(Editor's Note: The article below was "discovered" as a scanned three-page typed document in the NAU Cline Library Special Collections. We have excerpted only the portion dealing with the primitive so-called road that existed between Flagstaff and Marble Canyon in 1928. This article is part of a larger effort to describe early US 89 from Flagstaff to Kanab after it was officially designated in 1926 and before it actually became a real, paved road in the 1930's.)
Whoever wrote this story know how to give wings to his words! This poignant piece of purple prose provides an evocative glimpse of US 89 from Flagstaff to the Navajo bridge construction site in March 1928. The unknown Fred Harvey author really earned his payday with this delightfully imaginative flight of fancy.
"In the middle of March, 1928, a motor colossus on ten wheels, dragging behind it a sturdy trailer, roared smoothly into the Santa Fe freight yard at Flagstaff, Ariz., swallowed fifteen tons of structural steel, and then headed away into the northeast on the first of many journeys that were to mean much to travelers from every corner of the world.
Glistening
winter snowcaps on the 13,000 foot San Francisco Peaks looked down on
the truck's departure. For the first few miles it slipped past bare
brown fields bitten from the forest. The sun struck diamond fire
from the windows of the lonely forest service lookout on the
wind-torn summit of Elden as the road bent about the mountain's
outthrust shoulder. Spirits of forgotten ages, roused by the
deep-throated roar of the motor, stood silent spectators on the
broken walls of a great prehistoric pueblo among the red shafted
pines.
More
easy miles among ranches and homesteads nestling in the sunny “parks”
guarded by the black range of cinder hills and the reddish
sulphur-stained cone of Sunst Mountain. Then in and out through the
open glades of the Coconino National Forest and a long glide
downward through thinning trees.
It is a fair guess that here even the driver of the juggernaut paused a moment to look about him. To the right straggling pines haired the dark flanks of O'Leary. To the left a grey cloud cap, breeding weather, hovered above the snow crests of the greater peaks, whose forested foothills swept away northward toward the Grand Canyon. Below spread a broad flat, dotted with the green black of cedars and pinons, where intrusion still raises little bands of antelope whose white tail puffs go sailing away over the sage—like wind-driven balls of cotton. Far ahead rounded and tinted volcanic cones broke a shimmering distance fenced by the banded rim cliffs of the Navajo country.
It is a fair guess that here even the driver of the juggernaut paused a moment to look about him. To the right straggling pines haired the dark flanks of O'Leary. To the left a grey cloud cap, breeding weather, hovered above the snow crests of the greater peaks, whose forested foothills swept away northward toward the Grand Canyon. Below spread a broad flat, dotted with the green black of cedars and pinons, where intrusion still raises little bands of antelope whose white tail puffs go sailing away over the sage—like wind-driven balls of cotton. Far ahead rounded and tinted volcanic cones broke a shimmering distance fenced by the banded rim cliffs of the Navajo country.
MILES
FROM CIVILIZATION
Thirty miles more to the next habitation...
Thirty miles where every one left civilization farther astern...
The immense weight of steel and machinery rolled smoothly over long levels where distant dust clouds marked the plodding passage of high-piled Navajo freight wagons, stuttered down steep inclines, nosed its way cautiously across sandy washes and pulled steep grades hot and steaming.
At Cameron Trading Post the Navajo ponies, standing droop-headed before a mud and dedar hogan showed mild interest. Lounging bucks and many-pettycoated squaws about the Post doorway watched the monster drink water pumped from the bottom of the deepening gorge of the Little Colorado, snapping black eyes registering the curiosity withheld from the dark, strong faces.
Cameron Bridge took the unaccustomed load in groaning protest. The tiny fighting life of the silent sand hills beyond gave over its hunting as the four geared wheels of the motor bit deep into the “natural” road.
The immense weight of steel and machinery rolled smoothly over long levels where distant dust clouds marked the plodding passage of high-piled Navajo freight wagons, stuttered down steep inclines, nosed its way cautiously across sandy washes and pulled steep grades hot and steaming.
