Southwest Vacation
Part 4: Jerome

(Note: Clicking on any image in this travelogue will bring up a full screen version of the image.)

Sunday, September 10
Flagstaff to Jerome

Sunday morning we packed up and left our "Mountain Escape". Jenny wanted to go to church, and we found a convenient Lutheran Church in Flagstaff. I dropped her off there and found a nice diner where I could get a good breakfast. I picked her up after the services, (She found the post-service snacks offered sufficient to serve for her breakfast) and we planned out our day. There was nothing pressing on our agenda, and it was only 2 hours to our next destination in Jerome, so we decided to see what there was to see in Flagstaff.

Flagstaff had an arboretum, which sounded like a nice place to go. Jenny was the one who first introduced me to the concept of walking through an interesting place as a social activity when we first met. Seemed like a good plan until we arrived there, and found that the place had been reserved for a private wedding that day. OK, what else is there to do? A quick perusal of the Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce pamphlet from our Mountain Escape revealed the Lowell Observatory. Wow! That appealed to me for sure.

Now this is my idea of a museum. I've always been fascinated by old technology, and the Lowell Observatory has got that in spades. Percival Lowell was the very model of the Victorian gentleman scientist. Born in 1855, he was the scion of the New England Lowell family of industrialists and philanthropists (for which Lowell, Massachusetts is named). Born a man of means and leisure, he decided to devote himself to the study of astronomy. In 1894, using his personal wealth, he purchased land in Flagstaff, chosen for its altitude, clear atmosphere, proximity to the railroad, and absence of light pollution, and built this observatory. The centerpiece of the facility was the then state-of-the-art 24-inch Clark refracting Telescope. This instrument was built to order by Alvin Clark & Sons in Cambridgeport, MA, and shipped in pieces by train to Flagstaff. When it arrived, it was found that the dome built to enclose it was too small. (High precision instrument. Not so much so for the carpentry.) So a local handyman type general contractor in Flagstaff built the dome that exists today.

The refractor is an early design for telescopes, using lenses at both ends of the tube to produce the image, and is the general layout the average person conjures up in his mind when picturing a "telescope". Astronomical telescopes built since the early 20th century are reflectors, that use a concave mirror at the big end of the device, rather than a convex lens. That has the practical advantage of shortening the overall length of the instrument by half. The Clark instrument was the one that Lowell used for his extensive studies of the planet Mars, resulting in his famous sketches of the planet's surface crisscrossed by "canals". That led to speculation of life on the planet, and subsequent notion of intelligent and potentially warlike civilizations popularized by H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and their countless successors of science fiction authors. Lowell also used the instrument to measure and document perturbations in the orbit of Neptune, in the attempt to locate the mysterious 9th planet X, which would finally be found and dubbed "Pluto" 26 years after Lowell's death. The instrument is still in use today, although for educational, rather than research purposes. There is also another telescope at the facility built in 1928 that was used to actually find Pluto. That instrument is currently under restoration, and I did not get to see or photograph it.

Photos 010 through 060 are of the Clark Refractor Telescope.

Photo 010 is the building that houses it.

Photo 020 shows how the protective dome rotates so that the slot in the dome lines up with the telescope. The dome is supported on truck tires that act as a giant roller bearing, allowing it to rotate with minimal friction. A thoroughly workable idea concocted by the local contractor that built the dome.

Photo 030 is an overall view of the instrument itself.

Photo 040 shows the viewing eyepiece with all the various controls for the focus, aperture, and other adjustments involved in viewing.

Photo 050 shows the terrestrial rotation compensator, a device necessary on any research telescope. The axis of the big ring gear is set up to be parallel to the rotational axis of the Earth. And a timing motor drive rotates that gear so that it precisely counters the Earth's rotation, and the image being viewed stays motionless in the eyepiece, allowing for long exposure photographs to be taken. The cross shaft rotates to change the elevation of the instrument, and the counterweight at the other end of the cross shaft balances the weight of the telescope.

The observer sits on the chair shown in Photo 060. The frame that holds the chair is wheeled around the periphery of the observatory like a library ladder to line up with the instrument. And the chair itself can be moved up or down on its rails, depending upon the elevation of the instrument.

