The Slow Track

Trail of the Past

ONCE A RAILROAD TRACK, THE PEAVINE NEAR PRESCOTT CONJURES MEMORIES

Text and Photographs by Norm Tessman

“This looks like the perfect trail for old John Bull,” announced my friend Rob Bates as he affectionately patted his new bicycle's high stubby handlebars. He gazed up the old railroad bed toward the rusty-pink rocks of Granite Dells. “If trains could climb this thing, we can too,” he said. “Actually, the uphills don't worry me as much as coming back down. This machine has no brakes, and if it rolls faster than 1 can peddle, it's time to jump.” “Yes,” I agreed, “and it's a long way from that bike's seat to the ground, particularly if you land on your head.” It's not that Bates lacked cycling skills. On a modern mountain bike, he was an accomplished rider. But that day, he would attempt to peddle Prescott's newest recreational trail on a most unusual machine. Bates had recently purchased “John Bull,” a replica of a famous 19th-century English high-wheeled bicycle known as an “ordinary.” Its frame connects a chest-high solidtired front wheel to a much smaller rear wheel. The expression “taking a header” describes the often bloody results of crashing forward on such a bike. Popular in the United States during the 1880s, ordinaries were soon replaced by “safety bicycles” with gears, chains and same-size wheels. “Did you know that early cross-country bicyclists often followed the railroad?” Bates asked as he broke into a run, pushing John Bull up the trail. “Tracks were the straightest path between towns and smoother than the rutted dirt roads.” Using a step on the bike's frame, Bates vaulted onto the seat. “And, since locomotives didn't tolerate hills, railroad beds were nearly flat.” Bates was pedaling John Bull steadily up the trail. Whooping encouragement, I trailed along behind him on my mountain bike. Bates and I came here to enjoy a leisurely midwinter ride. He had never been on the Prescott Peavine Trail, and wanted to explore some local railroading history on this former Santa Fe Railway route. For more than 60 years, it served as the main track into central Arizona. Its nickname was an affectionate reference to the route's twists and turns, like a peavine, through the many canyons north of Prescott. After it was abandoned in the 1980s, the track's rails and crossties were sold and removed. In June 1999, 4.5 miles of the Peavine's cinder-surfaced roadbed were added to the national Rails to Trails network of former railroad tracks recycled into recreational trails. At present, the Peavine trail runs from Sun Dog Ranch Road, just past Prescott's northeastern city limits, to State Route 89A. It eventually will connect north to Chino Valley's Rails to Trails project. That afternoon Bates rode the popular new trail on a conveyance from the era when the railroad first ran through here. It seemed appropriate. We passed a young family hiking on the trail, and a little girl giggled and pointed at Bates. He beamed down from his perch. A living historian at Prescott's Sharlot Hall Museum and an expert on Victorian culture, mannerisms and clothing, Bates had dressed the part, wearing the casual garb of an 1890s gentleman-suspendered canvas trousers, long-sleeved shirt, leather shoes and a soft padded cap. We followed the Peavine northeast along Granite Creek. After about a mile, the stream widened into Watson Lake, a bird-watcher's paradise. During spring and fall, migrating waterfowl dot the lake, and prehistoriclooking cormorants dry their feathers on the branches of the flooded trees at its shallow southern end. Occasionally a falcon, osprey or bald eagle dipped and soared above us. Created in 1915, the mile-long lake was named for an Indiana senator who invested in local irrigation projects. In 1999, the City of Prescott purchased both Watson and the 1935-era Willow Lake to its west. On week-ends, canoes and kayaks explore the granite-lined coves of both lakes, and sailboats tack into the wind.

Pedaling past the lake, Bates grinned at me and said, “This is no harder than riding a kid's tricycle— if the front wheel measured over 4 feet high!” The Peavine climbs gradually toward the spires and domes of Granite Dells. Known locally as “The Dells,” the area includes some 4 square miles of spectacular granite outcroppings northeast of Prescott. Formed when molten magma cooled and crystal-lized deep beneath the Earth's surface, the granite has been exposed by the erosion of millions of years, cracking along vertical joints and weathering into fanciful shapes. The Peavine trail passes among these out-croppings and between stark rocky walls blasted through by the railroad. The Dells appears particularly beautiful in winter, when snow trims the rocks.

The Peavine runs through the part of Ari-zona that geographers call the Central High-lands. More poetically, author and historian Sharlot Mabridth Hall named it “the land of cactus and pine.” Extending from beneath the Mogollon Rim south to the Sonoran Des-ert, the highlands make up roughly the mid-dle third of the state.

By the time we reached the stone formation known as Point of Rocks, 3 miles above the trailhead, Bates had dismounted from John Bull only twice— for gates where the trail crosses private property. The landowner has generously allowed the Peavine to pass through his acreage. At Point of Rocks, the former railbed skirts massive fingerlike granite spires, a spot popular for picnics and a favorite for railroad photography. Old photos show train crews posing proudly on their locomotives near the unmistakable formation.

