Miriam McFate Travel Journal - 1926

Sun, Nov 21, 1926

This little place is right on the Gila river. The name is Rice. It is a very small place. It is right at the foot of a mountain we can look out the door and see it. It is 150 or 200 ft high. The kids had to try themselves out on this one. They want to climb every one they see. Some you could climb and some could not. Left here 7:30. We are 20 miles from Globe. Got gasoline here 26 cents. We only got enough to take us on to Globe.

These place thro the Mts. are regular hold ups. Drove on over mt. roads. The roads are good and wide. Lots of curves, but not such bad ones. Some deep cuts thro here. Some of the mts. are all rock. Lots of deep gullys all thro these. It looks as tho sometime lately they had had a hard rain. You can tell by the sand in the bottom of these, that the water runs very swiftly. If one was ever caught here in a heavy rain, he would just have to stop on a grade and wait till it ran across the road. No bridges here, just draws thru the road. In a great many places they have water stakes. These are painted white with red marks. They are marked every 6 inches. Have seen posts with 5 foot mark. Do not know whether it ever gets this high or not.

As we came into Globe, we could hardly see the town from any distance for the dense haze that hung over it. It is right at the foot mts. too. It is the largest town yet in Arizona. Population is 7,044. This is a nice little city. It is quite a mining town. They have made some tremendous cuts thro the mts. here. Both for the road and the railway. We have pavement now to Miami Ariz this is 7 miles. This mt. pass we just came up has nine curves before we reached the top, 10 before we reached the bottom. Mountains every where you look. We passed a large copper mine just before we came into Miami. Refuse from the mines piled hundreds of feet high. Stopped here for more gas. .25 cents gasoline and oil have been high all thro Arizona.

Houses all the way along built in the mt sides all the way thro here. Drove on out of the city in to more mountains. We thot we had seen some high ones before. They were nothing compared with these. These are all solid rock. We came down, down ever so far down into deep rocks canyons. Just makes one feel funny in the tummie to look down so far. If a fellow goes to sleep here on the job, he will surely go for his reward. Some of them drive like everything thro here. Good size trees grow right out of the rocks. A few house built back up in the mtsalong the way. I cannot understand how the trees grow here, you cannot see one bit of soil, just a mass of solid rock. You can see only a little ways ahead and a little ways behind. Just one curve right after another each one leads up another grade a few feet higher. Some places we can look down and some places we are walled in with solid rock on both sides. Sometime we come into a space where we can look across the canyon and see the road winding below us on the other side over which we have just left a few minutes before. Drove on up till we came to a place where we could pull out.

We decided we would eat our dinner way above the rest of the world for once. If you take a deep breath of this air it goes way down deep. Different than air lower down. Don’t know whether this is imagination or not. Ate our dinner and drove on. 12:20. We will have to change our minds about being up so high. We wished we had not eat our dinner. Just makes you feel awful funny in the middle. This sure is a real thrill for any one that has never been over anything much steeper than the hills around in Iowa. Don’t know how high we are up, but do know we can look down thousands of feet. We were going up, just one or two curves till we would have been to the top when the door gave way and out tumbled Beulah. Talk about your scare, we sure got it. It did not hurt her as bad as it did us.

We thot sure a car would come around the curve before we could get out to get her. Just got back to the car when another car whizzed by. We feel as tho we have been very lucky. If we had been going down hill or driving up like most of them do, she surely would have been killed.

We came to a little oil station way up here at the top. It was named “Top of the World.” Very true we thot. There is a campground, cafe and a private camping place thru here. This private camp had little cottages or cabins scattered over it.

