Arizona's Mogollon Rim The Mogollon Rim was named for Don Juan Ignacio Flores Mogollon, who was the Governor of the Province of New Mexico from 1712 - 1715. Zane Grey the great western writer had his cabin just above Payson Arizona ( Home of the longest running Rodeo) on the mogollon rim. But in the Dude fire of 1990 it burned down along with some other historical sites. Arizona's oldest standing schoolhouse, built in 1885, is on Fossil Creek Road in Strawberry. Further on down the road is the Childs Hot Springs. There was a popular hotel at the springs during the Prohibition Era but it has burned down. You can still enjoy the soothing water of the hot springs but it is about a one mile hike from the dirt road to reach them. The Mogollon Rim is a rugged escarpment that forms the southern limit of the Colorado Plateau. It extends across the entire forest and provides excellent views within Plateau Country and Desert Canyon Country as well. Dropping as much as 2,000 feet in some areas, the Rim provides some of the most far-reaching scenery in Arizona. Taking the 7,000-foot-high road If there was ever a place in Arizona where a visitor is guaranteed to feel a sense of peace and quiet, where the cares and problems of the city fall away like pine needles from ponderosa, the Rim Road is such a place. Here, along 200 miles of dirt road on the edge of a great escarpment, one can find coolness, fantastic views, green grass and towering pines, deer, elk, bear and some of the most beautiful campsites. The Mogollon Rim was uplifted eons ago. Once it marked the shore of a vast inland sea that covered much of southern Arizona. An east-west cliff, the Rim crosses nearly half the state, roughly Sedona to the New Mexico border. Its average height of 7,000 feet makes the Rim Road the longest continuous "high road" in the state. The route is more than 100 years old. It was pioneered in 1873 by Gen. George Crook while he was the U.S. Army commander in Arizona. Crook wanted a way to move troops and supplies to various Army posts scattered along Arizona's midriff. Unfortunately, the state's geology has erected some tremendous natural obstacles to east-west travel. The easiest, flattest terrain was - oddly enough - in the higher elevations. The Mogollon Rim is likened to a pitched roof. On one side the rain runs off into the Salt and Verde rivers to the south. On the other side the water flows north toward the Little Colorado River. A typical stretch of gravel road along Forest Route 300. But, along the edge of the cliffs, 2,000 feet high in some places, the land is relatively level. A rough way to go the first segment of the road, from Fort Whipple at Prescott to Fort Verde, was comparatively easy to build. But from Fort Verde, which was beside the Verde River, the planned route climbed some 3,000 feet from West Clear Creek to the head of Fossil Creek and then tightroped its way east along ever-rising ridge lines. Once among the pine trees, ax-swinging troopers had to chop a right of way through the forest. And most of the 200-mile length of Crook's Trail, as the road became known, was in thick ponderosa pine. When completed in 1876, the road connected Fort Verde with Fort Apache. Gen. Crook's road builders did such a good job that much of their work is now paralleled by paved highways. Parts of three national forests cover the old road: Coconino, Sitgreaves and Apache. The longest stretch of the original Crook's Trail remains beside the Rim Road between Arizona 87 and 260. Here, if you look carefully, you still can see remains of the old wagon road snaking its way beside the top of the cliffs.  Reflective chevron markers are nailed to trees adjacent to the old General Crook Trail. Most of the old route has been marked by Boy Scouts. Look for double-reflective white chevron markers nailed to trunks of pine trees, or stones piled up along the right of way. If you're real lucky, you may find one of General Crook's old marker trees, where soldiers blazed a smooth patch on a tree trunk and burned in the mileage. Most have a V, like V122, which means 122 miles from Fort Verde. The miles were measured by tying a rag around a wagon wheel and counting the revolutions.  When a certain number were counted, a mile had been covered; a mile marker tree was blazed or a rock cairn erected. Native Plant life The plant community common along these parts of the Mogollon Rim and in other mountainous regions of central and southern Arizona from 4000 to about 6000 feet is called Chaparral.. Chaparral consists largely of dense shrub thickets nearly impenetrable to human travel. Communities usually are a mix of several species of shrubs such as mountain mahogany, shrub live oak, manzanita, and silk tassel. Succulent plants, including prickly pear cactus, agave, and yucca, commonly grow alongside the shrubs as well. Wild Life Mule deer and sometimes elk can be found browsing or grazing on this community's shrubs and grasses, though smaller mammals such as the cottontail rabbit or cliff chipmunk are generally more common. Nesting birds include the scrub jay, canyon wren, rufous-sided towhee, and the black-chinned sparrow. Several lizards and snakes are common including the western rattlesnake and Arizona alligator lizard. The Yavapai's of the Mogollon The current boundaries of the Fort McDowell reservation mark only a small portion of the ancestral territory of the bands of Yavapais whos homeland was the vast area called Arizona and the Mogollon Rim country. These people hunted wild animals and gathered food. It is likely they refreshed themselves at Montezuma Well as history indicates that the Yavapai’s early origin is Ahagaskiaywa (Montezuma Well). December 28, 1872, the "Skeleton Cave Massacre" killed 100 Yavapai men, women and children during a surprise attack. Yavapai consider this the most horrible massacre in their history, and newspapers and Army reports of the day describe it as one of the most "terrible battles in Apache history." Reports indicated 75 "hostiles" were killed and 25 captured. The 1,500 surviving Yavapai and Tonto Apaches were removed to the San Carlos Apache Reservation on February 27, 1875, on what is now known as the "Trail of Tears." At an elevation of 1,350 feet, the peaceful topography of this reservation belies its bloody history. The serene landscape ranges from tree-lined bottom lands to cactus studded rolling hills. The reservation was designated in 1903 when the kwevikopaya, or Southeastern Yavapai, who lived in the Matazal-Four Peak and Superstition Mountain region, were granted 24,680 acres of the old Fort McDowell Military Reserve. This has been one of the most important outposts in the southwest during the Apache Wars which occurred between 1865-1891.

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