New Mexico Line to California Line, 385.7 m.

• Concrete- and asphalt-paved roadbed; sometimes blocked by snows in winter or washes impassable during heavy rains in summer; slow down for cattle on the open ranges.
• Santa Fe Ry. and Trans. & Western Air lines roughly parallel entire route.
• All types of accommodations at Holbrook, Winslow, Flagstaff, and Kingman; limited elsewhere.

The vegetation consists mostly of juniper, pinon, greasewood, and sage, except for the tall pines of the national forests in the central section and the chollas, prickly pear, Joshua trees, and Spanish bayonets near the Colorado River. The invigorating climate of the area makes this route a favorite with summer travelers.

Section a. NEW MEXICO LINE to TOWNSEND; 163 m. US 66

Along this section of US 66, which crosses the Navajo country, are the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, an agricultural community settled by Mormons, a meteor crater, two national forests, and several ruins of early Indian villages. From the highway are many glimpses of Navajo men riding their scrubby ponies, of Navajo women weaving beside their igloo-shaped hogans, and of their children guarding the sheep. Though many of the tribesmen, with a newly acquired business sense, have built brush ramadas near the highway and hung them with blankets and rugs for sale to tourists, they do all their purchasing at the trading post. There the men, women and children gather in groups with their exquisite handiwork. The men usually wear gaudy shirts, blue denim trousers, earrings, belts studded with huge silver conchos, and either worn Stetsons or bright bands tied around their long hair; the women, clad in velvet tunics and flowered or brightly colored voluminous skirts, often carry their black-eyed babies strapped in cradleboards.

Twenty-four miles west of Gallup, N.M. (see New Mexico Guide), US 66 crosses the NEW MEXICO LINE, O m., and traverses a small corner of the NAVAJO RESERVATION (44,308 pop.). This reserve, the largest in the United States, comprises twenty-five thousand square miles in northeastern Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico.

The vermilion cliffs on both sides of the highway are a fitting introduction to a land where sun, dryness, and mineral content of the rocks combine to produce a highly colored landscape.

LUPTON, 1.1 m. (6,300 alt., 75 pop.), is a western cow town, named for a pioneer.

LUPTON WASH, 1.9 m., like many southwestern waterways, is dry except after sudden rains.

ALLANTOWN, 8.1 m., a small trading point in the Navajo country, is almost entirely dependent on the business of the tribesmen. Navajo has become the chief means of communication here, for all who deal with these Indians must speak their language.

SANDERS, 20.8 m.(5,800 alt., 56 pop.), named for an early trader, and CHAMBERS, 26.9 m. (5,754 alt., 25 pop.), are also trading posts.

Right from Chambers on an improved dirt road to KIN TIEL (Navajo, wide) RUIN, 18.6 m., which covers thirty acres and is among the largest pueblo sites in the Southwest. Most of the walls have recently been razed. When a few rooms were excavated in 1929 by Haury and Hargrave for the National Geographic Society, primarily to obtain datable beams, the outer walls were unbroken and terraced dwellings looked down on open courts. This is one of the earliest of the sites possessing kivas of the square Hopi type instead of the round Pueblo Bonito type. From the beams in the kiva roofs archeologists estimate these rooms were built between 1264 and 1285 A.D., indicating Pueblo III and early Pueblo IV periods of occupation. The finding here of several new pottery types associated with dated beams has assisted in clarifying the relationship of prehistoric Hopi cultures.

At 37.2 m. on this road is GANADO (see Tour 5).

NAVAJO, 34.9 m. (5,700 alt., 25 pop.), is another small trading post.

Left from Navajo on an unimproved road to NAVAJO SPRINGS, 3.5 m., where the territorial government of Arizona was set up by Governor J. B. Goodwin on December 29, 1863. The territory had been created ten months earlier by order of President Lincoln. When the governor, with a small retinue of officials, entered this region, it was a dangerous wilderness. A little later the capital was established at Prescott with headquarters in a log structure that still stands.

From a point at 47.2 m. is the most extensive view along this highway of the PAINTED DESERT (R). The yellow, red, magenta, and mauve sands appear in terrace, mesa, and hill formations.

At 47.4 m. is the junction with a paved road.

Right on this loop drive, which skirts the most brilliant section of the Painted Desert, an addition made to the Petrified Forest National Monument in 1936.

The Painted Desert extends for 300 miles along the north bank of the Little Colorado -- a stretch of vividly banded earth beneath a brilliant sky; at times even the air above this lonely land glows with a pink mist or a purple haze. Eons of rain and wind have exposed the highly-colored shales, marls, and sandstones. Warm, almost unreal tints waver across the sands, dance along the mesa tops, stain the lomas and ledges, and splash scarlet hues from horizon to horizon. The caprices of heat, light, and desert dust frequently change the colors from blue, amethyst, and saffron to russet, lilac, and blood red. In the early morning and evening the mesas seem to broaden; the miniature escarpments break open; mountains a hundred miles away rise in clear profile. The oblique light deepens the shadows and causes the terraced wall faces and tiny chasms to glow with crimson. Geologically this stratum belongs to the Chinle formation, which is softer than the strata above and below it. The predominant reds and yellows result from the presence of limonite and hematite; some seams and small veins contain gypsum; and certain levels of the Chinle contain petrified wood, fossil plants, and the bones of extinct reptiles and amphibians.

The PAINTED DESERT INN, 1.9 m., a pueblo-type structure with varying floor levels, is surrounded by walled-in landscaped terraces. This building, completed in 1939 by the National Park Service, contains an Indian museum, trading post for Indian-made products, rangers' quarters, a camp naturalist's office, and accommodations for tourists.

At 4.5 m. is the junction with US 66.

At 50.1 m. on US 66 is the junction with State 63.

Left on this road to the northern boundary of PETRIFIED FOREST NATIONAL MONUMENT (yearly permit for cars, motorcycles, or trailers, 50¢; visitors forbidden to take wood), 5.2 m., a ninety-two-thousand acre tract containing five separate forests of petrified wood, and many points of archeological and geological interest. Early records show that the region was visited by Lieutenant A. W. Whipple in 1853 and described as a place "Where trees have been converted into jasper." The wood is extremely hard and capable of taking a high polish. At one time the forest was threatened with depletion by pilferers; whole carloads were shipped away to jewelers and curio merchants. In 1906 a section of about forty square miles was made a national monument, and in 1931 enlarged to include Black Forest, which is in the Painted Desert and inaccessible by automobile.

