Some stamps you can use for wallpaper

If you're looking for new wallpaper for your computer, Linn's Stamp News, a magazine about stamp collecting, has some offerings.

One that has a tie to the theme of this blog is "Legends of the West," whose honorees with ties to heritage sites around Arizona include Buffalo Bill, Bat Masterson, John Fremont, Wyatt Earp, Nellie Cashman, Geronimo and Kit Carson.

Don't know when we'll go into detail about heritage sites that relate to them, such as the Nellie Cashman Restaurant in Tombstone or the Fremont House in Tucson, but the wallpaper should certainly keep you in the mood of visiting some of these places one weekend.

Here's where you can go to check out this one and dozens more.

Old records get new home in Phoenix

One type of tourism that doesn't get a lot of mention is research.  It's not just university historians that haunt the dusty back corners of old libraries looking for tidbits that most people don't care about.

Among the most avid, and most down-to-earth, users of archives are genealogists. And their upscale cousins, the biographers. There are many other types of users of archives as well. Lawyer, for example, who want to know how a certain state of affairs came to be. Prospectors, who are looking for the best place to seek gold. Journalists, who want a new angle on an old story. Detectives, for a variety of reasons.

Arizona has several "archives" of various types. In my town, our history museum keeps track of shelves and shelves of records and drawers and drawers of microfilm that may or may not list bits and pieces of information about the tens of thousands of men who worked in the mines over the century they were operating. Hundreds of people a year come looking for parents, grandparents and a host of other relatives. That's above and beyond the more formal research: Some historians spend weeks in that one small library.

So it's easy to infer that if hundreds of people check out the archives of a small town museum, tens of thousands will be searching through the records of a state library.  And how much space does it take to host an entire state's public records? (Extend that to a nation: How many good-sized cities would love to have just the research visitors that Washington, D.C. gets each year?)

So in the summer of 2008, all the stuff that had been gathering in those famous dusty rooms in Phoenix was gathered up and moved to a new Archives Building. The $38 million Polly Rosenbaum History and Archives Building, southwest of the Capitol at 1901 W. Madison St., was to be dedicated Jan. 15.

Unlike the stereotype of an archive, this 124,000-square-foot facility controls climate, dust, light and other forces of nature and man that damage old documents. That's a considerable change from the old facilities, which were built in 1919 and 1938.

The archives, which falls under the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records, stores those things which one would expect, including state and local government records and photographs, some 125,000 of them.  (Of which about 35,000 have been digitized.)

The facility is open to the public and its website has written guides that will prepare users for what to expect.

Polly Rosenbaum, by the way, was a long-time Arizona legislator who worked hard for the preservation and display of history. She represented the Globe area, succeeding her husband, who served as House majority leader, when he died in 1949. She was in office until 1995, the longest of any state rep. She died in 2004 at age 104. She is pictured above, at right, with her old friend, former Arizona Gov. Rose Mofford.

Just as they did a century ago, visitors like Canyon de Chelly

In an undated brochure going back probably to the nineteen-teens, Santa Fe Railway offered up tips to the tourists who used their lines -- and most tourists in those days still used the railroad for trips beyond the immediate environs -- on what to see while in the Southwest.

Called "Off the Beaten Path in New Mexico and Arizona," the brochure suggested a variety of sidetrips, mostly north of the railway line, which ran through Santa Fe and Flagstaff. For the most part, it was designed to take the visitor into Indian country, calling it "both the oldest and the newest region in the United States."

The brochure told the tourists that they could make a 72-mile round trip, for example, by automobile and could go "there and back in a day." But the railway also offered trips by "saddle and pack" which lasted as much as 30 days, all the while camping out in the wilderness.

One of those 30-day horseback trips (which cost $300, including everything except the railway ticket) went through Canyon de Chelly (say "canyon duh shay") in the extreme eastern part of northern Arizona. Another trip, this one for four days in a Ford automobile, also took in the canyon and cost $120.

