Legend-haunted Skull Valley

Norman Rockwell somehow missed this place with a name Edgar Allan Poe would've loved. A town of six buildings in an impossibly beautiful valley on the western slope of the Bradshaw Mountains due west of Prescott, a little bit hidden, a little bit out in the open, an Eden of green with a ghastly name.

Skull Valley

Don't be alarmed by the name. It doesn't fit what the eye beholds: spinning windmills, calves dozing in the sun, and cowboys tipping their hats to women outside the post office. Nor does it fit what the ear hears: the music of train whistles above the silence of the afternoon, the wind swishing through the willows.

Ask first-time visitors their impression of this narrow five-mile-long valley, and the answer is the same.

They'll describe driving down from Prescott on Yavapai County Road 10, known as Iron Springs Road, and seeing the dark, churlish mountains give way to a hideaway of trees and grass so lush it seems unreal, as if snatched from an artist's heart and slapped onto canvas.

As I poked around Skull Valley, a 250post-office-box town, I wondered: Why does a place so tiny have so many artists? Metal crafter Doug Beebe, standing out-side the one-time dairy barn in which he lives, aimed his eyes out over heaven's landscape and gave the matter a good long ponder.

"Trees and green," he said simply, and that was just about good enough for me. Skull Valley is a place of surprises. Stick around a few days, and you might even see an outhouse rolling down the street.

A resident tells the story of some folks returning to their old homestead and talking with the new owner. Still on the property was an outhouse.

The talk gave the new owner an inkling of the couple's attachment to the little frame structure, and he said, "By gosh, why not take it home with you?"

The old-timers couldn't believe their good fortune. They backed up their truck, dropped the keepsake onto the flatbed, and took off down the dirt lane, happy as hoot owls.

Some of the town's other residents were more than a bit perplexed when they gazed out their windows that fine day and saw an outhouse skipping town.

Skull Valley harbors many such stories.

There's the one about ranchers long ago not wanting to trudge into the mountains to cut cedar trees to make fence posts. So they went to the creek and chopped a few cottonwoods. All was well until those fertile limbs took root. Next thing you knew, ranchers all around the valley had range fences that were growing.

They swear by that one at the cafe. As for the town's bloodcurdling name, the best we can do is tell a couple of stories, both born in mayhem.

One comes from the January 20, 1872, edition of Prescott's territorial newspaper, The Weekly Miner, which says: "It [Skull Valley] derives its name from the fact that the first whites who entered it found huge piles of bleached Indian skulls that had once belonged to warriors of con-tending tribes, who had met here, and fought a bitter fight."

But the paper offered no further details, so there the legend hangs. Another possibility stems from a shoot-out that occurred in the valley on August 13, 1866.

Freighter Charley Freeman was hauling supplies to Prescott with an escort of 17 soldiers when hostile Indians approached on the pretense of wanting to barter. Each carried a knife concealed beneath a piece of buckskin. A battle erupted. Years later Freeman gave the newspapers a memorable quote describing his role in the fight that left 23 Indians dead on the hills: "I had a big double-barrel gun and chucked a handful of buckshot into each barrel and just mowed the lizard-eaters down."

Something tells me if old Charley were alive today, he'd have hoop earrings and his own web site. Anyway, as the tale goes, the corpses stayed where they fell, bleaching in the sun, and a horrific name was made. But even an amateur historian knows that Indians always carried off their fallen warriors, which brings us back to legends and suppositions, and there's no shortage of those.

I'm partial to the explanation of Archy McDonald, who runs the general store: "People hear these stories and have a vision of this being a valley of Armageddon. I don't believe that. A cavalry patrol probably came through and found a few corpses, is all." My guess is Armageddon doesn't have an old-fashioned country store like Archy's, with a big wood stove for heat on winter mornings, a place where customers might have to sidestep a donkey to get in the front door, or a proud-as-apple-cider purple-and-blue peacock.

Pleasures you can't get by writing a check. Like cottonwood trees.

Bruce and Bonnie Jackson's discovery of Skull Valley could aptly be called the seduction of the cottonwoods. Four years ago, they were living a high-speed, high-dollar life amid the concrete and glass of Los Angeles. He was a recording engineer who helped produce albums for rock bands. She was a screenwriter and actress, the daughter of Buddy Ebsen, whose career includes playing Jed Clampett in the "Beverly Hillbillies" and the lead in "Barnaby Jones." "We reached our 40s and started rethink-ing the program," says Bonnie, who attend-ed Prescott College 25 years ago.

They found their dream at the end of Skull Valley's informally named Cottonwood Lane, a flat stretch of dirt shaded on two sides by giant cottonwoods that ends at Oasis Ranch. The first time they stood in the shadow of those hanging branches and sucked in a clean breath, the spell was on. "We didn't want to leave," says Bonnie. They made an offer the next day.

