An Aussie Looks at Arizona

The San Pedro Riparian Area

Since early 1986, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has acquired 36 miles of choice streamside habitat here. Now the property has been designated a national preserve.

Aspiring morning near the San Pedro River: the sky is clear and a light breeze ripples across the wild grasses that form a wide apron where the river makes a gentle bend through the community of Hereford. Erick Campbell, a wildlife biologist, is driving on a dirt road headed for the Hereford bridge, a favorite stopping point for bird-watchers. Suddenly he slows his vehicle and stops. "What have we here?" he asks, nodding his head toward a large and stately bird that sits like a judge on a gray stump, a dozen feet from the truck bumper. "A red-tailed hawk," he says, answering his own question. The bird seems to think both the name and Campbell's presence are superfluous. It swivels its head awayfrom him but does not fly off immediately. The hawk, after all, is at home in this terrain, a condition Campbell would like to reinforce. When it finally takes flight, we can easily imagine its view and speculate on why it feels so comfortable. Seen from the air, the San Pedro does not look remarkably different from several other Arizona rivers. Like others, it appears as a graceful path of trees meandering between broad meadows and mountain ranges in the southern third of the state. But unlike its cousins, the San Pedro contains water throughout the yearthough at times a mere trickle. Long ago, this river of St. Peter developed a reputation that set it apart. Like the Santa Cruz that passes through Tucson, theSan Pedro enters Arizona from Sonora, Mexico, and flows north, dropping about 2,500 feet in its journey to the Gila River near Winkelman. Its special reputation rests on the belief that, even when it is reduced to a fraction of its former flowjust prior to the summer monsoon season-it still manages to sustain one of the richest wildlife populations in the United States.

San Pedro

Though the great hawk that Campbell saw provided a nice moment of excitement, it is noteworthy that the experience was not particularly unusual for this environment. In fact, within 10 minutes of that encounter, the biologist spotted two other species of hawks low in the sky, as well as a great horned owl gliding out of a mesquite thicket and a great blue heron lifting off from the shallow river.

Because of its abundant wildlife and its precious riparian (streamside) habitat of cottonwoods and willows, the San Pedro has been high on the wish list of ecologyminded organizations and individuals who for the last 10 years have been seeking to get some portion of it protected against development and pollution. At last, in April, 1986, the U. S. Bureau of Land Management took title to a stretch of the river between Hereford and St.

David that is 33 miles long and three miles wide. The original parcel was later expanded to include three additional miles between Hereford and the ArizonaMexico border. Legislation recently passed Congress that designates this land, under BLM administration, as the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area. Campbell, who is the BLM's San Pedro project manager, can hardly contain his enthusiasm when he points out that the land he stewards supports 345 species of birds, 82 species of mammals, and 47 species of reptiles and amphibians. Among the birds are Harris' hawks, gray hawks, vermilion flycatchers, blue grosbeaks, summer tanagers, warblers, and thrashers. There have also been several sightings of rare birds this year, including the green kingfisher, crested caracara, rusty blackbird, eastern phoebe, and blackshouldered kite. Mammals in the area include white-tailed and mule deer, javelinas, mountain lions, bobcats, kit and gray foxes, coatimundis, and ringtail cats.

Once, too, it was home to the shy but ferocious grizzly bears that wandered between the river and the nearby Huachuca Mountains a hundred years ago. Ocelots and jaguarundis, two other species that used to be found in the Huachucas' canyons and along the San Pedro River, have also disappeared. While no one seriously considers bringing back the big grizzlies, BLM wildlife biologists say there is a possibility ocelots and jaguarundis may be reintroduced.

The land that is now owned by the American public was formerly the property of Tenneco West, a Houston-based development company. Tenneco sold the land to a Phoenix developer who swapped it for BLM-owned lands on the outskirts of Phoenix. Archeologists and geoscientists say they have proof that the area around the San Pedro River has been populated for about 11,200 years. At two points on the river, Murray Springs and a spot now called the Lehner Mammoth Kill Site, archeologists have uncovered the bones of extinct mammoths, camels, and bison killed by a people referred to as Clovis Man. There are only 10 known Clovis sites in all of North America, and two of them are on the San Pedro River.

