The Rim of the Kaibab Plateau

As we leave the Interstate headed north out of Williams, Arizona, the road begins an ascent that doesn't stop for 60 miles!  If you want to bicycle the Rim, I suggest you put the bike in a car, drive to the Rim and THEN start pedaling!  Otherwise you'll be all tuckered out before you get halfway there.


The National Park Service has really done a beautiful job of making access up and down the south rim easy and gorgeous.  (Yes, that's me.) Staying on the path is important because the vegetation really is fragile.

The Colorado Plateau and the Rocky Mountains were uplifted by the same geological forces at the same time.  The Kaibab Plateau is the southern part of the Colorado Plateau and can reach heights of over 9,000 feet.  That explains why it's been known to snow on the rim in July!  We didn't experience snow, but we did see the results of a hail storm that passed by just minutes before us:

Some areas of the Kaibab can get 200 inches of snow in a single season.  Folks apparently do a lot of back-country Alpine skiing and snow camping up here.  Believe it or not, there are about 1,500 Park employees that live on the South Rim year-round.  (I wish I'd known these things when I was 20!  I woulda moved here in a heartbeat.)

Lots of people don't pay much mind to the rim, but I heard tell of a couple who left the Park only to turn around in minutes and come back to the entrance, explaining that they had gotten so caught up in the beauty of the rim that they'd forgotten to look at the Canyon!  I can't imagine that!

 

Grand Canyon National Park and World Heritage Site

The Grand Canyon is not only a United States National Park, but it is also a World Heritage Site.  What does that mean?

Well, the United States was the first nation ever to formally establish and protect unique locations as national parks with the concept that they should never be exploited for economic gain.  They should belong to all citizens, forever unblemished by development.  Yellowstone was the first in 1872; Grand Canyon National Park came along in 1919.

With 70 miles of views like this from paved roads on the south rim alone, can't you just imagine the hoteliers that would want to build lodges all along the rim?  Then you'd have to have fast food restaurants and gas stations and...and...and...  Elected officials would vote yes because all of that means tax dollars into government coffers - from local to state to national levels they would vote yes.  But because back almost 150 years ago, someone played the statesman and said, "No!"  (That would be Teddy Roosevelt - the REPUBLICAN Roosevelt), we have fabulous, God-made national treasures!

Well, in 1954, Egypt decided it needed to build a dam, and that dam would flood treasures of ancient Egypt.  Hey!  They belong to Egypt!  Shouldn't Egypt be able to do what they need to for the living Egyptians? 

The world as a whole was made aware of what Egypt was planning by UNESCO (the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.)  There was a compromise between Egypt and the world that allowed for the Aswan Dam to be built - but only after UNESCO countries paid to have The Abu Simbel and  Philae Temples taken apart, moved to a higher location, and put back together piece by piece, the Temple of Dendur was moved to Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the Temple of Debod was moved to Parque del Oeste in Madrid.  (Only $80 million in 1954 dollars.)

One thing led to another and the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO in November, 1972.  The Convention came into force in December, 1975.  As of June, 2013, it has been ratified by 190 states, which includes 186 UN member states plus the Cook Islands, the Holy See, Niue, and Palestine in Israel.  Since that time, twenty-one sites in America have been designated as World Heritage Sites:

Mesa Verde
Yellowstone
Glacier Bay in Alaska
Grand Canyon
Everglades
Independence Hall in Philadelphia
Redwood National Forest
Mammoth Caves
Olympic
Cahokia
Great Smoky Mountains
San Juan National Historic Site in Puerto Rico
Statue of Liberty
Yosemite
Chaco
Hawaii Volcanoes
Monticello
Taos Pueblo
Carlsbad Caverns
Glacier (our only "National" park to actually be an International Park from its inception)
Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (140,000 square miles!) in Hawaiian waters

Granpa and I have been to over half of them!!

There are a dozen or so more "tentative" sites.

Well, that's a least ONE good thing the United Nations has done.  (I think.  Maybe.)

