The Miracle of Water on the Desert

TEXT BY BILL BROYLES PHOTOGRAPHS BY WILLARD CLAY By nature the Arizona deserts are dry, and the reliable water holes used by historic travelers and settlers were few. And it's true that, when viewed at today's highway speeds, the landscape can look parched. Yet nearly every mountain or valley has locally important pockets of water; places where a bird or mammal can drink are far more numerous and varied than even many residents of the desert can imagine. An early road sign just down the trail from a lonely desert well: "Agua Salada 75 miles; go back and fill your canteens."

The dot on my map read "water" but, from the looks of the arid terrain, only the faithful or the desperate would believe it. Right then, I was among the desperate. Alone, afoot, and a little afraid, I had just hiked across two flat valleys and through a jagged range of granite to reach the mouth of this canyon. The map had better be right or else

WATER ON THE DESERT

I'd have to consider several decisions, the least palatable being that this fine hike would abruptly end. I'd have to cache almost all of my backpacked gear and break for the nearest trace of civilization — 31 miles away.

The mountains of southwestern Arizona rise steeply from the desert floor. This canyon started with a sandy wash and raced 1,800 feet to a spinal ridge in less than half a mile. A few hundred yards out from the canyon's mouth, I spotted some prehistoric pottery and then a segment of an ancient human footpath, which I followed until it skittered through heavy brush. Coyote trails, too, converged toward the canyon as well as occasional hoof marks of deer or bighorn sheep. Their freshness could be a good sign if they, too, were coming for water.

From a scan of the land and map, I pegged the water hole at the base of a smooth-rock apron where, during infrequent torrential storms, surges of rainwater plunge down the canyon before being blotted up by the sands of the valley floor.

This water was a tinaja, which means “earthen jar” in Spanish. Geologically, tinaja signifies a desert-mountain rock pool, though pothole and plunge pool also convey the essence. It is literally an eroded cup in impermeable rock that catches runoff. Small ones may hold five gallons and last for a week after a rain; the largest may hold as much as 50,000 gallons and last yearround, except in prolonged droughts.

Ideally, they're filled twice a year during our Sonoran Desert's two rainy seasons, but this cycle offers no assurance. Spotty and meager rains make these tinajas unpredictable. Some pools have large catchment aprons that magnify any drizzle; a tenth of an inch may raise the water level the greater part of a foot. Others may demand at least an inch of rainfall to even start water flowing down the canyon bottom, so they fill only during cloudbursts.

This one lay heavily shaded in a cliffed gorge. Limbs of an ironwood tree arched tightly over the cool but dim retreat. I swirled aside the surface flotsam and sank my canteen well below the surface to suck in its fill. The hike saved, canteens topped, and the water treated, I lounged on a flat rock, contented, like a lizard basking in the morning sun.

Since then, I've discovered that desert water comes in many precious forms: tinajas, wells, charcos, represos, playas, springs, catchments, kiss tanks, washes, and even streams.

Some sit in granite, basalt, or sandstone, while others are perched on or sunk into valley alluvium. Rain in this part of America comes in two sessions: the frontal storms of winter and the thunderstorms of late summer. The rain is seldom much, ranging from three inches a year in the driest areas to a little more than 10 inches in the lushest of places. Most of what doesn't soak into the parched ground soon evaporates at a rate generally exceeding 120 inches a year; a 10-foothigh open barrel of water would be dry by year's end.

(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 18 AND 19) Travelers following the old Camino del Diablo, or “Devil's Highway,” staked their lives on finding rainwater tanks such as this one at Tinajas Altas, in what now is the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. It is said that perhaps as many as 4,000 people, including many 49ers on their way to the California goldfields, succumbed to thirst and hunger along the fearsome trail.

(BELOW AND OPPOSITE PAGE) Surefooted desert bighorn sheep that live in the rugged terrain below Baker Peaks in Yuma County are ideally suited for the steep and rocky descent to this water hole framed by sculpted sandstone.