An Indian legend tells of a goddess, hungry, cold, and exhausted, who was pleased when she found hundreds of logs lying on the ground here. She killed a rabbit with a club, expecting to prepare a meal. But the logs were too wet to burn. Enraged, she cursed the spot, turning the logs to stone so they could never burn. Geologists estimate that approximately a hundred and fifty million years ago this area formed part of a valley which covered western Texas, New Mexico, eastern Utah, and northeastern Arizona. Araucaria-like trees (similar to Norfolk Island pine) covered the land and perched along banks of streams that slowly wound across the valley. (Fossilized ferns and bones of giant amphibians and reptiles have been found.) To the west the ancestral Rocky Mountains formed a boundary, as did another ancient range to the southwest. As there were no Sierra Nevada, a long plain sloped west to the Pacific. The network of streams occasionally rose to flood stage and from the surrounding uplands carried sediments that slowly filled the entire valley with sand and silt and covered the forest to a depth of nearly three thousand feet. Before the trees had time to decay minerals dissolved in the ground water seeped into the trunks until the wood cells were replaced by stone. (Some of the minerals found in the different stages of petrifaction are silica, iron, manganese, aluminum, copper, lithium, and carbon.) A shallow ocean spread over this region during the Cretaceous period, which ended about sixty million years ago when the mountain-making period began. The present range of Rocky Mountains uplifted and the interior basin of the Petrified Forest region consequently rose from three thousand feet below sea level to five thousand feet above, buried under a blanket of sand, silt, and limestone 3,000 feet deep. The petrified logs were uncovered as water carried the silty substance into the Puerco and Little Colorado rivers. The forest is still being exposed by this erosion. In the deep washes logs have been found 250 feet below the surrounding land surface.

The RIO PUERCO RANGER STATION, 5.4 m. on State 63, is a checking station of the National Park Service to inspect cars leaving the monument and furnish information to those entering. Directly behind the building is a rock marked with petroglyphs believed to have been inscribed by an ancient people. Left 0.2 m. on a foot path to the PUERCO RIVER INDIAN RUIN, one room of which has been partly excavated.

At 6.2 m. on State 63 is a junction with a dirt road; R. 0.3 m. on this to a parking area (guides); R. 0.5 m. on a foot trail down steep rock steps to NEWSPAPER ROCK, a massive boulder with figures representing hands, spirals, frogs, unidentified four-legged animals, and numerous unintelligible designs scratched on two sides, presumably a prehistoric record.

THE TEEPEES (R), 8.2 m. on State 63, are eroded mounds of clay banded with blue, purple, and white.

At 8.5 m. on State 63 is a junction with a graveled road; L. here 0.4 m. to a parking area at the entrance to BLUE FOREST, a lowland region with many petrified logs, chips, and pieces of bark scattered on blue sands. In the soft sandstone are outlines of mountain sheep, antelopes, snakes, and turtles. Right 1 m. on a foot path through Blue Forest to the Upper Blue Forest trail.

At 12. 3 m. on State 63 is a junction with a paved road. Left on this 0.2 m. to AGATE BRIDGE, a partly buried petrified log, 111 feet long. Either the tall old tree fell across a small stream or erosion has washed away the soil underneath till the log forms a natural bridge over a forty-foot-wide arroyo. To prevent this largest piece of petrified wood in the park from cracking, rangers constructed a concrete support in 1934. A cowboy, who bet $10 he could ride across its treacherous surface, removed the shoes from his pony for surer footing and collected the bet. Right 0.1 m. from Agate Bridge on a footpath to PEDESTAL LOG, a petrified tree supported on a rocky base.

BENT LOG (L), 12.5 m. on State 63, is a twisted tree trunk partly buried in a knoll.

In the FIRST FOREST, 12.7 m. (R), is a graveled road that winds through fields of petrified logs. Although most of them are chipping away, hundreds are practically intact; many have a deep rich coloring and are filled with crystals. In the northern section of the Petrified Forest where silica is the only mineral found in the trees they are mostly white and gray. Toward the south the amounts of manganese and copper in the logs increase and their colors are more brilliant. The motor trail through the First Forest ends at EAGLE NEST ROCK, 0.9 m., a graceful perpendicular column of sandstone about thirty feet high, and so flared at the top that it resembles a waterspout.

The SECOND FOREST (L), 14.7 m., contains some exceptionally well-preserved logs having a dull yellow tinge and encrusted with coral-like formations. Many of the latter bear impressions of sea shells, and deep in the hollow of a petrified log a mussel fossil was found.

At 20.3 m. on State 63 is a junction with a paved road. Left 0.5 m. on this to the parking area at the entrance to THIRD FOREST which has intensely colored wood. Right from the parking area 0.5 m. on a footpath to AGATE HOUSE, the ruin of an Indian house estimated to have been built about 1100 A.D. The walls are pieces of petrified wood set in an adobe plaster.

The PETRIFIED FOREST ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, 20.5 m., constructed of local sandstone, has a central hall containing the finest stone specimens from all parts of the reserve, many polished to display their brilliant hues.

In the right wing are Indian artifacts, the jawbone of a phytosaur (a prehistoric monster that once inhabited this region) and a collection of exceptionally well-preserved ferns imbedded in rocks. A few have colored leaves.

RAINBOW LODGE (cabins 1$ a day; $1.50 includes bedding; meal 50¢) is on the administration grounds. A footpath leads back of the administration building into RAINBOW FOREST; innumerable petrified trees -- unequaled in intricacy of pattern and brilliance of color -- are still lying here as they fell millions of years ago.

The US 260 RANGER STATION, 20.9 m., is another Park Service checking station.

At 25 m. is the junction with US 260; R. 20 m. to HOLBROOK (see below), and a junction with US 66.

Near TWIN WASH, 63.5 m., are many tumble weeds, or Russian thistles which grow in the shape of a ball, become very dry in the late summer, and are uprooted by the wind that rolls them across prairies and mesas, scattering their seeds. From a distance these rolling weeds resemble running animals. They often stack against fences or barns and completely bury them.

