Speaking of Hiking

We were chatting with some folks on the rim of the Grand Canyon.  The man said that he trained for three months before visiting the Canyon because he did want to hike down into the Canyon, and he knew you had to be pretty fit to get back out!

There are signs like this throughout the Park:

Special Note to the young, strong and invincible:

Let's take a short quiz before hiking into the abyss.

1.  At what temperature will your brain FRY (and you die) from extreme heat exposure and dehydration leaving you utterly useless?  Answer: When your core body temperature reaches 105 degree F. or greater.  (This can happen at any summer temperature when you're overheated and underfueled.) 
2.  How long does it take to get out of the canyon on foot?  Answer: Two to three times as long as it takes to hike down.
3.  What is hyponatremia?  Answer:  A life=threatening electrolyte imbalance caused by salt depletion from sweating. 
NO KIDDING - DO NOT attempt to hike from the rim to the river and back without being prepared to possibly suffer the following:  Permanent brain damage, cardiac arrest, death.

And this:

And this:

Sheila Rowan, age 26, died in the Grand Canyon from heat stroke on the Bright Angel Trail.  Her three companions noted that she suddenly had leg cramps, acted disoriented, was breathing rapidly, and her lips turned blue.  She was just a few feet from Bright Angel Creek, where she cooled down easily -- and possibly still be living today.  *Source:  Death in the Canyon

We had a friend, his wife, and two teenage sons who hiked down to the bottom of the Bright Angel Trail and spent the night.  They were pretty physically fit folks - especially the boys.  Before they reached the top the next day, they ditched their backpacks and bedrolls.  It was hundreds of dollars worth of gear - but they simply couldn't finish the trip otherwise.  When they got back to Texas they found a message on their answering machine advising them that they had one week to get back to the Grand Canyon and retrieve that equipment or the National Park Service would beginning fining them (I think) $100 a day per pack!  Lawsa mercy me!!  But I suppose it happens SO often that the Park Service would spend all their time retrieving and selling or shipping things back to the tourists!

So those are my warnings to you if you ever want to visit the Canyon and plan on doing some hiking...  As our youngest son always tells us:  Be safe!

Mining at the Grand Canyon

Yup, there was mining goin' on in the Canyon.  In 1890 one brave soul, Pete Berry, staked his claim to mine for copper 3,000 feet below the rim of Horseshoe Mesa.  He called it the Last Chance Mine, and he thrived there for seventeen years below what is now called Grandview Point.

The ore was so rich that it claimed a prize at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago because the ore was 70% pure copper.  Even so, again we go back to the cost of getting equipment in and ore out of the Arizona desert to be refined.  By 1901 Berry had sold out to new owners.  The price of copper plummeted in 1907, and even the new owners couldn't make a go of it.

But as early as 1893, Berry saw another "gold mine" - tourists!  At first he just offered crude lodging in a cabin, but the people were delighted for a place to stretch out after their 12-hour stagecoach ride from Flagstaff.  The next day they would get to ride a mule down into the canyon.  By 1897 he had built a two-story log hotel.  Business was so good that Berry even added another building later.

Even with the capricious, sometimes testy nature of the human being, mining tourists was probably a WHOLE lot easier than mining copper! However, progress can't be held back.  Eventually the Santa Fe Railroad folks also counted the tourists and said, "Ah-ha!"  They built a track to Grand Canyon Village eleven miles west of Grandview and the tourists saw no reason to hop a stage from there over to Grandview.  They stayed a the Village, and Grandview facilities fell into decline.  Today, there is very little left of the Grandview Hotel, but now tourists arrive by their own vehicles and DO make that eleven mile trip.  The trail built by those first intrepid miners is now used by thousands of hikers every year, so all is not lost! 



You might also be interest in mining in southeastern Arizona:

http://thetravelerstwo.blogspot.com/2013/11/mining-around-tombstone.html
and in northwestern Arizona:
http://thetravelerstwo.blogspot.com/2013/09/mining-in-mohave-desert.html

If you like our blog, you can "subscribe" for free by clicking on the broadcast icon at the top right corner or by bringing out the right hand toolbar and clicking on that icon at the bottom of the list.  It will put that icon on your toolbar at the top of your browser screen.  I try to post every day - it'd be a shame for you to miss one!  On your iPhone, you can create an app by "adding to home screen," bookmark it, or add it to your Reading List, share it on Twitter or Facebook.  Any way you do it, it's free!