Into the Grand Canyon

Wouldn't it be great just to drive down into the Grand Canyon?

I suspect the reason the National Park Service hasn't built roads down into the Grand Canyon (besides the extraordinary cost financially and environmentally) is that it would invite the average person down.  That would magnify the dangers exponentially.  Can you imagine being down in the Canyon when this cloud burst opened up?

Even so, back in the 1960's a highway map published by the American Automobile Association (AAA) represented hiking trails as highways and people came from all over looking for a way to drive in!

But again I say, you don't have to take but a few steps from your car to the rim's edge to make the trip well worth your while.  With a pair of average binoculars you will even be able to see at least five famous rapids of the Colorado River:  Hermit, Granite, Hance, Unkar and Lava Falls.  Hermit Rapid sports some of the largest waves on the river - up to 15 feet! - but they're not as chaotic as Granite Rapids.  If you're "scoping" out Unkar Rapids be sure to look for rafts tied up to the shoreline.  Their occupants are probably checking out the Ancestral Puebloan ruins on the Delta there where the ancients farmed.  (Farming down inside the Grand Canyon.  Can you imagine?!)

From the North Rim, if you go west for a couple of hours, you have a chance to see Lava Falls Rapids which is one of the most famous of the Colorado's canyon-run rapids.  Even 30-foot motorized rafts have flipped over in this cauldron of hydraulics!  They say that there are only two kinds of river guides in the Grand Canyon:  those who have already been flipped by the river, and those who are going to be flipped.  And you only have to pay about a thousand dollars a person for the privilege!

The Grand Canyon

The finest and most spectacular views of the Grand Canyon are NOT from the south rim or the north rim.  The finest and most spectacular views are seen from the inner-canyon trails. 

The trails are carved out of the sides of the cliffs!  You can hike 'em or catch a mule ride!  On the right side of the picture below, find the "block" formation.  Follow it back to the lower right corner.  That's a trail with people on it.  Can you see them?  Distances are deceiving, yes?

There are hundreds of small ancient Indian ruins of pueblos in the canyon and on the rims.  The Tusayan Ruin and Museum is the easiest to get to.  It's a few miles inside the east entrance to the Grand Canyon National Park.

Remember, if you or a passenger in your car is 62 or older you can get a Golden Age passport and get into ALL National Parks for free!  Disabled vets, too. 

Senior Pass ($10.00 - valid for the lifetime of the pass owner; must be 62+ older, U.S. citizen, and a permanent resident)

Access Pass (Free for lifetime with documentation of permanent disability, U.S. citizens and permanent residents)

The South Rim drive is 70 miles long and open year-round.  You're just a few steps from the edge of the canyon, so even non-hikers get spectacular views!  The elevation is 7,000+ feet, so it's cool enough even in the summertime!

A Cloudy Day Doesn't Matter at the Grand Canyon

It was very, very cloudy at the Grand Canyon with some occasional rain and wind.




But then the clouds would begin to clear a bit.

Granpa always says not to let a cloudy day stop you from taking pictures.  In fact, most of the time an overcast day can give you some of the best pictures because there is no glare from the sun.  Sometimes too much sunlight can wash colors away, too.

The clouds helped to see the outlines of particular formations one might miss if the whole vista was uncovered.  Again the clouds disappear, and the canyon is revealed.  Now you completely miss the same formation, don't you?

 

 

 

 

I Have A Praise!

I have a praise.  After my post about our son's pain, you guys must have sinned a bit less because yesterday the Social Security Administration notified him that he has been approved for disability payments.  A man not being able to make a living for his family causes men great pain.  This disability payment is not something our son earned, it's something that he's been paying taxes for all his working years - since being a newspaper boy in Palestine, Texas at the age of 12 until earlier this year when his spirit and pride finally broke and he had to apply.  I praise God for our son's being approved, and I thank you guys for sinning just a little bit less!

