adventure

SEARCHING FOR GHO

I came upon the tail-end trickle of the San Pedro River in a broad sandy wash thronged with ghosts. Slogging through the sand to a reedy puddle, I made for the welcome shade of a venerable cottonwood. Here, in the southeastern corner of the state, seeped the liquid finale of a desert river that had sheltered human beings for millennia.

I knew I was nearing the center of the Boquillas Ranch, a 17-mile-long chunk of earth lying astride one of a handful of undammed Southwestern rivers. The San Pedro forms a linear oasis in the midst of an otherwise harsh terrain, offering a respite for desert dwellers and a food-rich ecological highway for creatures that migrate from the winter-friendly tropics to the summer-bountiful sprawl of North America. I'd been watching the immigrants flit past all morning: orioles, flycatchers, woodpeckers, flickers, kingbirds, kinglets, kingfishers, creepers, gnatcatchers, wrens, and warblers. Then a crimson tanager darted across the river.

OF ST. PETER

The flash of red lingered on my retina as I trudged upstream to a trail that led to a ramble of old ranch buildings. More than half a century of summers had weathered the barn until the wood seemed as natural as the corrugated bark of a cottonwood. Suddenly a red tanager flew out of the cottonwoods by the river, flitted across the open space before the barn, and disappeared into a squat thick-trunked mesquite that had no doubt crouched there long before a succession of powerful men built this ranch, fought a war with the Apaches, and laid the groundwork for the salvation of this precious desert stream.

ALONG THE RIVER

THE BOQUILLAS RANCH SITS AT THE CENTER OF A HISTORY RIFE WITH VIOLENT DEATH, DESPERATE DREAMS, AND OUTLANDISH CHARACTERS.

The Boquillas Ranch sits at the center of a history rife with violent death, desperate dreams, and outlandish characters spawned by at least 11,000 years of almost continuous human occupation. Clovis culture hunters left their stone points among the mammoth bones between 8,000 and 11,500 years ago. The hunters and gatherers of the Cochise culture left their stone knives and grinding tools between 2,000 and 8,000 years ago. And the offshoots of the Mogollon, Hohokam, and Salado left remnants of irrigation works, pit houses, and planted fields between 2,000 and 500 years ago. The first Europeans also left their traces. Fray Marcos de Niza in 1539, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in 1540, and Father Eusebio Francisco Kino in 1697 all traveled through the valley. Each visited the friendly Sobaipuri Indians, who welcomed them as possible allies against the warlike Apaches. The Spanish tried to build a fort on a bluff overlooking the San Pedro in 1776, but abandoned that half-completed dream four years later after losing 80 men to the harassing Apaches. The melted adobe remains of the Presidio Santa Cruz de Terrenate still keep lonely vigil on that bluff overlooking the river. (See Arizona Highways, Oct. '97.) The Apaches had come to raid the Spanish livestock. Spain finally gave up and left the valley in the early 19th century. The Mexican government tried to encourage settlement by awarding a land grant that encompassed most of the river to the Elias family in 1827 and 1833. The northern section of the grant was called The San Juan de las Boquillas y Nogales - "St. John of the little mouths and walnuts," in reference to the many small tributaries. The southern section of the grant was called the San Rafael del Valle. The Elias family tried to run cattle on its new ranch but gave up in the face of continued Apache raiding. After the Mexican-American War, they sold the grant to Americans. Later the land passed quickly through the hands of two speculators before it wound up as a footnote in the vast estate of mining tycoon and millionaire George Hearst, the father of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. George Hearst was an outlandish, outsized, domineering figure who built a financial and political empire. The determined miner parlayed a shrewd ability to locate rich deposits of ore into a vast Western empire. At one time, Hearst owned some 7 million acres in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. He also served as a senator from California in the heyday of the robber barons, when fabulously wealthy industrialists easily mingled economic and political power. Hearst left most of his San Pedro Valley ranch to his son and widow. Another large chunk of the river had passed through various hands to "Colonel" William Greene. Another mining millionaire who expanded into ranching, Greene also was frontier tough, willing to use force as needed to further his ambitions.

Meanwhile, elimination of the beaver and decades of cattle grazing led to major ecolog-ical changes along the San Pedro. Until they were exterminated by trappers, the beaver had formed the river into a chain of marsh-es bordered by oaks and mesquite. Cattle denuded the banks and tributaries, which resulted in severe erosion and flooding.

The changes in the grasslands made it hard for small operators to survive. The Bo-quillas Land and Cattle Company bought the ranch in 1912, recombining the two pieces of the original Elias land grant. The land eventually came to the Tennaco Realty Development Corporation, still in one pre-cious chunk.

Decades later a coalition of environmental and conservationist groups, spearheaded by the Sierra Club and The Nature Conservancy, started a 15-year campaign to convince the federal government to save the San Pedro. In 1986 the BLM swapped federal land near Phoenix for 43,371 acres of land along the San Pedro valued then at $26 million. The addition of other federal lands brought the total to about 56,000 acres. The BLM then set up the San Pedro Riparian Conservation Area, whose boundaries coincide with the Elias land grant and the holdings of the Boquillas Land and Cattle Company.

After a break at the ranch house, I returned to my car and took the short drive up the highway through Tombstone toward Sierra Vista, hoping I could find the ruins of the old ghost town of Charleston. I pulled off the road near the Charleston bridge over the San Pedro and scrambled down to locate the remains of what once was the toughest town in Arizona. Charleston was where the roughest of the adventurers, rustlers, and outlaws went when Tombstone got too civilized. Charleston became the base of operations for the Clanton gang, made famous by their feud with Wyatt Earp and his brothers. (See Arizona High-ways, Oct. '95.) As I wandered up then down the river, a summer tanager crossed in front of me, alighting in a mesquite on the high bank. Near the perch, I noticed a faint trail threading into the brush. Intrigued, I splashed across the calf-deep stream while the tanager flitted on deeper into the bosque ahead of me.

Stumbling over a low adobe wall, I made out more walls, dim in the shadows. I had come to Charleston.

A flicker of scarlet in the branches just ahead caught my eye, and I found myself regarding the tanager, who in turn regard-ed me curiously, head cocked, its beady eyes glittering. He chirped abruptly, flicked his tail violently, and lowered his head, a classic danger signal. Logically, I knew he was warning his pale yellow mate about me. But then why had he led me there? Why had he waited for me? Why had he shown me Charleston?

Suddenly alone, I stared about me at the silent adobe ruins in the lengthening An open gate next to the ranch's barn conjures visions of cattle and cowboys, bronco-busting and branding irons. GARY JOHNSON shadows. Heart pounding, I turned and scrambled down the trail. Halfway back to the river, the sharp hiss of a rattlesnake froze me in my tracks. I located the source of the sound in the mesquite some distance off the trail. But I couldn't see the snake. Walking cautiously past the spot, I slipped down the bank and back to the shore of the San Pedro.

There I sat awhile longer - watching the light play across the water, listening to the wind-soft murmurs of the ghosts of mammoth hunters, Indians, conquistadores, set-tlers, and outlaws, and wondering at the warning of the tanager of summer.

Coming next month: Backpacking along the San Pedro.

Additional Reading: Tucson to Tombstone guides you through nature's sanctuaries in southeastern Arizona as well as other attractions, highlighting the region's historical, cultural, and natural heritage. 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.