Oh, Shenandoah!

Wow! That song, Oh, Shenandoah!, has been recorded by at least eighty different artists including:

Archibald Asparagus from "Veggie Tales" (I know you're excited about that), but also Tennessee Ernie Ford (what an amazing voice HE had!), Harry Belafonte, Glenn Campbell, Celtic Woman, Bing Crosby, Bob Dylan, Judy Garland, Arlo Guthrie, The Kingston Trio, Michael Landon! for "Bonanza," the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Pete Seegar, Bruce Springsteen, The Statler Brothers, the Virginia Military Institute Regimental Band and Glee Club, and my favorite, The Trampled Turtles!  You can see that it is such a truly beautiful composition that it crosses all genres of music, but it will always remain a folk song, a real American original.

VMI (the Virginia Military Institute), of course, is located IN the Shenandoah Valley, so it makes sense that they recorded it - I hope they did it acapella because I'm certain it would be truly beautiful performed that way. 

The song, also known as Across the Wide Missouri, has nebulous origins.  It's positively known to date back to the early 1800's, and, again because of the importance of rivers to travel, made its way down to the sea and became a favorite of sailors.  Once it reached the coast the song was picked up by Clipper ship crews and became known world wide.  But it wasn't just a single song the way we think of them today.  The genera was known as sea chanties, and verses were added by seemingly every crew.  

If you've ever seen the epic movie How The West Was Won (1962) or Shenandoah (1965) starring Jimmy Stewart, you've heard at least a version of the song.   Some versions tell of a roving trader in the American west in love with an Indian chief's daughter, others of homesick pioneers who've left the Shenandoah behind in search of something more for their lives, still others chant of a rebel soldier from the Civil War dreaming of going home to Virginia, and slaves were known to have their own versions that they sung in praise of the Shenandoah River for covering the scent of their escape across the river away from the hounds hunting them down as runaways.

Here are a few of the versions - but they're all sung to the same hauntingly beautiful tune:

Oh Shenandoah, I long to see you, Away you rolling river. Oh Shenandoah, I long to see you, Away, I'm bound away, 'cross the wide Missouri.

Oh Shenandoah, I love your daughter, Away, you rolling river. For her I'd cross, Your roaming waters, Away, I'm bound away, 'Cross the wide Missouri.

'Tis seven years, since last I've seen you, And hear your rolling river. 'Tis seven years, since last I've seen you, Away, we're bound away, Across the wide Missouri.

Oh Shenandoah, I long to see you, And hear your rolling river. Oh Shenandoah, I long to see you, Away, we're bound away, Across the wide Missouri.

A Mr. J.E. Laidlaw of San Francisco reported hearing a version sung by a black Barbadian sailor aboard the Glasgow ship Harland in 1894, which went:

Oh, Shenandoah! I hear you calling! Away, you rolling river! Yes, far away I hear you calling, Ha, Ha! I'm bound away across the wide Missouri.

My girl, she's gone far from the river, Away, you rolling river! An' I ain't goin' to see her never. Ha, Ha! I'm bound away, " &c.

The deep sonorous voice of Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1971 recorded:

Oh Shenandoah, I hear you calling, Hi-Ho, You rolling river. Oh Shenandoah, I long to hear you, Hi-Ho, I'm bound Away. 'Cross the wide, Missouri.

Miss-ou-ri, She's a mighty river, Hi-Ho, You rolling River. When she rolls down, Her topsoils shiver, Hi-Ho, I'm bound Away, 'Cross the wide, Missouri.

Farwell my Dearest, I'm bound to leave you, Hi-Ho, You rolling river. Oh Shenandoah, I'll not Deceive you, Hi-Ho, I'm bound Away. 'Cross the wide Miss-ou-ri.

