Four Corners Part One - Ice Cream Melts in the Desert - 2021

 

Four Corners Part One - Ice Cream Melts in the Desert

On Saturday May 15, 2021 – I traveled 358-miles from Simi Valley, California to the Fort Beale RV Park in Kingman, Arizona. Towing our fifth wheel trailer across the Mojave Desert took longer than the expected six hours. Once I was set up for the night, I opened the refrigerator in my coach, seeking a cold drink. To my surprise, the refrigerator was dark inside, indicating some form of power failure.

I checked the fuses, circuit breakers and switches in the coach, but the control panel for the fridge remained dark. Since I had packed the unit with two weeks’ worth of frozen and fresh foods, I knew I had a problem. Not wanting to scuttle my trip on the first day, I walked to a nearby Chevron Station and purchased three disposable foam coolers, plus 30-pounds of ice. Back at the coach, I packed ten pounds of ice into the freezer and transferred as much of the fresh food into my coolers as possible. Then it was time to eat some melting ice cream and throw the remainder away.

In the morning, I called a local RV repairman, but he was out of town on another call. He suggested that the printed circuit board (PCB), which is the electronic brains of the unit may have failed. Since I had a non-refundable reservation that night in Flagstaff, Arizona, I could not afford to stay another day in Kingman. On the way out of town, I stopped at the local Wal-Mart, where I purchased two 48-quart red, white and blue Igloo brand ice chests. In the Wal-Mart parking lot, I transferred my fresh food from the leaky foam coolers to my bright new All-American coolers. At $14.85 each, they would do a more efficient job of keeping my food chilled. I put a fresh bag of ice in the non-working freezer and used the previous night’s ice to flood the ice chests.

With nothing more to do in Kingman, I headed 150-miles east on Interstate I-40. My destination was the Kit Carson RV Park in Flagstaff, Arizona. The Kit Carson RV Park declares itself to be the second oldest continuously operating RV Park in the nation. At 6,900 feet elevation, it is always a rustic and cool stopping point during my regional travel. As with most RV Parks, it is best to make your reservations well in advance. Many, including Kit Carson now accept reservations only on a prepaid and non-refundable basis.

Still determined to get my refrigerator operating, I called Buddy’s Welding & RV, which happened to be along my route north the following morning. After looking up my Dometic refrigerator model and serial number, the nice person there said that she had the appropriate PCB to complete my repair. On my way to Monument Valley, Arizona, I stopped at Buddy’s and paid $168 for the Dinosaur Electronics brand aftermarket PCB that was to replace my supposedly defunct OEM model.

After traveling 175-miles to Goulding’s RV Park in Monument Valley, Arizona, I quickly set up for a two-night stay. I then opened the refrigerator access panel on the outside of the coach. Soon, I had the replacement board installed and ready for the final electrical connections. Having carefully marked each wire-lead with a black marking pen, I soon noticed an extra connection wire, without a corresponding terminal on the PCB. It was approaching 4 PM PDT when I called customer service at Dinosaur Electronics Inc. in Lincoln City, Oregon.

After describing my issue to Joe at Dinosaur Electronics, he quickly determined that I had the wrong board. He said it was an easy mistake for the person at Buddy’s to make. In the process of agglomerating Dometic model and serial numbers, a third-party database could not be relied upon for reliable information. There were simply too many combinations of refrigerator models and PCB numbers for the database to handle. Once it was corrupted, there was no way to straighten the database out. Live and learn, I thought. By then, the last of my ice was melting in my coolers. My freezer would soon thaw completely. Standing there in the hot sun, I felt the pangs of bad luck returning.

It was then that Joe said, “Let us see what we can do. Do you have a multi-meter?” “At home, but not here”, I said. “Wait, Joe, my neighbor here had earlier offered to help”. “OK, reinstall your old board, get the multi-meter and call me back”, said Joe. My RV neighbor at Goulding’s was a veteran of the Alcan Highway to Alaska, so of course he had a multi-meter buried somewhere in his huge Class-A motorhome. Once I had the old board reinstalled and the multi-meter in hand, I called Joe back and said I was ready. First, he asked what make and model number multi-meter I had. He then looked up that information on the internet and said, “That is an old analog meter”.

