|
Northern Arizona: In The Footsteps of Pioneers and Settlers
We are clustered around a campfire at Kohl’s Ranch and, as the only
uninformed Canadian in the group, I’m eyeing Heather, our tour guide, warily.
"But you have to try it," she urges, holding out a Popsicle-like stick.
So I do, and promptly drip melted chocolate down my front. But that’s okay. It’s
yummy enough to be worth it. Which is why these campfire concoctions of toasted
marshmallows covered in chocolate are called a "smores". "Meaning you’ll want
s’more," says Heather. Right on! We have just finished a dinner of gargantuan proportions (five courses,
topped by a dessert puff pastry as flaky as a politician’s promise) turned out
by the Ranch’s unbelievably young and gifted chef, Matthew Hubbard but,
gastronomic delights aside, there are other reasons for being at Kohl’s Ranch.
Our group is on a trek, following in the footsteps of pioneers and settlers
in Northern Arizona. The trail veers off along errant paths—but then this
journey isn’t about dates and events along the broad highway of history. It’s
about people and their lives along those small byways. It’s about places like
Kohl’s Ranch.
Lou and Necia Kohl, cattle ranchers and pioneers, arrived in Arizona around
1917, bought the ranch property in 1926, and opened it up to guests from across
the world in the early ‘30s. We are each presented with a copy of "Kohl’s Ranch
Story" compiled by the Kohl granddaughters, and it is a lovingly compiled
treasury of family lore, bringing to life in old sepia photos and memoir, a
gracious lifestyle and generous standards of hospitality. Three generations of
family spent holidays at the ranch, and as in any family saga, the years brought
happiness and tragedy, moments of high drama, and moments of tranquility. The
summer months were filled with friends, laughter, lavish picnics and hectic
activity: horseback riding, fishing, hunting, swimming and hiking through the
rugged landscape bordering the Tonto River. Lou and Necia retired in 1943, and
the ranch has changed hands several times since then. IXL Incorporated, the
current owners, continue to offer guests their own brand of homespun
hospitality.
 Payson’s Rim County Museum has copies of familiar titles such as Riders of
the Purple Sage and Thunder Mountain as well as photographs and
memorabilia of a man whose books sold a staggering 17 million copies in his
lifetime. Hollywood, too, loved them. They churned out over 100 low budget, but
immensely popular, Zane Gray films, and even today, I remember the thrill of
watching Gary Cooper or Randolph Scott riding tall in the saddle at a movie
theatre in small-town India. Zane Grey’s cabin, built in the 1920s, was deep in the woods on the outskirts
of Payson, and this was where he wrote many of his stories of cowboys,
desperadoes, Indians, rustlers and cattlemen. Unfortunately, it burned to the
ground in 1990. Dick Wolfe, President of the Zane Grey Cabin Foundation, shows
us around a timber replica of the cabin, now taking shape on a grassy knoll
adjacent to the Museum. It is slated to open this summer, and will be an
exciting addition to Payson’s tourist attractions.
As is true in several small communities in northern Arizona, the past
straddles the threshold of the present in the towns of Strawberry and Snowflake
and we get to meet and chat with the descendants of families who homesteaded the
area in the late 1800s. At the one-room schoolhouse in Strawberry (the oldest standing
schoolhouse in Arizona, i.e., it has never been moved an inch from its original
foundations), Mary Hunt, takes us around the little classroom. She pauses in
front of a blurred sepia group photograph of children displayed on a wall and
points out a little girl. "That’s my mother-in-law," she says, "We’ve lived here
for many generations now," she adds, "not just in the area— but also in the same
house. In fact my husband, still wakes up in the same bed where he was born…and
he’s now in his eighties!"
Snowflake (where it doesn’t snow all that much) owes its origins to
two Mormon elders, Erastus Snow and William Flake who founded the town in 1878.
The town is as symmetrical, neat and trim as the quilts on display at the local
museum. Several lovely old heritage homes are open to public tours and the
Victorian-style residence, once owned by James Madison Flake, (William Flake’s
eldest son), is choc-a-bloc with family memorabilia, including photographs of
his two wives and twenty-four children! One of them, his daughter Augusta, was
responsible for preserving much of the Flake collection. In addition to being a
cranky spinster schoolmarm, she is described variously as a brilliant scientist,
a photographer, an accountant, and last but far from least, as a "pack-rat with
a mission," having accumulated a staggering amount of family photographs,
documents, heirlooms and other artifacts, which are now part of Snowflake’s
Stinson Pioneer Museum.
Although Snowflake’s heritage walk takes us through several beautifully
preserved homes, a small rustic dwelling with an unusual story, hooks our
attention. The Locy Rogers log cabin, built in 1878, came to light (literally!)
as the result of a fire in 1988, having been found within the smoldering ruins
of a much larger house. The small cabin had been thriftily incorporated as a
little dining room, within the walls of a residence built later in the mid
1880s. Do roadhouses and dance halls qualify as historical sites? Apparently in
Arizona they do. The Museum Club in Flagstaff, has been listed on the National
Register of Historic Places. It started life as a log cabin on Route 66 and was
built by a taxidermist with a penchant for the grotesque. The showcases in the
entrance hallway display photos of a few of his freak specimens (six-legged
sheep, two-headed calves etc.) while the walls of the dance floor sport a large
assortment of stuffed trophies.
 To my delight, I find out that the place is haunted. Two violent deaths—one
an accident, the other a suicide—took place here in the 1970’s. Staff and guests
have since encountered in shadowy corners, either Thorna Scott, who broke her
neck as she fell down the steps leading to the upstairs apartment, or her
broken-hearted husband, Don, who put a gun to his temple in front of the
fireplace, shortly after his wife’s death. As former owners, they appear to be
unable to leave the premises, creaking along the upstairs floor where they once
lived, turning lights on and off and, if feeling too chilly, lighting the fire
in the hearth. I sit alone in one of the "haunted" booths hoping to run into either Thorna,
or Don—but neither of them shows up. Thorna has been known to prefer guys, and
Don probably wouldn’t be interested in anyone other than Thorna. Oh well…perhaps it’s time to go home to Canada, carrying with me images of
Arizona’s past, and its people who have lived here for generations. And yes, a
yen for "smore" trips before too long.
Story and pictures by Margaret
Deefholts
|