Both of the movies are really good movies, (my favorite being the one with Jimmy Stewart), so if you want to get a feel for the song, watch either or both of those.  I'm sure you could find just a soundtrack of one of the versions in a multitude of different ways.  All of them will be pleasing to the ear!

Who Fought Whom?

During the American Revolution against England the colonists were not alone. We had help from the French and some Spanish seamen, but some of the American Indians joined us against the English, too.  The Oneida and Tuscarora most especially were on our side.

The British hired German soldiers to fight us, but they also had the Iroquois Confederacy against us.  May not sound like much, the Iroquois, but they were often known as the Romans of the New World.  Yikes!

The Iroquois Confederacy was made up of five nations: the Mohawks, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas and the Oneida.  (Oops.  The Oneida sided with the colonists!  Seems there were some internal disagreements, eh?)  These dudes, the Iroquois, terrorized all of the other Indian tribes they came into contact with.  They conquered them just in the fashion of Romans, and they took over their lands just like the Romans.  Had ol' Christopher Columbus not come a knockin' the Iroquois may have taken over the whole North American continent!  Why those four other tribes wanted to help the English is beyond me, but they did.  The Cherokee Indians were also part of the Iroquois Confederacy and fought with the British against the colonists.  (Maybe that's why, fifty years later in 1839, they were forced on the Trail of Tears by the U.S. government??)

Miner's Jargon

One of ours sons just got a new job.  It's basically the same thing he's been doing for years, but the language is different.  I guess every industry has it's own vernacular.  This is some of the miner's jargon:

Adit - a horizontal working with one entrance

Cross Cut - a working that connects two drifts

Desert canaries - the miner's burros

Drift - a horizontal working that attempts to follow a vein

Drill steel - a sharpened, hardened steel rod held by one miner while another strikes it with a jack.  Must be rotated after each strike.

Fire in the hole - shouted when the fuse of an explosive charge was lit

Glory hole - a large open pit from where ore has been extracted

Headframe - the structure above the shaft that supported the winch cable

High grade - rich ore

High grader - someone who is stealing ore from the mine

Incline  - inclined working

Jack - single jack was a short-handled sledge hammer slung with one hand; a double jack was long-handled and required both hands to swing it.

Muck - blasted rock

Mucking - digging out the blasted rock

Ore - material that contains valuable minerals and can be mined at a profit

Ore bucket - used to haul ore to the surface

Ore chute - spout used to load ore onto wagons

Ore shoot - valuable part of the vein

Salting a vein - putting high grade ore in a barren vein to swindle someone into buying worthless property

Shaft - vertical working

Stope - excavation from which ore has been extracted

Tunnel - horizontal working that has an entrance and an exit

Vein - long, thin structure containing valuable minerals

Widow makers - air hammers (invented in the 1880's) used to drill blasting holes because they create a fine powder that miners inhale and causes silicosis, a deadly lung disease.

Winze - a steeply inclined shaft connecting different levels

Working - general term for any mine development or prospect hole made by a miner.

The U.S.S. Philadelphia, 1776

So I'm resting down by the afore-mentioned sit-in lunch counter, and Granpa is continuing through the enormous Smithsonian venues.  He knows how to please me though, and comes back with these amazing photos (including shots of interpretive plaques so that I can read the stories that go with the artifacts.)  What a good man he is!

Literally, 1776.  She was built and sunk in the same year.  Bummer.  But she has been resurrected and is now known as the oldest American man-of-war in existence.  That's cool. 

Water was the super-highway before automobiles because unpaved roads back then could turn into muddy bogs - especially for the narrow wheels of wagons.  Therefore, control of rivers and lakes and oceans was of tantamount military importance.  Lake Champlain (over 100 miles long and about 15 miles wide) sits between what is now the states of Vermont and New York.

Benedict Arnold, a very successful Connecticut businessman by the age of 21, had sailed many times to the West Indies and Canada.  In 1774 he was elected captain of his states' militia, and later put in command of American forces on Lake Champlain.

Spring and summer, 1776.  Picture the northern end of Lake Champlain at Quebec teeming with British shipbuilders pounding together war ships as fast as they could.  Now then, at the southern end, a short distance from Saratoga and Albany, New York, imagine colonists doing the same quick ship building.  It was a race for control of Lake Champlain.