Over the next twenty minutes, we checked all the 12-volt and 120-volt connections that converge inside the refrigerator access panel. After all that, Joe said, “It sounds like you have a bad thermo fuse”. Again, my heart sank at the same rate that my remaining ice was melting. “Do you have wire?”, Joe asked. “I just bought 30-feet of it in Kingman”, I said. “Good. Cut a length of wire and strip it at both ends. Then, get out your electrical kit, find a spade-connector and crimp it on to one end of your wire”. By some good fortune, I had an automotive style electrical kit, complete with spare spade-connectors.

“OK, done”, I said. Luckily, I had a wireless headset for my mobile phone, or I never could have balanced the phone, multi-meter and replacement parts outside of my RV. “Alright, attach the spade connector to the F-5 terminal on the PCB and crimp the other end into the 12-volt terminal block.” After a few more minutes sweating in the afternoon sun, I had the repair completed. “Go inside and see if it lights up”, said Joe. After sprinting inside my rig for the fifth or sixth time, “Still dead”, I reported. “You blew a fuse”, he said. Go to the 12-volt panel in your coach and replace the blown 15-amp fuse”. Luckily, I still had several spare fuses in my kit.

When I plugged the spare fuse into the receptacle, the orange LED on the refrigerator control panel lit up. “You are good to go, for now. The jumper wire is for test purposes only. You need to get it diagnosed and repaired as soon as possible”, said Joe. He had already offered to replace my erroneous Dinosaur Board with the correct model number, so I had him ship that to my next stop, in Durango, Colorado. The replacement cost another $34, but at least I would have the correct spare board. Thanking Joe for his amazing service, I signed off and enjoyed the hum of my refrigerator, as it slowly chilled my frozen food. Above air conditioning and running water, refrigeration in the desert is what makes RVing possible.

After two nights in bucolic Monument Valley, I hooked up and headed northeast to Durango, Colorado, 165-miles away. To me, the refrigerator still seemed like a ticking time-bomb, waiting to go off at any moment. Somehow, the jumper-wire repair held, and my fresh and frozen foods were all chilling in the Dometic unit. Although the frozen meats and fish came close to melting, only one hamburger patty melted a bit and then refroze solid to the bottom of the freezer.

Arriving at United Campgrounds, Durango in the late afternoon I unhooked for three nights in the picturesque Upper Animas River Valley. Almost a decade prior, I had installed a primitive webcam at the RV Park, but it had failed during the recent health crisis. In October 2020, I was so concerned with health protection that I forgot to bring a $25 replacement webcam to Durango. The old Dell computer system whirred away each day, but no images made their way to the internet. Determined to get the webcam operating, I had planned my entire 1,800-mile round-trip with the focus of replacing that webcam.

For those who do not know, the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad first operated in 1882. With a few minor alterations and with some new locomotives from the 1930’s, it still operates today. It is an international tourist attraction that I first rode with my father in 1965. As it was in the 1880s, the railroad is still the economic lifeblood of Durango, Colorado. The webcam is located adjacent to the tracks, within the United Campgrounds RV Park. For years, people from all over the world have relied on the webcam for a glimpse of the trains running through the RV Park. Unless I could repair the system, all that visitors would see was a frozen image from summer 2020.

Borrowing a stepladder from Tim and Sheri Holt, the owners of the iconic RV Park, I swapped out the old Microsoft webcam for an equally old spare that I had brought from home. When I restarted the 20-year-old Dell tower computer, the system booted up and began firing images to the internet ever six seconds. With all the refrigerator electronics issues I had recently experienced, you can imagine how happy I was to see this old electronic marvel spring back to life.

