BACK ROAD ADVENTURE

backroad adventure Thoughts of Water Seep Into a Day Along the EAST VERDE RIVER Below the MOGOLLON RIM

I DIDN'T START THIS TRIP WITH WATER ON the brain. But at day's end, after an easy 23-mile jaunt below the Mogollon Rim in the Tonto National Forest, I realized that water - either its abundance or scarcity - had been the overriding theme.

That proved true at the Indian ruin I visited, at the canyons cut by the East Verde River, which forms swimming holes and glistening waterfalls, and even at spectacular Diamond Point, where I climbed a firetower and scanned the forest with binoculars.

I set out from Payson in my car on a sunny day at the end of the summer monsoon, accompanied by my favorite Rim guide, 73-year-old Al Ayers, a lifelong Payson resident and local guide. We drove less than 2 miles north of town on State Route 87, then east onto the pavement of Houston Mesa Road (Forest Service Road 199).

Our first stop came 3 miles along at Shoofly Ruins, an 80-room prehistoric settlement, occupied between A.D.1000 and 1250, now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Archaeologists excavated the site for years, and much of what they learned appears on interpretive signs along the trails curling among the ruins. The selfguided walk proved easy, and the morning silence powerful, broken only by the skittering of lizards in the grass.

The peace helped conjure the totality of what once existed there - freestanding rooms built of rock, wood and adobe on foundations of red sandstone, plus courtyards and plazas, and all of it surrounded by a massive stone wall.

But the more I walked, the more I saw that water defined life at Shoofly. Residents farmed along nearby streams, built terraces of rock and brush on mesa-tops to catch rainfall, and a drought provides one possible explanation for the site's abandonment.

Four miles past the village, we crossed the East Verde River and stopped a half-mile beyond at Waterwheel Campground. An actual waterwheel built in the early 1900s by gold miner James Greer inspired the name. The metal wheel, probably 25 feet high, still stands near the campground's entrance.

Stories about the waterwheel's operation have been told for years, but Payson historian Stan Brown recently unraveled the truth. It seems the wheel powered a revolving rope to which Greerattached milk cans. The cans dipped into the stream and the turning waterwheel lifted them to the top, where the rope pulley was attached to a cottonwood tree.

The contents were then dumped into a funnel, draining through a pipe, into an iron tank and, finally, a sluice box. The result, after some crushing and more washing, was gold ore. Strange as it sounds, the bizarre contraption worked. One of Greer's relatives told Brown he remembers seeing a soda pop bottle full of gold nuggets, each the size of a fingertip.

After inspecting the wheel, we hiked north along the riverbank, past soaring split-rock cliffs that reach more than 200 feet at their highest point. Not far beyond, the chasm narrowed, forcing the water through a break in the rocks only as wide as a man's shoulders.

We sat for a spell on a boulder high above the water's roar, then hunted for animal tracks in the sand at the river's edge. "Elk, deer, mountain lions they all come down here to drink," Ayers told me. "I've even seen bear tracks along this river."

We continued north by crossing back over the East Verde. Water poured over the paved bridge, but it measured just a few inches deep. Less than a quarter-mile beyond, we turned right onto Forest Service Road 420 for a side jaunt to a picturesque swimming hole.

A Forest Service gate blocks the road a few hundred yards beyond Houston Mesa, so we took the footpath around it and walked a half-mile down a steep hill to reach the treasure of a spot.

Picture a wide riverbed of boulders, their surfaces flattened, creased, creviced and potholed by centuries of flowing water. They make perfect stepping-stones for hopping in a pattern toward a waterfall that tumbles 50 feet to form a crystalclear natural swimming pool. Beside the falls, a downflow of Cold Springs, a 35-foot pine log with ladder steps nailed onto it slants into the water. This proved the perfect place to listen to the music of the rushing water or have a picnic, or for the daring to attempt to make it up and down the log without getting dunked.

Back on Houston Mesa Road, we crossed the East Verde for the third time, then passed through the tiny community of Whispering Pines. On the lawn of a ranch-style home, at 2927 Houston Mesa Road, a plaque commemorates the 1877 settlement of the area by John Moberly Meadows. Five years later, he and one of his sons were killed when Apaches from the San Carlos Apache Reservation raided the area.

At 10.6 miles, we reached the intersection of Forest Service roads 199 and 64. Visitors interested in another side trip can drive west a halfmile on FR 64, then north on FR 32 to Washington Park, directly under the Rim.

A pumping station there feeds water from the Blue Ridge Reservoir down into the East Verde. Although the water wasn't running when we were there, Ayers assured me that when the flume is open, it's a sight to see and hear.

From the intersection, we continued east on 64, which remains unpaved, but in good shape, for the 12-plus miles to its junction with State 260. Along the way, we passed Pyeatt Draw, where Ayers recommends visitors find a shady log amid the trees, at either dawn or dusk, sit perfectly still and await the elk. "There's so many in there you can't help but see one," he said.

For our third side trip of the day we took FR 65 to Diamond Point, one of the Rim's overlooks. With the gate to the peak closed to vehicular traffic, we hiked the last half-mile uphill and met fire-watcher Ralph Woods.

He invited us to climb the open-air stairs to the three-story tower to see the unreal views of oceans of pine, the Rim dominating the horizon to the north and mysterious, hazy mountains to the south.

But when I asked what he found most thrilling about working at 6,400 feet, Woods' answer had nothing to do with fire. He talked about watching monsoon storms gather over the Tonto water again.

"Two weeks ago, there was a line of black and gray clouds from Promontory Point to Milk Ranch Point," Woods said. "They sat there for two solid hours, raining down. When they moved out, there were these wispy-white water dogs just hanging over the Rim. I watched it all, and boy, was it beautiful."

Just short of 260, Ayers and I stopped at the Double D Bar and Café in Tonto Village for a root beer. We did some label-peeling and decided that spending a day under the Mogollon Rim, jumping rocks across a running river, sitting next to a forest waterfall and walking in the footsteps of the ancients came pretty close to a perfect daytrip. Al