Finding the Worth While in the Southwest 13

Finding the Worth While in the Southwest 13

Its length from the headwaters of the Green in Wyoming to the outlet into the Gulf of

California is about 2000 miles. The Grand Cañon (including 65 miles

above the junction with the Little Colorado and known as Marble Cañon)

is 283 miles in length, the walls varying from 3000 to nearly 6000 feet

high and rising from the river in a series of huge steps or terraces, so

that the width, which at the river is from about 100 to 600 feet,

increases to several miles at the rim. The deepest part of the chasm is

near the hotels, and the river there flows over a mile below them.[79]

The Cañon walls are the delight of geologists, who find there in orderly

arrangement (stratum upon stratum in banded colors) the deposits of the

successive ages of the earth from the archaean granite to the lava flows

of recent geologic time. A succinct and readable account of the

geological features of the Cañon will be found in the United States

Geological Survey’s admirable Guide Book of the Western United States,

Part C—a book of especial value to the car-window observer on the Santa

Fe route.

 

Trains to the Cañon are arranged so that travelers may reach it in the

early morning and leave the same evening. In a way this is unfortunate,

for it offers a temptation, almost irresistible to an American tourist,

to “do” the place in a day and go on to some other sight. Of course no

one _can_ do it in a day, but he can do certain things, and he can get a

notion of the general scheme. Three days at least would best be planned

for, and of course more still would be better. The principal features

that should not be missed, may be summed up as follows: A horseback trip

down into the Cañon by either Bright Angel Trail or the Hermit Trail;

the drive (15 miles the round) over the Hermit Rim road; the auto trip

(26 miles the round) to Grand View Point. There are, moreover, several

short drives of four or five miles by public coach to vantage points

along the rim, costing a dollar or two per passenger; and of course

walks innumerable, among which that to Hopi Point, about 2 miles

northwest from the railway terminus, is particularly to be recommended

for its sunset view of the Cañon. Another pleasant short rim walk is to

Yavapai Point, 1½ miles to the eastward. From both these points the view

is superb.

 

The trip down the Bright Angel[80] trail to the river and back is an all

day jaunt. To the tenderfoot it is a somewhat harrowing experience to be

borne downward at an angle of 45 degrees more or less on the back of a

wobbling animal, whose head at times hangs over eternity, and whose only

footing is on a narrow shelf scratched out of a precipitous wall of the

Cañon. However, as nothing tragical happens, and as there is no escape

once you are started on the _descensus Averni_, you soon find enjoyment

in the novel trip, zigzagging ever downward through successive geologic

ages marked by rock strata in white, red, brown and blue.

 

Something over half way down there is a grateful let-up, when the trail

runs out upon a plateau watered by a musical little brook. This place is

known as “The Indian Garden.” It is enclosed on three sides by lofty

reddish walls, and here some Havasupai Indians are said to have had in

comparatively recent times a village, and to have cultivated the land.

Long before them, however, _en el tiempo de cuanto ha_, as the Pueblo

story tellers say in poetic Spanish (“in the time of how long ago”),

another race must have tilled the same soil, as the near-by cliffs

maintain numerous remains of rock dwellings and other evidences of human

occupancy. It is a pleasant, flowery, romantic spot, this Indian Garden,

in the Cañon’s crimson heart, with its fascinating environment of rock

sculpturings that seem the towers, palaces and temples of an enchanted

city awaiting the lifting of a spell. At the plateau’s outer edge you

have a stupendous view of the colossal gorge and the muddy torrent of

the river, leaping and roaring 1300 feet below. You may make the Indian

Garden the limit of your descent, or you may continue to the river

itself, corkscrewing down among the crevices and rockbound ways and

echoes of the inexorable wall until you come out upon a little beach,

past which, more terrible than beautiful, the savage torrent thunders

and cascades and tears its course to freedom. You will be glad to get

into the blessed upper world again, but you would not have missed the

experience for a greater cost of clambering.

 

The Hermit Rim road is a first-class modern highway (so far barred,

thank heaven, to automobiles), extending about 7½ miles westward from El

Tovar by way of Hopi Point to the Hermit Basin. Part of it passes

through beautiful stretches of park-like forest, emerging upon the dizzy

brink of the Cañon with magnificent outlooks over chasm and river to

distant mountains and cloud-piled sky. If you enjoy walking, it is

pleasant to do this trip one way in the public coach and the other afoot

by way of Rowe’s Well. The Hermit Rim Road ends at the head of a

comparatively new trail to the river, a sort of trail _de luxe_, 4 feet

wide and protected by a stone wall very reassuring to the apprehensive.

As on the Bright Angel trail, there is a plateau midway. Here a public

camp is maintained, where accommodations for an over-night stay may be

had. From this camp to the river must be done afoot—an easy grade, it is

said, but I cannot speak from personal knowledge. There is a trail

connecting the lower portions of Hermit and Bright Angel trails, so that

one may go to the river by one route and return by the other. This

consumes 3 days ordinarily, and must be taken as a camping trip with its

concomitant ups and downs. It is hardly to be recommended to any but the

reasonably robust—and good natured!

