The Violent Chiricahuas

Cataclysmic lava mountains TUMULTUOUS CHIRICAHUAS

Witnessed a bloody past life, deep silences, fresh joy and old sorrows. Cruel and generous, careless and nurturing, he'd stare with crazy orange thrasher eyes set in craggy, sunburnt features. You would come upon him, vivid and unexpected, and never forget his outlandish gestures, the theatrical sound of his gravelly voice or the disconcerting glitter of his eyes as he studied you. Instead, as mountains, the Chiricahuas stretch for 50 miles in southeastern Arizona, rising nearly 9,800 feet at their peak, an ecologically extravagant range of tormented rock drenched in dramatic, often bloody history. The most extensive and varied of Arizona's sky islands, high mountains thrusting abruptly from the desert floor to create forested "islands" in a sea of arid grasslands, the Chiricahuas serve as a vivid lesson in how the accidents of geography shape both human and ecological history. Getting more rain than the surrounding valleys, the darkly jagged cataclysm of lava, ash and limestone shelters a profusion of plants and animals, many of them throwbacks to the Ice Age now stranded on an igneous ark. The mountains' microclimate and northsouth alignment, extending nearly to the Mexican border, provide a migratory corridor for brilliantly feathered elegant trogons and other

IF THE CHIRICAHUA MOUNTAINS TOOK HUMAN FORM, THEY'D BE AN ENIGMATIC, TOBACCO-SPITTING, BARE-KNUCKLED HOLY MAN, BRIMMING WITH EXPLOSIVE

Weathering sculpted the stone spires, while fractures, erosion and frost created the soaring monoliths of Cave Creek Canyon.

[PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 20 AND 21] Born of a cataclysmic volcanic eruption 27 million years ago, the Chiricahuas' rhyolitic hoodoos, spires and rocky prominences owe their existence to the timeless working of the elements on the layers of ash deposited by that ancient geologic event. GEORGE H.H. HUEY [ABOVE, LEFT] An immature screech owl practices its signature call. The Chiricahuas' vast array of plant and animal life results from its location at the confluence of the Sonoran and the Chihuahuan deserts, coupled with influences from two major mountain ranges, the Rockies and Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental. EDWARD MCCAIN [RIGHT] Wintry fog settles into Chiricahua National Monument's Echo Canyon. LAURENCE PARENT

Tropical birds. They've also given a borderlands path for vanishing jaguars, desperate Apaches, footsore soldiers, sweating settlers, saddle-sore rustlers and lurking outlaws. Here history and biology converge in colorful intensity, all thanks to the jostling of continents, a surging series of volcanic explosions, the churning of the atmosphere and the accident of an international border.

in Arizona and New Mexico. Deep-seated geological forces cracked the Earth's crust, pushed up lines of mountains and volcanoes and then stretched out the long, sunken basins that separate those ranges, isolating THE STORY of the current landscape starts millions of years ago, when shifts deep in the Earth triggered millions of years of upheaval. Oceanic and continental crustal plates collided, their monumental edges jamming together, then pulling apart with titanic force. Through millennia the subterranean jostling of these plates pushed up crumpled layers of rock and ultimately textured the Earth's surface with the serrated ridges of the Rocky Mountains, the Grand Canyon, Mexico's massive Sierra Madres, the Chiricahuas and smaller north-south mountain chains the Chiricahuas with low, wide valleys to the east and west. Adding to the geologic transformation, 27 million years ago a huge "bubble" of molten rock, or magma, pushed up along fault lines and fractures until it hit the groundwater and carbon dioxide stored in buried layers of sediment. The resulting chemical reaction foamed the magma into pumice, its volume violently expanding 50-fold as it exploded from the magma chamber into a superheated deluge of steam, lava and ash. The eruption ejected 100 cubic miles of volcanic debris over 1,200 square miles and darkened the planet with its ash cloud. The volcanic ash flows eventually cooled and fused, creating the raw material for the spectacular rock formations of the Chiricahuas. Now empty, the magma chamber collapsed, forming a

During the last Ice Age, abundant streams flowed, and a rich oak-juniper woodland blanketed the Chiricahuas, the valley basins and neighboring mountain ranges.

[LEFT] The blazing fall color of poison ivy suggests caution in a canyon bottom densely forested with yuccas and Arizona sycamore and cottonwood trees. JACK DYKINGA [ABOVE LEFT] This leaf of the sotol plant, sometimes called desert spoon, might have pressed against another leaf as it grew, until it dislodged and unfurled in a curious undulation. EDWARD MCCAIN [ABOVE RIGHT] Cave Creek's perennial flow nourishes rich stands of cottonwoods in its namesake canyon. RANDY PRENTICE

the highest degree of biological diversity in the United States."

THE GREATER rainfall and biological abundance of the mountains provided food in any season, crucial to the survival of the region's hunter-gatherer cultures. That might partly explain why generations of Apache warriors fought so desperately to roam and hunt the Chiricahuas unimpeded. The struggle began in the 1500s when the Spanish ventured into the area, continuing against Mexicans and Americans alike until Geronimo surrendered within [OPPOSITE PAGE, TOP LEFT] Fall's icy touch triggers a colorful display of Arizona sycamore and bigtooth maple leaves in Cave Creek Canyon. DAVE BLY [OPPOSITE PAGE, BELOW LEFT] Sunlight playing through sumac leaves reveals a tracery of delicate seasonal color. DAVID W. LAZAROFF [ABOVE] Blue-green yucca leaves expand before a backdrop of scarlet bigtooth maple trees in Cave Creek Canyon. ROBERT G. MCDONALD At sight of their pine-crowded peaks in 1886. Under leaders like Mangas Coloradas and Cochise, the Chiricahua Apaches for a while tried to live fairly peacefully with the Amer-icans who came after the territory changed

hands with Mexico in 1848. For many reasons, that peace was a fretful one, marred by raids and general mistrust on both sides.

