Discovering the Desert Foothills Scenic Drive – Continued
By Les Conklin
Published: Scottsdale Magazine/Summer 1996
The article is being published in three parts.
Part 2. Starts Here
Leaving the wooden sign, Bob and Geoff and I walk north a short distance to a small cleared area on the east side of Scottsdale Road. Two weeks before this adventure, Jo Walker, who as president of the Cave Creek Improvement Association shepherded the drive’s upkeep for many years, had sent the map to me with a note. “Back in the sixties, Maricopa County had jurisdiction over the land along the drive. Vince Thelander, a Cave Creek resident and member of the County Planning Commission, worked successfully to have the drive designated as a scenic corridor with setbacks to protect the plants next to the road. They cleared the area and erected a large cement sign with black metal letters – Desert Foothills Scenic Drive. There were three redwood tables there for a long time.”
Now, the tables are gone and the sign is rusted. Recently, I had seen tourists using the rusted sign as a backdrop for photographs and felt a twinge of embarrassment because of its lack of care. It was that experience that led me to approach Scottsdale city manager, Dick Bowers, with the idea of restoring the drive. Dick’s answer was unambiguous, “The city will help in every way it can.”
Back in the car, my sons and I head north, starting our discovery tour in earnest. We cannot see the sign for the ironwood that is supposed to be on the east side of the road, so we turn around, backtrack, park and begin walking north searching the desert for the evidence of the ironwood site. “Here it is!”, Bob shouts. Our first find of the day. The circle of white rocks is spattered with dirt and camouflaged by new plant growth. The sign, neatly lettered – Ironwood – is lying next to the rocks.
The ironwood is still there – after thirty long years. Ironwoods are tough trees, even harder than their name suggests. Ironwood is so hard that is has proven almost useless to desert dwellers; few could find tools strong enough to work on it. In the spring, ironwoods soften their image when half-inch blossoms form in little purple bouquets.
Looking toward the east, Pinnacle Peak serves as a direction post pointing to popular Scottsdale eateries Pinnacle Peak Patio, Reata Pass Steakhouse, and Greasewood Flat, where Geoff entertains as a country and western singer. Troon North, the world-class golf course is up that way too. From our vantage point near the ironwood, Pinnacle Peak resembles the head of a cottontail rabbit. Cottontails and jackrabbits were abundant when the Hohokam people arrived about 300 A.D. and still scamper in the desert along the drive.
The Hohokam migrated here from the vicinity of the Salt River to the southwest. They tended crops beside the springs that flowed in the region. In 1988, the Pinnacle Peak Land Company asked Arizona State University’s Anthropology Department to conduct an archeological survey of the Hohokam site on the land company’s property just south of Pinnacle Peak. Eighteen pit houses were unearthed. The Hohokam inhabited many sites in the Desert Foothills, but after spending some eight hundred years in the region, they moved on, abandoning the foothills to the rabbits and coyotes. We decide to move on and return to the car.
Carefully scanning both sides of the road, we look for the original signs, plants and white rocks. “There’s the ocotillo,” says Geoff with a tinge of excitement in his voice. We pull up next to the site for a quick inspection. Excellent. The site needs to be trimmed and the sign painted, but the ocotillo is flourishing.
The ocotillo, which in the spring has flaming orange flowers on top of each long slender stem, is known by many names: monkey tail, candlewood, and Jacob’s staff. Ocotillo means coachman’s whip in Spanish. Many plants found along the drive, chuparosa, jojoba, cholla, and saguaro are known by Spanish names, but the Spanish never came to central Arizona. They labeled it as desplobado, meaning desolate wilderness on their maps and bypassed the region. They would have re-labeled their maps had they seen the Desert Foothills – especially when the palo verde trees bloom in May.
Palo verde thrive all along the drive. Their name means green stick in Spanish. Every part of the tree is green – the trunks, limbs, twigs, even the thorns. When the palo verdes bloom in May, this part of Scottsdale Road is ablaze in pale yellow.
We cannot find the hackberry that the treasure map indicates is near the intersection of Scottsdale Road and Dynamite Roads. After five minutes of looking in the desert near the road, we call off the search. The terrain here is thick with creosotes and saguaros, and I make a note to consider using a large creosote as a substitute for the missing hackberry.
We continue to move north alternatively driving and walking, retracing our paths, crossing and re-crossing the road, searching for lost signs and missing plants. When my memory fails, we refer to the trusty plant book to identify plants. At Dixileta Road, we pause to log our findings. A perplexed Harris’ hawk watches our seemingly erratic behavior from atop a nearby telephone pole.
Reading the book reminds me that each plant has a story to tell. The succulent barrel cactus quenched the thirst of lost prospectors. Catclaw is disliked by today’s riders and hikers because its strong thorns tear at both clothing and skin, but catclaw seeds were widely used as food by the Indians. Another food source was prickly pear, which provided fruit for the Hohokam and later for the nomadic Apaches. Many desert dwellers still harvest the fruit to make distinctive jams and jellies.
Continued Discovering the Desert Foothills Scenic Drive – Part 3
Related Articles
Discovering the Desert Foothills Scenic Drive – Introduction
Discovering the Desert Foothills Scenic Drive – Part 1
Discovering the Desert Foothills Scenic Drive – Part 2
Discovering the Desert Foothills Scenic Drive – Part 3
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