creek, you probably won't find more than 200 year-round residents in that whole handsome range. Throw in another 500 or so summer folk, scattered in cabins here and there, and you have the population of the Bradshaws.

Undoubtedly a major limiting factor is the primitive nature of the roads. If you're heading south from Prescott on the Senator Highway (an extension of Mount Vernon Avenue), you'll have about 11 miles of pavement; thereafter the “high-way” is a gravel or dirt road. So is the rest of the Bradshaws' road net, including the access route from I-17's Exit 248 (the Crown King-Horsethief Basin turnoff). This twisting gravel road and some of the others can be navigated in a standard automobile; but in much of the range you're well advised to have a four-wheeldrive vehicle.

The venerable Senator Highway takes you through much of the historic mining region and past Battle Flat, site of an earlyday engagement between frontiersmen and Indians. Eventually the extended Senator route leads to Crown King and Horsethief Basin-as does the road from Interstate 17. From Exit 248 that road takes you first through Bumble Bee, once a stop on the old Phoenix-Prescott stage route. Today it has a population of five. About the only building of special interest is the home of Jerrell and Elissa Fulton, who say 90 per cent of their place and a very nicelooking place it is was built of salvaged materials from old hotels and other structures in Phoenix.

Around 1969 something big almost happened to Bumble Bee. A Cave Creek restaurateur named Ed Chilleen and some fellow investors sought to replicate an oldtime Western mining town, a kind of miniature Knott's Berry Farm enterprise, as Chilleen describes it. There were log cabins and an assay office and a shooting gallery. The governor even came out for the dedication; but the project failed, and Chilleen and his friends took a $100,000

Loss. Back to quiet desert went historic Bumble Bee. Stories vary as to how the settlement got its name. The one that sounds most plausible tells of a group of prospectors who were grievously stung when they blundered into a nest of bees in the cliffs above nearby Turkey Creek. About 10 miles up the road and a thousand feet or so higher is Cleator. Population: 10. Once known (when the railroad ran through it) as Turkey Creek Siding, it was renamed with pardonable pride by James P. Cleator, who acquired the town, lived there for 55 years, and passed it on to his son, Tom. Tom Cleator himself is now 63, a trifle bent, with a luxuriant beard and thick white hair that is bunched under a visored "Indy Speedway" cap. He earns as much livelihood as he seems to need from an amazingly cluttered store and bar. Contained therein, among many other things, are the distributor off a 1937 Lincoln Zephyr and a spiked German helmet that his dad got for selling war bonds during World War I. Tom Cleator also has a silver mine-a good one, he says. "Just waiting for the price of silver to go up." From Cleator, you continue to gain altitude on a road that once was the rightof-way of the old Bradshaw Mountain Railroad, more formally known as the Prescott and Eastern, with 10 of the best examples of switchbacks you could hope to encounter. (See Arizona Highways, April 1980.) Between here and Crown King, the road climbs through chaparral and manzanita into stands of juniper and piñon, and finally to the realm of the ponderosa pine. The scenery is a wondrous, wild kaleidoscope of mountain vistas, ridge after ridge undulating into the blue distance, marred only occasionally by the tailings of a small, wistful, long-abandoned gold mine. And the wildlife! Deer and javelina and

he Crown King Saloon

(BELOW, LEFT) as seen from the Tie House before the latter burned. The two restaurants stood face-to-face on opposite sides of Crown King's main street. When it is rebuilt, the Tie House will once again boast the longest brasstopped bar in Arizona. (BELOW) The roads up to Crown King provide many scenic outlooks over the pine-covered, history-rich Bradshaw Mountains. coyotes; lots of rabbits-both jack and cottontail-and unnumbered squirrels. And so to Crown King, the capital, as it were, of the Bradshaws. Elevation: 5,800. Population: approximately 165 year-round inhabitants.

There are at least two stories explaining the community's name. One, probably apocryphal, tells of “royalist” European immigrants among the folk who settled here in the 1880s and worked the great mine, said to have yielded $1½ million in gold and silver in one year alone. When their homeland crowned a new monarch, the sentimental expatriates decided to honor him by calling the mine and adjacent town “Crowned King.” The other explanation simply attributes the name to the peaks surrounding the town, rising like the points of a crown. In any event, the post office deleted the “-ed” from Crowned, and Crown King it has been ever since.

The town has an “old-timey” ambience. One restaurant, The Eatery, complete with bar, is located in the old Crown King Saloon, built in 1916 and doubtless appearing today much as it did then. “Depending on the weather, the heat in the kitchen and/or the mood of the cook,” proclaims the menu, “there is very likely a daily special...maybe two or more.” The saloon also has an upstairs with rooms. “They called it a boarding house, but you only boarded there for a fewminutes,” muses proprietor Larry Bard. The other restaurant (its saloon claimed the longest brass bar in Arizona) was the Tie House, so called because its walls were made of ties from the old railroad. The man who built it reportedly paid $30 for the wood. Before it became a restaurant and tavern, the premises were shared by a blacksmith shop and the post office. A fire destroyed it last May, and it is being completely rebuilt.

Paul Turley, who once owned the Tie House, has applied his entrepreneurial instincts in various ways. At times he has operated a jeep tour business. Once he installed a blue plastic cover inside a truck bed and filled it with water, then sold baths to tourists at a dollar a dunk-and made $200 for a fire district benefit.

Sandy Turley runs a curio and gift shop called The Prospector. (A sign in front proclaims the area is a “Shopping Mall.”) She is also the proprietor of the Crown King Depot, a cluster of 10 rustic-looking (but modern inside) rental cabins.

And then there's the General Store. The proprietors are Jack and Jeannie Riedl (pronounced riddle). Weary of the city, they purchased the store and moved where their hearts and a summer cabin dictated. The store is more than a hundred years old. Says Mrs. Riedl, “It's basically the same as it was a century ago”-ancient display cases, sagging wood floor, old brass scales.

So there you have Crown King and the Bradshaws-the closest high country to the Valley of the Sun. It's cool, green, “oldtimey,” and apparently determined to stay that way. You'll look hard and far through the Bradshaws to find anybody who wants a paved road put through from Phoenix. Even Paul Turley, who might be expected to benefit financially, says, “The worst thing that could happen here is if they paved that road.” He adds, thoughtfully and thankfully: “There's a lot of country up here. A lot of country.” Just as Paul Turley did, you can say that again.