The Bible

For those who feel lost when you pull a Bible out because you have a worry and don't know where to start in the Bible - anywhere will do. There's something about reading the Word that brings peace. BUT, a little help here: the first five books of the Old Testament are the books of Jewish law (which was impossible to keep so God sent Jesus), the next twelve books are about the history of the Jewish people, THEN you get to the books you are probably looking for: the Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Solomon, the major prophets are awesome: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, but the twelve minor prophets are important, too. That is all there is to the Old Testament: Law, History, Wisdom, Major and Minor Prophets. Does that help?

The New Testament is even simpler: the first four Books are called The Gospels and tell of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. They all tell the same story, but they are written by four different men (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John); the next is known as Acts about the history of the Christian church and the spread of Christianity; the next nine are letters written to new Christians groups or churches in different towns like Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus... That is followed by letters written to individuals. If you're a new Christian these two groups would be pretty cool to read. And it ends with the virtually impossible to understand Book of Revelations. Revelations is so full of imagery you need to take a class on it!! Don't go there for awhile, but when you get there, it is magnificent.

Our First Visit to the South Rim

I thought Granpa was taking a picture of me with his cell phone.  Turns out he was taking a picture of himself.  I guess he was impressed that he finally made it to the south rim of the Grand Canyon.  Years ago we stopped off at the north rim, but Granpa's dad was with Roosevelt's CCC (Civil Conservation Corps) back in the 1930's when they built the Bright Angel Trail down to the Colorado River from the south rim.  (We always tell folks that Daddy John helped build the Grand Canyon :)  Granpa has always wanted to get to the south rim.  Unfortunately, when we finally made it, we are too old to take the trip down the Bright Trail.

This is the same picture sans Granpa:

Not bad for a cell phone picture, huh?

So, all in all he took something like 512 pictures.  No, we're not gonna make you suffer them all.  The clouds just kept changing the view, and it was mesmerizing.  A lot of these views Granpa got while we were juggling umbrellas and fighting the winds coming up the side of the canyon.


But to set the stage:

There are several miles of paved trail along the rim going east and west from here.  At this spot is the main Visitors Center, restrooms, geedunk, and gift shops.  In the Visitors Center the first thing we see is an amazing motion picture presentation.  If you ever get to the south rim, be sure to see this!

We were also told to watch for this dude:

No offense, but this is not a handsome man.  Can this be a real creature?  Yup, it is.  And what's that sticking out of his chest feathers??  He is definitely a funky lookin' feller!

My Son's Pain

I was on my knees just now, praying to God and asking him to stop our sons pain.  Don't even fix the injury - just stop his pain.  A vision flashed into my mind of God sitting on His throne in heaven, looking down on me with enormous empathy and love.  Empathy means that He truly understands my grief.  I felt Him say, "Who is there to help My Son in His pain?  Even after His death on the cross for the sins of man, mankind still sins."  He said this with great love and kindness to let me know that He understands my grief.  Will He stop our sons pain?  I don't know, but I do know that He understands.  Maybe, just maybe, if you and I sin a bit less today, my son's pain will be a bit less.

Syria Suggestion

If you want to help the Syrian people, donate money to your Christian disaster organizations that might be helping out over there. We should always turn to the Lord and not government when things are as confused and conflicted as the Syrian situation is. Pray for wisdom for America's political leaders, too, but don't send them any money.

Don't Cross the River!

We leave Oatman headed west on Route 66.  (This is when we crossed paths with the naked behinds bicycling down the road... http://thetravelerstwo.blogspot.com/2013/08/best-gig-ever.html)  We will follow Route 66 over to Bullhead City on the Colorado River.  One side of the river is Arizona, one is Nevada.

There are casinos on the other side of the river in Nevada. To cross the river or not to cross the river? 

See what happens when you cross the river?  Don't cross the river !!

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard

It's only 350 miles from here to Hollywood.  Even in the 1930's that wasn't too far.  Clark Gable and Carole Lombard honeymooned in the old hotel in downtown Oatman!  But that was an effort to get away from the paparazzi.   

To get to Oatman, Arizona from Kingman, Arizona one has no option but to take old Route 66.  It winds you through the Black Mountains and is absolutely gorgeous!