To University of Arizona ecologist Paul Martin, the San Pedro sites are even more remarkable because they are the only places on this continent where scientists have found both the remains of the extinct animals and the tools the hunters used to kill them 11,200 years ago.

Other fossils abound as well: of clams, lizards, snails, an elephant, a horse, a tapir, a tree duck, two camels, and a bird called

San Pedro PORTFOLIO

Where water flows across the desert, a precious streamside habitat results. Light plays through the trees, and the cool air echoes with the calls of wild birds. Such a setting is a photographer's dream. Here, the last fiery radiance of the evening sun behind the distant Huachuca Mountains silhouettes a grove of towering cottonwoods. MARK S. THALER

Near Fairbank, an autumn morning finds the foliage still green along a gently flowing section of the river. RANDY PRENTICE (INSET) A great horned owl narrows its eyes against the dawn sunlight. DAN FISCHER

A gentle mist rises at first light, and the early morning glow softens the riverside grassland, reminiscent of a Romantic painting. RANDY PRENTICE (INSET) Alert to every sound, a coyote stalks the dew-kissed meadow. BRUCE TUCKER

As fall turns leaves to gold, the peaceful yet dynamic San Pedro River reflects the scene in an azure glass. MARK S. THALER (INSET) Cooper's hawk, one of 345 species of birds this watercourse environment supports. DAN FISCHER

Great beasts and primitive men lived along the ancient San Pedro's banks.

(CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT) Researchers unearth a mammoth tusk; nearby they find an entire skeleton. At nearby Lehner Ranch, stone spear points survive from the time of Clovis Man. PETER KRESAN (OPPOSITE PAGE) Armed only with stone weapons, Ice Age hunters pursued enormous mammoths 11,000 years ago. PHOTOGRAPH BY HELGA TEIWES OF AN ARIZONA STATE MUSEUM DIORAMA Text continued from page 21 a gallinule. And remains have been found here of an elephant-like creature called a gomphothere, said to be the largest land mammal on the continent some three million years ago.

The Ice Age landscape that was home to early humans gradually gave way to a drier climate and different cultures. Thousands of years after Clovis Man disappeared, the Cochise Culture arose, so identified because the bones were found in present-day Cochise County. As historian Jay J. Wagoner has pointed out, these ancient hunters and root-eaters were a link between the earliest mammoth hunters and later Indians of the Christian era. More recently, the land once populated by Clovis Man, the Cochise Culture, and the Hohokam Indians belonged to Spain.

The Spanish friar Marcos de Niza, who entered Arizona in 1539 during a trek from Culiacan, Mexico, to the vicinity of what is now Zuni, New Mexico, may have followed the San Pedro for part of his journey. In 1938 another priest, the late Bonaventure Oblasser, translated de Niza's vague report of his journey and, in trying to reconstruct his route, showed him camped along the river near Fairbank on April 14, 1539. But no one knows for sure. Most historians say the exact route will never be known because de Niza's notes were so imprecise.

A year after Fray Marcos was in the area, the explorer Francisco Vasquez de CoroNado(as commented) crossed into what is now Arizona near Palominas. The probable location is protected as the Coronado National Memorial. For a time he followed a river the Indians called Nexpa, today's San Pedro. In 1692 the explorer-missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino trekked the San Pedro looking for converts and new mission sites. But today no remnant of the Spanish period remains along the San Pedro-with one notable exception. One of Arizona's most evocative historical sites is the 200year-old adobe ruin of Santa Cruz de Terrenate, a Spanish presidio or fort.