Canyon de Chelly is entirely within the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. It's about 40 miles long and has red sandstone walls that rise, mostly vertically, 800 to 1,500 feet. As the brochure said, "on either side are pinnacles, crags and towers of great height, sculptured by wind and rain."

Before the Navajos came to the area, the canyon was home to the Anasazi and scores of their cliff dwellings can be found in high crevices along the rock walls. "Thousands of peach trees, planted by the early Spaniards, still produce fruit for their Navaho owners. There are Navaho Indians living in these canyons in the same primitive fashion that they lived a century ago, when the

Spaniards first came."

Today, Canyon de Chelly is still a tourist destination. It's both reservation and a national monument. It is unique among sites run by the National Park Service in that it also is a residential area. There is a road around the rim of the canyon that is free to drive, as is the White House ruins trail; to enter the canyon at the bottom, however, one must hire a Navajo guide. (You also need a four-wheel-drive vehicle and a Park Service permit.)

As well as driving through, the canyon today offers hiking, rock-art viewing, interpretive exhibits and talks, horseback riding, picnicking and photography, according to the Park Service. Come to think of it, that's not a lot different from a century earlier.

Before you go, there's plenty to learn.

A look at Arizona's first capital

As the centennial of Arizona statehood (Feb. 14, 2012) races toward us, it's appropriate to look at some heritage sites that discuss the creation of the 48th state. The first of these might as well be the first governor's mansion, which came shortly after Arizona became a territory in its own right.

President Abraham Lincoln signed off on a bill which admitted an area which had come into the possession of the United States in 1848 (the part north of the Gila River) and in 1853 (south of the Gila) as a territory separate from New Mexico on Feb. 24, 1863 in great part because the Union cause needed the precious metals the land produced. The Confederacy had admitted Arizona as a territory in 1861.

The capital was located at the newly established Ft. Whipple, originally near Chino Valley but soon moved to a site near present-day Prescott. Gen. James H. Carleton (leader of the California Column, which maintained a Union presence in Arizona during the Civil War) had just been given military command of the area and he sent two companies to establish a post in Chino Valley.

They arrived Dec. 23, 1863, establishing the post and naming it for Brig. Gen. Amiel Weeks Whipple (West Point Class of 1841), who had fallen in the battle of Chancellorsville, a stunning Union defeat, in May of that year. As a lieutenant in the U.S. Topographical Engineers before the war, Whipple had become familiar with the area when he helped survey for a proposed railroad through northern Arizona along the 35th parallel as early as 1853.

(As a point of trivia, Whipple's first fight in the Civil War was at the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), which included a who's who of past and future Arizona history-makers. Whipple, then a captain, worked directly for Gen. Irvin McDowell, who led the Army of Northeastern Virginia in that rout and who was namesake of Fort McDowell in Maricopa County; commanding the 3rd Division was Col. Samuel P. Heintzelman, who had extensive mining interests in Arizona before the war and who was an unceasing lobbyist for creating the Arizona territory; commanding his 2nd Brigade was Col. Orlando B. Willcox, who later would chase Apaches and would get a city in Cochise County named in his honor; commanding the 3rd Brigade was Col. O.O. Howard, who later would make peace with Cochise; and another brigade commander was Col. W.T. Sherman, who later would direct the Indian wars in the West.)

At Ft. Whipple, in the summer of '64, a log house was built as the governor's "mansion." The first two governors of the Arizona Territory, John N. Goodwin and Richard C. McCormick, would live here. It would cease being the seat of government when the capital was moved to Tucson in 1867. The mansion became a private residence, was purchased by the State in 1917 and it would become a museum in 1928.

Now it's part of the Sharlott Hall Museum, one of the finest "small" city museums in Arizona. Here are some reading opportunities if you want to learn more about the generals or about Arizona history in overview.

The San Pedro River, the nation's first riparian conservation area, turns 20

It's hard to believe that this year is the 20th anniversary of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, the first one in the nation. 

Riparian simply means something that's located on or lives around the banks of a natural watercourse, such as a river. In the desert, however, that's not so simple.

