U.S. 60- The Hidden Heart of Arizona

LOOKING FOR THE PAST ALONG US. Route 60

TEXT BY CAROL ANN BASSETT

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TERRENCE MOORE

Moonrise over the Hieroglyphic Mountains.

I sit on a rock just outside Wickenburg watch-ing the cacti turn blue. Stars pierce the darkness one by one until con-stellations emerge. Along with the moon, these stars were the only light guiding the Apaches, the prospec-tors, and the settlers who once passed through this region. Their presence is all around me, in the petroglyphs etched into these lava-capped moun-tains, in the ramshackle homesteads, and in the deserted mine shafts per-forating this country. Here, in the stillness of the night

HORSESHOE CAFE DEL

it's difficult to imagine the frantic activity that pervaded the territory: the clink of picks, the pounding of ore mills, the clang-ing of stew pots in the boomtowns that sprang up almost overnight: Vulture City, Harqua Hala, Polaris.

I wanted to know more about the history that shaped this region, so I headed into the central highlands of Arizona on U.S. Route 60, from Phoenix to Ehrenberg on the Colorado River.

Long before U.S. 60 became a highway, it was a dirt trail imprinted only by deerskin moccasins and the tracks of wild animals. In the 1800s, it became a deeply rutted wagon route for pioneers seeking the New Frontier, prospectors, and Army troops. (See Arizona Highways, May '56.) Today the road runs the entire breadth of America. It originates in Newport News, Virginia, and passes through nine states before terminating in Los Angeles. In Ari-zona, U.S. 60 begins near Springerville, snaking down through the White Moun-tains and cutting west about 400 miles to the Colorado River.

My journey began near Morristown, once known as Castle Hot Springs Junction. A former railroad siding, the town was the vacation jumping-off point for the great families of the Victorian Age: Cabot, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt.

Seeking refuge at a remote hideaway called Castle Hot Springs Resort, they traveled west in private railroad cars. Guests arriving at the junction stayed in a small hotel before embarking into the mountains on a grueling five-hour stage-coach ride to Castle Hot Springs Resort which required three changes of horses. Established in 1896 as Arizona's first luxury resort, the three-story hotel had a golf course and a theater. But its real attraction was rare mineral hot springs that bubbled out of the earth at 120° F. After a fire destroyed one of the main buildings in 1976, the resort closed permanently. A protective fence now keeps visitors out.

Whizzing down the highway at 55 mph, it was difficult to imagine that seas of native grass once filled these valleys, and the hills were fat with silver and copper. When gold was discovered in the Vulture and Bradshaw mountains in the 1860s, prospectors began pouring into the region and setting up makeshift camps along the Hassayampa River. Where one man found riches, another's fate was a lonely death in this unexplored wilderness.

In virtually every canyon where gold glittered in rivers or in veins of quartz, a mining camp sprang to life. Many of thesecamps grew into towns. Some even held the promise of becoming cities. One such camp was Vulture City, about 15 miles southwest of Wickenburg.

Legend says that in 1863 while searching for gold, an Austrian immigrant named Henry Wickenburg found a quartz outcropping laced with the precious metal. Another story has it that while reaching down to examine a vulture he'd shot, gold nuggets caught the miner's eye.

Whatever the case may have been, Henry Wickenburg set off a gold rush centered around a new boomtown called Vulture City. Within a few years, the new town of Wickenburg grew up around the mills, becoming the third largest in Arizona and nearly gaining status as the territorial capital in 1866.

That same year, Henry Wickenburg sold four-fifths interest in the Vulture Mine to Benjamin Phelps of New York City. Though the mine produced millions of dollars in gold, none of that bounty ever made it into Wickenburg's pockets. Soured on mining, the immigrant retired to an old adobe cabin on the Hassayampa River and began farming.

In 1890, when the Walnut Grove Dam gave way a few miles upriver, Wickenburg's fields were buried beneath tons of silt. About five years later, despondent and nearly penniless, he was found lying near his cabin with a bullet hole through his head and a Colt revolver by his side.

On the outskirts of Wickenburg, I pull over at a weathered building with bright red gas pumps from the 1930s. The screen door squeaks as I enter Hank's Antiques.