The Philadelphia was built over a two month time frame.  She was a gundalow (now called a gondola).  That is to say, she was a flat bottom ship designed to carry cargo.  She was typical of vessels common at the time in Maine and New Hampshire for river travel.   They floated on tidal currents but might have a large sail in case of good winds.  The Philadelphia was outfitted for war, though, and not cargo.

Now it's October, 1776, and these could be considered good times for Benedict Arnold.   He was in command of the American war ships on Lake Champlain.  It was his duty to prevent the British from capturing Fort Ticonderoga and thereby gaining control of central colonial New York.  (Remember, it's not a state yet because America is not a country yet...)  At Valcour Island, Arnold led the small American fleet of fifteen ships against the British's twenty-nine ships.  The fate of the Philadelphia was sealed when the British dropped a 24-pound shot on her.  She sank to the bottom.  Arnold's other ships were either burned, sunk or captured.

The Americans lost the battle, but in a manner of speaking, they won the war because of the delay it caused the British.  Before the British could regroup winter had set in, and back then armies went to ground in the winter.  By the time things began to thaw out (Lake Champlain can sometimes freeze over solid in the winter regardless of its size), George Washington and the Continental Army had gotten its act together and were able to win a victory at Saratoga.  Armies have been known to make huge sacrifices of men and material in order for the larger war effort to succeed.  That's exactly what the Texas Alamo fight was all about!

So, though Arnold's little fleet was almost entirely wiped out, it was a "win" in the long run, as was the Alamo - though I think the Alamo is remembered and not Arnold because Arnold eventually turned against America.

Now fast forward to 1935.  The 54-foot Philadelphia is discovered sitting upright at the bottom of Lake Champlain!  She still bears three of her cannon and eight swivel guns!  She not only retained most of her armaments but also hundreds of other items - including human bones.  Even her mast was intact and upright - with only about 15 feet of water from its tip to the lake's surface!  All those years and she was hiding just under the surface.  Cool!

The level of preservation is astonishing to me.

 

At first it was used as a tourist attraction, but finally ended up - along with the 24-pound shot that sank her - at the Smithsonian in 1964.

Presidential Heirlooms

We all know that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and that former Yankee Civil War General Ulysses S Grant was later elected President.  This is the actual carriage Grant purchased during his first term.

Even after Lincoln's assassination Grant was willing to ride around in an open carriage.  Cool? or not?  Meeks Carriage and Wagon Repository sold it to Grant and then purchased it back when Grant left office.  They held onto it for about a hundred years before donating it to the Smithsonian in 1968.

John Quincy Adams was a chess fan.  Awesome.  But hot pink chess pieces??  What kind of rumors would come out today if Obama played with hot pink?  The table sure is gorgeous though - that's not painted, it's inlay.  Who even takes the time to make furniture like this nowadays?

There was a time when Presidents took home things that were gifted to them as Head of State.  Now they have to leave it all to the American people, and it ends up in a Smithsonian vault somewhere.  Hey!  Maybe that's where they came up with the idea for the TV series, Warehouse 13.

Granpa thought this was a great photo.  Is this what's meant by balance of power?  Two Democrats and two Republicans?  That's America!  I'm so proud of America.  This kind of balance is what keeps the pendulum from swinging too far left or too far right.  It's best to be mostly in the middle, everything in moderation.  My question is, has the fixed point of America's pendulum been moved?

Ladies Can Be Miners, Too!

This lady discovered her own mine, learned how to set the blasting caps, blew tons of mountain loose, and rummaged through the debris all by herself.  She was known as the Lady Miner from Mineral Park.  Her husband died during all of this, she remarried, had twins (both of whom died).  Over the next years which included giving birth to four more children, Cordelia built a very profitable mining business.  Through it all, she was always known as a lady!

The Lady Miner From Mineral Park, Arizona

Mining in the Mohave Desert

It wasn't easy to get things to Kingman, Arizona back in the day - especially heavy mining equipment.  And once the ore was excavated, it wasn't easy to get it to processing plants and then to "market."

