Lee’s Ferry is the only place in Northern Arizona where steep canyons don’t surround the Colorado River. In 1872, John D. Lee established Lees Ferry, also known as Lee’s Ferry (with an apostrophe) and Saint’s Ferry, at the direction of the Mormon Church. Five years later, in 1877, Lee was the only person executed for the murders by Mormon militia of 120 gentile men, women, and children at the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre.
In 1939, Lee’s Ferry was cinematically burned by Apache warriors in John Ford’s Stagecoach, though in the movie the ferry’s location had migrated to Southern Arizona. Stagecoach is a great movie, but its geography surely is imaginative.
Standing on the west bank of the Colorado and looking left upriver is Glen Canyon National Recreation Area topped by the Glen Canyon Dam, about 15 river miles away. To your right is the Grand Canyon, which continues for 277 miles. Everything left and right is steep canyon. Lee’s Ferry is the only crossing.
Lee’s Ferry isn’t usually spelled with an apostrophe, and Lees Ferry is how it appears on maps (if it appears at all). I recall that some Park Service signage uses Lee’s, but that may be wishful thinking, and Lees is far more common. I’m a stickler for apostrophes though, and its painful for me to leave it out.
Lee’s Ferry is the staging point for raft trips through the Grand Canyon, and it’s a busy place. It’s also popular for sit-on-top kayaks. Outfitters ferry boatloads of kayakers about ten miles upriver from the ferry past Horseshoe Bend, then drop off the kayakers who paddle home. This is not technical whitewater kayaking, and there’s a lot of traffic.
If you have good enough resolution on your computer, there are some little white specks in the river in Kris’s photo of Horseshoe Bend. The specks that aren’t rocks are kayaks.
Thirty years ago Lee’s Ferry was the Southwestern Mecca of big trout, lots of big trout. Wendy and Terry Gunn owned Lees Ferry Anglers and they were famous, at least among fly fishers. My friend Mark says he remembers an issue of Fly Rod and Reel–you remember magazines?–with Wendy Gunn visibly pregnant on the cover. Ladies could fly fish! Even pregnant ladies could fly fish!
Their son, who would have been in utero on the magazine cover, is now in his 20s and runs Kayak Horeshoe Bend, an offshoot of Lees Ferry Anglers. It’s a kayak ferry and rental service. He rescued us when the starter on our guide’s jet boat conked.
Glen Canyon Dam was completed in 1966, and it was always controversial. The Sierra Club hates Glen Canyon Dam, Monkey Wrenchers plan to blow it up, and its success for water storage is dubious. It does, however, let trout thrive where no trout have thriven before. Fly fishers (who tend towards the environmental side of the ledger) may feel queasy about Glen Canyon Dam, but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to fish it. Big wild trout? Lots of big wild trout? You gotta fish that.
Something happened though, and since its heyday the number and size of trout in the river have decreased. Terry Gunn speculated that trout sizes decreased because of the introduction of bad genes from stocked fish during the 90s, or maybe from the reduction of raw sewage from the Town of Page–there’s nothing like just the right dollop of raw sewage to boost insect life. Current studies posit that the drop in numbers of big fish is caused by increased water temperatures, reduced nutrients, reduced dissolved oxygen, and increased numbers of predatory brown trout. Some of the reduction may be drought related, some global warming related, or maybe those are both the same thing.
They should think about adding some raw sewage. It’d probably be good for all those kayakers too.
There are still a whole lotta fish, and fish or no fish, it’s beautiful, with clear green water surrounded by steep red canyons. I can kinda understand why most of those kayakers forgot their fly rods. By all reports there are still big fish in the river. The fish we caught were somewhere around 16 inches or a bit north, and they were solid, healthy wild rainbows. We caught plenty. I caught the first fish early, and Kris caught the last fish late, and we caught a bunch in between. We never worried we wouldn’t catch our Arizona fish.
We fished with Natalie Jensen of Lees Ferry Anglers, who started working for the Gunns in their fly shop in 1995, and started guiding at Lee’s Ferry in 2006. Weirdly Natalie was only our second woman guide. We actually delayed our trip a day to fish with Natalie.
Guides use jet boats on the Colorado. There has to be some kind of motor to get upriver, and jet boats work better than propellers in rocky water.
Natalie’s boat was big, heavy, aluminum, with a Ford inboard V-8. It had a Bimini top, because in Arizona bringing along some shade is a brilliant idea. One of us stood at the back of the boat casting and singing hey-nonny-nonny, carefree as a meadow lark, while the other stood at the front singing blow blow thou winter wind because he had convinced himself that he couldn’t clear the Bimini with his backcast. Which one of us was a walking breathing puddle of mess, unable to throw a fly line? I’m still traumatized.
Natalie would also say that I’m one of the most accomplished line tanglers who ever graced her boat. I spent a goodly part of the morning trying to untangle my line, and after I’d made the tangle worse trying to untangle it, I’d hand the whole mess over to Natalie. She’d keep the boat on track, clear my tangle, continue to give Kris advice, and make it all look easy. Good guides are born to multitask.
We were fishing a double nymph rig, with two flies under split shot and a bobber, so I might as well have been wearing my “Here to Tangle” tee shirt. Layering in my perfectly unreasonable phobia about casting over the Bimini just made things worse. I really should remember to take photos of some of my better tangles. You don’t get my full fishing experience without contemplating a really good tangle.
Natalie was patient though. By mid-morning I had settled down. I remembered that she had said to make a high lift off the water, and I changed my cast so I was making her high lift with a kind of big loop over my left shoulder instead of over the Bimini. It worked ok. I spent the rest of the day without tangles. Ok, mostly without tangles.