A new version of Route 66 bypassed them in 1953, but the old route has been paved again and is truly miles of sights to behold.
 

In this particular 150,000 acres of wild-ness, we should find the largest herds of wild burros and desert bighorn sheep in the entire state.

During the Great Depression of the 1930's, half a million people struggled west on Route 66 in an attempt to find work.  The Black Mountains were a barrier to that goal.  I remember some old-timer telling me that the fuel in a Model T was gravity driven.  If a hill was too steep, no fuel could reach the engine.  The cleverest of men figured out that if they turned their "T's" around and backed up the mountain, gravity worked in their favor.  (How would you like to be smarter than a Model T?)  That's probably why, in 1953, the government built a bypass around the mountain.  It made traveling easier, but then folks missed all the scenery!

Oatman is an old mining town founded around 1908.  Over the next thirty years, 1.8 million ounces of gold had been mined from the area.  By World War II, gold (believe it or not) was consider nonessential to the war effort and the mines were closed.  (I guess they needed all able-bodied men "over there.")  But the price of gold is so incredibly high the last few years that mines are reopening.

It's impossible to drive through the town of Oatman for all the burros filling the street. 

(Notice I said, "street."  There's only one. :)  So the burros were allowed to range free thereafter and are protected by the Federal government from capture or harassment,  hence the huge herds.  

But the burros are for real - and they're multiplying! 

They are really beautiful, but wild.  You are warned time and again that, though they appear tame, they are in reality wild as a March hare and WILL bite.

I just happen to love all of 'em!

John Wayne and Andy Devine

 

If you were born in 1950 or before, you remember Andy Devine.  If you were born after 1960, you probably have no clue who he was.  I remember him as the character, "Jingles," in The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok television series which ran from 1951 through 1959.  That was two years longer than the I Love Lucy Show!  The Hickok show was on the radio before it was made into a TV series.  Devine had a really raspy voice - which may be why he got the radio gig.

Born in 1905 in Flagstaff, Arizona, Andy grew up in Kingman.  One of the two main thoroughfares here is named after him, Andy Devine Boulevard.  There is a whole room at the museum here in Kingman that is devoted to him and his career as a film star.

As we've driven around this area, it has occurred to me that it might have been Andy that introduced Hollywood to the majestic, rugged scenery that shows up in films from John Wayne's "Stagecoach" to today's "Indiana Jones."

He had a total of five children, some of whom appeared in movies with him.  He was married to one woman, Dorothy, for 44 years before his death from leukemia. That's what you'd want your Hollywood actors to be - faithful.

His paternal grandfather was from County Tipperary in Ireland, coming to America in 1852; his maternal grandfather was the first Navy Commander killed during the Civil War.

Devine played semi-professional football under the name "Jeremiah Schwartz," (why the identity secrecy I don't know!) but his football experience held him in good stead for his first real acting role, The Spirit of Notre Dame in 1931.  He appeared in films from 1928 to 1973 - dozens and dozens and dozens of 'em - along with radio and television appearances. 

By all accounts, Devine was a good, good man.  He did Kingman, Arizona proud!

The Devil's Rope

In 1875, 2,840,000 pounds of barbed-wire were sold in the United States.

It was the Native American's, oddly enough, that nicknamed barbed-wire, "The Devil's Rope."  It was certainly bad enough that the white man was shoving them off of their lands and forcing one tribe upon another, but that barbed-wire!  It made it next to impossible for the nomadic tribes to continue with their ancient life style!

The first patents for this uniquely American invention were issued in 1873 and 1874.  (Just a year later 2,840,000 pounds of it were sold in the U.S.!)   Those patents were issued ten years after the original concept was presented as a wooden rail fence with barbs sticking out.   The most successful design was created by Joseph Glidden of DeKalb, Illinois who had been encouraged by his wife (way to go, girl!!) because she wanted to use it around her vegetable garden to keep the critters out.  They called it the "thorny fence."