The Jacksons have turned the Oasis into a romantic hideaway for couples, which includes everything from fishing in a manmade pond stocked with bass and catfish to stabling for guests' horses. "You can ride from here to Bagdad, some 45 miles, and not see anything but deer and cowboys," says Bruce, who describes the magnitude of the life change this way: His 12-year-old son, John, went from the Malibu School District to Skull Valley's one-room schoolhouse.

Skull Valley

They found their dream at the end of Skull Valley's Cottonwood Lane, a flat stretch of dirt shaded on two sides by giant cottonwoods that ends at Oasis Ranch.

Skull Valley

The Phippen presence in town is still evident at the general store, too. The sign above the door sports a skull design created by George's son, Lynn.

Splendid simplicity was an attraction for the late George Phippen, too. His is a great American story.

He was born in Kansas, the son of a sharecropper, and he rose to become the first president of the Cowboy Artists of America and a nationally known painter and sculptor.

But fame was demanding. George and his wife, Louise, lived in Prescott in the 1950s, when George's reputation soared. So did curiosity about him and how he worked.

It got so bad that admirers began showing up at the Phippen home before breakfast, and the raps at their door continued until well after supper.

"I was serving coffee at 10 A.M. and lunch after that," says Louise. "Some of them even stayed the night. They knew I was too nice to run 'em off. We had to do something."

In 1961 the Phippens moved to a Skull Valley ranch once used to raise chinchillas. Four miles of main street were gravel, and the town had only 14 phone lines.

"Our ring was one long and two short," says Louise. "Of course, you never said anything important because you knew everything was listening. But moving here gave George the time and the solitude to create."

For five years, he operated a studio and foundry on the property, and after his death in 1966, Louise opened his studio to tours.

"I had so many people from around the country writing and calling asking to see it that I had to," she says. "The Phippen Museum in Prescott has a lot more of George's stuff, but they still like to come here."

Louise no longer conducts regular tours, but she's willing to open the studio door to visitors polite enough to call first.

The Phippen presence in town is still evident at the general store, too. But you have to look closely. The sign above the door sports a skull design created by George's son, Lynn, also an artist.

As a teenager, one of Doug Beebe's first jobs was at the Phippen foundry. The Beebe family moved to Skull Valley in 1948, when Doug's dad decided that Phoenix was getting too blasted big.

They bought a ranch without electricity.

Every morning young Doug took a goodsize rock and let it heat up on the oil stove through the day. At night he'd wrap the rock in a towel, carry it to bed, and run it up and down the sheets to warm them.

"People don't believe me when I say I had a pet rock," says Beebe, now 52. "They think I'm crazy. But it's true, and it kept me from freezing to death."

Crazy, too, is the story of how a lifelong Skull Valley resident came to be an artist with a worldwide reputation.

For years Beebe made a living roaming the state in a house trailer, working at whatever construction job he could find. In the evenings, he produced Indian jewelry. He eventually moved into metal carving, a skill his dad taught him.

He fashions metal into figures, such as quail and coyotes, or into Western scenes, covers them with copper, gives them an acid wash and a coat of paint.

When his kids were grown, Beebe quit construction to pursue his art full time. The gamble paid off, thanks to a listing five years ago in the prestigious Sundance Catalogue, an arm of film actor Robert Redford's Sundance Institute in Utah.

The response was strong, and now Beebe has a representative in Los Angeles and a thriving business called Skullduggery Metal Works.

"The Redford catalog really got me started," says Beebe, who chuckles at the serendipity of his success. "This is a hobby that got out of control."

Beebe's house, formerly a stately old dairy barn, is a kind of Skull Valley landmark, and the subject of a bit of irony. During the late 1950s, Beebe and a pal liked to go there after school to shoot bats.

When he bought the barn in 1972 and went about remodeling it, he realized that the biggest part of the job would be repairing the roof he'd so merrily perforated many years earlier.

"When I walked in there as the new owner, I looked at that roof and said, 'What a dumb kid,'" he remembers.

The yarn has a certain symmetry in a valley known for its skulls. And humor, too. I have to believe it'd give both Rockwell and Poe a good belly-grabbing yuck, and that couldn't be easy to do.

Additional Reading: To learn more about this part of Arizona, we recommend We Call It 'Preskit,' by Jack L. August Jr. The 64-page softcover book explores the Prescott of today and yesterday as well as central Arizona's ranching communities, ghost towns, and back roads. The book costs $12.95 plus shipping and handling. To order, telephone toll-free (800) 543-5432. In the Phoenix area or outside the U.S., call (602) 258-1000.

WHEN YOU GO

Skull Valley is 17 miles west of Prescott on Iron Springs Road. In town stop and talk to the locals at the Skull Valley General Store, (520) 442-3351; have a piece of pie at the Skull Valley Cafe, (520) 442-9549; tour the Skull Valley Depot Museum by appointment or on Sundays during the summer between 2 and 4 P.M., (520) 442-3677, (520) 443-3886; or stay at the Oasis Ranch for a romantic weekend, (520)442-9559.