On my second day in Durango, a cold rainstorm, including some hail in the evening, swept through the Upper Animas Valley. Even though it was May 20, the surroundings mountains received fresh snow. I was content to go shopping in Durango for fresh food and to avoid highway traffic. One woman at the City Market declared, “So many people have moved here in the past few years, they don’t even know it can rain here”.

For almost twenty years, the entire Four Corners Region has been in the grip of a long-term drought. It is of a magnitude not seen since the Anasazi, or Pre-Puebloan Indians vacated the region in about 1,200 CE.

This concludes Part One of a Five-Part Article. To read Part Two, click HERE.

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By James McGillis at 05:02 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

Respecting the Spirit of the Ancients at Kin Klizhin Ruin - 2011

 

Respecting the Spirit of the Ancients at Kin Klizhin Ruin

In May 2011, I visited one of my favorite places within Chaco Culture Historical Park, which is Kin Klizhin Ruin. On my way from camp to Kin Klizhin, I had already seen an elk herd on the mesa and visited Windmill Hill, where ranchers had installed a new windmill over a dry hole. Now it was late afternoon and time to head for the ruin in time for sunset.
 
From previous visits, I knew that the current road to Kin Klizhin paralleled an ancient pathway, which entered Chaco Canyon from the south. Rather than following the varied terrain, Anasazi visitors to the area tended to travel in alignment with the cardinal points of the compass. Looking east from the road, I could see occasional small mounds that may have been marked the trail for ancient travelers.
 
After stopping to inspect one mound, I walked carefully back to my truck. Once disturbed, the fragile soils of the area are subject to rapid erosion. By following a sandy watercourse, I avoided stepping on the cryptobiotic soils that make up much of the local terrain.  Closer to the road, I found an area scoured by wind and water. Lying among the pebbles on the sandy surface was a number of potsherds.
 
The largest of the fragments was almost pure white; its concave shape indicating that it was a small part of a much larger pottery vessel. When I reached down and turned it over, I could see that it was an elegant piece of black on white pottery. Found as far north as Wilcox Ranch, Utah and as far south as Antelope Mesa, Arizona, the high-contrast decoration of black on white pottery can turn utilitarian objects into great art.
 
On my fragment, three rippled waves of water lay beneath a white cloud, which was rolling across a dark sky. The symbolism left little doubt that the original vessel served to carry water across the dry terrain. According to Author Craig Childs, “archeologists excavate (black on white) painted jars as large as watermelons” from one Chaco Canyon site. Because of its remote location, I assume that someone dropped the water carrier along the trail. However, because of their ubiquity in the environment, early ranchers coined the word “potshot” for target practice using ancient vessels. Either way, this was a potsherd to love and cherish, if only in pictures.
 
After cleaning the fragment and taking several pictures, I returned it to its original spot. Although it would have made a fine artifact under glass, its real home was where I found it. By placing it back, face down in the spot where I had found it, I allowed another to come along and find it in the future. By publishing its image and identifying its native surroundings, I add to the general knowledge of black on white ware.
 
The U.S. Antiquities Act of 1906 made it illegal to remove any ancient artifact from public lands. Over the years, many people have ignored the law, taking whatever they found and placing those objects in private collections. As Craig Child’s argues in his book, “Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession”, once any artifact is removed from its surroundings, its historical context is lost forever.
 
The following day, when I described my discovery to the Gallo Campground host, he was pleased that I had respected the artifact and its context. “When we find a particularly nice potsherd, we dig a hole with our heel and bury it there”, he told me. Although his method may secure the future of the artifact for another century or two, mine left it on the land, where it belonged. I hope that when I visit Kin Klizhin once again, my treasure will still be there, reflecting light like a windmill in the sun. If you find this or other artifacts, I hope that you will respect the spirit of the ancients, allowing them to stay at home in the High Southwest.
 