Before the railroads made it west, supplies had to come by ocean steamers from San Francisco, down and around the tip of Baja California - over 1,900 miles! - then up the Gulf of California to the mouth of the Colorado River near Yuma, Arizona.  It was then off-loaded onto paddle-wheelers and carried another 300 miles north to Parker and Hardyville.  From those docks, supplies were put into wagons and onto backpack mules to carry across the desert to the many different mining camps.

Where there was room enough for two horses or mules to pull side by side, wagons would take over.  But wagons were hard to control going down a mountain and could be too much of a load for a team to pull up a mountain.

The wagons were so heavily loaded that they wore these tracks into solid rock over a period of 30 or so years.  The divots you see in the side of the rock here on the White Cliffs Wagon Road are where teamsters would place poles used to help push the wagons along much like longshoremen did on rivers, or to help hold a wagon back if they were headed downhill.  There's speculation that one man cleared this particular area to create a "road" and then charged a toll for folks to use it.  Each day he would have to travel the road to clear the rocks and debris from the path.

All of that effort against the trials and tribulations of nature - AND they were subject to Indian attacks, too.  An all-out war between the Hualapai and miners raged from 1866 to 1871.

Millions of dollars in precious gold, silver and other minerals such as turquoise, molybdenum, galena (a by-product of lead and silver now used as the semiconductor for wireless sets) and silver chloride (used in the relatively new art of photography) were taken from the Mohave County earth.  One year, from July, 1889 to July of 1890, nearly $1 million ($25 million in today's currency) of ore was hand chiseled from these mountains of rock.  That's what made it worth the price (physical and fiscal) to haul things by sea and by land to the Kingman area and the ore back out.

There was always some refreshments waiting for the miners in Kingman, though.  This "billboard" for a Kingman saloon is still visible on the side of the toll road!  (Sure wish today's paint would last as long as this guy's did!!)

But eventually the railroads did make it to the area.  The A & P (Atlantic and Pacific) in 1883, and by 1899 a single spur made it's way from Kingman to Chloride, Arizona.  That spur became known as the CB&F: Chloride Back & Forth.  By 1900, there were over 2,000 miners working 700 claims around this area, and the city of Chloride was coming of age.  They put an ordinance in place:  No person shall appear in a public place naked or in a dress not belonging to his or her sex.  Yes, time does tend to tame us all, eh?

From 1900 to 1919 the Goldroad Mine in the Oatman area, discovered when a man went looking for his lost burro, gave up over $7 million dollars worth of gold (about $175 million in today's dollar).  The government closed this mine and many others like it in 1942 because they weren't considered vital to the World War II "effort."  It seems that Molybdenum was in much greater demand to carry out the industrial functions of World War II.  Nowadays, it is far more valuable than even copper!!  "Moly" is alloyed with iron to make things like hard, high speed cutting tools.

You might also be interested in mining in the Grand Canyon:
http://thetravelerstwo.blogspot.com/2013/09/mining-at-grand-canyon.html


and in the southeastern part of Arizona:
http://thetravelerstwo.blogspot.com/2013/11/mining-around-tombstone.html 

If you like our blog, you can "subscribe" for free by clicking on the broadcast icon at the top right corner or by bringing out the right hand toolbar and clicking on that icon at the bottom of the list.  It will put that icon on your toolbar at the top of your browser screen.  I try to post every day - it'd be a shame for you to miss one!  On your iPhone, you can create an app by "adding to home screen," bookmark it, or add it to your Reading List, share it on Twitter or Facebook.  Any way you do it, it's free!

 

Winchester 73 - Forever Faithful

 

There are several stories that go with this relic we discovered in the Kingman Museum.  The most likely to me, because the Kingman, Arizona area was settled by miners, is that  this Winchester 73 was placed in the notch of a tree with a trip wire as a silent guard for the miner's claim.

This version was even reported in Ripley's: Believe It or Not, and The Winchester Proof (December, 1955).  I don't know about the man that owned it, but it seems to me that the Winchester 73 never gave up its vigil, huh?

