Mailing List
Contact Us:
• Email:
ltr@ocbtracker.com
• If you want your event on the calendar mail a copy to:
OCB Trading Post
657 E Arrow Hwy #M
Glendora, CA 91740
Events should be submitted no less than six weeks before they begin, and submissions should include a vender application as well.
Submissions sent in may or may not be posted on this calendar depending upon my time, my mood, the odd quirks in the server and for just about any other reason under the sun.
If you wish to yell at me for not having an event listed, a problem with an event listing, etc., the fee is $75 per hour, three hours minimum, payable in advance.
|
Stoneman Lake
from the book Roadside History of Arizona
by Marshal Trimble
Softcover, 482 pgs., $16.00
This book is available from OCB Trading Post (626) 914-0306
Some writers claim Stoneman Lake, which is in the crater of an ancient volcano, was the only natural lake in Arizona prior to the coming of the Europeans. The name was given by Prescott editor John Marion to honor General George Stoneman. Stoneman first came to Arizona as a young lieutenant with the Mormon Battallion in 1846 and is best remembered for his unsuccessful attempts to haul supplies down the Gila River on a raft. The craft sank in the mighty Gila, and the young officer went down with his ship, but then walked ashore. Stoneman achieved fame in the Civil War and some degree of immortality in folk music of the 1960's, when his name was used in a song called "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".
A few years after the Civil War (1869), Stoneman was given command of the Military Department of California, of which Arizona was a part. He was a tough taskmaster but didn't achieve any great success defeating the Apache, Mojave, and Yavapai warriors. Two years after assuming command, he was relieved by General George Crook.
Apparently Stoneman was a cantankerous individual and had few friends. A story is told that at his funeral a large crowd showed up to pay last respects. When a young officer expressed surprise at the huge audience for someone so universally disliked, a fellow officer replied drily, "It just goes to show, you give the people something they want and they'll show up every time."
Earlier, Stoneman Lake was called Chavez Lake after Lieutenant Coloned Francisco Chavez of the New Mexico Volunteers and member of an illustrious New Mexico family. Chavez commanded the military escort for Governor John Goodwin and his governmental party in 1863-64 on their trek from Santa Fe to establish the first government in the new territory of Arizona. Chavez also gave his name to a road that ran from the Verde Valley to Sunset Crossing (Winslow). The road ran from Fort Verde up past Stoneman Lake (Chavez Lake), then through a break in the rugged canyons above the Mogollon Rim, still called Chavez Pass, and on to the Little Colorado River.
Martha Summerhayes camped at Stoneman Lake in the spring of 1875 on a journey from Camp Apache, across the Colorado Plateau and down to Fort Verde. After passing "evidences of hard travel, exhausted cattle, anxious teamsters, hunger and thirst, despair, starvation, and death," she proclaimed Stoneman Lake "a joy in the memory, and far and away the most beautiful spot I ever saw in Arizona." She went on to comment sagely, "But unless the approaches to it are made easier, tourists will never gaze upon it." Later she wondered if the lake really existed or was simply "an illusion, a dream, or the mirage which appears to the desert traveler, to satisfy him and lure him on..."
The long, bumpy grade that led off the plateau at Stoneman Lake down to Fort Verde in the valley below rocked and jerked the army ambulance so much that Martha and her child had to get out and walk back part of the way. After getting back on board, they reached another precipitous hill. The teamster tried to ease the wagon along while the six-mule team was forced into a gallop to keep from being overrun by the ambulance, which was by now swerving so close to the edge that rocks and gravel were being pushed down the steep precipice. Finally the ambulance reached the bottom in a cloud of dust. "Beaver Springs," the driver announced cheerfully.
As her hsuband lifted her out of the ambulance, Martha asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Oh, he calmly replied, "I thought it was better for you not to know; people get scared about such things, when they know about them beforehand."
Then Marsha turned to the driver and asked, "Smith, how could you drive down that place at such a rate and frighten me so?"
"Had to, ma'am," he calmly replied, "or we'd a'gone over the edge."
Martha admitted to being a flatlander with little understnading of driving six-mule teams along hazardous mountain roads. That night, while camped at Beaver Springs, sixteen miles north of Fort Verde, she reluctantly admitted "life (in Arizona) was beginning to interest me." |
