Tuesday we head for Tombstone, but halfway there from my domain in the back seat I realize we are instead going to Cochise’s Stronghold.

 

The Dragoon Mountains are east of Tucson, a natural fortress surrounded by flat plains full of tough grasses.  Well stocked for war ponies. The base of the mountains are covered by green, the tops bare and rocky A perfect sentry lookout. Eight miles out the road stops, turning into a private, gravel track. I’m amazed, my parents continue on. We wind upward through chaparral and scrub, passing through cuts, until we reach a small pull off.

 

A sign identifies this unremarkable spot as the stronghold of Cochise and his people. Backed by cliffs, it is a difficult approach from any direction. It is deathly quiet, so far from any road there is no sound of machinery. No overhead power lines. I’m struck with the same feeling I’ve had in few other places. Arlington. Gettysburg. I focus in on the cliff face and snap a few photos, then close the camera when my father points back to the peak. A white cloud, the first we’ve seen all day, is cresting over the top. Quickly, I fire off two more shots.

 

The informational sign tells us Cochise was born in these mountains. When he died, of old age, the Apache buried him there. They buried him deep, ran their horses over the grave so no white man would ever know where he rested.  It worked, to this day he’s never been found. 

 

Cochise is still in his stronghold.

 

Heading north we enter a valley formed between the Dragoon and Chiricahua Mountains.  Is this Arizona?  Filled from one end to the other with knee-deep, thick grasses, I’m reminded of plains states, not desert.  Tough, with seed heads bobbing like wheat, the lush foliage covers hundreds of square miles, crowding the roadside and, in places, the center of the road. I learn this area is a watershed between the mountain ranges. High country, it is fertile and wet.  It’s too far east to be High Chaparral land. Too bad, John Cannon would’ve been rich as Midas if he’d run cattle on this graze.

 

At Chiricahua National Monument we begin to climb.  The Apache called this isolated sky-island ‘land of the standing-up rocks’, and soon we discover why.  An ancient volcano pushed up melted rock, weakening points and lines. Over eons wind and rain eroded the rest away, leaving precariously balanced blocks stacked in an array of pillars and patterns.

 

These mountains contain a wild mix of eco-systems.  In an eight-mile loop we go from desert through spruce and Ponderosa pine, and finally to oak.  Above everything are the amazing pinnacles, spires, domes, and jumbled shapes of the standing-up-rocks of the Chiricahua. 

 

In Tombstone I walk streets that are as close to a living museum as I am likely to encounter. Among the tourist trappings, the buildings are genuine, including the O.K. Corral.  I trace the route of the Clanton gang, stand where Wyatt Earp and his brothers shot them down. The re-enactment is touristy, but we are tourists; we sit on bleachers and watch as the Clantons die again. Dusting themselves off, they bow and tell us they will repeat the performance at 3:00.

 

The Bird Cage Theater is a self-guided tour and much of the original history is in place, including Tombstone’s original horse drawn hearse, valued at over a million dollars.  The building is authentic, having survived two fires that devastated the town. Bullet holes decorate the bar and walls. An enormous portrait of Fatima (later known as Little Egypt) has 16 separate patches from bullets and knives. 

 

Passing into the interior, we see the individual ladies cribs that gave the place its name. With curtains that provided a view of the stage, each birdcage provided a room of entertainment for the miner or cowboy with money to spend on one of the ladies.  In the basement, one of the richest poker games in the west ran for years, with a minimum buy-in of $1000. The house rules sign still hangs on the wall. Authentic tables, chairs, whiskey bottles and glasses are still in their original places. Side rooms, outfitted for the working ladies, contain beds and side tables, rules and regulations still posted on the walls. 

 

Age hangs heavy at the Birdcage; there is no trace of fakery about it.  It is real as heifer dust.

 

On the way out of town, large signs announce the most famous cemetery in the world. Boothill was recently remodeled.  The graves are neatly manicured with freshly piled stones and newly painted wooden markers.  A cut ocotillo fence assures you must pay to wander and read the bright yellow crosses. Content with orienting the hillside pauper’s graveyard with the small town below, we leave the unfortunate gunslingers, cowboys, and sporting women in peace.