At Cameron Trading Post the Navajo ponies, standing droop-headed before a mud and dedar hogan showed mild interest. Lounging bucks and many-pettycoated squaws about the Post doorway watched the monster drink water pumped from the bottom of the deepening gorge of the Little Colorado, snapping black eyes registering the curiosity withheld from the dark, strong faces.
Cameron Bridge took the unaccustomed load in groaning protest. The tiny fighting life of the silent sand hills beyond gave over its hunting as the four geared wheels of the motor bit deep into the “natural” road.
Here
in the Painted Desert was slow, hard going in a strangely beautiful
and interesting region known by name to millions but as yet actually
seen by few. Bits of a natural race track on firm, fossil-strewn sea
beds ended abruptly in sharp arroyos or the cut banks of sand-floored
draws. Now the road threaded the fractured trucks of petrified
trees, now pursued its tail through the massed, impossibly-colored
ash mounds of a volcanic “bad lands.” The painted walls of the
Echo Cliffs draw closer as the mountains to the south and west became
blue saw teeth on the horizon.
ONLY CROSSING IN 600 MILES
The
huge truck ended this first of four months' continuous journeys at a
mushroom growth of white tents and frame buildings one hundred thirty
miles from Flagstaff. A few yards away a dull-red chasm split the
earth. At the bottom snarled a leaping chocolate river. Beyond rose
the yellow and green tinted talus of the Vermillion Cliffs. Here in
the Navajo Indian country of northeastern Arizona, at the northern
tip of the Painted Desert, and in a setting of amazing grandeur, was
the one point in nearly six hundred miles where engineers had decided
that the greatest natural travel barrier on the continent could be
bridged.
That barrier is the Colorado River proper, born deep in southeastern Utah at the junction of the Green and Grand Rivers, and flowing thence through Cataract, Glen, Marble and Grand Canyon—the most stupendous series of gorges on the globe. Until this year, it has been unbridged for vehicles from Green River, Utah to Topoc, six hundred miles below on the western border of Arizona. There have been and are, only a couple of vehicular ferries and these uncertain at best and often dangerous and abandoned."
Source: http://archive.library.nau.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/cpa/id/85262/rec/333
(Editor's Note #1 The truck photo at top is merely a "representation" of what the make and model truck in this story might have looked like. Members of the Old Truck Forum helped positively identify the make and model of the trucks actually used. However, there are no known photos of the actual trucks themselves. Over 1,100 tons of steel were delivered. Including other supplies, those early trucks made at least 100 round trips (and probably many more) when and where there was no real road.)
(Editor's Note #2: The actual details of the haulage vary from the sensationalized account above. We excerpted narrative from the bridge's nomination form for the National Register of Historic Places. Click here to see the relevant information about the actual haulage, as well as a source link to the Register form:
https://goo.gl/JS71bL
That barrier is the Colorado River proper, born deep in southeastern Utah at the junction of the Green and Grand Rivers, and flowing thence through Cataract, Glen, Marble and Grand Canyon—the most stupendous series of gorges on the globe. Until this year, it has been unbridged for vehicles from Green River, Utah to Topoc, six hundred miles below on the western border of Arizona. There have been and are, only a couple of vehicular ferries and these uncertain at best and often dangerous and abandoned."
Source: http://archive.library.nau.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/cpa/id/85262/rec/333
(Editor's Note #1 The truck photo at top is merely a "representation" of what the make and model truck in this story might have looked like. Members of the Old Truck Forum helped positively identify the make and model of the trucks actually used. However, there are no known photos of the actual trucks themselves. Over 1,100 tons of steel were delivered. Including other supplies, those early trucks made at least 100 round trips (and probably many more) when and where there was no real road.)
(Editor's Note #2: The actual details of the haulage vary from the sensationalized account above. We excerpted narrative from the bridge's nomination form for the National Register of Historic Places. Click here to see the relevant information about the actual haulage, as well as a source link to the Register form:
https://goo.gl/JS71bL
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