Just past Point of Rocks, we stopped at a fork in the trail. Here was Prescott and Eastern Junction. The station's depot and other buildings are long gone. Tracks to the right led southeast to Mayer and the eastern Bradshaw Mountains. The left branch continued straight ahead through Chino Valley to the Santa Fe main line at Ash Fork. Sitting at a picnic table, we talked about railroad history. After the Civil War, Arizona Territory was among the last areas to be reached by the rails. Finally, in 1881, the Southern Pacific spanned southern Arizona. Two years later, the Atlantic and Pacific crossed the north through Winslow, Flagstaff and Kingman, and then later became the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line. But between those paral-lel east-to-west railroads, central Arizona's merchants and mine entrepreneurs waited, confident that their region would boom once it had railroad transportation. On New Year's Eve 1886, speculator Tom Bullock completed the Prescott and Arizona Central Railway, 72 miles south of the main line at Seligman to Prescott. It entered Prescott along today's State Route 89. Bullock's tracks were badly laid, his locomotives old and underpowered. By 1891, the Prescott and Arizona Central had failed.

Yet another line was heading toward Prescott. With Midwestern backers, local businessman Frank M. Murphy laid a solid track south from the Santa Fe main line near Ash Fork. His new Santa Fe, Prescott and Phoenix entered Prescott in April 1893. Two years later, it was completed south to Phoenix via Iron Springs, Skull Valley and Congress. Then in 1898, Murphy launched the Prescott and Eastern Railway down the eastern flank of the Bradshaw Mountains. Leaving the Peavine at Prescott and Eastern Junction, it reached 26 miles southeast to Mayer by 1901. Two branch lines, incorporated as the Bradshaw Mountain Railway, connected the Prescott and Eastern to the booming mining communities of Crown King and Poland. Murphy's railroads were headquartered in Prescott, and in 1900, the yards covered a six-block area downtown and included a roundhouse, passenger and freight depots, waterand oil-storage tanks and other railroad buildings. Today, this area would be bounded by Sixth Street, Sheldon Street and the Montezuma to Whipple connector.

Central Arizona's civilized lifestyle relied on the railroad. Trains brought mail, coal, medicine, manufactured goods and mail-order merchandise. Outgoing ore and cattle shipments fueled the region's economy. Passengers rode both ways, and holiday specials carried people to dances, baseball games and rodeos.

Bates had been listening intently. Then he pulled a harmonica from his pants pocket and broke into "John Henry," a ballad about a steel-driving railroad-building man. When he finished playing the tune, he asked, "So why did the railroad abandon Prescott?"

I told him that metal prices plunged following World War I. Mines closed, and the rails began their retreat. The Crown King line was abandoned in 1926 - today a road uses its old switchbacking rail grade. The Poland branch gave up in 1932. But the final blow fell after World War II, when interstate highways and automobiles replaced luxury trains as the fashionable way to travel cross-country. Fleets of semi-trucks captured commercial shipping. Prescott and Eastern Junction was abandoned in 1949; its rails were scrapped in the 1970s.

In 1962, a new Santa Fe bypass left Prescott cut off from the main line on a 28-mile branch line. Passenger service ended with the completion of the bypass; but weekly freights rumbled into town for another two decades. The route was finally abandoned in 1984. All that remains of Prescott's railroads are the 1906 Santa Fe Depot (now housing A.G. Edwards stockbrokers), the Sharlot Hall Museum's exhibits and this new Prescott Peavine Trail along the old trackbed.

As we began to ride back toward the trailhead, Bates wondered, "Can you imagine what it felt like when a train blasted through these granite road cuts?"

"As a matter of fact, I can," I answered. "It wasn't a steam engine, but I think I may have seen the last freight train into Prescott."

And I told Bates the story: Back in the 1980s, I often jogged on the Peavine route, particularly after snowstorms. Running on the raised wooden crossties, you could avoid the snow. With luck, you might finish your workout with dry running shoes and relatively warm feet.

On that particular winter afternoon, I ran a few miles up into Granite Dells. In those days a better runner than I could have followed the tracks 50-some miles north to Ash Fork even all the way to Kansas. But the short winter day was fading, and car lights began flickering over along State 89. So I turned and started tie-hopping back toward Prescott. Warm inside wool gloves and my hooded parka, I was deep into the rhythm of my breathing. In my Walkman's earphones, Emmylou Harris sang of love and loss.

Just above the last granite road cut, an intensely bright light shattered my runner's trance. It flashed back and forth past me, reflecting across the snow and granite. Then an air horn nearly blasted me out of my running shoes. Rumbling toward me was the biggest diesel locomotive in the world.

I stepped off the track with plenty of time to spare. As the diesel and its three boxcars rumbled on past, my entire body vibrated from all those tons of moving metal. I hardly felt the snow melting in my running shoes.

"Why do you think that was Prescott's last freight train?" We were nearly back at the trailhead when Bates asked this. He had, of course, descended unscathed despite John Bull's lack of brakes. I answered that I had watched its lights winking off into the dusk. Maybe it was from hearing too much country music, but I felt a very real sense of loss. I remember thinking that this was like meeting one of the very last dinosaurs - that like those doomed reptiles, the railroad was teetering on the brink of extinction. A short time later, I read that the Santa Fe had discontinued its Prescott freight service.

Bates' eyes shone in the cold. "So that was the end of the railroading era in central Arizona. But I am glad this trail was saved so people can experience some of that history." AH EDITOR'S NOTE: After his adventure on the Prescott Peavine Trail, Rob Bates, 48, rode John Bull at living-history events throughout Arizona. He ran the replica 1870s print shop at Sharlot Hall Museum, and enjoyed mountain biking through the Prescott backcountry during his spare time. He died last January.

Norm Tessman works as senior curator at Prescott's Sharlot Hall Museum.