๐๐๐น๐ ๐ฎ๐ญ, ๐ญ๐ต๐ฌ๐ณ You’re aboard the steamship, Columbia, en route to Portland. San Francisco, wherefrom you departed the day before, now seems a distant memory. It’s dark, almost pitch black, and thick fog blankets the sea. An otherwise cold night is made bearable under the gleam of a state-of-the-art lighting apparatus, the first of its …
It was 2:30 in the morning on Independence Day, when two of my friends, Kaleb (AKA, Squatch) and Ryan, arrived at my door. We had a planned adventure that day based on a tip I had received. With three hours until sunrise, we hit the road. Our destination: a rock quarry hiding something more than …
Roughly centered 30 miles down the I-40 between Flagstaff and Winslow, taking a dedicated exit marked “Two Guns,” will take you to a forgotten place, the likes of which modern civilization had only begun to tame as the grip of the Wild West began to loosen. This place, once a bustling must-stop off the Mother …
The famous American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, once said, โSow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.โ For another man of Emersonโs time, James Addison Reavis, who would become Arizonaโs most …
Since I began my adventure journey a few years ago, Iโve seen a number of ghost towns. On a recent trip through California, however, I was privileged to visit the most intact ghost town I have seen so far.ย Welcome to Helena, California.ย The story of Helena is similar to many towns like it. What …
In a small town outside Prescott, Arizona, a monolith to a bygone era stands proudly amongst the pine and summer homes. Created around the year 1880, by Jake and Joe Carmichael, this kiln was used to convert oak wood into charcoal to be used in the smelting operations of a nearby silver mine. Using a …
This Historic Ranch House, known as the Bowen Stone House, has stood tall in the canyons of the Tucson Mountains for nearly a century. Moving Southwest in the 1920s, Sherry and Ruby Bowen, transplants from Rockford, Illinois, hoped a change in climate might also result in better health for the increasingly sick, Ruby Bowen, who …
I LET MY SADDLE FALL, MY WEARY HORSE I TEND, DEAR LORD I HEAR YOU CALL, FOR IโVE REACHED THE END. Poetic and unsettling, whatโs known as the Cowboy Prayer, reads more like a lament. Permanently transfixed along the divide between civilization and the Prescott Wilderness, sewn into a large boulder and overlooking a small …
This lovingly-crafted stone and mortar home was once that of the Robert Clevenger family, in the early 1900s. Built in Queen Creek Canyon, the northern wall is the canyon, itself. The majestic Picketpost Mountain looms to the South, and the ghost town of Pinal once stood less than one mile to the east (as the …
This cross proudly stands atop the hills overlooking the small Arizona town of Superior. Around the time of its creation, much of the town’s residents were devout Catholics. So, on May 3rd, 1936, a group of miners set out to construct this monument overlooking their homes and workplaces, to be blessed by a town priest, …