Arizona's Apache Trail yields a cache of ruins

By Patricia Connell

March 21, 2004 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Globe, Ariz. — The $29 airfare from Burbank to Phoenix was my cue. I had recently read about the centuries-old cliff dwellings in Arizona’s Tonto National Monument; the upper, larger dwelling, the article said, is accessible only on ranger-led tours November to April. This was my chance. It was also an opportunity to spend an uninterrupted few days with my daughter Elena, 15, doing mom-and-kid stuff.

I snagged a Priceline rate of $14 a day for a rental car and reserved places on a tour for the first weekend in March.

At the Phoenix airport Hertz counter, Elena’s innocent request for a car with a CD player catapulted us from a subcompact to an 18-foot Ford F-150 truck at no extra charge. As the trip unfolded, I wasn’t sorry to be surrounded by all that metal.

We headed east on U.S. 60 to Apache Junction, where we picked up Arizona Route 88 -- the 78-mile mountain road known as the Apache Trail -- and started rising from rolling desert into the spectacularly precipitous Superstition Mountains. Sixteen miles out we passed Canyon Lake, one of a chain formed by the damming of the Salt River, and a couple of miles later we cruised through Tortilla Flat, a former stagecoach stop and now a shamelessly kitschy tourist magnet -- to which we would return.

Past Tortilla Flat, the twisting, up-and-down route became more breathtaking and challenging. A notorious 22-mile stretch is unpaved and just a lane and a half wide, and although the AAA guide calls it “well maintained,” there were sections of punishing ruts and washboard that made the truck rattle so thunderously I expected the doors to fly open. We hugged a sheer rock wall; westbound travelers were inches from an equally sheer plunge of hundreds of feet, and several times we had to squeeze past approaching cars in a dicey do-si-do. Riveted by the mountain panoramas and the demands of the drive, Elena and I agreed that we’d sneer at roller coasters forevermore

The pavement resumed at 356-foot-high Roosevelt Dam, dedicated by President Theodore Roosevelt. At the visitor overlook is a plaque with a quote from TR: “The Apache Trail combines the grandeur of the Alps, the glory of the Rockies, the magnificence of the Grand Canyon and then adds an indefinable something that none of the others have. To me, it is the most awe-inspiring and most sublimely beautiful panorama nature has ever created.” Amen -- though he doubtless had a driver.

After 30 more miles on easy highway, we reached the old mining town of Globe, where I had reserved two nights at Days Inn (though, on visiting them, I wished we had stayed at one of two exceptional B&Bs; -- Noftsger Hill Inn, www.noftsgerhillinn.com, or Delvan’s Drawing Room, www.miamiAZ.org/bed, in neighboring Miami). Night fell, and the full moon that rose over the desert awed even my jaded 15-year-old.

The next morning we retraced most of the trip’s last leg to Tonto National Monument. From about 1150 to 1450, the prehistoric Salado people farmed here in the Salt River Valley. By the early 1300s, possibly for protection or because of swelling population (which may have reached 15,000), some had migrated to natural caves in the cliffs hundreds of feet above, where they built apartments of rock cemented with mud. The monument shelters the ruins of two of these complexes, a lower cliff dwelling of 16 rooms -- open to all -- and the upper dwelling of more than 30 rooms.

Sixteen of us joined ranger Jan Harper for the 1 1/2-mile hike 600 feet up to the larger dwelling. Along the way she identified plants and pointed out how the Salado used them. Yucca-fiber sandals are the monument’s “most prolific artifact,” she said, because every climb up the trail would have worn out a pair.

The upper ruin was a wonderfully evocative place, an aerie with stunning views over the broad valley and surrounding mountains. Ironically, what now dominates the valley view is the lake formed by Roosevelt’s namesake dam, which destroyed 700-year-old Salado irrigation canals, yet Roosevelt created Tonto National Monument in 1907 to protect the cliff dwellings. Before the elements took their toll, the cliff homes had one, two and perhaps three stories, connected by ladders reaching through openings in the ceiling. Ancient handprints are still visible in the mud plaster.

We gathered in a room at the corner of the complex, which, because it was more exposed and therefore less desirable, was abandoned and used as a midden, or trash dump. Here archeologists have excavated worn-out yucca sandals, broken mortars, 9,000 potsherds, and hundreds of corncobs and clumps of agave fiber, which the Salado used as chewing “gum.” Some still litter the site.

The midden also yielded two bodies, one of a woman with a badly set broken leg. She was probably unable to make the trek down the mountain, Harper said, and would have spent her life confined to this 70-foot-square niche in a cliff wall. The image was haunting.

Later in the day I paid one more visit to these people who, like other Southwestern groups, mysteriously disappeared in the early 15th century. Back in Globe, at Besh-Ba-Gowah Archaeological Park, an excavated Salado pueblo built on flat ground, visitors can climb ladders from room to room and peer into spaces furnished with the simple trappings of Salado life: pottery, baskets, gourds, looms. Atmospheric in different ways, the austere cliff-side ruin and the more museum-like, well-labeled pueblo park made great complements.

Paddle wheeler on the lake

Monday, to avoid the perilous westbound Apache Trail, we made a circle, taking U.S. 60 west from Globe -- past still more spectacular scenery in the spires and pinnacles of Devil’s Canyon -- back to Apache Junction; from there we repeated the Apache Trail’s first 16 miles to board the Dolly Steamboat, a 150-passenger paddle wheeler that makes a 90-minute circuit around Canyon Lake.

After the high-wire driving and ruin scrambling, I found the ride delightful, a close-up cruise past arid mountains plunging straight into the water. Alas, we saw no bighorn sheep, deer, bobcats, bald eagles or other wildlife often spotted there. For Elena it was a little geriatric, but the boat’s “Titanic” soundtrack got a laugh. No threat of icebergs here.

For lunch, we and a few hundred other tourists crowded into Tortilla Flat’s Superstition Saloon, a couple of miles up the Apache Trail, which turned out to be worth a visit for its outrageous decor. The barstools are Western saddles mounted on tree stumps, and hanging on the walls are items ranging from a buffalo head to boxer shorts. But the real attraction is the dollar bills papering every inch of every wall up to the 15-foot ceiling. The menu is a broadside that includes a short history of the hamlet, home to 125 people in its 19th century heyday. (The population is now six.) And the food, standard burgers ‘n’ Mexican fare, was, well, we hardly noticed it, dazzled by all those bills.

The Ol’ West vibe carried through our last stop, Goldfield Ghost Town, which re-creates what was from 1893 to 1897 the biggest town in the Arizona Territory. We passed on LuLu’s Bordello, the fudge shop, the “antique” photo studio and the narrow-gauge railroad, but we did take a swing through the simulated 1890s gold mine. Our tour guide, Wylie Boehs, knew plenty about the nuts and bolts of the work but put vivid emphasis on the quality of the miners’ lives, which were brutish and short. The half-hour tour felt a little short too, but Elena and I found it fascinating.

It was a lot to take in, these traces of ancient Indians, gold rush pioneers and miners who ate lunch in total darkness to ration their candles. At Phoenix airport, I set my watch back an hour to California time, but the voices of old Arizona were still loud in my ears.

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Budget for two

Expenses for this trip:

Airfare

Round-trip, Burbank-Phoenix $156.40

Lodging

Days Inn, two nights $131.16

Car rental

Three days $75.36

Admissions, tours

Tonto National Monument,

Besh-Ba-Gowah Archaeological