Early on I would try to set the hook by lifting my rod left upriver. Mostly Natalie used the oars to keep the boat drifting stern first, so on the bow I was at the back of the boat. We fished mostly to the right of the boat, and left was upriver. I don’t why, but that upriver strike seemed like a good idea, but it pulled the fly away from the fish. Natalie told me to strike straight up, which after the first few misses I managed. After that I still lost a few fish, but not many. I caught a lot more.
How many fish did I catch? Of course I have no clue. I can’t count past one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, and then I lose track. I caught a pretty good number of fish. Kris caught a pretty good number of fish. It was a day of a pretty good number of pretty fish on a pretty river.
Late in the day the boat’s starter died. It had been cranky all day, but it had the grace to wait to die until the day was almost over. Natalie rowed to keep us out of trouble, Kris kept fishing–now with a big foam cicada fly on the surface–and I daydreamed about the S.S. Minnow and how when we were marooned I’d have to be Gilligan. The Gunn’s son came to rescue us. We listened to the cicadas get active in the afternoon, and we could see them flying off the cliff face. We saw bighorn sheep on the shore. Kris caught a last fish, a brown trout on the dry cicada pattern. I put my rod away and managed to do it without getting tangled.
This wasn’t my first trip to Utah. When I was five, my parents spent the night in an old—and even then it was old—hotel in Salt Lake, a place I’ve searched for but which seems to be long gone. We could see Temple Square lit at night from our hotel room window, and it was beautiful. Then the temple was probably the largest building I’d ever seen, and that was probably the first hotel I’d ever stayed in. It’s no wonder I have a thing for old hotels and their windows, and for Salt Lake.
Since they arrived in 1844, the Latter Day Saints, née Mormons, are so linked to Utah that it’s hard as a gentile not to drive around Utah thinking constantly of religion, speculating whether the pierced and tattooed 22-year old at the next table is LDS, and wondering what the heck were those pioneers thinking?
I could never be a Mormon. They don’t drink iced tea, either sweet or unsweet. They don’t drink coffee. That just wouldn’t work for me.
Driving around Utah (and northern Arizona as well) makes me wonder how any Utah or Arizona kid, LDS or gentile, could ever be anything but a geologist. It is all about the rocks, the movement of rocks, the composition of rocks, the colors of rocks. . . The region includes some of the most magnificent and dramatic geologic formations in the world. Those mountains and canyons can rival the moon and the stars for grandeur, and for inspiring amazement can even rival homegrown tomatoes. Utah is all about the rocks.
We started from Durango, Colorado, and drove by the Four Corners Monument where we stopped to step into Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. We took a side trip to Utah’s Monument Valley in the Navajo Nation, and then fished in Arizona at Lee’s Ferry. We left Lee’s Ferry and drove west through the rest of Arizona to the southern entrance of Zion National Park at Springdale, Utah. From Springdale we drove northeast through most of Utah to the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area. At Flaming Gorge we fished the Green River.
How far did we drive? A fur piece, more than 1500 miles. We got our money’s worth from our rental Kia. We saw a lot of rocks. I thought about going back to school to become a geologist, because how could any old man driving across Arizona and Utah not identify with old rocks?
Some History
Before Europeans, there were Utes, from whence comes the name Utah. The Utes were also in Colorado, but Colorado was busy naming itself after the Colored Reddish River. The Utes self-designation was Núuchi-u, but the State of Núuchi-u apparently didn’t roll off the tongue, so Utah. After contact with the Spanish, the Utes became a horse culture, and warred with the Mormons and the U.S. from 1853 to 1879. There are only about 5,500 Utes left, primarily on reservations in Utah and Colorado.
New Mexico’s Kit Carson admired the Utes, but apparently disliked the Navajo, though as I recall he adopted a Navajo daughter.
Pagre, Ute, Library of Congress, 1902.
The other pre-European people in Utah were Goshutes, hunter-gatherers who ranged from Western Utah into Nevada; Southern Paiutes, hunter-gatherers who by 1900 were reduced to about 800 people; Western Shoshone, who are closely related culturally to the Paiutes, Goshutes, and Utes, and who have litigated extensive land claims against the U.S.; and the Navajo, latecomers who weren’t related to anybody except the Apache and raided everybody else (including the Spanish) for slaves.
Of the Europeans, Spanish explorers arrived first, but decided all of Utah was uninhabitable desert. The Mormons left Illinois for Mexican Utah in 1847, bringing with them in the first year polygamy and about 2,000 vanguard pioneers. After being violently driven from Missouri and Illinois, the pioneers liked uninhabitable desert because nobody would bother them. Ultimately about 70,000 LDS pioneers made the journey to Utah. About 2,173,000 of Utah’s current 3.3 million inhabitants are Latter Day Saints. That’s a smaller total percentage of the population than it used to be.
Torleif S. Knaphus, Handcart Pioneer Monument, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, 1945, unnatributed photo from Wikipedia.
Along with the rest of the Southwest, the U.S. took Utah from Mexico in 1848 after the Mexican-American War.
Joseph Smith received his revelatory golden plates on a hill in New York in 1823. Religious unorthodoxy had been part of North American culture since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, but Mormons stood out because of their relative success, their reliance on the Book of Mormon and prophetical pronouncements in addition to the orthodox Bible, the perception by the larger public that its founders engaged in more than the usual levels of religious hucksterism, the violence that drove Mormons from Missouri and Illinois (including Smith’s assassination by gentiles in 1844), their autocratic leadership structure, and plural marriage. Don’t forget plural marriage. With the LDS that’s kind of a theme.
C.C.A. Christensen, The Hill Cumorah, 1850. Joseph Smith received the golden plates from the Angel Moroni in 1823.