The Lord's Prayer

Have you ever had some much to pray about you simply don't know where to start, or a heart so heavy that it's impossible to find the words necessary to lift things up to the Lord?  God knew that would happen!  So He gave us this simple prayer:

  9 Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
 10 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
 11 Give us this day our daily bread.
 12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

The Lord's Prayer, King James Version (KJV) Matthew 6:9-13

I was in a life threatening situation with my three young children once.  There was no safe way out.  The only thing that came to mind was this prayer - and I prayed it over and over and over until help came - through a very different stranger.   I must have witnessed to him, though I don't remember ever using any particular words.  Turns out, he was being indicted for a white collar crime and spent a couple of years in jail.  One evening the phone rang and his mother introduced herself.  She said that he had just committed suicide, but had asked her to find me if anything happened to him, and to let me know.  I was stunned, to say the least, about the news, and that our chance encounter several years before had left such an impression.  I believe God's hand was in it all, and that it was God who witnessed to him somehow through me.

The Lord's prayer is a powerful, powerful prayer.  They are God's own words, so of course they'd be powerful!  But they are ours to use when our own minds fail us.  They are so familiar that it's like a healing balm when they are said out loud.  These words say it all...

The Graffiti House at Brandy Station

The armies of two determined men, Confederate General Lee and Union General Hooker, clash.  With relatively few infantry, but 10,000 horses and men each, they engage in the largest cavalry battle the Western Hemisphere has ever seen.

They charge each other on Fleetwood Hill, firing their guns on the first sighting of each other, but then there's no time to reload, and so it becomes a bloody battle of hand-to-hand sword and bayonet fighting. Even after exhausting his men and horses the day before with parade-charging practices and a review of troops for General Robert E. Lee himself, and after being surprised by Union General Hooker's men, twice!, Stuart salvaged the day.  He maintained the field of battle (with the help of a rain and hail storm) suffering "only" 575 casualties.  The Union lost 866 men.  But the Confederate cavalry had lost its superiority for all time that day.

You can read a play by play detail of the battle which began at Beverly's Ford on the Rappahannock River at http://www.nps.gov/frsp/brandy.htm, but this blog post is really about a home built in 1858 but is now known as The Graffiti House.

This is the house as it stands this day:

When we open the door, we don't see much, but then again, it's the headquarters of the Brandy Station Foundation, not just a museum piece.  It's a work very much in progress.  It's a room like many other rooms, the floors look new (and are), the walls are completely absent graffiti and looking new, there are tables and shelves and a scattering of photos and presentation boards.  Not too impressive.  But there is a wonderful ol' gentleman who reminds us of Ray Russell, our Sunday School teacher back home.  Ray's from Maine, and we find out that this man is from Pennsylvania - but they sure look alike!

I ask him to tell us the story, and so he begins.  He's very, very good at talking story.

First, to understand where the Foundation has come from he explains the recent history.

The owners of this house were planning a community event around the burning down of this place.  They had a city permit, had the fire department standing by - it was gonna be a real small town to-do.  Dad told his sons to go in one last time and make absolutely certain every possible piece of something to salvage had been removed.  They noticed a piece of paneling nailed to one of the  walls upstairs and decided, what the heck, let's take it.  What they saw on the wall behind the panel put their little event on hold - permanently.

Can you make out the initials and last name?  "J.E.B. Stuart"  And that's just the beginning.  Under layers and layers of paint, hundreds of names, initials, and drawings have been discovered.  All of the downstairs graffiti apparently was cut out in the dark of night and sold before something could be done to stop it.  What is left is upstairs.

The Brandy Station Foundation was formed, and they have struggled for decades to preserve the structure and the marks left by injured soldiers from both sides - and their caregivers like poet Walt Whitman who came there to find his wounded brother.  Whitman found him, nursed him back to health, shipped him home to their momma on a train, but stayed himself to tend to others until all had left Brandy Station.

The writings and drawings are believed to be one of the most extensive collections of Civil War graffiti discovered in recent decades.  They were mostly done in charcoal taken from the fireplaces, but some were done in lead pencil.  This means that the drawings have not faded and will not fade - so flash photography is not a problem if you want to snap a picture!  (That's a novelty in itself!)