I was the only human visiting Kin Klizhin that afternoon. Although not as large as other Chaco Canyon great houses, the unusual setting and architecture allows Kin Klizhin to stand out from its peers. Unique in Chaco Culture, Kin Klizhin featured three above-ground circular kivas, each set within a rectilinear outer structure. The inner walls of the largest kiva are more than twice as high as the other two. Looking up from inside the larger Tower Kiva, I felt the grandeur of this ancient place. Perhaps that is what early visitors to Chaco Canyon felt upon arrival at this outlier, or welcome center.
 
The main west-facing wall of Kin Klizhin is its largest bulwark. The remainder of the structure, including a former enclosed courtyard was to the east of there. Although it is massive, there are only two small ventilation holes or Ancestral Puebloan windows on the west wall. One is set low, probably used to draw air to a hearth inside. The other is at eye-level, and is an obvious viewing port. From a relatively small inside hole-in-the-wall, the opening expands as it penetrates toward the exterior. This arrangement allowed someone inside to have a wide field of view, but kept the penetration of the structure as small as possible.
 
As sunset approached, I stayed inside the roofless structure, waiting for the right moment. Any photographer will tell you that catching the right moment requires luck, skill and many shots. Of the dozen portal shots I took that day, the pair pictured here are my favorites. The small image is from the outside, looking into the structure. If you click on that image, you will see the larger picture, looking out towards the sunset at Kin Klizhin, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.

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By James McGillis at 09:29 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

The Gallo Campground at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico - 2011

 

The Gallo Campground at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

Late on May 21, 2011, I arrived at Chaco Culture National Historic Park. Known colloquially as Chaco Canyon, the place is almost equidistant from Nageezi and Crownpoint, New Mexico. For Interstate Highway reference, Chaco Canyon is about fifty miles northeast of I-40, if exiting at Thoreau, New Mexico. Although situated at what once was the crossroads of the Pre-Puebloan world, Chaco Canyon slipped into obscurity after the Great Disappearance, one thousand years ago.
 
Today, the larger Navajo Reservation encompasses over sixty percent of San Juan County, New Mexico. Of the county’s 130,000 residents, about thirty-five percent are Navajo. Seventy percent of county population resides in the Farmington Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), including Aztec and Shiprock. Sparsely populated Indian lands dominate the balance of the county. Finding Chaco Canyon, sequestered as it is among high desert mesas can be difficult, unless you are Navajo.
 
Even in this era of GPS navigation, the Magellan map database is woefully inadequate in Navajo Country, which surrounds Chaco Canyon on three sides. At least twice during my southern approach from Crownpoint, Magellan instructed me to turn at erroneous locations. The first road resembled a dirt track; the second existed only in the minds of early Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) surveyors. Between my late start toward Chaco Canyon and Magellan’s sweet-voiced siren luring me toward sandy tracks across New Mexico and the high desert plateau, it was after 9:30 PM when I arrived at Gallo Campground in Chaco Canyon.
 
There, as I scanned the bulletin board for information, the campground host emerged from her coach. That kind soul, living in the middle of nowhere, had held back two RV spaces for late arrivals like me. Had she not done so, there would be no other legal RV camping within twenty miles, via treacherous, washboard roads. That night, I had tempted fate and fate had smiled on me. It came in the form of the volunteer host who saved my camping bacon.
 
While conducting research for this article, I found the “Gallo” name attached to many features in New Mexico. After I had no luck discovering who “Senor Gallo” might have been, I recalled that in Spanish “gallo” translates as “rooster”. Is the derivation of the local place name as simple as, “Rooster Wash”? Either way, its adjacency to the Gallo Wash, makes “Gallo Campground” an appropriate name. On the mesa north of Chaco Canyon, three “Gallo Wells” stand among the few other human-constructed landmarks. Every drop of fresh water used in Chaco Canyon originates in that sandstone aquifer.
 
Early in the past decade, the Gallo Wash flooded a portion of the campground. During my September 2007 visit, several low-lying campsites sported yellow tape and barricades. Floods along this Chaco River tributary had damaged the septic system, requiring extensive repairs. If you look at a satellite photo of the campground, long, geometrical berms associated with the new septic system are evident. Used as causeways during wet weather, one of the flattop berms ends at the communal campfire circle.
 