For several years, the Terrenate ruins have been thoroughly studied by archeologist Jack Williams of the University of Arizona. On a warm Monday morning recently, Williams stood amid the scant remains of that fortress overlooking the San Pedro River north of Fairbank and remarked: “This was not a fun place to be in 1776. The Spaniards came here as conquerors and left as evacuees. I have a feeling there were a lot of deserters from this place, because it seems you had a choice of dying here or someplace else.” Williams' wry comment about mortality was not flippant; he based it on reports written 200 years earlier by Teodoro de Croix, commander of the northern frontier of New Spain. Those documents indicate that assignment to Santa Cruz de Terrenate was like a wave goodbye. The presidio was in use only from 1775 to 1780, and Williams noted that no more than 60 men were ever stationed there at one time; yet during its brief existence, 80 men were killed by Apaches.

“In addition to the heavy casualties,” Williams said, “the presidio commander continued to face the problem of having only partially completed facilities to house and protect his men. Furthermore, the repeated attacks of the Indians prevented the harvesting of crops planted the year before. As a result, soldiers and settlers at the fort were literally starving to death.” It was a grim and dangerous period along the river. Yet the times provided little to equal a brief and bizarre skirmish

San Pedro

that occurred 66 years later at a point called Charleston Crossing, just 10 miles south of the abandoned presidio. The incident in 1846 has come to be known as “The Battle of the Bulls.” There is a plaque on a boulder near the spot where Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke and 500 soldiers were attacked, not by Indians, but by wild bulls. The Army had assigned Cooke and his commandknown as the Mormon Battalion because all the enlisted men were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to open a wagon road from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to San Diego, California. Historian Odie B. Faulk described what happened when Cooke and his men unintentionally spooked a herd of longhorns lying in the shade of some honey mesquites: “A private was tossed in the air and gored in the leg. The same bull eviscerated a mule before being felled by rifle fire. Col. Cooke, when confronted by an enormous rogue bull, prepared to make a run for his life. Luckily, a corporal shot the animal, and it died practically at Cooke's feet. Lt. George Stoneman almost shot off his own thumb while trying to kill one of the ferocious animals. Cooke in his journal referred to this incident as 'The Battle of Bull Run,' anticipating the Civil War battle by some 15 years.” The vast land that had been New Spain had passed to Mexico after the Mexican War of Independence (1810-1821). With the end of the war between Mexico and the United States in 1848, Arizona north of the Gila became American territory. But the region south of the Gila belonged to Mexico until the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. The land along the San Pedro consisted of two Mexican land grants, the San Juan de las Boquillas y Nogales and the San Rafael del Valle-the latter owned by Sen. George Hearst, father of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. Toward the latter part of the 19th

century,

“The star of enterprise has located another townsite on the banks of the San Pedro,” the Arizona Weekly Star reported on September 25, 1879, “and its name is Contention City.” Built about 10 miles northwest of Tombstone and named for the rich Contention Mine, the new town's location on the San Pedro River was no accident. The key factor was water. For abundant water was the lubricant, the solvent, the essential ingredient for turning the Tombstone district's raw ore into sleek, shining bars of silver bullion. Each of Contention City's three mills the Grand Central, the Head Center, and the Contention needed up to 10,000 gallons of water a day to process the ore, and the free-flowing San Pedro was the only source near Tombstone that could supply the quantity needed.

Ironically, it was also water that caused Contention City's demise. When the Tombstone mines flooded in the mid1880s, the ore stopped flowing to Contention City's mills. With the young town's economic base destroyed, its 200 or so residents drifted off to other diggings. Less than 10 years after it had first been surveyed, Contention City was a ghost.

Today, a few lumps of adobe are about all that remain of the once-prosperous mill town.

-James M. Crane

century, the San Pedro River area became a rather hectic place. Silver strikes in nearby Tombstone led to the development of mill sites along the river where the ore was smelted and loaded on trains. Today you can still see the barren remains of such places as Contention City and Charleston, once known as Millville. The picture changed drastically in 1887, however, when a devastating earthquake in Sonora hurled a shock through the San Pedro Valley that destroyed the mill towns and ignited a fire that decimated most of the grasses, willows, and cottonwoods along the watercourse.