Where rock pockets lie in fractured channels, some pioneers would make their own tinajas by lining the pockets with cowhides in hopes of catching 50 gallons of runoff here and another hundred gallons there to slake the thirst of family and stock. A variation was to lay out a tarp before the onset of a storm and then funnel the runoff into cans and buckets. Some miners used dikes and channels to divert

WATER ON THE DESERT

(BELOW) The great blue heron can be found in Arizona year-round when there is enough water to sustain the aquatic life that makes up its diet of fish, frogs, and even small snakes. Unlike the swimming pelican, the great blue heron walks along the water's edge in search of food. ROBERT CAMPBELL (OPPOSITE PAGE) Evening light plays on the patterns in dried mud at Aguirre's Lake, which was created in 1886 by the construction of a dam. Beyond looms Baboquivari Peak, which the Tohono O'Odham believe is the center of their world.

He preferred a very long fuse. The hole was generally about four-feet square and probably curbed and braced near the top. Many of these are still in use, though most now have replaced the windlass with a motorized pump or mill.

Later, of course, drilling supplanted dig-ging. The drilling derrick and windmill lent a permanency. Many of these hit layers of aquifer water, but frequently it was highly mineralized. "Salt well" may be the most used of all desert appellations, though Peroxide, Red Water, and Dirty Wells also indicate that not all water was tap quality.

One way to make a mark on history was to sink a well with your name on it, which was then perpetuated on the maps and in the travel guides. Wells bearing names such as Childs, McIntyre, Gonzales, Fred Stokes, and Charlie Bell are now etched into the geography.

In 1916, four years after Arizona's statehood, the federal government began a systematic survey of desert watering holes. Led by Clyde Ross and Kirk Bryan, these surveys produced road guides to desert watering places, many of which still serve travelers, game, and livestock. There were so many watering holes that even in three years of intensive fieldwork the surveyors didn't reach them all. Desert watering places are Nature's answer to convenience marts. Early-day travelers were encouraged to carry a rope and bucket in case a well encountered had none. With the standing A-frame and pulley, a horse or car could be used to pull up the laden bucket.

Cars also carried a shovel in case water lay below the sandy surface of a tinaja or arroyo, and a tarp did double duty as a device to harvest water from squalls and to provide shelter. But whatever the water source, a cloth strainer was requisite for the fastidious.

But it wasn't wells that watered the ancient people or led the first European explorers through the desert West. The ancients employed the mountain tinajas and the seasonal sources in the valleys. Early visitors to the land of the Tohono O'odham found that families lived near tinajas in dry seasons but moved to the valley when rains came. There they farmed corn, beans, and squash, using charcos or pools of water left by flood runoff in hardpan clay depressions.

The Indians went one step further and impounded water in charcos by raising an earthen dam at one end. This retains and spreads the water, allowing a field to be sown, as well as deepening and prolonging the reservoir. This type of agriculture is called temporal farming. A version of this for livestock became the represo, or stock tank.

The ancients gave descriptive names to ground runoff into unused shafts and prospect holes, so they'd have water and could save an extra trek to town. Others built cisterns fed by roof gutters.

Early desert ranchers, farmers, and miners often dug wells for their permanent needs, and soon the windlass and then the windmill came to symbolize the procession of civilization. These first wells were hand-dug affairs, some of them punching more than 200 feet into the unconsolidated earth and demanding more than a little courage from the digger. He was lowered and raised with a windlass. He relied on a pick and shovel, though occasionally dynamite was necessary and, needless to say, their water places. For example, the mountain range called Tinajas Altas, "High Tanks," was known to the O'odham as O'ovak, or "where the arrows were shot." This name comes from the myth of two warriors who shot arrows across the ridge. One's arrow cleared the mountain, but the other's didn't, striking the slope where pools of water formed. Another tribe, the Mohave, called another range that was an important water source, Harquahala, which translates "where the water flows high up."

The European explorers tried to follow rivers like the Gila and the Colorado, the Santa Cruz and the San Pedro. Even if the river dried for a stretch, they might find springs or isolated pools. Beyond the river valleys, they followed the trail system of the native peoples who had routes to and from virtually every natural water source. In this game of hopscotch, the explorers, the missionaries, the soldiers were usually guided by native peoples.

