March 27
I left Phoenix this afternoon after watching the A's vs. Kansas City baseball game at Hohokam Field in Meza AZ. Since the A's were giving up home runs at every opportunity and grounding out tot he first baseman the rest of the time, it seemed like a good time to leave. I wan ed to drive to Gallup which is about 240 miles from Meza kin time to get to bed. I am there now.
It was, indeed, a most interesting drive. In addition to the wide open spaces, the huge vistas that are not obscured by 60 foot tall redwoods growing along the road side, the cumulus clouds that looked like they were about ten feet off the grounds and with their flat bottoms ready to crush the vehicles on the road, the juniper-pinyon pine forest that literally looked like a vast carpet stretching for miles over the hills and mesas, and the numerous "watch for elk" signs along the roadway, there was actually an interesting and relevant bit of history right at the beginning of the drive: Fort McDowell.
Ft. McDowell is now a little resort area featuring, not surprisingly, an Indian Casino. The Fort McDowell Casino. The Indian's revenge. Butt there really was a Fort McDowell and before that Camp McDowell. It was the site of an encampment of the "California Volunteers" but this is not confirmed on an available on-line history of the California Volunteers who were formed during the Civil Wafr an d were, in fact, in Arizona. Once they completed dealing with the Confederate Army in Arizona they were engaged in trying to deal with the sometimes very unfriendly natives in the southwest and protecting the rade routes in the area. This was, of course, the main job of the US Army cavalry, the Horse Soldiers, in the 1870s and 1880s. The Stoneman Military Trail connected Ft. McDowell with Ft. Whipple in Prescott AZ. This trail shorted the time required to get supplies to the isolated Ft. Whipple. Originally Ft. McDowell was a fairly elaborate installation and was expected to be able to withstand Indian raids. But heavy rains soon after construction of the Fort was complete did what the Indians were not supposed to be able to do- destroy the fort.
Tomorrow I head a little further east and north to Farmington, NM, were the highway and the Old Spanish trail seem to intersect or run parallel.
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