The Old West

We took a ride out to the desert today. Five days after arriving in Arizona, it was time to see some cacti, close up. We loaded up a reluctant Chuy in the FJ Cruiser and drove off toward Picket Post Mountain to find some adventure. Picket Post is big peak west of Superior where the white man settled the first mining town in this area, the town of Pinal back in the mid-1870's. The town didn't last very long. It went bust when the mine quit and died sometime in 1878. The way the history books tell it, the town just dried up and died in about six months. The townspeople and the miners who had become accustomed to the area either went southwest towards Florence or clustered into Superior which declared itself a town in 1882. Superior was only about three or four miles east of Pinal and it was there that the Silver King Mine provided work for the miners.

Anyway, the ruins of Pinal would be fun to poke around in, but I'm not certain whereabouts they are. They'll have to wait until another day. There's still some quarries in the neighborhood of Picket Post and it's also where you can find the Apache Tears rocks (obsidian rocks wrapped in a white round coating, sort of like yogurt covered raisins). So we were just taking a jaunt, seeing where we'd end up and what we might find. Bill turned off State 177 on a farm road and zigged and zagged several times, finding smaller more rutted roads as we drove slowly towards the imposing Picket Post. There were other folks out on this fine clear day: four wheelers taking the air, a small group of teenaged boys roasting hotdogs by a stream, a man trying to get his new four wheel drive vehicle muddied up for the first time, a group of hunters looking for somewhere to go. Most would nod pleasantly as we made our way over the muddy ruts in the road.

We stopped at a high overlook, caught somewhere between Picket Post to the west and the more imposing Apache Leap to our east. We got out and started picking our way down a cactied and rocky strewn hill where a little stream gurgled over more boulders and a few yellow sycamore trees vibrated in the breeze. It was real pretty. Bill found an abandoned rattlesnake's rattle first off. It had about eight segments on it and I spent a few minutes looking over the area closely, hoping the big fella wouldn't come back for it. Later, I found a nice piece of rose quartz and a freshwater snail shell. It felt 'funny' to be picking up shells in the desert. But since I'm fresh from the ocean, I guess that was apropro.

Chuy was intent on smelling every last smell that the desert served up and his little nose worked incessantly. Whether it was the straggly remains of a sagebrush, or the droppings of a brush bunny or even the glinting remains of a Dos Equis bottle, the puppy had to smell it and classify it. An hour's walk just about wore out his poor nose!

But toward the end of our walk, we heard five rapid fire gun shots. They sounded like they were coming from the area of Apache Leap. Bill and I looked at each other. "It might be deer season. But I don't know what's 'open' in Arizona right now," he said. We continued on, retracing our footsteps toward the parked car. A few minutes later, we heard a ripping slug of bullets, maybe twenty or thirty, automatic fire, machine gun fire?

It was something I certainly never expected to hear in the empty confines of the Sonoran Desert. And then, nothing. All perfectly quiet. The shooter emptied his rounds and departed maybe. Maybe. But so did we. Back in the car and back to the paved roads and civilization. Gee, what an enigmatic place this is turning out to be!

Superior, Arizona

There's a little town in central Arizona I want to introduce you to. It's an old copper mining town that came into existence a hundred and twenty five years ago. It started out as a silver mining town and in the 19-Teens changed over to copper for the next eighty years. Since the early 1990's the mine has been closed and the town has lagged behind.

It's not a big town. It's got a population of nearly four thousand and the majority of the people worked the mine before it closed. It's located sixty miles east of Phoenix and sits under the jutting, majestic peak of Apache Leap. The mountain is a red monolith with bulging pinnacles crowning its summit. It earned its name by General Hooker's men rounding up a hold out band of Apache warriors the Army had destined for an internment camp back east sometime in the 1880's. The Army figured they had them cornered once they'd crowded them onto the steep rocky pitches of the mountain's top. Rather than face the ignominy of incarceration, one by one the warriors leaped to their death from the massive rock.

Superior and the mine and Apache Leap have weathered the past and the present over these many years. You can't have one without the other. They make up the whole. And one wouldn't be the same without the other two.

So now the problem arises: There is a Land Swap before the House and the Senate for a British mining company to come into Superior and re-open the copper mine. It would bring the ailing little town new prosperity and assure the townspeople that their children wouldn't have to move away to make their way in the world. It would insure there was a vibrant livelihood in the town once again. It promises to get the boarded up storefronts on Main Street unboarded and thriving again. In short, it promises to bring Superior back to life after its long hiatus of mine closure and few jobs. But what the Land Swap would do is take away some of the Apache land that was promised by Eisenhower in 1955 to stay in natural lands and award it to the mine for land to be mined on. The method of mining the British company prefers is one called cave blocking, where they would dig down into the bowels of the earth by seven thousand feet to cut out big blocks of ore to bring to the top. The weight of the mountain above it would subsequently fall in on itself when enough of the ore had been removed. Impacting, is how the mine describes it. Imploding the mountain is how the Apaches and some retired miners look at it. There is no guarantee that the Apache Leap mountain would not suffer an impaction. Indeed, if that should happen, the little town of Superior that nestles at the mountain's feet could well be threatened too.

So now the friendly, hard working people are at an impasse. Some are convinced the mine would be the best thing for this ailing community with abject poverty and low paying jobs. Others are just as convinced that the mine could ultimately cause the demise of this sacred Apache land and change the landscape forever. Friends and neighbors are at odds with each other and old resentments are simmering. It's hard to go into any store or public gathering without the question of the copper mine getting trotted out and argued over.So what's the coincidence here? It's that for all of the arguments over whether the mine is a good thing or a bad thing for the town, there is one area that everybody is in agreement upon. And that is their heartfelt hope that they all want what is Best for the town. They all want Superior to survive and want the town to prosper. How that will happen is yet to be decided. But what I'm praying is that folks will recognize that they are all in agreement in wanting their little town to thrive, without changing the fact as to what Superior is.