HOLBROOK, 75.9 m. (5,080 alt., 1,115 pop.), was named for H. R. Holbrook, first engineer of the Atlantic & Pacific R.R., which later became the Santa Fe. It is the seat of Navajo County and until 1914 was said to be the only county seat in the United States without a church. Shortly after the advent of the railroad in 1881 a company was formed to utilize the right-of-way land grants for grazing. Forty thousand head of cattle were turned loose on the plains to the west and within a year Holbrook became a tough little cow town. The Aztec Land and Cattle Company, called the Hash Knife outfit for the shape of its brand, frequently drove cattle here from Texas. The Aztec, organized in the 1880's and one of the largest outfits in the Southwest, had its ranch headquarters on the Little Colorado across from Joseph City (see below). The attending cowboys would gallop through Holbrook with blazing guns, yelling, "Hide out, kids, the cowboys are in town," shoot out the lights at dances, and otherwise justify wildest western traditions. Several Hash Knife men were known to be killers.

Holbrook's first settler was said to have been Juan Padilla who came with an ox team in 1879. He set up a saloon and put Berado, a Spaniard, in charge. Berado and his wife, who added a store and an eating house to the saloon, were so well noted for their hospitality, that a self-appointed busybody put up a sign in front: "No Money, No Eat"; but Senora Berado wrote underneath: "No money, eatie anyhow." This generous woman was later kidnapped by Henry Hunings partner who, on Huning's instructions, got Berado drunk on his own whiskey and then carried the senora to Huning's home at Show Low. On his next sober day Berado started in pursuit, a hopeless one, he soon discovered, because of Huning's power and influence. Soon thereafter Berado abandoned his home and store, and left the country.

The old BLEVINS HOUSE on Central St., a white frame structure, was the scene of a gun battle between Sheriff Commodore Owens and four members of the Graham faction, who had taken a leading part in the Pleasant Valley War (see Tour 10A). Owens held a warrant for the arrest of Andy Cooper as a cattle rustler. (Cooper, one of the Blevins brothers, had changed his name when he came to Arizona because he was wanted for murder in Texas.) On September 4, 1887, the sheriff went alone to the Blevins' house and demanded Cooper's surrender. In the fight that followed Andy Cooper was mortally wounded, his 16-year-old brother, Sam Houston Blevins, was killed, John Blevins was wounded, and Mose Roberts, a member of the Blevins household, was killed.

The highway crosses the boundary of a farming district, 82.5 m., and parallels an irrigation ditch (L). The green of the crops forms a contrast with the wild plant life to the east. On the western skyline are the usually snow-capped San Francisco Peaks, the highest mountains in Arizona.

JOSEPH CITY, 96.8 m. (5,083 alt., 400 pop.), founded in 1876 as Allen's Camp, is the lone survivor of five early Mormon settlements on the Little Colorado River, and the oldest town in Navajo County. The Mormons made heroic attempts to dam the Little Colorado, one of the most capricious rivers in the nation, in order to provide water for irrigation. Before 1925 when the present (1939) dam was built, they had themselves financed and wholly or partly constructed fourteen dams here. (These many thwarted efforts caused the abandonment of the other four settlements.) The first dam, built three miles east of the present site in 1876, required 960 days of work and an expenditure of $5,000, but was washed out by the first flood. Five hundred workdays had been expended on the ditch to convey the water to the farms, and seed, hauled 400 miles by wagon, had just been planted. The total value of that year's crop was about twenty dollars. The successive attempts to put effective dams in the quicksand bed of the river led Andrew Jensen, Mormon church historian, to call the settlement "the leading community in pain, determination and unflinching courage in dealing with the elements around them." Agriculture is still the principal industry.

At 104.2 m. is the junction with a graded dirt road.

Right on this to another section of the PAINTED DESERT, 14 m., a source of colored sands for the dry-sand paintings of the Hopi and Navajo.

The road enters the Navajo Indian Reservation (see above), 18.4 m., and the Hopi Indian Reservation, 43.6 m., as it winds through the Hopi Buttes, which are the eagle-trapping grounds of certain clans. Formerly the men hid in traps baited with rabbits and seized the eagles that pounced on the prey. Now, every June several men of each clan climb the steep rough mountains in the eyries, take the young birds from their nests (but leave a few so they will not be exterminated), and carry them to the village where they are tied on the housetops. Their heads are washed with yucca suds, as are those of new born babies, and their feathers are made into prayer sticks. Then the eagles are killed and buried with a solemn ritual in a special crevice in the rocks. At the last appearance of the Kachinas in mid-July (see Tour 5), the prayer sticks are offered to the gods and the eagles' graves are sprinkled with sacred meal and decorated with Kachina dolls, and small bows and arrows. The Hopi speak of the eagles as "our animals," regarding them as the best carriers of prayers to the rain-bringing gods. At an eagle shrine near Walpi (see Tour 5), is a collection of wooden ovals -- some very old while others still show traces of white paint and feathers. These are representations of eggs and are made during the Winter Solstice Ceremony as prayers for the increase of eagles.

WINSLOW, 108.9 m. (3,730 alt., 3,917 pop.), was first settled in 1882 as a division terminal of the Santa Fe Ry. As the stock-raising industry developed, it became one of the largest towns in northern Arizona. Hotel LA POSADA, one of the Fred Harvey system, is a copy of a Spanish hacienda and holds many pieces of furniture in use long before the territory was organized.

At 109.1 m. is a junction with a graveled road.

Right on this to another dirt road, 16 m.; R. 1 m. on this to LEUPP, a Navajo subagency (meals available; no sleeping accomodations), near the Little Colorado. Five hundred Navajo and Hopi children attend the boarding school here, which is housed in half a dozen red sandstone buildings -- school, dormitories, laundry, auditorium, and shops. The course, evenly divided between academic and vocational subjects, covers the first eight grades.

The waters of RED LAKE (L) are visible from 27 m. on the main side road. This lake surrounded by trees and tall reeds provides a refuge for wild ducks.

RED BUTTES (L), 40 m., are eroded into the likeness of medieval castles. Here the road crosses the HOPI INDIAN RESERVATION boundary.

ORAIBI, 67 m., a very old Hopi village, is at the junction with a dirt road (see Tour 5).

From the tower (R) of the METEOR CRATER OBSERVATORY (adm. 25¢), 128.2 m., the crater can be viewed by telescope. Within the building is a model showing the course of the meteor after it struck the surface of the earth, its present position, and examples of the ore that possesses a greater density than gold and a high iron content.