By the time the U.S. annexed Utah, Mormons were already there. As early as 1847, in anticipation of the U.S. takeover, church leaders had established the proposed State of Deseret, with its own provisional government. Deseret was huge, and included most of Nevada and Utah, significant parts of California and Arizona, and bits of Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and New Mexico. Deseret did not include any of New Zealand or Argentina, though those are also excellent trout fisheries.
Overlay of the boundaries of the provisional State of Deseret, Wikipedia, 2011.
After annexation there was frequent friction between Washington and Salt Lake City. Outside Utah Mormons weren’t all that popular, particularly after the church’s public avowal of polygamy in 1850. On their side, the LDS taught avoidance of outsiders. In 1857, President James Buchanan sent troops into Utah to squelch Brigham Young’s claims as territorial governor. Young responded by declaring martial law. In the midst of Mormon fear of U.S. invasion, a Mormon militia massacred a group of 120 peaceful gentiles from Arkansas passing through Utah to California. There has long been speculation that the cover up of the massacre was directed by Young. It was a particularly ugly bit of business.
As part of the Compromise of 1850, Congress created the Utah Territory, including most of what is now Nevada and Utah, with a Washington-appointed territorial governor. After the discovery of silver in Nevada, Washington separated Nevada from Utah in 1861, and granted Nevada statehood in 1864. Utah would not gain statehood until 1896, after the LDS disavowed plural marriage in 1890. Prohibition of plural marriage was written into the Utah constitution as a condition for statehood.
Overlay of the Utah Territory, 1850, Wikipedia.
A Study in Scarlet and Riders of the Purple Sage
My mother, who was born in 1917, adored Zane Grey, and except possibly for Ernest Hemingway, he was America’s most famous fly fisher and big game angler before World War II. Even today I fish a Zane Pro 8-weight made by Hardy Brothers of England. Before World War II Grey was certainly America’s most popular novelist, and Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was his most popular novel. It was also the most popular Western novel of all time, though Owen Wister’s The Virginian is much better. Riders of the Purple Sage was filmed six times, first in 1918, and most recently in 1996. Its title gave its name to a pretty good band.
Grey was also a serial philanderer and dentist, in order of frequency.
In Riders of the Purple Sage, in Southern Utah, evil Mormon polygamists led by evil Bishop Dyer attempt to force the marriage of the beautiful Jane Withersteen–an unprotected heiress–to evil Elder Tull, who already came equipped with two other wives. The hero, the rugged stranger and former Texas Ranger Jim Lassiter (with whom Jane is in love), has a six gun and his own creed. You can guess the rest of the plot from there. It involves a good bit of galloping horses.
Meanwhile, back in England, in 1887 Arthur Conan Doyle had published the first full-length novel featuring Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet. A Study in Scarlet, is also set in part in Utah. Evil Mormon polygamists led by evil president Brigham Young attempt to force the beautiful Lucy Ferrier–an unprotected heiress–to marry either the evil Joseph Strangerson or the evil Enoch Drebber, sons of Mormon leaders. The rugged Jefferson Hope (with whom Lucy is in love), attempts to intervene. Hope and Lucy flee, but Lucy is recaptured and forced to marry Drebber. Lucy dies of heartbreak one month later.
The Bristol Observer, Lucy Ferrier and Jefferson Hope, 1890, Illustration for A Study in Scarlet.
Richard Gutschmidt, Lucy Ferrier and Jefferson Hope, 1902, Illustration for A Study in Scarlet.
For the next 20 years, Jefferson Hope pursues Drebber and Strangerson, finally catching up with them in London and murdering both. The game is afoot, Holmes is the consulting detective, and Hope conveniently dies of an aneurism the night before the commencement of his trial, because really who wants to see him punished for righteous vengeance?
Whatever the fairness of Conan Doyle’s and Grey’s depictions of the LDS (and the depictions are less than fair), these were extremely popular novels that reflected views of their times and reinforced those views. They also got something right: early Mormonism didn’t have the most enlightened views of women. Joseph Smith is thought to have had as many as 49 wives, some as young as 14. Brigham Young had 56 wives, at least one as young as 13. Of course the early Mormon marriage rules are so complicated, it’s hard to say whether they were married, sealed for eternity, sealed for life, or something else I don’t understand. In any case there’s some theocratic me-tooism going on, and it weren’t right, not even in 1850.
One does wonder whether beautiful heiresses are still a dime a dozen in Utah. As far as I know we didn’t meet any. One suspects that if there are any, they now have some tattoos and piercings, and a mountain bike.
Politics
No state is more closely identified with the Republican Party than Utah, largely because of the close identification of the LDS with the Republican Party. That wasn’t always the case. Utah has had, believe it or not, Democratic governors in relatively recent history, from 1925 to 1949, and from 1965 to 1985. It has had a Democratic U.S. Senator as recently as 1977, and from 1933 to 1941, during the Great Depression, both senators were Democratic. I’m pretty sure though that every public official in Utah is now Republican, including the dog catcher.
Before the Great Depression, the Mormon Church evidenced no particular political preference, but that changed with Mormon President Heber Grant and his First Counselor, J. Reuben Clark. Clark had been a federal civil servant and ambassador to Mexico under Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover, and Clark and Grant both despised The New Deal as rampant socialism. They actively campaigned against Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt also supported the repeal of the 18th Amendment, the Prohibition Amendment, which Heber Grant could not forgive.
On Roosevelt’s death, Clark said “The Lord gave the people of the United States four elections in order to get rid of him. They failed to do so in these four elections, so He held an election of His own and cast one vote, and then took him away.” Clark and Grant really hated Roosevelt.
Los Angeles Times, Heber Grant and J. Reuben Clark, 1935.
The law school at Brigham Young University is named in honor of J. Reuben Clark.