July 21, 1861, after the first Battle of Manassas, this house was used as a hospital for retreating soldiers.  It was used again in 1863 after Confederate General Richard S. Ewell and Robert E. Lee observed part of the Fleetwood Hill action - which almost made it to the house itself.  The home's owner at the time, James Barbour, was actually on Ewell's staff.

The Foundation has identified many of the names on the walls and put their stories together. 

Michael Bowman was a member of Company H of the 7th Virginia Cavalry.  He enlisted in the Confederate Army April 18, 1861 in Harrisonburg, Virginia.  He was wounded in the fighting at the Wilderness May 5, 1864 but did recover, survive the war and return to his house near Harrisonburg, Virginia.

These initials are identical to those drawn by George Armstrong Custer, but he usually included an "A," so the Custer folks won't officially confirm these belong to him - though they confess they are drawn identically...

 This is an accurate date for the first snowfall of the 1863 winter...  November 9th, 1863.

 

Removing the layers of paint is (thanks to the Federal laws and EPA rules) very, very expensive.  The Foundation can only afford to do this in little bits.  It costs hundreds of dollars an hour for this specialist to come in.

This is the most historically significant piece of graffiti in the collection:  The Maryland Scroll.  A member of the Rifle Gun #1 of Breathed's Battery, Stuart Horse Artillery drew this.  It lists the entire crew of Rifle Gun #1, and includes the inscription, "On picket, March 16, 1863."  The next day is when the Brandy Station battle began.  Why, might you ask, is this in a display case?  It is one of the pieces that was sold to a private collector.  The Foundation was able to raise the money necessary to buy it back.

The stories are too many to tell here.  You really should go see this for yourself.  And if you appreciate what you have read and learned here, if you go yourself to see more, I truly hope that you send a donation to the Brandy Station Foundation so that they can continue their incredible work.

http://www.brandystationfoundation.com/graffiti_house.htm

Critters of The Canyon

I suppose the earliest record of critters found in the Grand Canyon is a pile of poop.  Mmhmm.  Poop.  Seems there's a cave there that is chock full of giant ground-sloth dung "deposited" there during the Ice Age.  One park ranger back in 1920 thought that was pretty cool, so he brought a pile home and tried to display it on the top of his wife's piano.  Is it any surprise that she said, "No!"

Currently the Grand Canyon boasts a family of albino bighorn sheep, jackrabbits that run up to 40 miles per hour, Gila monsters (big AND poisonous)... but the most poisonous critter is the red ant.  Now, granted, one bite won't kill you, but get a swarm of 'em, and you won't be feelin' so fine.

The tarantulas may be the scariest, but they are the least dangerous.  Not so, the pink rattlesnake!  However, in 1929, a brave park ranger, finding the first one he'd ever seen, grabbed the lil' feller behind the head (the only safe place to pick one up), and hiked up out of the canyon to his car.  Not finding anything to put it in, he simply held his arm out the window and drove home with his prize.  (Since automatic transmissions weren't around until the 1950's, that was probably a pretty crazy trip!)

There are bats.  Caves = bats, eh?  The smallest bat in the canyon is the western pipi-strelle.  They may be small, but they are no slouches when it comes to having babies: the pipistrelle is one of the few bats that give birth to twins.  Bats are the only mammals that are capable of true flight, too.  Bats to whales.  Mammals cover a wide spectrum, huh?

Of, course I've already told you about the condors that have been reintroduced to the canyon.  Today's condors can be found nesting in the same caves their ancestors used 12,000 years ago during the Ice Age!  That's cool on several levels!  (They know that fact because they carbon-dated a condor skull they found there.)  That may be the ONLY cool thing about condors, however!  They eat only rotting dead things, have bald heads because the dead goo doesn't stick to bald as bad as it does to feathers, and they pee on their own legs as a way to cool off in the summertime.  Eewww!

You know what?  I think we should go back to Virginia where everything isn't so ... western!

The Squirrelly Grand Canyon

If you think this guy is cute...

