BACK ROAD ADVENTURE

back adventure Seemingly Far From Civilization, the Route Between ST. DAVID and DRAGOON Seldom Runs 15 Miles From Shopping

WHERE IS THE CIVILIZED WORLD? Where is the gas station, the hospital, the organic hot dog vendor? I wondered as I drove.

I traveled somewhere between St. David and Dragoon on an unpaved route that in places seemed less like an actual road and more like a mere crease in Mother Nature's dress. But it's an illusion. Anyone driving this route feels like they've left the known world far behind, yet the road seldom runs more than 10 to 15 miles from museums, antique shops, motels and vast quantities of food.

Carrying a gallon of water, I drove through this terrain on a hot morning in May. From Tucson, it is 50 miles east to Benson on Interstate 10 and 7 miles south on U.S. Route 80 to Sibyl Road in the little farming town of St. David. Sibyl Road began as a paved route headed alongside a well-shaded mobile home park, but 1.5 miles later the pavement ended and the road climbed a small hill, where I stopped to enjoy the view, practically dead center in the San Pedro Valley, surrounded by mountains. The jagged ridgelines of the Dragoon Mountains, where I was heading, hugged the horizon in a haze of blue directly to the east.

From the hilltop, the road curved and dipped in and out of desert washes dominated by mesquite trees and desert broom. I counted my blessings, knowing that in the middle of the last century, no amount of Prozac would have made a traveler feel comfortable in this terrain. For as far as my eye could see in every direction, the land would have been dominated by Cochise and his Chokonen band of Chiricahua Apaches. Who knows how many Indians and whites were killed in this landscape before peace came to the area in 1886?

This day, however, cows sang and lizards dined on small bugs in the quiet valley. The mountains glowed like burnished copper, then deepened to rose, and gradually became bluer and darker.

At 6 miles from St. David, I came to the railroad tracks. At this point, most people heading to Dragoon or Willcox swing north and in a few miles end up back on Interstate 10. But I was in no hurry. I turned right about 100 feet before the tracks onto a narrow dirt road that, I'd been told, would eventually follow the railroad to Dragoon. About 1.5 miles after that first cutoff, I came to another road that shot off to my right, but this one had a sign saying "closed to wheeled vehicles." I ignored that road and another one a little farther on, and stayed with the main dirt road. Immediately, I dipped into a rutted wash and came up the other side, still headed northeast. Less than a mile beyond the wash, another dirt road crossed the one I traveled. It looked [OPPOSITE PAGE] In southeastern Arizona, travelers heading east from St. David find the history-rich Dragoon Mountains an attractive lure on the horizon. [LEFT] Hardy ocotillos sprout from the sandy slope bordering Dragoon Wash between St. David and Dragoon.

like it was built to accommodate construction of the power line that passed directly overhead. I wasn't sure where I was on my itinerary map (which existed mostly in my head), but I knew I had to end up closer to the Dragoons, and I could see them clearly enough to decide not to turn. I continued straight, past an old corral on my left and, at just over a mile, came to a gate painted the color of Pepto-Bismol.

"I hope you're not locked," I said into the thin air. Chained, but not locked. Judging from the tire tracks, others had been through there often. (And why hadn't one of them come up with some decent paint? I wondered.) I opened and closed the gate and, 60 feet later, wound up against the railroad tracks again. The road formed a T and nothing in that deserted landscape said "Dragoon, This Way." But the mountains rose to my right, so I turned that way and, 6.5 miles after leaving that pink gate, I was back on pavement in the sleepy center of Dragoon.When I reached the pavement, I faced a decision. I could go left for 3 miles and visit the Amerind Foundation Museum, an archaeological research facility with exhibits and a picnic area, or I could turn right and immediately right again onto a dirt road that would eventually take me to the ruins of a stage station.

I decided to visit the museum first. The graceful Spanish-style structure sits on a hill surrounded by smooth granite boulders and lacy mesquites. Archaeologists from the Amerind have been poking around southern Arizona for decades, unearthing the story of other cultures and storing some of their finds in the museum's exhibits. Next door to the museum, I found a locked art gallery. I asked about this place in the Indian museum and was told they open it upon request. I wandered through the upstairs room of the art museum and saw the eclectic collection mostly Western regional art and a room dedicated to Native American artists which belonged to the benefactor who started the Amerind.Before leaving the area, I drove south, headed Back toward the railroad tracks. I crossed the tracks and turned west onto Fourr Ranch Road. After 2.5 miles, I came to a road on my left and a sign directing me to the stage station. One mile later, I saw a low stone wall and a sign announcing the Dragoon Springs Station, part of the old Butterfield Overland Mail route, used until 1862. Shuffling in the dry brush, I thought about Stone Avenue in Tucson, named for Col. John Finkel Stone, who in 1869 at 33 years old, served as president of the Apache Pass Mine near Fort Bowie. That year Stone and an escort of four soldiers were headed back to Tucson from the mine. When they approached the abandoned stagecoach station where I had lunch, a bunch of Apaches jumped out of a gully and hit them fast and hard. Stone, the coach driver and all of the soldiers were killed.

I left this melancholy spot to return to Fourr Ranch Road. I planned to turn left, west, and complete a loop drive back to St. David, but found the road blocked by a locked gate at the headquarters of Fourr Ranch. The alternative required returning to the pavement in Dragoon and heading north to the interstate - proof once again that, isolated though this terrain may seem, a paved road and all amenities are never far off. AH