The rest of the photos are of non-astronomical artifacts displayed on the grounds.

Photo 070 is a mausoleum where Lowell is buried. The original mausoleum is the rounded dome that can be see through the transparent outer panels. Those panels were added later as additional protection after it was found that the original was leaking.

Photo 080 is a typewriter that Lowell used. Not much historical significance, but it's just such a neat old piece of machinery that I thought it deserved a place in this collection.

Photo 090, "Big Red", is a 1911 Duryea Touring Car that was Lowell's personal transportation. It's enormous, dwarfing modern day SUVs, and powered by a 40 HP 6-cylinder inline engine. It was rugged enough to handle the marginal roads of the Arizona desert, and is still in working order.

Photo 100 is one of the world's first electromechanical calculators. In operation from 1914 into the early '30s, it was used to do calculations involved in searching for the mystery planet Pluto.

Photo 110 is a terrestrial rotation compensator mechanism, similar to that of Photo 050, but for a smaller instrument.

Photo 120 is of a later 42" reflecting telescope, no longer in service, and for display only.

Our visit to the Lowell Observatory lasted into the early afternoon, and we hit the road to Jerome. This took us back down the same path on Route 89A through Oak Creek Canyon, and through and past Sedona. We stopped for a late lunch in Clarkdale (where we never got to go to catch the train ride) and pulled into our next lodgings in Jerome.

Jerome began its life as a copper mining town. It clung by its collective fingernails to the side of the very mountain that was being mined, and provided housing and general services for the miners and the mine operators. Copper, along with trace amounts of silver and gold, was first discovered in the area in 1876. The mining operations were of mixed success until early in the 20th Century when a second and much richer lode was discovered, a railroad was built, and open pit operations began. (The railroad, I believe, was the one that eventually became the tourist rail trip from Clarkdale that we missed.) Through the teens and 20s it became a wild and woolly boom town, with lots of money being made. It's history was rich with labor disputes, bootleg liquor, open prostitution, gambling, and shootouts on the streets. Population grew from 250 in 1890 to a peak of almost 5,000 in 1930. The town was plagued by frequent fires in the largely wooden construction, and some buildings falling off the side of the mountain due to unstable rock foundations, and seismic activity triggered by the mining operations. Photo 150 shows the town and it's precarious perch on the hillside. (The letter "J" for Jerome emblazoned on the mountain is maintained by a local civic organization.) By the 50s, the mines had played out, and the population dropped to under 100. The town reinvented itself as a tourist destination, restored a lot of the old buildings in their original style, but with updated safety codes, and has become a really cool place to visit. It adopted the nickname of "Ghost City" as one that has risen from the dead.

And the Ghost City Inn is a jewel of a place to stay in an antique setting. According to the historic marker plaque outside:

The Garcia House was originally built in 1885 to house mine management. The house was later owned by the Garcias from 1920 to 1978. In the 1930s, a bootleg still exploded upstairs causing the second floor to burn. In the late 1970s, the downstairs was made into an art gallery, and the building was briefly an ashram. Later, gourmet evening dining was served downstairs, and Maude, the owner, lived upstairs. The home became a bed and breakfast in 1994.

Photo 160 shows the place, and incidentally our rental Ford Fusion Hybrid in which we journeyed, happily ensconced in one of the rare horizontal parking spots scattered here and there throughout Jerome. Upon our arrival we were greeted by a couple of the locals relaxing on the porch depicted in Photo 170. Entering the premises, we found ourselves in the deserted Breakfast Room shown in Photo 180, and listening to the strains of early Duke Ellington music softly playing through a sound system. This was a good sign. Although the management was nowhere to be seen, we had written directions on how to find our room. Following instructions, we exited out the back of the Breakfast Room, climbed a steep outside stairway (Photo 190) to a second floor back veranda, and entered the common lounge (Photo 200). Our room was accessed by the door on the right, and it was a beaut! (Photos 210 and 220)

Each bedroom was individually decorated in a specific theme, and ours was hunting and fishing. Not that I'm a hunter or fisherman, but the decor was unique, attractive, beautifully done, and quirky. Note the stuffed Canada goose in flight mounted just before the upper left hand corner of the mural in Photo 220. I loved it. (Two other rooms had themes on cowboys and mining. I didn't see the rest.) A door in the back of the bedroom opened onto a second floor veranda overlooking the street and the wide desert looking out towards Clarkdale it was a wonderfully cool place to sit in the evening. And we took advantage of that, reading, catching up on correspondence (We had a good strong WiFi signal, thoroughly out of keeping with the decor.), and playing a little music.

