EDITOR'S PAGE

EDITOR'S

SOMETHING IMPORTANT happened up in the pine-scented highlands of the Arizona Strip one cool, sunny afternoon last July. About two miles northeast of Jacob Lake, at a wooded spot normally silent except for the occasional sound of a passing car or truck on nearby U.S. 89A, a couple of hundred people quieted the lively conversations that had accompanied a Western barbecue and turned to the pleasant duty of dedicating a nine-mile segment of the Kaibab Plateau Trail.

The event acknowledged a fine achievement in cooperation, the teaming of private enterprise, government, and volunteer organizations in a significant public service. And it marked a giant step-a nine-mile step-toward establishing an uninterrupted hiking and riding trail that eventually will reach the length of Arizona.

When completed in 1989, the 60-mile Kaibab Plateau route will become the northernmost section of the Arizona Trail, visualized (and personally reconnoitered) by a Flagstaff schoolteacher named Dale Shewalter. That trail for hikers, skiers, horses, and mountain bicycles-no motors-will wind approximately 750 miles from the Utah line to our border with Mexico. And, in due course, it will become the southernmost link in a Great Western Trail that will reach from Mexico to Canada.

Much of the Arizona Trail route already exists as portions of present recreational trail systems on public lands. Such agencies as the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Arizona State Parks, and State Land Department have cooperated with Shewalter and the Arizona Hiking and Equestrian Trails Committee in developing the trail plan. But there are major gaps where no appropriate, nonmotorized routes exist, and one of these problem stretches had been the 60-mile distance between the northern boundary of Grand Canyon National Park and the Utah border. Most of that land lies within the Kaibab National Forest.

Striking an unusual private-public sector partnership, Kaibab Forest Products Company and the Forest Service reached an agreement under which the Kaibab company is providing the manpower for the trail's construction. The Plateau Group of the Sierra Club has volunteered to maintain the trail.

Other conservationist groups and the Phoenix engineering and planning firm of Carter Associates also participated in the long process that led up to the July dedication. The example set by that process is heartening on at least two counts. It suggests that the Arizona Trail-with all the opportunities it implies for those who love wilderness and admire our state's natural beauty-may indeed soon become a reality. But more important, it demonstrates that remarkable possibilities can present themselves when goodwill and the identification of common goals are allowed to take precedence over parochial interests.

Accuracy is one of the foremost objectives of Arizona Highways' editorial staff. Unfortunately, we fell short of that objective with an embarrassing rash of errors in a pair of our summer issues.

The photograph of Tucson at night, on page 19 of the August issue, was reversed in reproduction. That 226-mule team (!) mentioned near the bottom of page 16 was intended to total 26. And though the reference to 20-mule teams on page 17 sounds feasible, we are informed by a reader who was there at the time that teams were limited to six mules in order to negotiate the tight curves of the Apache Trail.

Much more confusing than miscounting mules, however, was switching the locations of the two power plants in the historic Childs-Irving generating complex. Childs, not Irving, is on the Verde River; Irving, not Childs, is on Fossil Creek. In successive issues of the magazine, we implied that two individuals were deceased who were in fact alive. Our July article on World War II quoted "the late Newell Stewart, mayor of Phoenix from 1942 to 1944...." We learned from Mr. Stewart's nephew that the former mayor still resides in Phoenix. In August we credited authorship of the article on Charles Poston to "the late novelist John Myers Myers." Mrs. Myers graciously informed us that, although suffering an extended and severe illness, Mr. Myers is living. We sincerely apologize to these gentlemen and to their families.