Way Out West

by James Allen

A long dusty straight desert highway, hot and deserted, featureless scrub; heading from Ajo in Arizona to Gila Bend in Arizona. Signs appear indicating a stop. The post is manned by quasi-military dressed, armed, men, some with dogs. We are stopped and asked: ‘Citizenship?’

‘American,’ says Mara. ‘English,’ I say.

‘Do you have your passport?’ asks the border guard looking at me.

‘No,’ I protest, ‘I don’t.’

‘Do you have any identification?’

‘I have my Driving Licence.’

As I pass it over I realise that it’s an EU licence and doesn’t really convey my UK or English citizenship. After many long seconds and some discussion which we can’t hear, my licence is returned and we are waved on.

Welcome to America, 2011. The last time I required a passport for internal travel within a country was several years ago in Jordan, but only close to the Syrian and Israeli borders, not long after the second Iraq war. I didn’t expect to need a passport when travelling in the US, land of the free. Looking back on this and a second similar encounter, it’s clear that we could have lied and been waved on and that they weren’t looking for slightly overweight English white men. Had I been Mexican, I suspect each control point I would have been stopped and asked to provide documentation of my right to be in the US. Scary, really, how quickly those perceived rights we believe we have can evaporate...

Travelling through California and Arizona, close to the border (close - as in 100 yards to 100 miles), we went through perhaps eight to ten US Border Patrol checkpoints. I lost count after a while. In all but two we were waved through without stopping (I assume that we didn’t look ‘foreign’ i.e. Mexican enough). However, twice all cars were stopped and we were asked our citizenship. How long before these checks become more widespread? How long before identity cards will be required by all citizens? The second time we were stopped, I got a smile and a ‘have a nice trip’ from the border guard. I guess he wasn’t looking for overweight Englishmen either...

DAY 1. We took a mini-trip from California to Arizona. Our starting point was just south of LA, so we headed down the freeway to San Diego and ‘hung a left’ along the freeway heading East. Our first stop was Yuma. Arriving early afternoon, we had a shock when looking at our watches; they were an hour slow. We had crossed the Colorado River from California into Arizona, into Yuma which is on its banks and into ‘mountain time’. We lost an hour in the space of 100 yards.

Yuma’s not a place most people have heard of and today it’s a snowbird paradise - a human snowbird paradise. Thousands of people head south from Canada and the northern states in winter looking for a warmer winter. In RVs loaded with pets they head for Yuma (amongst other places) due to its fine weather – it’s reputed to be the sunniest place on earth. I can’t compare but it was warm and sunny when we were there and I guess 80,000 extra visitors each winter can’t be wrong! Some resorts and hotels are so confident about the weather that they are thinking of not charging when it rains…

Yuma is not a noted tourist spot, but it has some gems. This was the height of the navigable river from the Sea of Cortez and was therefore the site of the military supply base. It was here that the last piece of the Pacific to Atlantic roadway and railway were laid across the Colorado. The river now is a mere stream following the completion of the Hoover dam, compared to its original strength. The hotel we were in was next to the site of the first bridge and rail station.

So we headed off to the Yuma Territorial State Prison. You may have heard of the movies The 3.10 to Yuma (both versions), the prison most cowboys get sent to. Real life is different. Inside the prison the prisoners had to work, were held in cells 12 feet by 10 feet, six to a cell in bunks three high, were forced into a dark cell for disobedience (a cell 10 feet by 10 feet in a dark room), or forced to carry leg irons or a ball and chain. However, the locals pointed out that the prisoners had a band, a hospital, the first electricity in the area and forced air cooling in the cells.

Today the prison (or what’s left of it) still sits on the bluff overlooking the town. Some cells and the exercise yards still exist (some of the prison was lost when the railway moved its bridge and cut away 30 feet of the old prison in the 1920s). The museum is a good one, telling the story of the prison and some of the inmates that went through it. Interestingly when it closed it become a school, and a place to rest for the hobos riding to California in the 1930s depression. The prison graveyard still remains, mostly filled with those who died from disease in the prison rather than foul play.