Because its design was so simple, a wire barb locked (keyword: locked) onto a double strand of wire, and because he had even figured out a way to mass-produce the stuff, Glidden's patent, literally and figuratively, became known as "The Winner."  Here we are, almost 150 years later, and it's still the most familiar style of barbed wire!

Pretty cool, you say?  Well, sort of.  The problem with being almost the only barbed-wire being used was that it could be (and was!) stolen, and there would be no way to prove who it really belonged to.  The railroads were required to fence off their rail lines, and, like today, most folks think to themselves, what the heck, those big corporations can afford to replace the wire, and off they'd go with miles and miles of it.  The entire lengthy of a rail line was impossible to police!  The railroad's solution was to corner the market on a particular style of wire and at least make it easier to identify as theirs.

With the use of barbed wire, "wide open spaces became less wide, less open, and less spacious, and ... barbed wire became an accepted symbol of control, transforming space to place and giving new meaning to private property."  (www.archives.gov) The ranchers first filed land-use petitions, but the governments realized that farmers brought families, and families meant permanent settlements that would grow into tax-paying villages and towns and cities.  In places like Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming, range wars ensued between farmers and ranchers.

The Devil's Rope was as influential to settling the American West as six-shooters, the telegraph, windmills and the steam engine.

Branding Irons and Brands

If you Google "history of branding," what you get is a list of the history of branding products.  That's all about marketing things. 



********************

 



The word "brand" itself comes from the English and referred to a burning stick or "firebrand."  In ancient times, in Rome, brands were chosen that represented magic spells intended to protect the branded animal from harm.  By the Middle Ages the definition of the word had pretty much transitioned to the mark left on animals as proof of ownership.  Spain had a lot of free-range cattle raising, and the concept of branding migrated to that country, too.  Their vaqueros brought the idea over to America's desert southwest and refined it into what most people think of today as the branding process.



Some Arizona Brands and Branding Irons

From America, branding to prove ownership showed up in Australia by 1866.  Branding was useful anywhere there were large free-range areas.  It allowed one owner's cattle to mingle with another all season on shared land until it was time to ship them to market.  At that time every ranch hand would join together, round up all the cattle, take them in to fenced areas, and then sort them out by brand.

Leather suppliers would really prefer that a branding iron not be used because it diminishes the value of a hide.  (I know also that European cow hides are more valuable than American southwestern hides because of the damage Mesquite thorns, cactus, and ticks do to the surface of hides.)  Tanners call a hide with no brands, "native."  A Colorado brand (also known as a "Collie") means the hide was branded on the side of an animal, butt branded (obviously) means the animal was branded on the rump.

A branded calf was like money in the bank back in the day.  The brand design itself was considered personal property and subject to sale, transfer, mortgage or lien.  Today, many of our western states have strict laws regarding brands, including brand registration, and require brand inspections.  If a brand is not recorded by a designated time it is legally "lost."  At the end of the next year, someone else can pick up that brand and register it.

Cattle rustlers would have to alter a ranchers original brand if they wanted to sell the cattle they rustled.  If they were caught driving cattle with someone else's brand they would be subject to "immediate" justice (taken to a hanging tree!)  You had to have a steady hand to change a brand without smudging it.  It took a lot more skill than just slapping a new brand on an unmarked calf.  Sometimes they used what was called a "running iron" because it was run along the hide to burn the hair off and permanently leave a mark thereby changing the design of an existing brand.  Other times a very clever rustler would design a brand to fit over and incorporate the existing brand to the new design.  If they were caught before a new brand had a chance to heal they were as good as dead, too, because it was tremendously obvious what was new and what was "seasoned."