Springs sometimes do appear in unlikely places. Quitobaquito Spring and its neighbors at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument sit on the edge of a sandy flat and a rocky hill. Here, water is pushed to the surface through fissures in the earth. Another unusual desert water phenomenon is the playa. These are table-flat lakes where water flows in but not out. Sometimes covering square miles, a full playa might be only ankle deep. Yet, a number of people have been saved by a deluge on a playa. World traveler Raphael Pumpelly reported being rescued from thirst in 1861 by a cloudburst over a playa that gave the lake its first water in more than two years.

The least common of desert waters is the kiss tank. These are so named because of the method of drinking from them. They are so small, holding but a few pints at most, that "kissing" the rock basin where they are is the only way to drink from them. Strangely, they occur in deep canyon bottoms during clear weather when conditions are right for dew to form on sheets of impervious rock. During early morning, the dew collects in small depressions making desert dew ponds. These most ephemeral of desert watering places evaporate by afternoon.

Stories, both in fact and fiction, have spun around events at a desert water hole. Historically, intrepid explorers and scientists, bandits on the lam, valiant homesteaders, determined miners, and cattlemen found themselves around these water holes. After all, everyone eventually came to water. (And, yes, more than one desert spring or tinaja was visited by a moonshiner during Prohibition. The mash was made from

WATER ON THE DESERT

(PREVIOUS PANEL, PAGES 24 AND 25) The northern section of Alamo Canyon in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument has no permanent water, just depressions waiting to be filled with rain.

(BELOW) When the first European explorers arrived in Arizona, javelinas were here to greet them. JAMES TALLON (OPPOSITE PAGE) Dozens of birds perch in a cottonwood next to Quitobaquito Springs, a prime birding spot and the year-round home to about 30 species of birds.

Etiquette and law preclude camping right at the water hole, taking an obscured seat nearby is like buying a ticket to a series of nature documentaries.

In late summer, toads mate and tadpoles metamorphose in desert pools. Their cycle is swift; the spadefoot toad can go from conception through tadpole to hopping juvenile in 10 days. Red-spotted toads live in nearby rocks and vegetation, but they come to water at night to party and mate; they frequently can be seen leaving tinajas and represos before first light.

Deer and foxes generally arrive in the dimmest twilight, and they're so quiet that a drowsy observer will miss them. Around sunup doves and quail come calling. Midday may bring the croak of ravens or the scream of hawks. A coyote may steal a drink on its appointed rounds one's loud lapping once woke me from a noon nap, but usually they come as a family to drink at night. They are noisy guests, barking and whining and swishing their tails against rock and limb.

The action is slow but eventually rewarding. Once I even saw a golden eagle standing drumstick-deep in a summer's puddle, splashing and sipping while half a hundred thirsty but prudent doves silently perched in a nearby paloverde tree. Another time, as I sat beside a boulder, a bighorn ewe brought her fuzzy lamb in for its first taste of anything but mother's milk.

On the larger desert waters playas and represos waterfowl may pause to rest on their migrations. Few sights are more startling to see than mallards, herons, or even a pelican rising from a desert pond screened by mesquites and saguaros.

To put things in perspective, in summer a dove will prefer to drink twice daily; a cow or steer, daily; a horse, every couple of days; a bighorn sheep, daily to 10 days; and a coyote, daily to never.

So important to wildlife are these desert watering places that wildlife agencies, such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Arizona Game and Fish Department, build and maintain, often with volunteer help, hundreds of artificial tinajas, catchments, storage tanks, and represos. In the driest of times, they even haul water to depleted water holes.

To come to know at least one watering place is to feel the very pulse of desert life. By the way, if you head for Agua Salada and beyond, top your canteens first.

Continued from page 22 mesquite beans, cooked over mesquite coals and poured into discarded bottleware. Rusted vats, barrel staves, and copper piping can still be found near some sites.) Southwestern fiction-masters such as Zane Grey (Desert Gold), Louis L'Amour (Last Stand at Papago Wells), and Jeanne Williams (The Valiant Women) often set their conflicts around watering places.

In these times of swift transportation and municipal water companies, water holes lack the attraction they once had for desert travelers, but they have become marvelous places to view wildlife. Though