Road Trip: Desert Dunes and So Much More

Southern California's Algodones Dunes reach south to the Mexican border.

 Armchair Adventures

for Feb. 26, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

photos by CG

Getting There Really Is Half the Fun

            It's as true in the west as it is in the East: the real fun doesn't start till you ditch those Interstates and take to the blue-line highways on the map.

            The round-robin road trip we took to the Southern California desert a few weeks back was only half the story. At least half the thrill of discovery came on long route we took getting there and back.

            Here are some highlights from that drive, all but one of which we would have missed sticking strictly to major highways:

            Funky little Arizona cowboy towns like Hope, where one sign welcomes visitors, the next tells you "Your Beyond Hope." (And just a few miles beyond, a propane company's huge white tank bears the inscription: "Passmore Gas.")

            You can't make this stuff up.

            A summit of Harquahala Mountain, where Smithsonian scientists lived in lonely vigil for decades to measure the sun's intensity.

            Quartzsite, an Arizona desert town magnetically attracting thousands of winter-escapee RVers to a variety of events. It is on I-10, and we stopped at a specialty store selling every imaginable sort of jerky. In its parking lot was the sealed entrance to an old "Jerky Mine," complete with miner's rail car. A jerky mine? It's cowboy humor. One of those things you "get" … or never will.

            Quartzsite’s cemetery has a most unusual monument-to a camel driver. It tells of a Syrian-born man whose anglicized name was "Hi Jolly," and of his loyal service to the U.S. Government for 30 years as a camel driver in the famed-but-now-forgotten Army experiments with a herd of those animals in the late 19th century.

            A few miles west of Love in Arizona, you’ll find the town of Salome. A fellow named Dick Wick long ago opened a gas station on US 60-once the main road linking Phoenix and Los Angeles. Wick, a born promoter, aimed to put his place on the traveler’s map. He did this with funny roadside signs to entertain desert-crossing drivers, and with the little humor newspaper that he published. His “Salome Sun,” was chock full of Wick’s tall tales, and created a curiosity that brought customers to his businesses.

            Even his town’s name was an improvisation, starting as Salome-Where-She-Danced, and in time shortened to her proper noun. Among his other claims, Wick said he had the ultimate golf course: 247 miles long with a par of 16,394. Wick’s humor spread far beyond Salome, as readers learned of the town’s old frog, that never learned to swim because it didn’t have to.

            The Algodones Dunes in southern California's enormous desert look like a scene from Africa's endless Sahara sands. They have served Hollywood well as a substitute for its beautiful-but-deadly African counterpart.

            A green valley in Arizona's high country where horses graze beneath tall trees on luscious grass in a picture you'd swear came from Kentucky's Blue Grass Country. A few miles to the west, this world falls away as highway 89 tumbles off a mountainside, depositing shocked desert newcomers to wonder what happened to that cooler, greener world.

            It is as sudden and radical a change in the land as you can find. And you won't find it on an interstate highway.

            Heading west, this is the start of the desert stretching all the way to California's coastal range, the final barrier before the sea.

            It's also the land of legendary pioneer settlers like Bill Kirkland and Pauline Weaver. Kirkland, a big tough fellow, brought his family out from his native Virginia in 1856 and despite heavy opposition from native peoples, set up the state's first cattle ranch. He lived well into the 20th century.

            Now about that other pioneer, Weaver.  Born in Tennessee to an Indian mother and a white father, his given name was Powell, but that was later altered to a more familiar Paulino by Spanish-speaking friends and, later still, to Pauline-the name that stuck for the remainder of his eventful life.

            Weaver was both a peacemaker during troubled times with Southwestern Indians and a guide, scout and prospector. At his death he was accorded full military honors for his service to the Government. Much later, after two burials, he was interred on the grounds of Arizona's first state capital, at Prescott.

            The inscription on his monument at the Sharlott Hall Museum there reads, in part:

Pioneer • Prospector • Scout • Guide
Pauline Weaver
Truly a Great Man
Born in Tennessee in 1800
Died at Camp Verde
June 21, 1867