Inside, dusty shelves display remnants of a long ago era. There's a rusted ox shoe, wagon wheels, and a curious knife and fork combination for a one-armed man. Elsie Brumm, the 90-year-old proprietor, appears in a faded cotton dress.

Elsie and her husband, Hank, moved here in 1933, raising chickens and goats and selling goods from their small general store. "Wasn't nothing' here except a mes-

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quite thicket," she recalls. "Back then, U.S. 60 was only a single lane road. There was a gravel pit just down the way where the kids used to play. We'd watch those big machines come in here and grade the road every time the [Hassayampa] river overflowed its banks. It filled our store once with six foot of water."

I can still see the watermarks along the walls.

In the morning, I drive into the Hassayampa River Preserve across the highway from Elsie's store. The preserve was established in 1986 by The Nature Conservancy to protect rare plant and animal species, such as the Gilbert skink.

In Apache, Hassayampa means "river that runs upside down." The aptly named stream flows underground for most of its 100 miles, but here it emerges aboveground for five miles, supporting cottonwood groves and more than 200 species of birds.

I kick off my shoes and wade through the ankle-deep water, watching raptors glide through the trees. Surely this river must have been an oasis for the thousands of settlers who pressed through this region.

In 1868 Culling's Well, 38 miles west of the Wickenburg Stage Stop, was established by an Englishman named Charles Culling. Located in McMullen Valley, it became one of the most famous stations on the Ehrenberg to Prescott run. Culling had gained notoriety by digging a well 240 feet deep. A reporter in 1900 wrote that the well provided the only water for 30 miles in any direction: "By the well passes the old Ehrenberg Road, once the great highway in Arizona, and there concentrate roads leading to the Great Harqua Hala and many other important mines of western Arizona. It has been said that the road from the Hassayampa River to the well is blazed by the graves of those who have died of thirst upon their way."

One such victim was a lone prospector who was found dead within rifle shot range of Culling's Well. Alarmed by what was becoming a common occurrence here, the station keeper fashioned a "lighthouse" for future travelers by hanging a lantern from a tall cottonwood pole. It came to be known as "the Lighthouse on the Desert."

Time and the elements laid waste to Culling's Well. Love is gone. So is Forepaugh. Like most ghost towns along the highway, they appeared to simply blow away on the wind.

The sun ducks behind clouds as I head westward down this "trail of graves." To the north beyond McMullen Valley, rain hangs like cobwebs over the Harcuvar Mountains. There's not much traffic on this highway, just a truck full of hogs bound for Salome and a trailer full of horses.

About 50 miles west of Wickenburg, Wenden appears. In 1955 this small town was a stockpiling depot for one of the largest supplies of manganese ores in the United States. At one time, more than 150 mine owners hauled the mineral into Wenden from nearby Bill Williams River and other locations. Most residents envisioned a modern-day boomtown until the government stopped buying the mineral. But it isn't mining that interests me in Wenden. It's an old-timer I've heard about who still drives a 1930 Model A Ford down U.S. 60. I find him at his trailer near the outskirts of town. A button on his baseball cap reads: "Don't Tell Me What Kind of Day to Have."

I ask 78-year-old Dan Rohrig about his car, but he's less interested in talking about it than he is in taking me for a ride. I gladly hop in, marveling at how the windshield opens like a window. "Natural air-conditioning," he says, turning onto the highway. The engine purrs like a contented feline. A boyish grin appears on his face as he shifts into third.

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With its shiny chrome gadgets, this is a far cry from a jalopy. The car is a vintage model. Along the road, neighbors honk in greeting from their pickup trucks. I ask whether the car can make it to Wickenburg. "Sure," says Rohrig. "I wouldn't be afraid to drive this to New York and back."

By the time I arrive in Salome, the sun hangs like a great lantern over the Harcuvar Mountains. Shadows creep through the cotton fields like snakes.

How this place got such an exotic name is somewhat surprising. Pronounced Suh-LOME by the locals, the town's name does not honor Herod's daughter - the femme fatale who danced for John the Baptist's headbut a pioneer resident named Grace Salome Pratt.