 

you should see him in the wintertime when he has tufts of hair growing off the top of his ears.  Utterly adorable!!  I love his polka-dot fur.

 

The Kaibab squirrel is a subspecies of the Abert squirrel.  The Kaibab is endemic to a 20 - 30 mile area of the north rim of the Grand Canyon area.  It's the only place in the world that you'll find this guy!  Seriously?  On this entire, humongous planet this is the only teeny-tiny spot that you can find this squirrel?  Cool!

The Abert is concentrated in the Arizona, Grand Canyon, New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado area, but can be found south into Mexico and up into the Rocky Mountains.  They were named for Colonel John James Abert, an Army topographer from the 1800's who organized the effort to map the American southwest.  (Talk about a tall order!)

Both the Abert and the Kaibab eat pine nuts - and the hawks eat the squirrels!!

Daniel Boone

Daniel Boone (1734-1820) learned his woodsmanship from his dad who gave Daniel his first rifle when Daniel was only 12 years old.  Soon after that Daniel shot his first bear.  Daniel's dad, Squire Boone, was a blacksmith and weaver.  (Now there's an unlikely combination!)

In 1749, when Boone was 15, he and his family picked up stakes and moved to Rowan County, North Carolina, on the Yadkin River.  Being an enterprising young man with skills, he started his own hunting business.


In 1755, during the French and Indian War (that's the French and the Indians ganging up on the English colonists to run them out of North America), Boone served as a wagoner for British Brigadier General Edward Braddock in the Battle of the Monongahela in an attempt to capture the French Fort Duquesne (now known as Pittsburgh, Ohio.)  The French prevailed, and Daniel only got away because of his well-honed survival skills.  He also got away on one of those horses he used to pull his wagon!

In 1756 he married, saying, all a man needed was "A good gun, a good horse and a good wife."

In 1769 I guess Boone made the discovery of his lifetime, the one he's truly remembered for.  He led an expedition of four men on a "boys trip out," Boone found the now famous Cumberland Gap through the mountains to the North American west.  In 1775 he packed up his family of wife and six children, moved through the Gap, and carved a settlement out of the wilderness named Boonesboro.

Now, folks, if you think it was all roses, think again.  We are truly talking wilderness and hostile Indians.  Boone even had one of his daughters kidnapped by the Indians!  Boone, being the man he was, stole her back, but this was no easy move he and wife Rebecca made.  I just don't know if they make families like theirs anymore - or ever will again!  We are all pretty much wimps nowadays.  In the years that followed, Boone was shot in the ankle during an Indian attack and even captured himself by the Shawnee!  Finally, all the settlers got their money together, gave it to Daniel, and he set out to buy land permits.  (Wait a minute.  The Indians owned the land, Daniel fought for the land, but now he has to BUY permits from the British to live on it??  The arrogance of government never ceases to amaze me.)  Poor Daniel got waylaid by thieves who took everyone's money.  Nothing in life is simple...

In 1780, Daniel fought with Colonel George Rogers Clark (brother of William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame) in the Battle of Piqua during the American Revolution (1775- 1783).  Strangely enough, the Battle of Piqua was the largest military engagement of the American Revolution west of the Allegheny Mountains, but for some weird reason the history books give no mention of it. 

First, Clark planned to secure a supply location.  This was accomplished (where Riverfront Stadium is located today in Cincinnati!), and Clark left Daniel there to guard the supplies.  (Remember, an army travels on its stomach.)  Then Clark and his forces moved on to Chillicothe, Ohio.  (This is significant to our family because our mother was born in Chillicothe, Texas - namesake of Chillicothe, Ohio.)  The battle took place here against the British-supported Indians.  Their 4,000 strong force stood against Clark's 1,000 men.  The colonists prevailed because they weren't just fighting the Revolution, but they were also trying to stop the British-supported Indians from sneak attacks against their homes and families. Well, that and Colonel Clark's superior tactics.

In 1788 Boone and his family moved north to Point Pleasant (now in West Virginia) where he served as a lieutenant colonel and county legislative delegate.  Later he moved one final time west into Missouri.  He spent the rest of his life doing what he loved most - hunting.