Freeze branding is a newer method, but it's a whole lot more complicated to accomplish, and in some places doesn't even constitute a legal brand.  It's also slower, more expensive, and even harder to get a good clear result.  A brass or copper iron is submerged in liquid nitrogen or dry ice to get the freezing part ready, but that's the easy stuff.  After that is when it gets pretty tricky.  The area to be branded has to be clean shaven because the hair is too good of an insulator to allow the cold to reach the skin.  Then the skin has to be disinfected.  Once that's done, the iron can be laid to the skin.  For how long you ask?  Well, that depends on the type of animal, thickness of skin, type of iron, type of coolant, even the color of the animal's hair.  Why the color?  Because the freezing is intended to kill the pigment-producing hair cells causing the hair to grow in white.  If the animal's hair is naturally light colored then the iron has to be applied longer to actually creating scar tissue that will show as an actual brand.  So, while all of these other factors are being taken into consideration, the guy holding the branding iron has to keep a steady hand, too.  Like I said, complicated.  In America, the Federal government uses the freeze branding method to mark wild mustangs found on BLM land.

Mostly today earmarks are used rather than branding irons.  Ears can carry a particular notch, punch, tattoo or clip, or be tagged with a metal marker.  Some high tech ranchers are using micro-chips for tracking purposes.  That oughta make a round-up easier!  Besides, free range areas are pretty uncommon today.  Most grazing land is marked off using the "Devil's rope," or barbed wire.

My Sincerest Apologies

One of our sons - and apparently only the one - keeps getting multiple text messages from me every time I publish a new post to the blog.  He's about to disown me over this!  His phone number is not even in my contacts list, so I have no idea why he's getting text messages about the blog.  I don't think I have anyone's phone numbers in my Google accounts lists.   I have tried everything I can think of to stop "harassing" him, and have finally just deleted him entirely from my contacts list.  When this gets published, I'll find out if even that works.

PLEASE LET ME KNOW if you are being harassed in the same way!  When you receive an email notification of a publish, you should be able to stop them (if you want to) by following the instructions at the bottom of the email.  But apparently that's not an option when our son receives a text message.

I know that with all of this technology everybody's everything is linked to everything, but this is crazy.  I offer my absolute sincerest apologies if I am bothering anyone.  Click on the comment portion at the bottom of the post and tell me!  It is a private communication with only me.  It doesn't get published to the blog unless I take action and authorize the publication of your comment.  Please help me to not aggravate you!  I am so very sorry if I do!

Cow Boys and Arizona

Our perception of the era of cowboys is that it lasted for a long, long time.  Well, it did last longer than the Pony Express ( http://thetravelerstwo.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-pony-express-and-split-rock-wyoming.html ), but not much longer.  In reality the aftermath of America's Civil War is what created the big cattle drives and therefore the cowboy persona.

Northern Arizona's cowboys got started a bit earlier in ranching than in the lower part of Arizona, and it differed from Texas ranching in so much as individual Texas ranchers owned thousands upon thousands of acres, and other state's land belonged to the Federal government who would only lease grazing rights.  (How'd they do that?  That's like kings in Europe and emperors in Asia, and that's un-American!)

Pappo (Momma's daddy) was a rancher and farmer in west Texas.  His brother owned land right next to him.  His son, Pappo's nephew, ran that operation.  One summer when we were visiting our grandparents, Twin invited us kids to come over and help (watch) brand some of the cattle.  Woohoo!!  Would we ever!  and we flew out the door into the bed of his pickup truck.  This had to be around 1962.  Twin was always on the cutting edge of technology, and he had converted his truck to run on propane because the price of gasoline was so insanely high (almost forty cents a gallon!!)  At least that's what he told us.  I think it was because he could unscrew the lid of the propane tank he had mounted in the bed of the truck behind the cab, and he could hold a can of beer in the propane for about five seconds and, ta-ta!, have a frosty cold beer anywhere, any time!

But back to branding the cattle...  We sat on the propane tank while Twin bounced and bumped over the fields.  His cowhands were already hard at work.  But where were the horses?  Where were the lassos and the branding irons heating in campfires?  None of that for the Twin!  The branding iron was heating over a propane burner.  (That was a way to prevent range fires.)  He had the cattle in a corral and would move the cows into a chute.  The gate at the end of the chute allowed the cow to stick its head out and a lever that, when pulled, squeezed the chute in to hold the cow still.  While one cowboy was branding it's hip another was spraying a medicine in and around its eyes to prevent pink eye.  Then the cow was vaccinated for hoof and mouth disease and released.  Well, it wasn't as thrilling as we had imagined, but I did manage to completely trash the new white sandals Momma had just bought me the day before.