To their detriment and possible demise, Anasazi visitors and residents stripped the San Juan Plateau of all its timber. Deforestation eliminated extensive root structures, which had long held the soil. Later, cattle and sheep that grazed around Chaco Canyon exacerbated the erosion begun during the Ancestral Puebloan era. Undammed and wild, the Gallo Wash became a twentieth century focus for erosion control projects.
 
Beginning in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) conducted extensive tree planting in the lower reaches of Gallo Wash. By that time, it was too late to save the meandering stream of yesteryear. Today, most of Gallo Wash is a deeply eroded, if somewhat stabilized ravine. Although only treetops are visible from the Main Loop Road, cottonwood trees planted there eighty years ago still flourish. At either end of Chaco Canyon, highway bridges span Gallo Wash. At the eastern bridge, near the confluence of Gallo Wash and the smaller Fajada Wash, you may stop and view full sized trees growing up from the streambed, far below.
 
Only upstream from the campground does the wash retain the look of a broad arroyo. With scrubby growth stretching from bank to bank, the water table there is closer to the surface. With less soil or sand below that section, floodwaters spread, rather than cutting deeply into the soil. In satellite photos, the larger Gallo Wash stands out as the most highly eroded canyon in San Juan County. Did early exhaustion of timberlands and arable land doom Chaco Canyon to depopulation and eventual abandonment?  Today, the grassy wasteland that we see in and around Chaco Canyon tends to say, “Yes”.
 
The following afternoon, I spent time walking south along a nearby canyon wall. Other than the contemporary toilet facilities, the most prominent permanent feature at Gallo Campground is a humble Chacoan rock house. Unlike the multi-roomed and multi-storied great houses found elsewhere at Chaco Canyon, this structure contains only two small rooms. Tucked under the canyon overhang, most of the structure has stood the test of time. In its heyday, around 1050 CE, what function did this structure serve?
 
The Chacoan rock house sits near the seasonal stream at Gallo Wash. Perhaps the structure was a granary, overlooking a stream fed cornfield or milpas. Maybe it served as a welcome center or port of entry to Chaco Canyon itself. Northbound, Chacoan visitors had the unique round kiva at Kin Klizhin to welcome them. For southbound visitors, the campground may have served much the same purpose that it does today. Then, as now, the site provided a final rest before viewing the great houses at Chaco Canyon.
 
As I continued my campground tour, I felt and then saw the spirit of the ancients on the walls around me. Whether decorating the canyon walls with pictographs and petroglyphs or building a small granary, the ancients imbued their outdoor areas with sacred art. As with many of the structures at Chaco Canyon, the rock house at Gallo Campground displayed an anthropoid image to me. Using its windows, air vents and roof beam holes, this little structure exhibited a face with character equal to its age.
 
As I approached the canyon wall, a variety of rock art images leapt out at me. One of the more obvious examples was a red ochre painting of a man. A pair of slim antennae emanated from the top of his head and a male organ pointed downward. Standing spread-eagle, this ancient Vitruvian Man predated Leonardo Da Vinci’s by five hundred years. As with so many ancient spirits, he had evolved over the past 1000 years. With two small rivers of gold flowing over his body, I noted that his stone cranium was proportionally larger than that of current humans. Perhaps the longer a spirit lingers on a Chaco Canyon wall, the greater consciousness he or she attracts.
 
My next stop was under the overhanging wall. There, water and minerals have seeped through porous sandstone, leaving their unique mark. If you study the Gallo Campground, you will find that both wind and water play a continuing role in the shaping the local landscape. Since the ancients last viewed it, this perennially damp wall has been sand blasted by one thousand years of storms.
 