As an alternative to the New Deal, Clark and Grant felt that the church could provide private aid to Utahns, at least to Mormon Utahns, and Grant instituted a church welfare system in 1936. It is still an important part of the church’s mission, but at least during the Great Depression it wasn’t enough. Most suffering Utahns still largely depended on socialist aid from New Deal agencies. Still, by actively campaigning against Roosevelt, Grant and Clark had set the future tone for church leadership, and subsequent leadership continued the church’s strong ties to the Republican Party.
After John F. Kennedy, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir only sang at the inaugurations of Republican Presidents.
In 2020 Utah delivered for Donald Trump big time, 58.13% to 37.65%. Joe Biden only carried three counties in Utah, Grand, Salt Lake, and Summit. Grand contains the Greenie enclave of Moab, but has fewer than 10,000 residents. Summit also tends Green with Park City, and has about 25,000 residents. Salt Lake is the most urban county in Utah, and consistent with most urban areas nationally Biden carried Salt Lake by about 59,000 votes. In the rest of Utah Biden got trounced. In Duchesne County, population 19,596, Trump received over 87% of the vote. If Duchesne County ever has a treasure hunt, it should include “Find a Democrat” as one of the treasures.
Weather
It’s hot and dry in Utah. Except when it’s cold and dry.
Utah may be consistently Republican, but there’s considerable variance among its temperatures. St. George in Southwest Utah is 120 miles from Las Vegas, Nevada. Its average July high is 102°, while the average low is 76°. In January, the average high is 53° while the low is 32°.
Compare that–really hot and reasonably cold–to Park City. In Park City January highs average 25° and lows 12°, while July averages are 71° and 52°. I’d call that really damn cold in winter and a mild Houston winter in summer. Salt Lake City slots neatly in between, with January averages of 37° and 23°, and July averages of 92° and 65°.
There is no place in Utah where every now and again the temperature won’t hit 0. That’s cold.
St. George gets average annual snowfall of .01″, and rain of 8.1″. Park City has average annual snowfall of 57.4″, and rain of 7.7″. Statewide, average rainfall is less than 15″, though there’s considerable variance from place to place. Whatever the average, there is absolutely no probability of it ever being muggy in Utah. Just think how bad that is for their skin.
We saw some rain in Utah, right yonder on the purple sage.
Geography
I’m going to be stupidly simple, and for further explanation see my description of Arizona. In Eastern Utah there is the Colorado Plateau , drained by the Green, Colorado, and San Juan Rivers, and in western Utah there’s the Basin and Range. The Rocky Mountains run through the center. There’s a lot of different stuff going on, and it’s all magnificent. There’s the Great Salt Lake Desert in the northwest, including the Bonneville Salt Flats where I could have really opened up our rented Kia. There’s the Rocky Mountain Wasatch Range and the Uinta Mountains. There are six national parks, eight national wilderness areas, eight national monuments, six national recreation areas, and the Navajo Nation’s Monument Valley. There are some great state parks. It is a place of unbelievable natural beauty and geologic magnificence.
We drove through Utah with an open copy of The Roadside Geology of Utah, and learned that the major population corridor, up I-15 along the Wasatch Front, from Provo through Orem and Salt Lake to Ogden, is on track for a major geologic upheaval. It could happen at any time. I wouldn’t move there if I were you, but it’s probably ok to visit.
Google Maps.
Where We Planned to Fish
We planned to fish in the far northeast corner of Utah on the Green River, in the Flaming Gorge Recreation area. It’s hard to get to, though Kris and I had been there with our kids once before, almost 30 years ago. I have no idea why we were there unless I wanted to scout the Green River for fishing. I know we were driving from Yellowstone to Salt Lake City, but that’s not a direct route. It doesn’t matter. It was beautiful then and it’s beautiful now.
We’re in Northern Arizona, near Lee’s Ferry below the Glen Canyon Dam. I texted the guide to find out whether we meet at 6:30 a.m., Mountain Daylight Savings Time (which is the time that my telephone says it is), or 6:30 a.m., Mountain Standard Time (which apparently is the actual time). She’s texted back to say that Arizona doesn’t observe daylight savings time, which is kind of true because the state doesn’t, but the Navajo Nation does, as do other tribal areas. Driving across nonconformist Arizona is weirdly disorienting, the GPS time jumps each time we cross a state or reservation border, and I have to check the internet to figure out what time it should be. The applicable time zone (and the time displayed in our GPS) seems to change at whim.
We would meet the guide at Lee’s Ferry on the Colorado River, and on one side of the river, the non-Navajo side, it is 4:10. On the other side of the River, the Navajo side, it is 3:10. Or is it the other way around? My phone says it’s 3:10. My phone apparently agrees with the Navajo Nation, even though reality differs. I figure it’s one of those mystic things the Navajo picked up from the Hopi.
It’s the end of June, and it’s 102° at 3:10 (or 4:10, depending on where one stands), which is serendipitously the same time that the Yuma train is famously scheduled to arrive. It’s dry and sunny, which covers a lot of Arizona weather. I will only note that Willis Carrier invented central air conditioning in Houston. I’m not certain Arizona has invented shade.
The Colorado River below at Navajo Bridges.
Getting ready for this trip, I finally read Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang. It’s a fun-filled romp by a romantic band of fictional 70s eco-terrorists who have gun battles, sabotage big machinery, destroy bridges, dislike almost everybody, have hot sex, and make plans to blow up the Glen Canyon Dam. I had read Abbey’s Desert Solitaire many years ago and admired it, but reading The Monkey Wrench Gang I realize that today the eco-terrorists’ methods would like as not be used by Bundy’s protesting the BLM. Mr. Abbey’s means make me queasy, and worse seem unproductive.