Left on this to METEOR CRATER (adm. 25¢), 7 m., a great pockmark about one mile in diameter and 600 feet deep in the face of the desert. Although some geologists estimate that the meteor which caused the crater struck this continent about 50,000 years ago, promoters like to quote a date nearer 2,000 years ago, thereby lending support to those who call it the Star of Bethlehem. Scientists estimate that the meteor displaced between five and six million tons of rock and soil. Efforts to find the meteorite under the crater were begun in 1905. The first test holes, sent down in the center, failed but subsequent drilling at the south edge revealed at a depth of 1,376 feet a hard mass that may be a meteor. Meteor fragments that are scattered about this area are principally iron, with some nickel and platinum; some of them contain diamonds. Several tons of these fragments -- ranging from small pieces of iron to some weighing over 1,000 pounds -- have been picked up. The meteor is though to have struck at an angle from the north, leaving a surrounding ridge higher on the south edge. Though this crater has aroused much scientific speculation, the site has been purchased by a Pittsburg company with the evident intention of future mining operations.

CANYON DIABLO (5,429 alt.), 132.8 m., a typical gorge in the Kaibab sandstone (shading from a yellow to a salmon color), 225 feet deep and 500 feet wide and so named because travelers experienced great difficulty in crossing it. In 1857 when Edward F. Beale was surveying for a wagon road from Ft. Defiance, New Mexico, to the Colorado, he passed here with his camels (see Tour 3d) and noted, "It is appropriately named being a deep chasm with perpendicular walls..."

On March 21, 1889, an Atlantic & Pacific train was stopped at the Canyon Diablo station by four bandits who robbed the express strongbox and fled northward. A posse consisting of Sheriff William "Bucky" O'Neill and three deputies chased the robbers 300 miles in two weeks before finally sighting them in southeastern Utah, 40 miles east of Canyonville. The citizens of Canyonville had already attempted to arrest the desperadoes, but were themselves held up, forced to stack their arms and retreat. Shortly thereafter the sheriff's men closed in; during the pitched battle that followed fifty shots fired succeeded only in wounding a robber's mount. The fugitives abandoned their horses and plunged into the mountains on foot but were soon captured by the posse, and the money they were carrying -- about $1,000 -- was recovered. Smith, one of the robbers, escaped through a car window on the return trip but was later recaptured.

The route crosses the boundary of the COCONINO NATIONAL FOREST, 148.8 m., which contains western yellow pine, the most valuable of the state's timber.

WINONA, 156.8 m. (6,000 alt., 109 pop.), has a general store, service station, and tourist camp.

At 157 m. is the junction with an unimproved road.

Right on this 0.5 m. to the RUINS OF A GAME COURT. Although carefully excavated in 1936 by the Museum of Northern Arizona and the State Teachers College at Flagstaff, the site has been partly filled with soil. It is one of several similar prehistoric ruins in Arizona, and since it is the same type described by the early Spanish writers in Mexico and Yucatan, it links the culture of the Mayas and Aztecs with that of the Pueblo area.

On the same road are the excellently preserved REMAINS OF A PIT HOUSE, 0.7 m., of the early Pueblo period. About 20 feet square and 10 feet deep, it was roofed over with perishable materials at the time of occupation. The walls are of coursed masonry and the fireplace is in the approximate center of the floor. This is one of the largest of the many pit houses found in the Southwest. It was also excavated in 1936.

At 158.8 m. on US 66 is the junction with an unimproved road.

Right on this road to another unimproved dirt road, 16 m.; L. on this to the GRAND FALLS OF THE LITTLE COLORADO, 27.2 m., which drop 185 feet. Except during the rainy season of late summer the falls are practically non-existent and in the spring the Indians water their stock in the pool below. After a storm in the upper basin the usually dry bed of the river roars with a turbulent muddy flood, and the falls become a chocolate-colored Niagara. They were formed when a stream of molten basalt from Rodin's crater, between this point and the San Francisco Peaks, blocked a canyon that the Little Colorado had cut through the limestone and sandstone of the plateau and forced the river out of its channel. The diverted waters wore a second gorge nearly 60 miles long around the tongue of lava, then dropped over the high rim of its former canyon into its old course. This volcanic interruption accounts for the basalt western bank and the limestone baked to a reddish color by the intense heat of the lava. There are many ruins of cliff dwellings in the hills to the west and south of the falls.

At 160.6 m. on US 66 is the junction with a dirt road.

Left on this to the Park Service's WALNUT CANYON NATIONAL MONUMENT, 5 m. On the sides of this gorge which is cut in a limestone plateau are the remains of about 300 cliff dwellings, believed to have been built and occupied from about 900 to 1100 A.D. and abandoned because of prolonged drought. Matting, stone implements (including hoes), and other relics have been uncovered. The northern wall of the canyon served as a windbreak and shelter. Water was carried up to the cliffs on a well-built trail. Large shells are often found in the vicinity and fossils abound.

At 161 m. on US 66 is the junction with an unimproved road.

Left on this to TURKEY HILL RUINS, 0.1 m. By the tree-ring method of dating, it has been estimated that the pueblo-type structures on this site were built between 1203 and 1278 A.D. This was one of the largest pueblos in the region and also one of the last to be abandoned. A large mound covers what is believed to be the remains of a three-story building with perhaps fifteen basal rooms, and a one-story extension of eleven rooms to the northeast. Three small extensions of four-room houses lie a few yards to the southeast. Between the largest of these is a depression that archeologists believe might show a kiva if excavated. An outcrop of lava north of the ruin was used as a permanent metates. Although not as large as Elden Pueblo (see below), potsherds indicate this site was occupied at a later date. Well preserved painted arm bands made of basketry were found on arm bones in the burial grounds.

TOWNSEND, 163 m. (6,938 alt., 218 pop.), called Doney for a Civil War veteran who lived here till his death in 1932, and renamed in 1936 for John Townsend, the Indian fighter, is at the junction with US 89 (see Tour 1a). US 66 and US 89 are one route between Townsend and the junction with US 89, 0.3 miles east of Ashfork.