As I stepped back, the erosional rock formation (image above) revealed its ancient essence to me. With the profile of a Mayan warrior in headdress, a face appeared. His large left eye seemed to spy me at the same time that I saw him. We both looked startled, I am sure. Regaining our respective composure, I asked if I could photograph him and share his story with the world. In silent ascent, he posed ferociously, if a bit comically for my lens. Oh, the stories he might tell of campfires and revelry at Gallo Campground, both past and present.
 
Soon, I reached the end of the cliff wall, where I discovered a cave large enough to shelter a family from the elements. When a freestanding slab of sandstone tilted, and then came to rest against the canyon rim, the cave established itself. Not knowing what wildlife might be lurking inside the cave; I remained outside.
 
As I completed my circuit of the campground, I could see Fajada Butte rising in the distance. The lowering angle of the sun reminded me of other plans. By then, there were less than three hours before sunset. My planned trip around the Main Loop Road at Chaco Canyon would take most of that time. Although the loop contains only nine miles of paved road, I hoped to stop and visit other Ancestral Puebloan spirits along the way. During a previous visit to Pueblo Bonito, I had discovered a cleft-rock frieze that I called “Lizard Man”. Had Lizard Man sloughed off in a recent rock slide, or did he patiently wait there for my return? I could not wait to find out.

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By James McGillis at 05:16 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

Mesquite, Nevada - Better Economic Luck Next Time - 2009

 

Mesquite, Nevada - Better Economic Luck Next Time

On April 19, 2009 I departed Los Angeles, California, heading north on Interstate I-15.  After almost 300 miles, I stopped for the night at Mesquite, Nevada, which lies eighty miles north of Las Vegas.  There, I spent a quiet night at an RV Park behind the Casablanca Hotel and Casino.  On my previous trips through Mesquite, I had ignored the town, assuming that it was not worth so much as a fuel stop in the desert.  After a quiet night at the RV Park, I drove through town, looking for remnants of its pioneer history.

 

While driving along West Mesquite Blvd., I saw contemporary buildings and businesses.  Even on a clear spring day, both traffic and business activities were light.  Like many Western towns, Mesquite’s proximity to open land and abundant water drove a recent economic boom.  Like Phoenix, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada, Mesquite rode a swell of economic exuberance which ended abruptly with the mortgage crisis of 2008.  As it had several times in its history, Mesquite again became a land of busted dreams.  Of the three casinos that recently called Mesquite home, only the Casablanca currently operates with full services. 

 

Midway on its journey from origins in Southwestern Utah and its submersion in Lake Mead, the Virgin River skirts Mesquite on its south side.  The early Spaniards named it El Rio de Sulfureo, after nearby hot sulfur springs.  In honor of John Adams, the second U.S. president, Jedediah Smith may have named it the Adams River.  Ironically, John Quincy Adams, the sixth president and son of John Adams held that high office at the time of Smith’s 1826-27 transit.  Some records claim that Smith named the river after Thomas Virgin, a member of his party.  Wounded by Indians near Mesquite Flat, Virgin later died in the fight at Umpqua River, along the California-Oregon border.

 

The Pleistocene Epoch dominated much of the Northern Hemisphere for 1.8 million years, apparently ending only 10,000 years ago.  During that period, repeated glaciation forced plants and animals from the north to share a migration route through the Virgin River Gorge, toward the more temperate south.  As the glaciers retreated, flora and fauna made their way back up the gorge and into new lands exposed by the melting ice shield.  Since the freeze-thaw cycle took between ten thousand and more than one hundred thousand years, some species may have traveled north and south many times, adapting to new conditions as they regained what had been their old territory.

 

In the 1830’s, the Old Spanish Trail, between Santa Fe, New Mexico and Los Angeles, California utilized the Virgin River Gorge as part of its route.  At the time of early Anglo exploration and commerce, the Southern Paiute (Nuwuvi)lived in the area.  In a unique adaptation to their environment, the Nuwuvi combined a hunting-gathering subsistence system with some flood-plain gardening along the river.  Although Thomas Virgin sustained injury during an altercation in that locale, I do not know which Indians he fought.  Was it the relatively peaceful Nuwuvi or the more aggressive Utes, who may have migrated south as encroaching Anglo hunters stressed their game supply?