Monday, September 11
Jerome

Today, Jenny's birthday, we would spend most of the time just poking around Jerome. And then in the afternoon, we took a ride to neighboring Clarkdale to look at the Copper Art Museum..

So our first stop was, of course, the Jerome Visitors' Center, so we could look at brochures, and ask about what was to see in town. That turned out to be a little wooden shoebox about the size of a half shipping container (Photo 250). Which was closed on Mondays. So we were on our own.

The main drag in town was good old Route 89A, which zigzagged up the side of the mountain in a series of switchbacks. It was good cardiovascular exercise exploring. Photo 260 shows the view looking down from about the 3rd tier up. There were art galleries and boutique clothing shops and wine shops, and palm readers, and gun shops, and antique stores, and motorcycle paraphernalia dealers, and all the things one would expect in a Western artsy tourist town. But the mountainside layout and the period buildings gave the place some real character. Photo 270 shows the entrance to an indoor mall of artsy stores and galleries in building perched out over the slope of the mountain. Is Photo 280 truth in advertising, or just braggadocio? (Look at it in full screen if you can't read the name of the shop.)

There was a fairly extensive Jerome Historical Society building which walked us through the history of the town. It had full size dioramas of a mine, a general store in the 1870s, a bordello, typical miners' lodgings, and other aspects of life in Jerome through its history. There were newspaper clippings reporting on fires, and landslides, and labor strikes, and gunfights in the streets that somehow brought these events into a stark reality that impressed me. I inexplicably took no photographs in this place. But Jenny found this sonnet inspired by the landscape around Jerome that she liked, published in the Saturday Evening Post, that was displayed on the wall:

There was a road here once, that ran between
The river and the field. Here cattle still
Graze over clumps of stubborn daffodil
And tags of lilac. Where those hickories lean
There is a weedy path, a trampled screen
Of trumpet vine, and here the cresses spill
Out of a lost and dwindling spring, to fill
Some dim old dooryard with a deeper green.
Somehow an old road never quite goes back
To wilderness or woods or meadow grass.
There will be something left to show the track
Of vanished wheels where neighbors used to pass;
Some scrap of hedge will mark the shadowy bend.
A road once traveled never has an end.

Irene Carlisle
Pub. 1951

One gallery / gift shop called "Nellie Bly's" particularly impressed me. It featured an extensive collection of glass art, including some truly elaborate kaleidoscopes. That fancifully carved wooden thing in Photo 290 was one such. I'm generally not one for hanging out in such places, but I was well and captured there.

Looming over the town, and visible from just about anywhere was the Jerome Grand Hotel. I didn't want to trek all the way up there in the heat, so we took the car. It tried to be imposing, but somehow struck me more as a poseur. But we poked our noses around the place. (Photos 310 through 340) The grandfather clock in the lobby was pretty classy, though (Photo 350).

From there we drove down the switchbacks to Clarkdale to look at the Copper Art Museum. This was set up in what was once an old school building from sometime in the mid 20th Century. The visitor was guided by copper footprints inset into the cement floor through a series of ex-classrooms containing various exhibits of stuff made from copper, both practical and artistic. Somehow none of it particularly captured me except the fanciful twin tub bathroom fixture shown in Photo 360. A precursor to the modern hot tub? It must have been a bitch to clean out the footwells of that thing.

Back home to Jerome (Oh, give me a home in the town of Jerome...) dinner at the Haunted Hamburger, a little music on the rear veranda of the Ghost City Inn, and bed.