Right from Townsend on an unimproved dirt road to ELDEN PUEBLO, 0.1 m., a moundlike ruin in a clearing of pines at the foot of Elden Mountain (9,000 alt.). The pueblo is a rectangular structure, 145 feet long and 125 feet wide, with the remaining walls only two to seven feet in height. Originally it had two stories; the lower one was used as a granary and contained a large communal or ceremonial room with a low seat extending completely around the inner wall. Near by are many smaller ruins and two burial grounds that have yielded ollas, ladles, jugs, necklaces, turquoise ear pendants, rings, clay images of quadrupeds, a small clay effigy of a bird with spread wings, and miniature vessels painted black-on-white. It was the custom to bury the dead near-by so that their spirits might remain close to friends and relatives. They were always fully ornamented and any articles they valued in life were buried with them. Offerings were presumably placed before the small shrine at the southwest corner of the pueblo facing the sunset point of the winter solstice.

Section b. TOWNSEND to ASHFORK JUNCTION; 56.2 m. US 66, US 66-89.

West of Townsend, 0 m., the road continues through two national forests whose pines give the route much beauty as their dark forms are silhouetted against the drifting clouds of a summer sky or assume a Christmas-card prettiness under a winter snow. Because of the high altitude the air is always dry; summers are cool and winters sometimes have sub-zero temperatures. There are many Indian ruins and two hundred extinct volcanoes in this vicinity. In the forests are bear, lion, deer, and smaller game but they are seldom seen; occasionally a bear will lumber across the road or a motorist glimpse one or more deer bounding away through the pine and juniper.

Before the advent of barbed wire and domestic stock, every mesa and valley of any size from sea level to seven thousand feet supported thousands of these animals. On the grassy plateaus and open pine tablelands of the north the American pronghorn ranged, and in the desert and southern grassland mesas, the duller-coated Mexican pronghorn.

The American pronghorn is the only antelope that annually sheds the hard covering of its horns, and the only one with horns that are branched. Both sexes are horned, the females having much the smaller growth. Shortly after the breeding season in the fall, these black varnished shells peel off, exposing a dark skin covering on the bony core beneath. The coarse hair that protects thisskin drops off as the new shell hardens. Although they are primarily grazing animals, weeds and shrubs make up much of their diet, and the desert pronghorns have become almost entirely browsers.

In late April and May the does quietly drift away from the herd to drop two, or occasionally three fawns, or kids, which they hide separately near shrubs or rocks or in the long grass and weeds. Every winter these antelopes, most gregarious of all the large game animals except the bison, band together in herds which include all of their number for miles around.

The largest herds in Arizona are usually southeast and north of Flagstaff and north of Kingman, Seligman and Ashfork. Many smaller herds are scattered from the Grand Canyon to Prescott. In southern Arizona there are remnants of herds in Pima and Cochise Counties and a few good-sized groups in southern Yuma County. The Mexican variety ranges far into Sonora but the northern species moves within a comparatively small area.

FLAGSTAFF, 6.2 m. (6,907 alt., 3,891 pop.) (see Flagstaff).

• Points of interest. Arizona State Teachers College, Public Library, City Park, and others.

1. Right from Flagstaff two blocks on Beaver Street to Birch Avenue; L. on Birch Avenue to an improved dirt road; L. here to LOWELL OBSERVATORY (open daily 1:30 to 2:30), 1.4 m. on top of Mars Hill on the edge of a volcanic mesa 350 feet higher than the city. Dr. Percival Lowell (1855-1916) founded the observatory at Flagstaff in 1894 and endowed it permanently. Lowell advanced the theory that Mars was inhabited by intelligent beings who constructed its canals. In a theoretical treatise he predicted the course of a then-unknown planet. In 1930 Clyde W. Tombaugh of the observatory discovered a planet in exactly the position that Dr. Lowell had calculated. It was subsequently named Pluto. The staff (1940) consists of three astronomers and four assistants.

2. Right from Flagstaff on Beaver Street nine blocks to Columbus Ave.; L. on Columbus to the graded dirt Country Club road; R. on Country Club road to the MUSEUM OF NORTHERN ARIZONA, 3 m., constructed in 1934 to promote archeological research and preserve one of the largest collections of mammals, birds, reptiles, and invertebrates in the state. The museum contains research rooms, laboratories, a library room, and an art gallery. Each year during July Hopi Indian handiwork is exhibited to several thousand visitors. Straight ahead on Country Club road (open May-Oct.) to the three SAN FRANCISCO PEAKS, 12.5 m., Humphreys (12,611 alt.), Agassiz (12,340 alt.), and Fremont (11,940 alt.). Their names honor Andrew Atkinson Humphreys (1810-83), who surveyed for a railroad to the Pacific, was an authority on river hydraulics, a corps commander of the Army of the Potomac, and became chief engineer in the army; Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807-73), the geologist and zoologist noted for his classification of marine fossils and theory of the glacial epoch; and John Charles Fremont (1813-90), governor of Arizona territory (1878-82), whose appellation the "pathfinder" has been changed by recent biographers to "pathmaker." Early in the seventeenth century the Franciscans who established a mission at Oraibi (see Tour 5) gave the name San Francisco to these peaks to honor St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of their order. These mountains are so high and the air in the surrounding valleys and plains usually so clear that points in Utah, California, and Nevada are often visible from their crests. When seen from a distance in the early morning the lower slopes are hidden by haze and the peaks seem to hang from the sky. They are amazingly symmetrical and their snowy summits are constantly changing in color. At sunrise they appear gold; at noon they are Carrara marble against a turquoise sky; at sunset they are polished copper, ruby, coral, and finally amethyst.

The Hopi call these peaks the Nuvat-i-kyan-bi (place of the snow peaks).

US 66 crosses the eastern boundary of the KAIBAB NATIONAL FOREST (see Tour 1a) at 16.3 m.

BELLEMONT, 17.7 m. (7,132 alt., 35 pop.), is a trading point in a stock-raising and lumbering region. KENDRICK PEAK (10,418 alt.), visible to the north, was named for Major H. L. Kendrick, who brought a military party through here in the gold rush days of forty-nine.

Right from Bellemont on an unimproved road to GOVERNMENT CAVE, 8 m. This cave, which is almost a mile long and in places forty feet high, was formed by the cooling of a lava flow and contains no large stalactites, or stalagmites. The walls and roof form an arch over the malapai volcanic rock floor, which reveals the flow lines so clearly that it appears to be still in motion. Ice that forms in the cave is used by near-by ranchers for refrigeration.

The light bark of a grove of aspen (L), 21.8 m., contrasts with the dark green pines.

The highest point (7,040 alt.) on US 66 is at 22.8 m.