Provoking all-out war in the shadow of the mountains proved pitifully simple. In 1861, a foolish Army lieutenant, trying to rescue a rancher's son kidnapped by a separate band, accused Cochise and tried to hold the formidable leader as a hostage for the boy's safe return. Cochise escaped, but members of his party were killed, including his brother. This triggered a decade of bitterly vengeful warfare until the U.S. government finally offered the weary Chiricahua Apaches a reservation that included the Dragoon and Chiricahua mountains. Soon after Cochise died, the government shut down the reservation, citing continued raids into Mexico by other, more warlike renegades like Geronimo. Most of the Chiricahua Apaches sorrowfully marched off to the San Carlos Apache Reservation to the north. Others, however, including Geronimo, resumed their guerrilla raids on both sides of the border, delivering another decade of bloody warfare that claimed hundreds of lives.

Like spatters of blood, forgotten battle-fields, unmarked except for spent cartridges lost among the rocks, dot the slopes and canyons of the Chiricahua Mountains. Cochise, who once said that the rocks of the Chiricahuas and the nearby Dragoons seemed his only friends, had fought stubbornly for the mountain reaches of his people. Now, history buffs savor the thrill of searching out the battlefields of the Apache wars and standing in the evocative, mostly empty places where brave men on both sides fought and fell.

A NEW CAST of characters moved into the mountain range when the Army at last broke the stubborn resistance of the Apa-ches. Without the threat of Apache attacks and raids, the Chiricahua Mountains held out the enticing invitation of precious metals, lumber and grazing lands.

Author Alden Hayes, who describes himself as a "failed farmer, bankrupt cattleman, sometime smoke-chaser, one-time park ranger and over-the-hill archaeologist," spent decades gathering the stories of local ranchers who hung on for generations, which he distilled into the wonderful A Portal to Paradise, published in 1999 by the University of Arizona Press.

Hayes offers up the local memories of vivid Western history, "replete with tales of glory and greed, heroism and depravity, and plain hard work." Well-known personalities sometimes clashed, leaving episodes that still lure historians to more study. The fascina-tion continues for stories such as the feud between the Earps and the Clantons that pro-duced the gunfight in the OK Corral, or the strange death of gunfighter Johnny Ringo, who was shot through the temple as he reclined bootless against a giant oak that still towers over Turkey Creek, or the violent but inept misdeeds of Blackjack, who turned out to be three outlaws using the same nickname.

Hayes mingles remarkable life stories of early ranchers, cowboys, merchants, miners and the women who came with them, whose family names still populate the area: Riggs, Nolan, Reed, Stephens. These were folks whose everyday lives were much like that of pioneer rancher-preacher-vigilante John Augustus Chenowth, who first passed through the mountains in 1854, returning in 1881 to make a life there. Chenowth led a massacre of probably peaceful Indians, faced down outlaws, killed his too-critical opponent for sheriff in a controversial case of "self-defense," said sermons over the people he killed, raised nine children with his wife Mary and founded a family dynasty that persists in the still wide, hard spaces of the Chiricahuas.

The long, rugged sweep of the Chiricahua Mountains, penetrated by a handful of good dirt roads, a scattering of hair-raising jeep trails and a wealth of scenic hiking trails, promises many wonders and adventures for those willing to wander off the beaten path for a glimpse of a wild, haunted land. The Chiricahua National Monument's fused-ash spires, sculptures, hoodoos, volcanic castles, shaded streams, deep canyons and mean-dering trails offer its visitors the most scenic, concentrated glimpse of the mountain range's geology and ecology.

All of that-the rich biological diversity, contentious history and riotous geology-mingles on the steep, forested slopes of the Chiricahuas, where hummingbirds zip past the sites of forgotten massacres; butterflies flutter above lonely cemeteries crowded with crosses for the "unknown Mexican;" elegant trogons draw birders to clump down dirt roads where rustlers once rode; and day-hikers marvel at rock formations that once hid Apache warriors awaiting the signal to ambush.

Crowning it all, the mountain peaks loom, grim and joyful, brimming with life and utterly without pity, both eager and patient for the next turn of the wheel.

[PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 32 AND 33] Ancient volcanic ash flows, sometimes hundreds of meters deep, fused into the welded tuff that helped form Chiricahua National Monument's unique geology. Over time, wind and water wearing away at cracks in the rhyolitic rock created dramatic formations like these in Echo Canyon. LAURENCE PARENT [LEFT] Cathedral-like light illuminates an Arizona white oak deep in a hidden alcove. LAURENCE PARENT [ABOVE LEFT] Bigtooth maple leaves glow in a beam of sunlight. EDWARD MCCAIN [ABOVE RIGHT] Fall color in Cave Creek Canyon adds to the appeal of a region already rich in wildlife and scenic opportunities. RANDY PRENTICE ADDITIONAL READING: Showing that the Southwest's vast panoramas can hold intimate scenes, renowned photographer David Muench delivers special views of inspiring landscapes-from the Chiricahua Mountains and other southern Arizona sky islands to the Colorado Plateau to the low desert of California's Death Valley-in Vast and Intimate: Seeing Nature's Patterns and Relationships, published by Arizona Highways Books.

The chance to combine writing about the Arizona outdoors with his passion for the history of the Apache wars was enough to lure Peter Aleshire from his Phoenix home ... the steep, forested slopes of the Chiricahuas, where hummingbirds zip past ...