Some History
Arizona gained statehood in 1912 as the 48th state. Until 1821, Arizona was Spanish, and then Mexican after the Mexican Revolution. It was ceded to the United States in 1848, after the Mexican-American War. What a successful real estate deal that was.
Besides The Monkey Wrench Gang, I started reading a terrific history of Arizona, Arizona, A History, by Thomas Sheridan. At least what I read of it was terrific. It was dense and long, over 500 pages, and I only managed about 200 pages before we left for Arizona. That was enough to get me through the Civil War and into the late 19th century, when railroads, cattle, mining, and cotton spurred Arizona development, at least a bit. Arizona didn’t really get spurred until the U.S. government stepped in with massive water projects. Water transfers let Arizona boom, hence the Monkey Wrencher’s plans to blow up the Glen Canyon Dam.
By the 17th century, long before the United States took over, the Colonial Spanish had started early missionary settlement in Arizona, but they (and then the Mexicans) never really did much until the late 18th Century. Then they bought off the Apache with food, other supplies, and guns. The Mexican Revolution brought chaos, and the Mexican government couldn’t continue the Spanish payoffs to the Apaches. The Apache again went to war.
Arizona was on the furthest fringe for Spain, and even with the Apache payoffs Spanish settlement was sparse and precarious. The Pre-Spanish native populations, on the other hand, were complex and well-established. The prehistoric Ancestral Pueblo, Mogollon, and Hohokam developed complex civilizations, though they didn’t have much respect for state borders. The Mogollon and Hohokam developed water control systems for farming, and the Ancestral Pueblo, née Anasazi, built complexes throughout the Southwest, including Mesa Verde, Keet Seel, Canyon de Chelly, and Chaco Canyon. Meanwhile the Hohokam built ball courts similar to the courts of Mesoamerica, and the Mogollon created Mimbres pottery.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mogollan Mimbres pottery, 10th to 12th century and 850-1050, public domain.
The Hopi, Zuni, and O’odham are thought to be descendants of the prehistoric groups.
The Apache and Navajo came to Arizona and New Mexico from the Rockies as a single language group as late as the 1500s, but then split, with the Apache moving further south from Arizona to Texas. The Navajo/Apache language group, Athabaskan, stretches through Alaska and Western Canada, then makes a big jump to the American Southwest. They apparently didn’t like Washington or Idaho.
The Navajo are great incorporators, and took religious practices from the Hopi and Zuni, sheep from the Spanish, and weaving from the Pueblos. The Apache meanwhile waged brutal battles with the Spanish and Mexicans in both Arizona and northern Mexico. It’s estimated that about 5,000 Mexicans were killed by Apaches between 1820 and 1835, and then they continued to fight with the Americans. When they were finally subjugated, they were just lucky that our Indian policies were so peaceful, fair, and equitable. Just kidding.
The U.S. had 5,000 troops in the field in 1886 to accomplish the surrender of Geronimo and 30 other Apache warriors. The Apache and Navajo are now reunited as part of the Navajo Nation.
C.S. Fly, Apache warriors, Arizona Historical Society, 1886. Geronimo is on the far right.
Under U.S. control, Arizona was the Wild West. Kit Carson decimated the Navajo in Canyon de Chelly in a war of attrition and starvation. The U.S.-Apache Wars were nearly continuous for a half-century. Arizona mining boomtowns came and went, and the Earps, Doc Holliday, Cochise, Fort Apache, the OK Corral, Geronimo, Tombstone, the Buffalo Soldiers, the Hashknife, and the Range Wars are as much touchstones of our culture as Generals Grant or Eisenhower, or Lexington and Concord, or the passage of the 19th Amendment. They trigger a mental image that we immediately recognize.
And Arizona gave us mythology. The 3:10 arrived in Yuma not once but twice, and both times it was on time. The gunfight at the OK Corral continues to be fought on screen every few decades, with variations that explore either the Earps’ thugishness or their nobility. Before we left for Arizona, we watched John Ford’s 1939 Stagecoach starring the young John Wayne in his first major role. Watching it now, it was like seeing Star Wars for the first time. I realized why every boy child for the next two generations–including me–would wear a cowboy hat and pack a six gun as he entered the frontier range of his neighborhood. It was all you could ask for imagination.
Climate
Arizona is dry and hot. Statewide average annual rainfall in Arizona is 12.26 inches. In Yuma, bordering California and Mexico, average annual rainfall is a whopping 3 inches. Summer in the southern desert can average highs of 115°. We traveled in the High Desert, at the higher elevations of far north Arizona, but it’s still hot, still dry, just not as hot or as dry as the south.
Population
It seems like everything in Arizona is south, and then a bit further south, and then crammed right up to the border with Mexico. Ain’t true. Physically about two-thirds of the state is north of Phoenix. Still, it is true that most of the population is crammed around Phoenix and Tucson in the south. There are towns north of Phoenix–Prescott (47,603), Winslow (9,005), Sedona (9,790), Flagstaff (75,907)–but the further north you go the fewer people there are. The population of Page, the northern town of any size closest to Lee’s Ferry, is 7,440.
By population, Arizona is the 14th largest state, with a total population of 7,151,502. Almost 70% of that population, 4,845,832, is in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. Another 1,057,597 is in the Tucson Metro Area, southeast of Phoenix. Phoenix is the nation’s fifth largest city by population, trailing Houston (2,314,157), but leading Philadelphia (1,550,542), but it also represents the bulk of Arizona’s population.
Arizona map of population density, from Wikimedia Commons.