So it was around 1865-1870 that the big cattle drives began.  By the 1880's cattle was being transported by rail, and so there were only small cattle drives from ranches out in the counties over to the rail lines.  The cattle was then loaded up and taken to centrally located towns like Abilene, Kansas for processing or live transport back east.

Another difference between Texas ranching and Arizona ranching is that Arizona really and truly is the desert southwest.  In 1885 a major drought struck Arizona.  Between that and the overgrazing of the desert scrub, when the rains came what topsoil had been there was washed away.  The drought ended in the 1890's, and the cattle industry made a painstakingly slow comeback.

The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 ended free-range grazing.  The good news here is that fencing was required.  That meant that the ranchers would have to control where the cattle hung out if they wanted to be granted those precious grazing rights.  The Act required ranchers to dig wells, build dams, and control natural watering areas by spreading cattle out to prevent over grazing around watering holes.

Grazing fees are based on AUM (another piece of governmental alphabetization: "Animal Unit Month") which is the amount of forage it takes to feed one cow or cow/calf pair for one month.  By Congressional formula, the fee cannot fall below $1.35 per AUM and cannot increase more than 25% over the previous year's level.

The bonus to the government and the general public is that the ranchers are paying attention to what's going on over millions of acres of remote land.  They report range fires, poaching of wildlife, and vandalism of ancient historic sites and rare plant life.

Have you ever wondered why the price of beef and other livestock keeps going up?  Try this list of old and new troubles:

Drought
Predators
Government regulations (barbed wire ain't cheap when you have thousands of acres to fence, and finding water and drilling absolutely isn't cheap!)
Capricious markets
Environmentalists
Real Estate developers (lobbying for government land to go to them instead of ranchers)
and us homeowners taking that government land, too.

And so the cattle industry in Arizona seems to have had about a 100 year run.  Starting in the 1970's, ranching has been on a steady decline.  In 1996, due to a lack of forage on the grazing land, one Arizona rancher had to sell his cattle, taking a $100,000 loss.  However, the rancher continues to pump water on the land that he had rights to so that the wildlife can be sustained.  (Thank you, Mr. Rancher!!) 

Butt-naked in the Arizona Desert!

Kingman seems to be centrally located to a ton of Southwestern tourist locations.  Within three or four hours driving time we can get to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas (where we hear there are several really excellent museums), the historic mining town of Oatman, the part of the Colorado River that divides Arizona from Nevada and California is only about thirty miles away, the Hualapai Mountain park, and, yes, even the famous London Bridge that some guy bought and had disassembled in London, brought to our desert Southwest, and reassembled.

With seven days on and seven days off we can do a considerable amount of sightseeing into California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado, too.  My goodness, we could even make a trip back to Texas and spend three days!  This may be the best gig ever!  No.  Wait.  There was that year in Hawaii, and almost a year in Virginia wasn't too bad.  Then there was that frozen winter in North Dakota that we thoroughly enjoyed...  Maybe we're just too easy to please.  All of that and a paycheck, too, makes medical traveling pretty cool.

The other day we were tootlin' down Route 66 in the middle of nowhere doing our sightseeing thing when we came upon something my eyes could have done without:  we happened upon a group of bicyclists that were butt-naked. It was really not a pretty thing to see from behind!  I would bet that those silly people had sores where sores ought not be and rosy cheeks for a week!  I do know this:  the next day I had a sore neck - probably from the whiplash I got when I realized what I was lookin' at!  One of the women was obviously embarrased to get caught in the buff because she headed off the road into some cactus.  I don't know that I would EVER be so embarrased as to go naked into the cactus...

But not all of our trips are so very revealing.  Most just expose secrets of the past...

