Between the White and San Francisco Mountains

As a boy in Ohio I read all of Zane Grey’s western novels. I was especially impressed with those set in Arizona where, I learned later, Grey had spent some years in the early 1900s.

I remember particularly his word-picture landscapes, the descriptions of earth forms and hues, of vast visible distances, of heights and depths and distinct and varied ecosystems layered like environmental parfait. His accounts presented a fantastic and unimaginable background to elemental stories of good and evil and I thought Grey was exaggerating his settings for the sake of an interesting story.

He wasn’t.

One of my favorite places to witness this fact is along that section of the Coronado Trail in eastern Arizona between Clifton and Alpine also known as US Highway 191. It’s an extraordinarily fascinating, positively gorgeous drive, but not for the faint-hearted.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s a paved highway, painted stripes and everything, though it reminds me more of the unpaved Forest Service logging roads common throughout the western mountains. The first third of this route has numerous steep grades, tight switchback curves and unrailed drop-offs, but they reveal some of the best scenery around. I recommend the south-to-north direction because of those road conditions.

And it’s not just the natural scenery that makes it so interesting. Funky little mining and tourist towns, forest lodges and campgrounds, one of the largest open-pit copper mines on the planet and the engineering of the highway itself contribute substantially.

Consider just the copper mine: the route takes you through the middle of it! It’s not one of those gigantic bowl types; while it is gigantic, this one looks more like it was planned by a committee of five-year-olds not willing to share the shovels. Even the highway leads you into the mine's industrial areas that make you think you’ve lost the road, but it quickly brings you back again. And that’s merely the opening act.

As for that natural scenery, it‘s, as I said, incredible— but I’m not going to try to compete with Zane Grey. You can read him yourself.