I stop at what was once the Laughing Gas Station, named by the town's founder, Dick Wick Hall. Considered the Mark Twain of the Southwest, Hall was a satirist who wrote for the Saturday Evening Post. He made the town famous with stories about a canteen-toting frog who never learned to swim. (See Arizona Highways, April '89.) But beneath his off-the-wall humor, there was a serious side to Hall. He once wrote that Salome was a place where he could get acquainted with himself and "maybe find the something which every man in his soul is consciously searching for - himself."

Just south of the old town jail, a dirt road runs for about 10 miles to the ghost town of Harqua Hala. Gold was discovered here in 1888, setting off yet another rush. Saloons sprang up like mushrooms around the Bonanza and Golden Eagle mines. The first bar was a tent where whisky was peddled out of a five-gallon jug. Soon the amenities included a stage line, general stores, and a newspaper called the Harqua Hala Miner.

From Salome, Route 60 climbs steadily through Granite Pass. The desert changes from creosote flats to saguaro, cholla, and ocotillo before dropping into Hope. The town itself is nothing more than a wide spot in the road where, at the edge of an RV park, a misspelled sign proclaims: Your Now Beyond Hope.

Soon I'm descending through the volcanic rocks of the Plomosa Mountains. Beyond a lone windmill at the Timbuktu Garage near Brenda, Interstate 10 comes into view. I can hear it before I see it. Huge trucks whiz by at 65 miles an hour. Blinking signs advertise gas for "low, low prices." Gone are the adobe cafes, truck stops, and weigh stations. Rest areas have taken their place. I exit at Quartzsite, once known as Tyson Wells on the Ehrenberg-Prescott stage route. The town, originally spelled Quartzite for the rock, was respelled by the post office in 1895. The community attracts thousands of rock hounds every winter. According to one brochure, the motor homes they come in turn the desert into "a sea of aluminum."

In the old cemetery along the highway, a metal camel rises from a stone pyramid. This is the tomb of Hi Jolly (his real name was Hadji Ali), a Syrian camel driver brought over by the U.S. Army in the 1850s. Hi Jolly and his camels were part of an ill-fated experiment to improve transportation in the arid Southwest. When the strange beasts proved less than promising - nipping and spitting at the packers most of them were sold off or turned loose to wander in the desert.

So was Hi Jolly, who took up prospect-ing. No doubt he must have followed the stage road down to the Colorado River, a major source of transportation during the gold rush days. As I pull off 1-10 into Ehrenberg, it's hard to believe that this sleepy town was a major miner, surveyor, and hero of the Texas war of independence. The town of Ehrenberg (about two miles north of present-day Ehrenberg) generally made a bad impression on early-day visi-tors. Martha Summerhayes, wife of an Army officer, wrote of the port: "I did not go ashore. Of all the dreary, miserable settle-ments that one could possibly imagine, that was the worst."

Like many steamboat crossings along the river, Ehrenberg was a rough town of desperadoes, dance hall girls, prospectors, and gamblers, some of whom were shot to death when a game of poker got out of hand. One historian wrote: "Ehrenberg in the 1870s provided many avenues by which one might acquire six feet of space in boothill."

Of the 200 or more graves in the old cemetery, scarcely a dozen markers bear legible epitaphs; most are now nameless mounds. In 1935 the State Highway Department commemorated these early pioneers by fastening old mining implements into a small monument in the graveyard.

Just beyond the cemetery lies the Colorado River. I park my car high above the river and scramble down a rocky bank. A fish jumps from the shallows, leaving circles in its wake. Mud swallows build nests beneath the steel bridge leading to Blythe, California. I dive in and float in a back-eddy, gazing at the billowy clouds that tumble over the mesas. They're like ghost riders galloping down to stake their claims.

Editor's Note: For more information on the communities along U.S. Route 60 between Wickenburg and Ehrenburg, contact the Wickenburg Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Drawer CC, Wickenburg, AZ 85350; (520) 684-5470, and the Quartzsite Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 85, Quartzsite, AZ 85346; (520) 927-5600.

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Tucson-based Carol Ann Bassett's travel stories have appeared in The New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, and numerous other national publications. She has lived in Arizona for 25 years Terrence Moore, also of Tucson, has long dreamed of traveling U.S. Route 60 from coast to coast.