Mohave Indians' Body Paint and Tatooing

The oldest known tattoos were found on the remains of a dude over in Europe on the Italian-Austrian border in 1991.  It's estimated that he was over 5,000 years old.  (That would make him a contemporary of Adam and Eve maybe!!)  Two thousand years ago the Romans named one of the northern tribes of the English Isles, "Picti."  That's translated as "the painted people."  It was about that time that tattoos, then known as stigmata, transitioned from being marks of the upper class to marks indicating the person was a slave, criminal or belonged to a religious sect.  Around 300 A.D.  the Roman Emperor Constantine (the first Christian Emperor of the Roman Empire) banned tattoos because he felt that they disfigured mankind who was created in the image of God.


According to the information in the Kingman museums, the Mohave Indians were sandwiched between the California tribes to the west (which were into body tattoos) and other Indian tribes to the east (which were into body and face paint).  Being clever traders who knew how to blend in, the Mohaves adopted BOTH.  (I suppose that they were ancestors of the Dallas Cowboys' Dion Sanders who wanted to play pro football AND baseball.)  Only the Yuman peoples combined the painting and tattooing.

To make the paint, the Mohaves kneaded deer fat while adding their paint to it.  Then they continued kneading it until the fat was like bread dough.  The paint would last a whole day - unless they sweated.   Red pigment came through trade with the Walapai who found it in their Red Mountain.  The Mohaves traded corn and pumpkins for it. 

The tattooing wasn't a very pleasant thing to get through.  The design was drawn on with charcoal, and then a sliver of stone was used to make skin pricks close together.  When the blood flowed, mesquite or willow charcoal that had been ground into a fine powder would be rubbed into the wound.  It took hours just to do a chin tattoo.  The design used on Olive Oatman was reserved for marking slaves.  (WHAT?!  The white man was not the only ones to have slaves?!  Imagine that!)

(Not my drawings :)

Most Mohaves had tattoos because a person without them would be refused into the "Land of the Dead" and had to "go down a rat hole" instead.  Even so, the tattooing process was so very painful that some refused, preferring the possibility of a rat hole to the certainty of pain.

Today's tattooers use pain killers, so it's not the symbol of strength that it once was.

Tonto Apaches and Mohave Indians

In 1851, Tonto Apaches captured Olive and Mary Ann Oatman and, as happened a lot, they were then traded to the Mohave Indians that lived along the Colorado River.  (The river is now the dividing line between Arizona and California.)  Olive survived five years of drought, starvation, and death by illnesses only to be traded to a white man.  What's cool is that that white man had been sent by her brother, Lorenzo.  That man had been searching for Olive for over a year.

Have you ever watched a cable TV series, "Hell on Wheels?"  (It's not for children...)  One of the female characters in the series was once a captive of Indians and carries a chin tattoo as a symbol of her earlier acceptance into an Indian community.  Interestingly enough, that tattoo is vaguely familiar to the one Olive Oatman carried to her grave...


In 1857, Lt. Beale noted in his personal journal that he believed a military presence in the Kingman area would be necessary to protect emigrants from Mojave Indian aggression.

In 1858, just a few months after Lt. Beale and his men (and camels!) finished their survey work on the wagon road, folks were already heading west.  When one of these groups made it back to Albuquerque, one of their men wrote a letter to the editor of his back-home newspaper:

The Indians came running from every quarter out of the brush, completely surrounding the camp, and attacked us.  They kept up a continued shooting of arrows for near two hours and part of them, having driven off all the stock except a few near the wagons, they all left ... Miss Bentner had been found dead, her clothes torn off and her face disfigured.  From this and the fact of an Indian shaking some scalps at us, which he had fastened on a pole, we supposed that they (the Bentner family) had all been killed.  Mr. Alpha Brown was also killed and eleven wounded (including a small girl who was shot through the shoulder with an arrow) ... We concluded to return the way we had come ... Out of near four hundred head of cattle, we saved seventeen head, and out of thirty-seven horses, probably ten..."  
Despite much hardship most of the group made it back to Albuquerque, walking most of the way.

Fort Mojave was established the next year - just as Lt. Beale had warned would be necessary.