Pipe Spring Arizona

Last week I worked in northern Arizona at Pipe Spring National Monument.  The monument was created in the 1920s when the first head of the National Parks Service Stephen Mather decided it was a good place to situate a rest stop between the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park.  Before that it was an abandoned fort surrounded by miles of sagebrush.  Before that it was a fort run by the LDS church as a place to keep livestock received from tithing.  Before that it was the biggest of several springs in the area used by the Kaibab Paiute, deer, antelope and others and it was surrounded by up to thirty miles in all directions of waisthigh grass--to a horse.  Today it is a property the size of a Walmart on the Kaibab Paiute  Reservation with a very informative visitor center, a couple of little exhibits about the grass that used to be there and traditional Kaibab structures such as a ramada and a kahn (which we worked on and slept in) and the restored two-story fort that comes with an orchard, a vegetable garden, a horse named Princess, two longhorns, a chicken coop, a pond with three ducks, two bunkhouses for cowboy ranch hands, and a short trail up onto the mesa with several edible plants, including currants and lemonadeberries.

Evening view to the west from the mesa (zoomable, like all my pictures)

It doesn't matter where you are, Pipe Springs is far away.  But that gives it its barren look.  In the picture below, you can barely see the highway that runs from left to right.  It is the only way to get to Pipe Springs.  Also, the golden color from the sunset makes it look how it might have been all the time when it was all grass, instead it is sagebrush and tumbleweed, which takes over when grassland is disturbed.  In this case, it was a ten year combination of heavy grazing and drought in the 1870s.

The Arizona Strip to the south

The fact that Pipe Springs is far away and no longer has good grassland (the spring mostly closed up after an earthquake in the 90s and the National Park Service owns the right to a lot of the water that comes out of the spring for the monument) draws the few people who live in the area.  Off the highway past Pipe Spring is the town of Mocassin, which is completely surrounded by the reservation, meaning that the only way in is to wait for someone to die without a will.  It is a Mormon town with no stores of any kind and no police either.  To the west on AZ-389 is Colorado City, which is known for being a polygamist colony (locally known as pligs).  It is a creepy town with huge, simple, unfinished (for tax evasion purposes) homes with several minivans out front.  Neither is an inviting place.  The Kaibab Paiutes are also not very inviting, although the do run a nice, albeit windy campsite, on which we stayed.    Non-natives are not allowed on the reservation after dark, which left us little to do but hope we didn't offend any skinwalkers.  With that said, the nearby Kanab Canyon and Kaibab plateau look like incredibly scenic places to do some backpacking without the crowds of the Grand Staircase areas.

We drove down on Monday, July 4th.  We had the opportunity to stop in Kanab, Utah for their fireworks show.  Small towns who do a big fireworks show are awesome.  And we were lucky because most towns in Utah don't do much on Independence Day and instead save it for Pioneer's Day on July 24th.  Kanab must be a place full of people looking for a reason to have a shebang at the park instead of going to the Pizza Hut.  On the way we drove through Fredonia.  Both are really charming little towns.  We stopped at the Fredonia Fire Department for some fun.  Luckily, my swollen poison ivy-covered face didn't attract too much attention.  At first I just like a skinny fat person.  A few days later I looked like I might be Native American.  People out there don't talk too much to newcomers anyways.

Used the timed-shutter on my camera.  Set the camera on top of the van.

Sophia's bummed and Hillary laughs when they realize they can't steal the old firetruck because the don't know how to drive such an old truck.  This is good news for the Volunteer Fire Department of Fredonia, but probably bad news for the town's good people.

Laughably, our work the first few days was landscaping the yard at a bunkhouse for monument volunteers.  We were accompanied by a 13-year-old juvenile delinquent on a work study project through the tribal court.  We also got to learn a lot about the history of the area.  Interestingly enough, the fort was only built because the first person in charge of the Mormon Ranch was killed by raiding Navajos who were taking Kaibab Paiutes to sell to slavery.  The Ranchers didn't know the difference.  The Kaibab were exceedingly peaceful (to the point of being encaptured by other tribes), but they had a beautiful world-view that couldn't contrast more with the view of Brigham Young that the resource of the spring and pasture must be utilized to supply every want of the future Mormon children.  The existence of the orchard and garden (both of which are open to harvesting by visitors) seem ridiculous in this place, dry as it is with the cattlemen and Kaibab Paiutes stuck on the land they have with limited access to water.  But the people must have a place to rest their autos while visiting other more magnificent places!

Hillary about to throw her nether garments at an oncoming thunderstorm.
It was the ultimate taunt.

One last thing of note about Pipe Springs was the weather and visibility.  At all times while we were there a thunderstorm was visible somewhere.  They usually stayed away after being threatened by Hillary the Harrible but it was so cool to watch the rain or see flashes while driving or even stargazing.  Also the wind was fierce.  Two tents did not survive.  Mine did.  I highly recommend the Marmot Limelight.  It is a beast.