Near PARKS, 35.9 m., which consists of a post office, store, and tourist cabins, is a series of natural clearings in the forest (R) which have been intensively cultivated.

Grand Canyon Junction, 38.6 m., is the junction with State 64 (see Grand Canyon).

Though WILLIAMS, 39.8 m. (6,762 alt., 2,164 pop.), is a lumber town, most of its buildings are of brick. The main street straggles down the west shoulder of Bill Williams Mountain between a series of one- and two-story business houses. Above, spreading gradually across the slope of the mountain, is a residential section with an occasional modern hotel indicating the lively tourist trade Williams owes to the Grand Canyon. Livestock, shipping, and railroad repair shops are additional sources of revenue.

Charles T. Rodgers, cattleman who ran the 111 brand, homesteaded this site in 1878. In 1881 when the area had become more settled he was appointed postmaster. The lumber industry developed after the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad was built in 1882.

Both the town and the mountain are named for Old Bill Williams (1787-1849), the trapper and guide. He had been a Baptist circuit rider in Missouri when he was seventeen, and had lived for more than ten years with the Osage as one of them before he plunged into the wilderness and emerged as a mountaineer described thus by Will. H. Robinson: "Long, sinewy and bony, with a chin and nose almost meeting, he was the typical plainsman of the dime novel. He always rode an Indian pony, and his Mexican stirrups were big as coal scuttles. His buckskin suit was bedaubed with grease until it had the appearance of polished leather; his feet were never encased in anything but moccasins, and his buckskin trousers had the traditional fringe on the outer seam. Naturally, Indian signs were an open book to him, and he was even readier to take a scalp than an Apache, who preferred to crush the heads of his victims and let their hair stay." As paradoxical as he was incredible, Williams was acknowledged one of the most skillful guides in the West, yet was blamed by Fremont for the failure of Fremont's fourth expedition and was accused of incompetence, treachery, and cannibalism -- charges which have since been disproved. He was finally killed by the Utes with whom he had once lived and by whom he had been treated as a tribesman until he went on a spree with their money, then led soldiers against them and took an active part in the attack.

The SAGINAW & MANISTEE LUMBER MILL at the western edge of town prepares Arizona pine for house construction and manufactures box shooks that are extensively used to ship products from the Gila, Salt River, and Imperial Valleys.

Left from Williams on the Williams-Verde Valley road to the junction with Lookout Trail (open May-Nov.), 6 m. (horses and guides available here at Perkins Ranch); R. 4.5 m. on this to the fire lookout on the rounded summit of BILL WILLIAMS MOUNTAIN (9,264 alt.), called by the Havauspai Hue-ga-woo-la (Bear Mountain), and by the Apache-Mojave Jack-ha-weha (covered with cedar). In 1851 R. H. Kern placed it on the map that accompanied the report of the Sitgreaves Survey -- of which he was a member -- as Bill Williams Mountain.

From a point at 49.4 m. a broad view of open country covered with juniper and sagebrush stretches for miles to the west.

At 56.2 m. is a junction (L) with US 89 (see Tour 1b). The highway crosses the western boundary of the Kaibab National Forest near this point. West of the junction Picacho Butte dominates the horizon.

Section c. ASHFORK JUNCTION to CALIFORNIA LINE; 168.5 m. US 66

Between the junction with US 89, 0 m., and the California Line are the high mesas of the Hualpai Reservation, the Mojave country, several mining communities, and the border of the Mojave Desert.

ASHFORK, 0.3 m., (5,144 alt., 894 pop.), is a stock-raising center (information here concerning trip to Cathedral Cave) and has developed considerable business in quarrying a tinted sandstone, found about ten miles away. This stone was used in many of the town's buildings and a large amount has been shipped to California.

Left from Ashfork on a road (almost impassable for cars) to CATHEDRAL CAVE, 16 m. Through a narrow crevice between two huge boulders, visitors descend by ladders to the floor of the cave where many stalactites and stalagmites create a fantastic effect.

SELIGMAN, 25.3 m. (5,242 alt., 500 pop.), a shipping and trading point for miners and cattle ranchers, is headquarters for the Three V Cattle Company, which controls extensive ranges (R) from State 64 to the Colorado River.

(Travelers going west should set watches back one hour to Pacific Standard Time.) On the western horizon (L) are Twin Buttes.

US 66 crosses the eastern boundary of the HUALPAI (sometimes spelled Walapai) INDIAN RESERVATION, 58.1 m. (321 pop.), which comprises almost a million acres bounded on the north by Lake Mead and the Colorado River, and forms the lower part of an irregular octagon. In this southern part of the reservation are wide mesas; in the north, giant buttes form a series of steps to the rim of the Grand Canyon; while to the south and west are jagged barren mountains characteristic of the desert. On this reservation, which is under the supervision of the Truxton Canyon Agency, is only one settlement, Peach Springs (see below), from which roads radiate to the farthest points.

The present census shows less than 500 surviving members of the Hualpai tribe. (Some of these live in towns off the reservation.) Their health is comparatively good perhaps because of the clear dry climate -- days of brilliant sun and invigorating cold. They were never a large tribe even when they roamed from the Bill Williams River to the Grand Canyon. Unlike most Indians of the Southwest they developed little agriculture and lived on deer, antelope, mountain sheep, badgers, rabbits, porcupines, birds, many varieties of cacti, both fresh and dried, century plants, yuccas, pine nuts, mesquite beans, acorns, and walnuts. The pine nut is still important in their diet. They had also wild berries, grapes, and wild tobacco. In their tiny gardens in the depths of canyons corn, beans, squash, melons, and a few peaches were grown.

The Hualpai built a small dome-shaped house on a four-post foundation, filled out with framework of small poles and branches, and covered with a thatch of juniper bark. Few of these houses survive; the present-day Hualpai prefer frame houses from the sawmill erected by the government.

Their arts were never highly developed; among them skill in the dressing of hides and a distinctive basketry were alone noteworthy. They wove blankets of strips of rabbit skin and made basketry bottles waterproofed with red paint and pitch. The clothing of the men consisted of a buckskin shirt, breech clout, and moccasins; that of the women two aprons, a long one in front covered the breasts, and a short one in back that extended from the waist down; all were ornamented with simple geometric designs.

They developed no group ceremonials, but instead considered each daily individual act or duty a rite to be fulfilled according to the instructions in their elaborate creation legend.