In 1860, Arizona’s non-native population was 6,482. By 1910, two years before statehood, the total population was only 204,354. As late as 1950 the population was still less than 1 million. Since 1950 Arizona has boomed. It’s a relatively diverse state, though most of the population is either Anglo or Latino. Anglos are 53.4% of the population, Latinos 30.7%.
Native Americans are about 3.7% of the population, giving it the third largest indigenous population by state–California and Oklahoma are numbers one and two. After English, the most common languages spoken in Arizona homes are Spanish, Navajo, and Apache.
Geographyand Fish
There are three geographic regions in Arizona. The Basin and Range region covers most of Southern Arizona, and also most of Nevada, Western Utah, and parts of mainland Mexico west of the Sierra Madres. It’s the corduroy geography of interspersed flat basins or valleys and narrow mountain chains that John McPhee describes in Basin and Range. We didn’t make it to the Arizona Basin and Range.
The Colorado Plateau where we spent our time is named for the Colorado River, the “Colored Reddish” River, and the Colorado River cutting through the Colorado Plateau formed the Grand Canyon. It is the nation’s 5th largest river, and famously it is used up for urban water supply and agricultural irrigation by the time it reaches the Gulf of California. The Plateau is high country with a mean 6,352′ elevation, centered on the Four Corners Region. The Plateau is drained by the Colorado River, the San Juan, and the Green.
Map of the Colorado Plateau, from Wikimedia Commons.
This trip I would fish the Colorado River, the San Juan, and the Green, the San Juan in New Mexico with my great niece, and the Colorado in Arizona and the Green in Utah with Kris.
The Mogollon Rim is the third major Arizona geographic region, and is the transition zone between the Colorado Plateau and the Basin and Range. There is an escarpment, and in places it rises as high as 8,000 feet from a basin to the Plateau . We didn’t make it as far south as the Mogollon Rim either.
There are two major rivers in Arizona, the Colorado and the Gila (which is a tributary to the Colorado). There are two native trout, the Apache trout and the Gila trout, both native to waters located along the New Mexico border. The Apache is endangered (though it is proposed for delisting), and the Gila threatened. Their restoration is part of the wider movement to restore native trout. Restoration a good thing, though it means the removal of transplanted rainbows and browns, and they’re awfully fun to catch.
In the Colorado River in Glen Canyon we would be fishing for rainbow trout, which survive and reproduce because of the cold water releases from the Glen Canyon Dam. There appear to be no current stocking programs. Fortunately for our fishing we got there before the Monkey Wrenchers blew up the dam.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Apache Trout.
Politics
Since World War II, Arizona politics has been pretty consistently inconsistent, with 10 Democratic governors and 8 Republicans. For President, the only Democrats who have carried Arizona were Harry Truman in 1948, Bill Clinton in 1996, and Joe Biden in 2020. The current governor, Katie Hobbs, is a Democrat. U.S. Senator Mark Kelly is a Democrat, and U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema is nothing at all, other perhaps than a nutcase. The Congressional delegation is currently six Republicans and three Democrats.
There is a slight–two vote–Republican majority in both houses of the Arizona legislature: two votes in the senate, two votes in the house. Overall Arizona is considered to lean Republican.
Joe Biden carried Arizona in the 2020 election by about 10,000 votes, and Arizona is an exception to most states in that the Democrats carried several areas that are largely rural, particularly in the tribal areas of the far northeast. in 2016, Donald Trump carried Arizona by about 90,000 votes, including Phoenix’s Maricopa County which then flipped in 2020. Total turnout in 2020 increased by more than 700,000 votes, with both Trump and Biden benefitting from the increased turnout. Biden benefited a wee bit more.
2020 Election Results in Arizona by County, Wikipedia, by AverytheComrade.
Where We’re Going
This is an ambitious trip. By trip’s end I will have fished the three major drainages on the Colorado Plateau: the San Juan in New Mexico, the Colorado in Arizona, and the Green in Utah. That’s also the three major Southwestern tailwaters–rivers that exist as destination trout fisheries because of the cold water flowing through dams from deep lakes. By the end of the trip we will have driven about 1500 miles and floated about 25 miles of river.
We’ve already caught our New Mexico fish, and Kris didn’t fish the San Juan. She’s fished it before, and I took my 16 year-old grand-niece fly fishing for the first time. I booked the guide, James Brown, “JB”, through Duranglers in Durango, but he also runs his own guide service. He couldn’t have been a better choice to guide Eva. Before we went I was going to try to teach Eva how to cast, and after nearly an hour got as far as showing her how to hold the rod. I didn’t get as far as showing her how to hold the line with her left hand. JB had her throwing flies in about 30 minutes.
Because JB thought Eva would catch fish all day, we fished the lower heavily stocked catch-and-take section of the river instead of the flies-only trophy water. Quantity trumped all, and we mostly had the lower half to ourselves. She landed a bunch of fish, missed a bunch of fish, and may or may not have taken a nap. Half the time I think JB was as excited as she was, which made the day fun for all of us. Believe it or not he and I talked a lot about fishing. I caught a bunch of trout, both wild browns and stocked rainbows, and I’m not going to complain about catching a bunch of trout, wild or stocked. I’m not proud, and I can use the practice.
For trout in North Georgia we took 5-weight rods with floating trout lines. We used long 9-foot 4X fluorocarbon leaders with weighted nymphs. I took an Abel disc drag reel, kinda the pinnacle of obsessively over-built trout reels, but it didn’t get much of a workout. For all the trout I caught I could have used a spool of bright yellow sewing thread, or kitchen twine, or bailing wire, with any of them tied to a stick I picked up on the riverbank. It would have been harder to cast, but I would have caught just as many fish.