 

In the 1880’s, the first two Mormon pioneer settlements failed at Mesquite Flat.  After flash floods along the Virgin River ruined the water diversion trenches of first two settlements, a third group rebuilt the system and succeeded.  With an abundant, if erratic water supply from the Virgin River, Mesquite became a subsistence farming community.  There was slow growth in the area until 1973, when Interstate I-15 replaced Old Highway 91.  Because of early twentieth century engineering challenges, Old Highway 91 avoided the gorge, instead taking a longer route to the west.  Once the I-15 route through the gorge became a reality, Mesquite began shipping farm products eighty miles south to Las Vegas and forty miles north to St. George, Utah.

 

The now defunct Peppermill Casino, opened in the 1970s, beginning the diversification of Mesquite’s economy.  By the mid-1990s, with other casino resorts open, Mesquite marketed itself as a getaway from Las Vegas and a more laid-back gambling option for residents of Cedar City, Kanab and St. George, Utah.  As its population grew, residents adopted the shorter “Mesquite” as the official town name.  The City of Mesquite incorporated in 1984.  The 2000 Census placed the population at 9,000.  At its 2008 peak, the population had ballooned to over 19,000.

 

As I made my way along West Mesquite Blvd. on that spring morning, historical remnants of Mesquite Flats showed through in vacant lots and abandoned businesses.  Although most of the historical architecture was gone, enough remained to give a feeling of what the town was like in earlier days.  The remaining buildings and signs were a poignant reminder of what happens to a Western town when its commercial base disappears.  Some landmarks, like Harley's Garage, look like they closed yesterday.  Others, like the Desert Palms Motel still operate normally, despite the missing paint and neon lights evident on their highway sign.

 

In one’s mind, it is easy enough to see how plant and animal life around Mesquite may have changed, yet we know that the underlying rocky landscape has remained unyielding for eons.  That morning, I pictured ice dams breaking to the north, sending a deluge down-canyon and across Mesquite Flat. 

 

Then, I saw conifers and other evergreens from temperate southern climates, moving north to colonize the mountainsides of Southeastern Utah.  As game, large and small moved up the gorge, so too did the Ancient Anasazi Indians, and later the Nuwuvi. 

 

The spirits of mountain men like Jedediah Smith and Thomas Virgin passed by my location, moving south, in search of big game.  Although they did not find the abundant game that earlier mountain men found in the Rocky Mountains, they did find the vast and abundant land called California, lying just beyond the deserts of the Great Basin. 

 

Soon, Mormon pioneers traipsed by my historical viewing port, followed by others seeking the excitement of gaming at flashy casinos.  Finally, the land speculators, golf pros and second-home buyers found their way to this “virgin territory”.  Many of them arrived just in time for the greatest economic downturn since the destruction of the original Mesquite Flats flood.  For many, their only choice was to migrate again, in search of greener economic pastures. 

 

Will Mesquite Flat grow again?  Will new residents at least occupy all the vacant homes and condominiums still waiting for buyers?  Can anything surpass Mesquite’s recent peak of growth and excitement?  As long as the waters of the Virgin River continue to bring live-giving sustenance to the bone-dry desert at Mesquite Flat, my answer is, “Yes”.  I wonder if there is a “betting line” at the Casablanca Casino as to when that resurgence might occur.

 

For a May 2012 update on Mesquite, Nevada, click HERE.

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By James McGillis at 11:02 AM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

Four Corners Region - The Colorado Plateau 2008

The Magic Gate - Part 2

Four Corners Region

The Colorado Plateau

Mesa Verde

 

From Durango, we ventured west on Highway 160 to the pre-Puebloan alcove and cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park.  Mesa Verde contains the most famous of the Anasazi (or pre-Puebloan) sites in the Four Corners.  In 1965, the archeological sites appeared unchanged since their discovery in the 1870s.  With park rangers as our guides, we climbed traditional pole-ladders and peered into ancient living spaces and granaries.  On hands and knees, we squinted down into dark ceremonial chambers, known as kivas.  In contrast, today one views these ruins from behind fences, on well-marked trails.