The Hualpai stubbornly resisted the white man's invasion but in 1874 were subdued and transported from their desert-mountain home here to La Paz, in the Colorado Valley south of Parker, where they died by scores. In 1883 the government established this reservation for them. The remnant that returned from exile in 1875 soon drifted into railroad-construction camps and mines, and subsisted meagerly for half a century. In 1915 the government began to make amends and issued ten head of cattle to each fifteen families, a plan that has been continued to the present. The depression wiped out their always slight subsistence, and a new government program was therefore developed to give them good homes, augment their herds, and teach them to become self-supporting on their own lands.

In PEACH SPRINGS, 62.4 m. (4,800 alt., 129 pop.), the trading post of the Hualpai Indian Reservation (rodeo in Aug.), is a small hotel. Litigation between the Indians and the railroad over rights to the springs has extended over a long period. Father Garces, Franciscan missionary, camped at Peach Springs in 1776 on his way to the Hopi villages. His route from the Colorado River to the springs closely approximated that now followed by the Santa Fe Ry.

The following reservation roads radiating from Peach Springs are unpaved and generally unmapped; guides essential.

1. Right from Peach Springs on the western road to MERIWITICA CANYON, 35 m., a thousand-foot gash in the mesa, at the bottom of which are a few acres of garden land cultivated from time immemorial by the Hualpai. It was here that they took final refuge from the invading white man, but even here he eventually starved them out. The canyon is similar to but smaller than the one occupied by the Havasupai, their cousins in the Grand Canyon. In the wooded land above the canyon graze several thousand fine Herefords, common property of the tribe.

Meriwitica Canyon and Diamond Canyon (see below) are both within the Boulder Dam Recreation Area (see Tour 2B).

2. Right from Peach Springs on the eastern road across a wide stretch of desert and into a thirty-nine-thousand-acre FOREST OF YELLOW PINE. The government is beginning to make the resources of the section available to the Indians, improving the road, erecting a sawmill, and conducting experiments in dry farming. There are twenty thousand acres along the stream beds suitable for such development.

3. Right from Peach Springs on the northern road (almost impassable for cars) along Peach Springs Draw into DIAMOND CANYON, 21 m., where the old Diamond Creek Hotel was operated until the railroad between Williams and Grand Canyon was built in 1907. Before that time Diamond Canyon had been the most popular place from which to view the Grand Canyon, though the walls in this western section of the Colorado's gorge are only 2,000 feet high, which is less than half their height in the national park area. The trip was made by horse-drawn stages and took ten hours because of a three-thousand-foot drop in elevation on the last eighteen miles of the journey. Diamond Creek Hotel was a frame structure with nine bedrooms, a dining room, and a lobby. After its abandonment the hotel was carried off in pieces by Indians and ranchers until only the foundation forms remain. John Nelson, the stage driver who still lives in Peach Springs, can remember when the Diamond Creek Hotel entertained guests from practically every state in the Union, and from Europe.

In VALENTINE, 81.1 m. (3,800 alt., 110 pop.), formerly called Truxton but renamed for Robert G. Valentine, Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1908-10), is the Truxton Canyon Indian Subagency on a tract of 640 acres bisected by the Santa Fe Ry. The agency building, erected in 1900, houses a boarding school for two hundred Indian boys and girls.

On the desert southwest of Valentine changes of weather effect sudden and complete transformations. Under a clear blue heaven this is a land of tawny yellows and reds; when there are clouds they throw dark purple shadows on the ground and intensify the golden glow of the sunlight; but as columns of rain advance over the mesas it is a world of blue and gray-green shadows. Desert rains are usually so definitely demarked that the story of the man who washed his hands in the edge of an Arizona thunder shower without wetting his cuffs seems almost credible.

Many are repelled by the desert's vast stretches of mesas and buttes with their sagebrush and yucca; by its gigantic masses of sharp, broken rock; and by its wind-beaten wastes, so still at times beneath the blazing sun that the wavering heat vibrations are the only movement. Under the withering summer heat, the cacti droop, the desert fauna seed the shade of the mesquite; only the lizard, skirting swiftly over the parched floor, braves the sun's glare. The plant life bears visible evidence of its struggle to exist in these extremely arid conditions. Branches are reduced to stubs and thorns, leaves are varnished or dispensed with, flowering and fruiting processes are withheld through rainless periods sometimes for years. Yet the desert has a compensatory beauty. The cacti bear brilliant flowers. The yellow, red, and orange of the bisagna, the white of the saguaro, the red, pink, and gold of the ocotillo and cholla, and the yellow of the palo verde are spread across the desert to the horizon where sky, mountains, and cacti dissolve in a Tyrian haze. Under clouds and oppressive heat the sky often glows with carmines, chrome-yellows, magentas, pinks, grays, and browns and at times these are reflected on the desert floor till it becomes a symphony of color. On rare occasions even the moon that silvers the mountain spires, turrets, and peaks bridges them with a faint arc in all the colors of the spectrum -- a rainbow of moonlight.

KINGMAN, 114.5 m. (3,336 alt., 5,572 pop.), since 1882 has been the shopping and shipping center for a large and sparsely populated western area. It is the seat of Mojave County, which contains over three hundred thousand acres of grazing land but derives its principal income from lode mines. These mines have already yielded many millions of dollars' worth of gold.

The town is built on gently sloping land between the Hualpai, Cerbat, and Black Mountains. US 66 follows the main thoroughfare, Front Street, which has business buildings on one side and on the other the tracks and station of the Santa Fe Railway, the town's one link for many years with the outside world. Its two Federal highways and its proximity to Boulder Dam have brought many tourists to Kingman and fringed the town with auto courts.

The gold miners, cowboys and Hualpai Indians (who depend on Kingman for shopping and recreation) and an occasional old-fashioned prospector who passes through, driving burros packed with bedroll, Dutch oven, picks, and drills, give the town quite an atmosphere of the old West. Most Kingman streets are unpaved and the shops and cafes off the highway resemble country stores. In its early days the water supply, which now comes from Oak Creek and Beale Springs, had to be transported into town by wagon and sold for five cents a gallon. Though food as well as lodging is expensive here the restaurants list steak-and-eggs on the breakfast menu and frequently serve four eggs and a double stack of wheatcakes to one patron.