In saltwater we fished with 8-weight rods and floating redfish lines, with 7-foot 16 lb leaders. We used the guide’s flies, which if you squinted real hard looked a bit like tarpon toads. They were prettier flies than what I use at home for redfish. My redfish flies look like deformed bits of cotton plucked straight from the boll and colored brown with a Magic Marker. I forgot to take a photo of the guide’s redfish flies.
We could have used the guides’ rods instead of hauling our own to Georgia, but how could we ever amortize their cost if we didn’t haul them with us? We gotta get our money’s worth.
Barbecue
I found a list of Georgia barbecue places on the internet, and on the way to Savannah we stopped at one. Because I didn’t particularly like the barbecue, I’m not going to mention it’s name. Just remember, it’s somewhere between Ellijay, Georgia, and Savannah. I’m sure there are better places than the one I chose, but Georgia being Southern I expected anything that made a list to be quality barbecue. This wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. Maybe I’ll try again someday.
We did get a pretty good Cuban sandwich in Blue Ridge, but as a Texan I have strong barbecue opinions but am mostly ignorant about Cuban sandwiches. I thought it could have used some pickles, but what do I know?
Donuts
We stayed in the northside Atlanta suburbs for wedding festivities. Two mornings we ate Atlanta suburban donuts, once at a utilitarian donut shop next to a gas station, Marietta Donuts, and once at an artisanal donut shop, Doughnut Dollies. Both had good donuts, and Doughnut Dollies managed to walk that fine line between too much imagination on the one side and boredom on the other. That’s not easy to do when you’re hawking artisanal doughnuts. I especially liked the frosting on Doughnut Dollies’ strawberry and orange doughnuts. All that fruit made me feel healthy.
Restaurants
Ok, so the barbecue we tried wasn’t great, but we otherwise ate a lot of good food in Georgia. In eight days I gained eight pounds.
The first night we went to a Korean place, Woo Nam Jeong Stone Bowl House, on Atlanta’s Buford Highway. Atlanta seems mostly to be either Anglo (50.7% in the metro area) or black (32.4% in the metro area), but that’s mostly. There is a Hispanic and Asian population, and Buford Highway is this strange culinary accident where a lot of Asian and Hispanic mom and pop restaurants have landed. I could have gone back to that Korean place for every subsequent meal. The food was so elegant but at the same time so homey and delicious that it was impossible not to be happy. All those dishes of pickled stuff couldn’t have been more beautiful. And all the bowls matched, which is more than you can always say at our house.
I suspect I could eat for days on Buford Highway.
Lunch Saturday we ate at Mary Mac’s Tea Room. It’s an Atlanta meat-and-three African American institution that serves huge–and I mean really really huge–portions of Southern food. Covering the walls they had photos of famous people who’d eaten there. There were several of Jimmy Carter and, of all people, the 14th Dalai Lama. I guess the Dalai Lama knows a good meat-and-three when he sees it. They didn’t ask for my photo for the wall, but I suspect that’s only because I couldn’t clean my plate.
Sunday evening we ate at a Vegan Mexican/Cuban place, La Semilla. Vegan Mexican/Cuban seems to me a strange combination, more because of the Mexican/Cuban than the vegan, but it was completely successful and very hip. I’m sure some of that hipness rubbed off, and you’re now reaping the benefit. Our friend Shelley can’t eat dairy, and she declared the vegan queso the trip highlight, because queso.
In Savannah we ate at The Grey, which is one of Georgia’s best-known restaurants. They priced accordingly, but it was worth it. If nothing else, it’s located in the old Savannah Greyhound Bus station, and who can resist repurposed 1930s streamlined modern art deco architecture? We couldn’t decide what to eat, so we copped out and ordered the tasting menu. They also had the greatest cop-out martini ever, named for one of the owners who could never decide what she wanted. It was advertised as a mix of curated gins and vermouths, with both a twist of lemon and olives. It was the perfect martini for the indecisive, and could only have been improved if they’d both shaken and stirred it. It was excellent, and if I’d drunk two it would likely have been more excellenter. I only had one and I could still barely speak English.
We ate at Common Thread, which was also highly recommended, expensive, and excellent, and we got ice cream at Leopold’s because we were walking down the street and there was a line. Who can resist a line at an ice cream parlor, and if you can, why would you want to? There’s a lot of good food in Savannah. There’s a lot of good food in Georgia, though the jury’s out on the barbecue. Did I mention I gained eight pounds?
The Civil War
Georgia was the industrial heart of the Confederacy. From 1863 to War’s end, Georgia was the final focus of the Union’s Western campaign. After the Confederates under General Bragg defeated the Union under General Rosecrans at Chickamauga, Ulysses Grant took charge of the Western campaign. Grant changed the War. Under Grant, General Sherman led the Union in two of the most important campaigns of the War, the Battle of Atlanta and Sherman’s March to the Sea. I had three great-great grandfathers at Atlanta, two Confederate, one Union. Those Union victories cut off the Army of Northern Virginia, and with Grant’s Virginia campaign the War ended.
Chickamauga, September 18-20, 1863, was a major Union loss, and the War’s second bloodiest battle. There were more than 34,000 Union and Confederate casualties, and more than 4,000 deaths. That means that over three days, 34,000 Americans, Southern and Northern, were shot, stabbed, or blown up, and more than 4,000 of them died. The Union fought at Chickamauga to capture the Chattanooga railroad hub and open Georgia for Union invasion. The South fought to destroy the Union’s Army of the Cumberland. The South won the battle, but under Bragg they didn’t cripple the Union army. Because the South failed, two months later at Missionary Ridge Chattanooga fell to the Union under Grant. That defeat at Chattanooga may well have ended the South.
We visited the Chickamauga battlefield, and weirdly it’s in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Congressional District. It’s odd that one small region could produce two such catastrophes.