Suppose this is a secluded spot for some of the towns people. After we reached this oil station our road led down thro a little valley. Big trees like our shade trees at home grew thro here. We passed huge boulders thro here as we drove on that weigh thousands of ton. You can hardly imagine that there could be rocks of such tremendous size. This rock that are way up on the side look like they were ready to fall. Some of them just look as if they were balancing there. If one of these ever does fall, God pity the party passing. We had to stop to tighten our emergency break. We drove on down and around it to what is known as the Devils Canyon. This surely has a good name. The rocks in the mountains here remind one of the old castles or great cathedrals like our story books tell about. Wish I could give you a better discription of this canyon thro here. But I guess this is beyond my writing ability. We are going down, down, winding round and round just the same way we came up. Can coast lots of the way. Have come on to kind of a level spot now, where a person can take a deep breath, and know it won’t be the last one.

Around the next curve we had to change our mind about this breathing business. I guess this place I mentioned above was just a place for one to relax and get a good breath before the worst came. We came up another grade then down a pass we can never forget. Rocky cliffs up for thousands of feet, from the bottom of the canyon to the peaks. Great rock cliffs on both sides. Stopped here to tighten our breaks again. If it wasn’t for the breaks a person would soon go to his happy hunting ground. Just over the edge of the road grade we can see theemains of some ones Buick. We have come passed places where the rocks have projected out of the side over the road. it looks to a person like it would be impossible to drive under it without striking the top. But when we are closer it is a long ways above us.

We came to a tunnel cut thro solid rock. This was about 400 feet in length. After we had came down ever so many curves we could look back up and see other cars pass thro this same tunnel. Came down two or three more notches as the kids call them, here a man stopped us wanting a coal chisel. Grover swapped his for the one the man had and 50¿¿ to boot and on we drove. This took us out of the mountains and into the town of Superior. We found out these mountains were called the Superstitions Mt. Now I’ll tell the great world if a person has any inclination of being this way they better stay clear away from Arizona. The town of Superior is not very large. It is 2:35. We have been a long time coming thro this pass. But our motto today has been Safety First. This pass is about seven miles up and seven down.

We have 33 miles to our next town. This is thro the desert again. But for us we will take the desert. We feel lots safer out there, than in the mountains. Stopped here to see about gas, oil and water. Had enough so on we drove. Had drove only a short ways till a man stopped us for water. their raditor hose came out and they lost all their water. Gave them enough to get back to town with. We have drove 5 miles and have to no desert yet. It is the same old story, up one grade, and down another. Still going round sharp curves. These are not like the real mts but steep enough to make us take them in low. Had to stop and tighten our low band again. We finally did drop down to a level strip so suppose this must be Arizona desert. It is pretty hot and very dusty. The kids have gone barefoot these last 2 days. So you can imagine about how the weather is here. There is 2 different kind of cactus, growing on this desert that did not on the other. One is a tree cactus, it branches out like a little tree. It has yellow cup shaped apple growing on it. These are called cactus apples. The others are a very tall species. Do not know what they are called. They are 25 or 30 inches in diameter. Some grow up perfectly straight and some have prongs or arms that grow out and up from the main stalk. These remind us of the Totum Poles the Indian use to worship in ancient times. All they lack is the horrible design they carved on them. They have deep creases in them that form ridges thro them. Are light green in color. Have seen them 6 to 9 feet in height. Stopped at a filling station out

33 miles and filled up with gasoline .24 cents. Have a strip of pavement for a mile or two now. 20 miles to the next filling station. We still have little mountain like hills and big boulders off to the north and northeast of us. When we came to the end of the pavement we had to eat dust again. So many cars coming and going. These are mostly Ariz. cars. Think most of them are out joy riding. If I wanted to joy ride, I would pick out a different place than this, if it wasn’t any place but round the city square. Drove on and on. The dust is terrible. Will be glad when we get to a camp. These desert roads have all been scraped. It would be worse than it is if it wasn’t for this. All the sand that is on the road is what works loose from travel. But this is enough to make the air full of dust.

This road we came over thro the mountains from Globe to Superior is called The Million dollar road. We don’t doubt but what it cost that much. We have all came to the conclusion that all the other mts. that we have come thro are mere playthings. Folks that call them mountains have never been in real mountains. Pulled into camp at this next oil station. Nothing here but the filling station and camp ground. This is called the Superstitious Service St. named from the mts. Can still see the mts. a short distance away.