 

Grand View Point, 13 miles east of El Tovar—a beautiful drive that may

be done by motor car through the Coconino Forest—is the terminus of the

old-time stage route from Flagstaff. The view at the point is perhaps

the finest of all—quite different from that at El Tovar and more

extended: owing to the greater width between the main walls of the

Cañon; to the fact that the river here makes a sharp turn to the north;

and the further fact that the relative lowness of the eastern wall of

the bend opens up a vista towards the desert, which at El Tovar is

hidden. The Grand View round trip with a look-around at Grand View Point

may be done in half a day from El Tovar, but if one can afford to give a

day or two to it, the material is here to be worth the extra time. Here

is a hotel to care for you. Particularly of interest is the trail to

Moran Point, some half dozen miles to the east, an exquisite outlook and

the view point of Thomas Moran’s famous picture of the Cañon which

occupies a place in the Capitol at Washington. There is a trail down to

the river from Grand View Point, and another by way of Red Cañon,

heading a little to the west of Moran Point. A connecting trail at the

bottom of the Cañon makes it possible to descend by one trail and return

by the other, if one goes prepared to camp by the river. There are, by

the way, several varieties of fish in the Colorado, one, the so-called

Colorado salmon,[81] being a good table fish, though the catching

involves no sport, as it is not gamey.

 

The Grand Cañon may be visited at any season, though in winter there is

often snow upon the rim and upper levels. Usually there is not enough to

interfere seriously with reaching the various points of interest; and as

one descends into the gorge, one soon passes out of wintry into warmer

and still warmer conditions. Even in December some flowers will be

blooming in the bottom of the Cañon. July and August constitute the

usual summer rainy season, when frequent thunderstorms are to be

expected, particularly in the afternoons. They are usually of short

duration. The atmospheric effects accompanying and succeeding them are

often magnificent.[82]

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XIII

MONTEZUMA’S CASTLE AND WELL, WHICH MONTEZUMA NEVER SAW

 

 

If you happen never to have speculated in copper or archaeology and are

not a Southwesterner, it is quite likely that you have not heard of the

Verde Valley. It is a somewhat sinuous cleft up and down the very center

of Arizona, holding in its heart the Verde River (_el Rio Verde_, or

Green River, of the Spaniards) which has its source under the San

Francisco Peaks, and after 150 miles or so through cramped cañons and

sunny bottomlands of more or less fertility, joins the Salt River about

50 miles east of the latter’s junction with the Gila. On the western

edge of its upper reaches are the smelter towns of Clarkdale and

Jerome,[83] and the famous copper mines of the United Verde Company.

Across the valley from these, to the eastward and bordering the great

Mogollon Mesa that divides the basin of the Little Colorado and the

Gila, is that Red Rock country referred to in a previous chapter,

together with the Verde’s beautiful tributary, Oak Creek; while some 30

miles to the south there enters the Verde another stream called Beaver

Creek. It is upon the latter the scene of this present chapter is laid.

 

[Illustration]

 

OLD GOVERNOR’S PALACE, SANTA FE, N. M.

 

The center for three centuries of the political life of New Mexico,

under the successive regimes of Spaniard, Indian, Mexican and

American.

 

[Illustration]

 

MONTEZUMA’S CASTLE

 

Near Camp Verde, Arizona. A beautiful specimen of prehistoric Cliff

architecture, with which, however, Montezuma had nothing to do.

 

Today the valley of the Verde maintains but a sparse population. Here

and there is a white man’s hamlet; here and there are wickiups of the

now peaceable Apaches; and where, between the cliffs that wall in much

of the valley, there is level land enough to make farming operations

possible, there are scattering ranches strung along. Time was, however,

when the valley was the home of an abounding aboriginal population. How

long ago that was no one knows, further than that it was before—and

probably long before—the 16th century Spaniards discovered the Upper

Verde and reported silver outcroppings there. The bordering cliffs and

hilltops are dotted and honeycombed with the ruins of pueblos, stone

fortresses and cave dwellings to an extent that has made the region

unusually attractive to the archaeologists. Two of these prehistoric

remains on Beaver Creek hold especial interest also for the lay

traveler. They are the so-called Casa Montezuma, or Montezuma’s Castle,

and Montezuma’s Well. The former, a strikingly fine example of a cliff

ruin as imposing in its way as a castle on the Rhine, has been made a

National Monument and is under such protection of the United States

government as goes with a printed notice tacked upon a tree nearby, for

there is no resident guardian. The Well is upon a private ranch 8 miles

north of the Castle. It need hardly be said that Montezuma, whose name

is popularly joined to both, had nothing whatever to do with either; nor

indeed had any Aztec, though people who get their ancient history from

newspapers, will tell you that the ruins are of Aztec construction. Both

Castle and Well are close to the Arizona State Highway, and may be

reached by a 50 or 60 mile drive from Flagstaff, or half that from

Jerome. Another way to reach them is from Prescott by automobile livery.