Chickamauga National Battlefield. Apple Maps.
Back to Atlanta. In addition to wedding festivities and eating, we visited the Botanical Garden and the High Art Museum, but best of all we visited the strange Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama at the Atlanta History Center. The History Center has a solid presentation about the Battle of Atlanta, of which the Cyclorama is only a part, but the Cyclorama is its own attraction. It’s a 358′ x 49′ hand painted canvas, which is a painting longer than a football field. It may be the largest oil painting in the world.
Some interesting tidbits about the Cyclorama. According to the history center, Southern troops at the Battle of Atlanta outnumbered Northern, but the Cyclorama was painted in the 1880s in Ohio, a Union state. In the painting the South is vastly outnumbered. When the Cyclorama was first moved to Atlanta in 1891, many of the Union soldiers were repainted with grey uniforms to show the South winning the battle. It’s a problem with history. It’s hard not to slant the presentation.
Where We Stayed
In Atlanta we stayed in the Roswell DoubleTree. It was fine, but where we stayed was less important than that we were in the suburbs, and (except for the Atlanta Brave’s Truist Park), a lot of Atlanta eateries and attractions seem to be located centrally within easy driving range of downtown. Every time we went somewhere–well every time we went somewhere other than Total Wine, REI, or the wedding–we had to drive 20 miles. If I ever go back to Atlanta, I’ll stay somewhere central.
In North Georgia we stayed at a B&B, the Overlook Inn. If you’re going to some relatively remote mountain destination, you’re statutorily required to stay in a B&B. It was pretty, and on our second night we ate dinner there. Kris always complains about B&Bs because on the mornings we fish we never get to eat the breakfast, but she didn’t complain about this place, maybe because our friends the Marmons were there. And the dinner we ate there–all four of us had the smoked trout–was great. The Georgia mountain views were also great.
In Savannah we stayed at a restored 1960s motor lodge, The Thunderbird Inn. Who doesn’t like a restored 1960s motor lodge? This one had everything you could want except Magic Fingers, a swimming pool, and free parking. The turndown service was a Moon Pie and RC Cola, and there was 24-hour coffee and popcorn in the lobby. The rooms were small, the colors bright, and the sign was neon, so it was almost perfect in every way. It was also very central, but everything in Savannah seems reasonably central.
Where We Didn’t Go
When we fished in North Carolina we stayed with our friend Bryan, and his family had given him a week in Blue Ridge, Georgia, for his birthday. We went to Blue Ridge, and we had a good Cuban sandwich there, but Bryan didn’t go to Blue Ridge for the Cubano. Bryan went to Bill Oyster’s six-day bamboo rod building class. He hadn’t been yet when we stayed with them, but later he sent me pictures of the classes and the rod he built.
Now I can’t find Bryan’s pictures. They’re on my computer somewhere, probably under my virtual bed, or in a virtual drawer in my virtual closet. They were great photos, and I was jealous. Bryan made a beautiful rod.
Bill Oyster is famous for his rod-building class, and maybe more famous for his bamboo rods and his metal engraving. Bamboo rods aren’t explicable. They’re best compared to an old Jaguar E Type, or a 1956 Martin D-28, or a first edition of Absalom, Absalom. It may not be the most useful thing in the world, but it’s so . . . irreplaceable, beautiful, timeless . . .
One of Bill Oyster’s bamboo rods built for Jimmy Carter. Photo shamelessly cadged from OysterBamboo.com
And Bill Oyster makes some of the most beautiful bamboo rods in the world. He made two for Jimmy Carter, who was a serious fly fisher. They were gorgeous things, with gorgeous engraving. Oyster told a story to the American Fly Fishing Museum about how he made the first rod for President Carter, and how Carter was going to fish it a bit, sign it, and then it would be sold as a fundraiser for the Carter Presidential Library. Carter fished it a bit and then told the Library that they’d better buy another because he wasn’t giving back the first.
I remember talking to Kris after Bryan went to Blue Ridge, and she just didn’t get it. Why would somebody pay good money to build something, when for the same money they could buy a rod from a real builder? I’m still baffled by her response. Why wouldn’t you want to build your own bamboo rod? And also the prices aren’t the same. The rod class currently costs $2,950–and almost all the classes for 2024 are full. Oyster also has some fly rods listed for sale online, and an 8′ 5 weight lists for $5,760. The cheapest rod listed is a 8′ 9 weight saltwater rod for $3,320.
8 5-weight Bill Oyster Master, photo shamelessly cadged from OysterBamboo.com
Isn’t that rod-building class a bargain?
I don’t know though. That 8′ 5 weight looks pretty sweet. I might have to get a prettier reel though. And I might have to give up some stuff, like food.
Benedetto Guitars are made in Savannah, but I’m afraid they’re out of my league. I guess Oyster fly rods are also out of my league.
Playlist
Georgia had a great music playlist. Blind Willie McTell, Gnarls Barkley, Harry James, R.E.M., Cat Power, James Brown, Trisha Yearwood, Gladys Knight, Little Richard, Fletcher Henderson, Otis Redding, The Allman Brothers, The B-52s, Ma Rainey, Indigo Girls, Jessye Norman, Robert Shaw, Robert Cray, Kaki King . . .
There’s also Atlanta HipHop, plus there all those great songs about Georgia. I could listen to Rainy Night in Georgia once a day from here on out, and never get tired of it. There’s Georgia on My Mind, I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train, Midnight Train to Georgia, The Devil Went Down to Georgia, and if you get tired of those there’s Moon River and Skylark.
That playlist is good enough to keep me happy on a six-hour drive, through Georgia, on a rainy night.
Blind Willie McTell
Guitar
I took the Kohno and practiced some. I should have found a transcription of Moon River.