It is not surprising, therefore, to hear Larry Humphrey, a BLM natural resource specialist, say that vegetation and wildlife along the river are in better condition today than they were 100 years ago. Even before the quake, he observed, the land had been stripped of many of its trees as settlers built homes and stoked the fires of their boilers and smelters.

Campbell, who has been assisting in the preparation of the BLM's management plan for the San Pedro, intends to see to it that the landscape is never again without endangering the riparian ecosystem. We're talking about managing people to minimize damage to the resource." In the spring of 1987, even before a portion of the BLM's San Pedro land was opened for recreational use, Campbell had the first test of his resolve. Representatives of Fort Huachuca came to him and asked if they could cross the river with tanks to go on training maneuvers. The biologist did not hesitate.

reduced to what it was in the last century. "These riparian, or streamside, areas are critical wildlife habitats," Campbell told an Arizona Republic reporter. "Riparian areas are the most significant ecosystems in the Southwest. We've lost more than 90 percent of our historic riparian areas, partly due to damming of the rivers. In the Southwest, there has always been a lot of competition for a little bit of water. The riparian areas were the first homesteaded. "What we want," he said, "is to make the best use of the river that we can "I told them no, that's not compatible with what we're supposed to be doing out here. They went away, and I haven't seen them since."

Additional reading: Travel Arizona, by Joseph Stocker, and In Coronado's Footsteps, by Stewart Udall, both published by Arizona Highways. Also, Fort Huachuca, the Story of a Frontier Post, by Cornelius C. Smith, Jr., available through the U.S. Government Printing Office or the gift shop at the post museum.

WHEN YOU GO...

For further information: Bureau of Land Management, San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, Box 9853, RR 1, Huachuca City, AZ 85616; (602) 457-2265. Nature Conservancy, Ramsey Canyon Preserve, RR 1, Box 84, Hereford, AZ 85615; (602) 378-2785. Sierra Vista Chamber of Commerce, 77 Calle Portal, No. 140A, Sierra Vista, AZ 85635; (602) 458-6940. Public Affairs Office, Fort Huachuca, AZ 85613-6000; (602) 533-3035. -S.N.. Getting there: The southeastern Arizona community of Sierra Vista is the most convenient point to use as a base if you're going to explore the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.

Sierra Vista, 189 miles southeast of Phoenix and 79 miles southeast of Tucson, is easily reached via Interstate Route 10 and State Route 90.

Where to stay: All visitor services, including motels, restaurants, car rental agencies, and medical facilities, are available in Sierra Vista. The main visitor center for the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area is eight miles east of town on State Route 90.

Other things to see and do: When you've had your share of enjoying the streamside flora and watching hawks and other birds along the river, head for shady Ramsey Canyon, 10 miles south of Sierra Vista off State Route 92. Ramsey Canyon (see the November 1982 Arizona Highways), which the Nature Conservancy maintains as a wildlife preserve, is the "Hummingbird Capital of the World." More species of the tiny birds are found there than anyplace else on earth. On weekends, you need reservations to visit; telephone (602) 378-2785.

The rapidly growing town of Sierra Vista, sprawling at the base of the Huachuca Mountains, is well worth a visit, as is the area around the mountain range itself. Fort Huachuca, a major Army installation that was founded as a frontier post in 1857, has an excellent museum containing relics of the days when cavalrymen first arrived to protect settlers from Apache raids. The museum is adjacent to a parade ground lined with historic homes. You also can visit the fort's cemetery and see the graves of Apache Scouts and area pioneers.

Some 15 miles south of Sierra Vista, off State Route 92, you'll find the peaceful Coronado National Memorial on the Arizona-Mexico border. In 1540 the Spanish explorer Francisco Coronado entered what is now Arizona in this general vicinity. There is a visitor center with a small museum and picnic area. Three miles beyond the visitor center, via a winding dirt road, you'll come upon a panoramic view of the San Pedro and San Rafael valleys from 6,575-foot-high Montezuma Pass.