Next to the wedding of the movie stars, Carol Lombard and Clark Gable, performed here March 29, 1939, Kingman's greatest bid for attention is its annual Dig-N-Dogie Days Celebration (Sept.). The streets are decorated; all townspeople wear boots and Stetsons; gold miners from the near-by Katherine-Oatman district crowd into town; copper miners travel considerable distances to compete with them; and cowboys ride in on their ponies, untie their bedrolls, and sleep in the open. When they are not busy around the chutes, they squat on their heels along Front Street swapping stories about the day's events, or stand at the bars drinking whiskey between swigs of Coca-Cola. The Dig-N-Dogie Days are crowded with dances, carnival attractions, parades, and general gaiety -- but the rodeo and miners' contests are the big events. Only men who actually work the range ride in the rodeo. In the miners' contests muckers compete to fill a mine car with broken rock, push it down the track, and dump it in the least possible time, and drillers work for fifteen minutes with hammers and steel chisels to cut as deep a hole as possible in hard granite rock. Each gold-mining camp has its championship team or single-jacker in the competition and a cheering section in the audience. As hand steel is now seldom used in the mines, the drilling contests bring out many old-timers but the muckers are all younger men. The purses for the events are not large but competition is keen and local merchants offer such additional prizes as a T-bone steak for the biggest cowboy in the first parade; a shine, haircut and shave to the most unlucky cowboy in the show; or $5 in credit on a mattress to the most recently married contestant.

West of SITGREAVES PASS (3,600 alt.), 118.1 m., the greasewood and yucca of the desert country appears. This pass, named for Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves who surveyed a wagon road from Zuni to the Colorado River, was the scene of a massacre of an emigrant train by Hualpai and Mojave Indians in the early sixties.

At 121.5 m. is the junction with a dirt road.

Left on this road to YUCCA, 20 m. (2,000 alt., 75 pop.), a small settlement that caters to employees of the near-by Yucca-Tungsten, Borrianna, and Signal mines (open on application). The Borrianna, in which was discovered Arizona's first tungsten in commercial quantities, is still (1939) the state's largest tungsten producer. Small amounts of tungsten are used in electric lamp filaments though its chief value is for hardening steel.

GOLDROAD, 140.9 m. (5,225 alt., 52 pop.), is a typical small mining community.

OATMAN, 143.3 m. (2,600 alt., 500 pop.), an old-time mining camp with modern touches, strings up and down blue-shadowed foothills of the Black Mountains. Flanking the town are gray tiers of cyanide-mill tailings, smooth and graceful as frozen waterfalls; some of the mine shafts and workings are visible in the surrounding hills.

US 66 follows the only street, built on a long hillside with stores and offices in an unbroken row up one side of it. In front of the stores is a wide plank boardwalk raised on stilts at the lower end to make it level and reached by flights of worn wooden steps. Old wooden awnings on the store fronts shadow the shop windows and make the walk resemble an old-fashioned front porch. Among the several bars in this block is one called the Health Center, a combination saloon, ice-cream parlor and drug store. Because of several bad fires the opposite side of the street has fewer and somewhat newer buildings. One of these, a neat frame fire station, contains a red fire engine that leads all town parades. Next to the fire house is a vacant lot where mine-drilling contests are held.

The houses of the community are small and cheaply-constructed; some are gay with paint, and others, weather-beaten gray. Many are perched on hilltops that give an excellent view of the mountains and are reached by narrow winding dirt roads or trails. Although water is very expensive in this semiarid country each house has some shrubbery or a few flowers which are kept alive by carefully conserved waste water.

In spite of its high food prices and isolation the miners like to work in Oatman. Its spirit and morale are unusually high. The nearest movie is in Kingman, 29 miles over the mountain, so the citizens depend on their community gatherings for recreation. In good weather dances, boxing matches, and other entertainments are held in the pavilion on the main street. Wrestling contests between young men of the town, who sometimes perform barefooted, are well attended. The male spectators squat around the mats that are placed in the center of the pavilion and the women and their small children sit on wooden benches in the back. A great to-do is made over choosing a referee, who seldom lasts more than one match. While a contest is in progress the miners shout and urge their favorites to bite, kick, and gouge, but when it is ended they cheer the loser as well as the winner.

Families from miles around come to Oatman on Labor Day; an Indian band plays all day long, and the streets are jammed with good-natured crowds. The competitive events of the day, which consist of girls' tug-o'-war and a women's nail-driving competition, are climaxed by mucking and drilling contests for the miners (see above).

Oatman was named for a pioneer family that was attacked by Apaches near Gila Bend in 1851; the parents were killed, two girls were taken into captivity, and a boy beaten into unconsciousness. The girls were hidden at a spring a half-mile north of the present townsite (locally known as Ollie Oatman Spring), and were overlooked by soldiers who had been detailed to their rescue. The boy recovered. The younger sister, Mary Ann, died a captive, but Olive, the older, was released in 1856 through efforts of a rancher and joined her brother at Fort Yuma.

Throughout its history Oatman has prospered and languished by turn after the manner of mining towns. In the early days a narrow-gauge railway extended from the near-by mines to Fort Mojave on the Colorado River; to that point a ferry brought supplies from Needles, California. From 1904-7 three million dollars' worth of gold was taken from this vicinity and the town boasted two banks, ten stores, and a chamber of commerce.

West of Oatman is the traditional territory of the Mojave Indians who now live on the Mojave Indian Reservation to the north and on the Colorado River Indian Reservation at Parker to the south (see Tour 3B).

When Father Garces, Spanish missionary and explorer, went up the Colorado River in 1775 he estimated the Mojave at three thousand although they now have less than nine hundred members. The Mojave language is still very much alive; the older folk use it almost entirely and many of the children do not know English when they enter school.

Formerly one of the fiercest tribes of the Southwest, the Mojave are now farmers who raise fruits, vegetables, and cotton on the rich lowlands of the Colorado Valley. On the Colorado River Reservation ten acres of land have been allotted to each family (see Tour 3B).

The Colorado River is glimpsed (L) from a point at 160 m. The black rocks along the roadside here are of volcanic origin.

TOPOCK, 168.5 m. (505 alt., 55 pop.), is the lowest point in elevation on the Arizona section of US 66. The Standard Oil Company has made it a distributing center for this part of the state.

The halfway point on the bridge over the Colorado River is the Arizona-California boundary, 169 m. (see California Guide)