From here we headed over to the old Quartermaster Supply Depot. Close to the river, it later moved north for its rail connections, before enlarging during World War II as a training site, before yet again changing into one of the largest army bases in the world and being renamed the Yuma Proving Ground. The old site we visited is a state park and has some of the original buildings built before 1900; including the water tank, the CO’s home, the Quartermaster’s office and old warehouse. The site is a museum designed to give a sense of the time and location which it does perfectly. We found a local independent restaurant serving lots of good, well-prepared American-Italian food.

DAY 2. The next day we left Yuma and headed for Tucson, indirectly. It was 250 miles and we went the ‘long way’. We followed the freeway to Gila (pronounced Hila) Bend, then north through the Sonoran Desert National Park. This was perhaps one of the disappointments as there was no entrance, just the road through the desert. It was pretty, but we were unable to get up close.

Anyway, on through the desert to Casa Grande (the big house). First a little-known fact – most Indian tribes didn’t live in wigwams. We have visited a number of Indian sites before, but Casa Grande is an Indian house (the large remains of one) and was a part of an Indian village. The site was believed to have been inhabited from 700 to 1450 AD by a tribe of Hohokum Indians – at its peak by over 5000. It’s one of the largest prehistoric structures ever built in North America, and its purpose remains a mystery. It could have been a four storey house or a temple or an observatory (certain holes line up to allow sun/moon to shine in on equinoxes etc) or all of the above!

Archaeologists have discovered the Casa Grande builders also developed large-scale irrigation farming and extensive trade connections which lasted over a thousand years until about 1450, when it’s believed that a prolonged drought forced the people to abandon such large villages. The site itself is over 400 acres, much of which is untouched and off limits. The Casa Grande ruins are just one compound of many, and other ‘public’ buildings such as irrigation ditches and ball courts are similar to those from Central and South America.

The ruins are made from local clay; when mixed with water it becomes cement-like. The structures are now only a maximum of three storeys, but only 2½ are present since efforts to protect the ruins have lifted the level of the surrounding earth. The walls which only look in some places two feet high are actually some seven feet tall (five of which are underground). The ruins are covered by a War of the Worlds-type structure.
Why the Spanish name? In 1642 the first Spanish expedition passed here and the building was described as a Casa Grande.

DAY 3. Having driven to our Tucson hotel for a two-night stay, we hit the road and our first stop was a few miles away – Saguaro National Park. Think of the American West and desert and the image is of a cactus – tall with two arms pointing up. That’s a Saguaro cactus - and there’s a whole national park dedicated to them. We arrived before the rangers and went around the eight mile loop, stopping to admire the views of Tucson and over the many acres of cactus. In the morning sun they had an added orange glow. Other kinds of cactus included prickly pear and drum.

From here we headed out of the city and on towards Tombstone, the site of the Gunfight at the OK Corral. But Tombstone has a much richer history than that. Starting as a mining town, it was actually small compared to other local towns. The railway reached nearby towns by the 1880s, but not Tombstone until 1903. The silver mines ran out in the early 1920s and many other larger local towns started to decline, Tombstone only remaining because it had a courthouse. The Courthouse is today a state park and museum. It feels like it was set up in the 1960s and has not changed. But it was interesting, mentioning the expulsion of over 1200 workers for ‘communist activities’ because they wanted to start a union!

The rest of the town is - well - a theme park. The main street (as was) is pedestrianised and many townsfolk (actors) wonder around in Western gear. There are at least three different gunfight groups, each offering their own interpretation of the famous OK Corral. Nobody really knows what happened, or why, on that day; or even why it became so famous. It’s clear from the museum that the gunfight was news very soon afterwards. It has captured the imagination of writers ever since - I think because of the ambiguities in the evidence, because it was so well written up at the time – and scholars have continued to write about it. Today the site is built over and the gunfight groups stage the shootouts in the streets or in open air theatres. The shops are all devoted to Western gear or food. We despaired over false and fake history being played out daily while far more important history wilts in a 1960s museum case.