 

In the 1960s, mystery pervaded the disappearance of the ancient cultures of the Four Corners.  Today, we know that those cultures experienced a combination of drought, overpopulation and internecine warfare.  To offer some perspective on their numbers, archeologists believe that in 1200 CE, the population of Colorado’s Montezuma Valley was 30,000, a number larger than its contemporary population.

 

For reasons both known and unknown, the society broke down, leading to the complete depopulation the Four Corners.  Later, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Navajo tribe, with ancestors traceable to Asia, Alaska and British Columbia, repopulated much of the area.

 

Returning to Durango that night in 1965, we saw live television reports of riots in South Los Angeles.  Large areas of Watts and the Central City were ablaze.  Not unlike the pressures experienced by the pre-Puebloan cultures of 1250 CE, summer heat, overpopulation and competition for resources had led to violence in LA.  Unlike the pre-Puebloan, who could simply migrate south in search of water and new farmland, there was nowhere for the residents of South Los Angeles to go.  In a metaphor to the actions of the ancients, some Los Angelenos sacked and burned their own commerce and cultural centers.

 

The Disappearance

 

Hundreds of archaeologists and other scientists have studied the pre-Puebloan disappearance phenomenon.  Not one of them that I know has hypothesized seismic activity as a contributing factor to the mass migrations of 1200 – 1400 CE.  Today, researchers assume that prior to their departure; the former residents burned and willfully destroyed many of their most important buildings.  The remaining destruction they attribute to the ravages of time. 

 

Rather than assuming that the pre-Puebloan tribes irrationally destroyed their own cultural landmarks, might we trace the initial cause of that destruction to large-scale seismic activity?  Even the largest earthquakes leave few long-term traces in the natural environment.  Toppled towers and caved-in kivas might be the best indicators we have that cataclysmic seismic activity provided impetus to the complete abandonment of the Four Corners area. 

 

Today, we find potsherds at many Four Corners sites.  Intact pottery is so rare that we find it only in museums and private collections.  Were the pre-Puebloan so careless as to destroy essentially all of their useful pottery or did seismic activity play a larger role than previously assumed?

 

The Reemergence

 

Today, the consensus is that the last pre-Puebloan migrated away from the Four Corners, later to “reemerge” as the Hopi, Zuni and other Pueblo tribes.  The Hopi creation myth centers on the “sipapu”, a hole in the earth from which their ancestors arose.  Every ceremonial kiva in the Four Corners includes a symbolic sipapu in its floor. 

 

The great kivas provided communal warmth and shelter to the pre-Puebloan.  Since an earthquake could collapse their roof timbers, kivas also carried the risk of unexpected and immediate death.  After a swarm of catastrophic earthquakes around 1250 CE, did the pre-Puebloan survivors reemerge from the metaphorical sipapu of their collapsed kivas, only then to leave the land that had caused them so much death and destruction?

 

Silverton

 

Leaving Durango, we traveled north on Highway 550, also known as The Million Dollar Highway.  Whether the road derived its name from its initial construction cost or from silver-bearing ore crushed into its asphalt mixture is still a subject of conjecture.  In 1965, its new surface reflected light like a million diamonds in the afternoon sunshine.

 

After negotiating the 10,910-foot Molas Divide, we descended into Silverton, Colorado, a former mining town now famous as the northern terminus of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.  Although winter sports are now a factor, the summer tourist trade generates most of the town’s revenue.  In late May 2008, a spring snowstorm closed Highway 550 near Silverton, forcing us to make a low-elevation detour in order to reach Moab, Utah. 

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By James McGillis at 12:10 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link