In years prior to the acquisition of the old Spanish land grant by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the San Pedro was just another site for multiple uses. No one thought about what impact nearby Fort Huachuca would have on the water table and no one was trying to promote birdwatching in the area, much less bring back the long-depleted beavers.

But when Ronald Reagan signed the designation bill in November 1988, he set aside about 40 miles of the Upper San Pedro, which the BLM now calls one of the "crown jewels" in its National Landscape Conservation System.

Earlier this year, many of the folks who have worked on preserving and restoring the river for the past two decades gathered at the San Pedro House a few miles outside Sierra Vista to recall what it means. A number of politicians, professional land managers and volunteers, who have put thousands of hours into making it all work, were recognized.

People come to the San Pedro from all over the world for a variety of reasons, perhaps the simplest being "because it's there." But it's more than just there. The Nature Conservancy, for example, has designated it one of the "Last Great Places on Earth." 

The river that flows north out of Mexico to the the Gila attracts million of birds (some 345 species, or nearly half of the entire North American bird fauna, the Conservancy says), which depend on the watercourse to survive. There are 13 species of breeding raptors, such as hawks and owls, who make the San Pedro home, and that's one of the most diverse concentrations in North America, the Conservancy says. These bird provide one of the major attractions of the River.

The Conservation Area contains about 58,000 acres of public land in Cochise County, most of which originally was a Spanish land grant. It was tax regulations governing these grants that kept the land intact and allowed BLM to acquire such a large tract. Included in the area are mammoth sites dating to Clovis Man some 12,000 years ago, as well as Spanish settlements going back several hundred years.

To get directions to the site and to learn what is possible and what is not permitted, visit BLM's website for the San Pedro. To learn more about the San Pedro and neighboring cities, including Tombstone, Bisbee and Sierra Vista, get one of these interesting books. The photo is by BLM's Diane Drobka. 

Phoenix is the place to see Hopi katsinas

When Hopi dancers have put on the masks and garb of their katsinas, a ritual that dates to time immemorial, they are putting on far more: their identity.

"The Hopi Indians represent their gods in several ways," wrote anthropologist Jesse Walter Fewkes in 1899, "one of which is by personation --by wearing masks or garments bearing
symbols that are regarded as characteristic of those beings. The symbols depicted on these masks and garments vary considerably, but are readily recognized and identified by the Indians."

Another way of representing the gods is through the katsina "dolls," which today are considered a high art form as well as religious symbols. And while most of the ceremonies are off limits to outsiders today, many katsinas (also spelled kachinas) have been gathered at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, forming perhaps the most popular core of an extensive collection of masterpieces created by the native peoples of the Southwest.

"At each festival in which these supernatural beings are personated," Fewkes wrote, "the symbols are repainted, and continued practice has led to a high development of this kind of artistic work, many of the Indians having become expert in painting the symbols characteristic of the gods."

The advent, several decades later, of a tourism industry that craved the katsinas led to a similar growth in artistic skills. The collection at the Heard, numbering more than 500, includes many of the earlier carvings, collected by the Harvey Company, and later images gathered by the late Sen. Barry Goldwater.

Arizona's Hopis, like neighboring New Mexico's Zunis, have celebrated their religion with katsina ceremonies since long before the Europeans knew of the Americas. Yet they continue to add new members to the katsina pantheon as they learn more about their universe. Some of the activities introduced by other tribes and by the descendants of the Europeans have even come to be represented.

One of the best ways to learn about the katsinas is by experiencing the Heard Museum's extensive collection, which is part of a vast exhibit called "Native People in the Southwest," which will continue indefinitely at the Phoenix location, 2301 N. Central Ave., Phoenix.

It features nearly 2,000 treasures, the Heard says, including jewelry, cultural items, pottery, baskets, textiles, beadwork and more. And it's not just the little stuff. There's a full-sized Navajo hogan, Hopi piki room, Yaqui ramada and Pueblo oven.

For more information, visit the Heard website. Before you go, you might want to learn more about katsinas and about the Hopi.   (The art accompanying this article was drawn by a native artist contracted by Fewkes for his report for the Bureau of American Ethnology.)