Seeking something different, we went a few miles further on to the ghost town of Fairbanks. This was a much larger town than Tombstone was (15,000 people at its peak) and is now a small collection of restored buildings and a walking tour. The town was built by a small river, which provided much needed power for the mills which separated the silver from the ore. These mills (20 at a peak) ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Stretching some three miles up the river valley, they would have been heard miles away. The town was connected to the railway in the 1880s for all that silver and was occupied until the late 1970s.

We walked up to the cemetery. Perched on a hilltop, it overlooked the town, and now only a few graves are discernible. We then headed west and entered Arizona Wine Country. We felt obliged to stop at one and taste. The wines were good. See the website at http://arizonavinesandwines.com/index.html

From here we headed to Patagonia, a small but very pretty relaxed little town that was nestled in a valley and was surprisingly green given some of the countryside around the area was brown and parched. We had decided to go to the nature reserve but it was closed, so we visited the Patton House. The Pattons had spent years encouraging humming birds to their garden with sweet water. While we didn’t see humming birds, we watched falcons and other birds. The property now belongs to the Audubon Society.

DAY 4. We headed back towards Yuma, and our first stop was the Kitt Peak observatories. At the top of a 7,000 foot mountain, the location is home to the largest collection of optical telescopes in the world. The drive up the hill is actually quite easy, but arriving at the top we found snow. Though the temperatures reach 24C (76F) the snow remains in the shadows. We went on the tour to the solar telescope, which extends 300 feet underground and is designed to undertake viewing (spectrometry mainly) of the sun. It was built in the early 1960s and feels old inside, but it functions well, so won’t get changed. We then went to a small solar observatory to view the sun. This was a quiet day for the sun, but we saw sun spots and a small solar flare. Driving down is never as easy as you think, but we made it down and headed through the Indian reservations to Yuma.

We stopped for gas in Ajo (‘Ah oh’). High-grade copper made Ajo the first copper mine in Arizona. Working the rich surface ores, loads were shipped around Cape Horn for smelting in Swansea in the mid-1880s. The mine closed when a ship sank off the coast of Patagonia. With the advent of new recovery methods for low-grade ore, Ajo boomed. For several decades more than 1,000 men worked for Phelps Dodge in the open pit mine, and it’s believed to be one of the largest ‘holes’ in the earth’s crust.

DAY 5. We headed into California. Our first stop was the Imperial dunes, the largest dune field in the USA, 10 miles across. We pulled off the freeway and first stopped at an overlook. The dunes had a mystical golden glow in the morning light, spoiled by all the RVs parked around and the border patrol. The border fence is only a few hundred metres south. We went over to the last remains of the plank road. To cross the dunes by wagon or car was impossible before 1913, when the first road (of moveable sections) made of wooden planks was placed (or built) on the dunes. The road was moved when the dunes started to cover it, so it was constantly shifting. It was only wide enough for one car, with passing points every few hundred metres. Imagine today backing up 300 or 400 hundred yards; then imagine doing it without power steering, good brakes, mirrors... What remains is 300 metres of original planking, heading up a dune which is badly weathered and slowly being covered over by sand.

We headed down to a lower level and walked the few hundred metres over to the fence. The fence stands some three to four metres high and is made from steel uprights; designed to ‘float’ on the dunes, it dominates the surrounding landscape. We approached the fence and the first thing we noticed was that it was making a fast clicking sound which seemed to travel along the fence almost like a power line. Nothing we could see indicated it was electrified; perhaps it was just thermal expansion in the morning heat. It certainly looks menacing, but it’s not difficult to climb over (apparently) and, given the number of border patrols, not very effective!

We left the fence and, as we reached the top of the last range of mountains, we turned off north and headed into the Cleveland National Forest and the town of Julian. Julian sits at 4000 feet above sea level and was a mining town settled in the 1870s. Following the closure of the mines, it turned to agriculture and specifically apples. Prized today for its apples and apple pie, Julian itself is a mix of those two great American obsessions, shopping and food. We people-watched and then headed to Ramona. The Ramona Café sits on the main street and is smaller than expected. But the food was good and plentiful. I tried the signature dish of chicken Cordon bleu, deep fried and then covered with a hot spicy hollandaise sauce. Hmm.

First published in VISA 102 (Apr 2012)