 

Thursday dawns bright and sunny; temperatures will hit 99 before noon. There are a handful of tourists taking the tour at Old Tucson, a working film studio and theme park. The streets are full of old west buildings – crumbling adobe, clapboard school house, spired church, Spanish mission with fountain. They built Main Street from original photos and documents outlining the original layout of historical Tucson. It’s as authentic as movie-magic can make it, a fantasy-version of a frontier town. In the heat and the dust I wander from livery to mercantile, dentist to bath house.

 

The tour guide points out a long pedigree of movies and TV episodes shot at Old Tucson, including Bing Crosby’s The Bells of St. Mary’s. John Wayne loved the location and invested in the original studio; he is responsible for much of its original success.

 

Surrounded by life-size movie memorabilia, I am drawn to one set in particular. Off to one side, down a ravine and up a small hill, past Rattlesnake Junction, a trail leads to an overhanging ranch sign. High Chaparral.

 

The set has been re-used over the years, most recently turned into a fort.  The fence is missing. Well, trough, cactus garden, corrals, barn, water tower, windmill – all are long gone. The bunkhouse is barely recognizable, changed into something resembling a blacksmith/storage shed.

 

But John Cannon’s ranch house still stands. 

 

I expected to be disappointed. Thought I’d find a disneyesque piece of fakery, a plastic, thin-shelled movie set, all the wires showing.  Instead I saw a substantial ranch house, heavy columns leaning slightly, adobe sides stained with age.  It looks for all the world like a vintage building, an authentic 1870’s ranch house, still stubbornly refusing to fall after battling Apache, sun, wind and rain for 150 years.

 

Did you ever confidently set your foot on the bottom tread of a staircase, only to encounter the floor instead?  Feel that strange shock shoot through your body when you hit the ground, knowing something isn’t quite right?  Multiply that and cross it with a weirdly skewed deja vue. Walk into your backyard, mirror-reverse everything, and cross your eyes.  You’ll approach the feeling I had at the Old Tucson Chaparral set. 

 

The mountains framing the house are closer, more imposing. They shelter the compound, outline and define it.  I stood where the original gate was; I know because the brushy ditch where John and Blue hid from attacking Apache in Peacemaker is still there. Between that landmark and the bunkhouse it’s possible to find the gate location.  Here’s a surprise – the compound is smaller than it looks. Count footsteps the next time you watch an episode, and you’ll get a better sense of the real dimensions.  A small outpost in a large, hostile land.

 

The front porch is narrower than you’d think, but when you step into the shade it’s at least 10 degrees cooler. The floor is made to look like sandstones, the posts like huge logs. The summer kitchen’s lean-to is gone, torn away for some movie remodel, but the adobe divider remains, heavy and solid. You can lean against it and see where the corral once was. It’s a substantial hacienda, in the 1870’s it would’ve been an impressive place. 35 years since it was built, and it looks like the bunkhouse boys could set everything to rights with a couple weeks work.

 

In the mid 90’s a fire destroyed most of the Old Tucson lots, but left the High Chaparral set.  Despite the air of disuse, I have no feeling of sadness here.  Instead satisfaction, seeing something that’s lasted.   But then Cannons and Montoyas build to last. 

 

I walk down the winding path, look over my shoulder at the overhanging sign, and hear voices in my head:

 

“The High Chaparral is a big place… It’s like a thing that’s in my blood… the thing that we’re building goes beyond my life, that it’ll go on with you and your children. If I had to live with the thought that the High Chaparral, what it means, stops with me….”

 

“I’m just a saddle tramp. What do you think I’d be John, what I am . . without . . I’m looking for something, something better. And with you, and Chaparral, Blue Boy, Victoria, Don Sebastian, Manolito, the bunkhouse boys . . . Well you’re all something better, all of you. But John without you, I don’t know – ‘cause I’m a drifter."

“You know something, Pa? This is beautiful country. And it’s our country. It’s gonna be ours for a long time. “

 

Leaving Arizona behind on our way north to Yellowstone, we pass a semi-trailer. On the back in white letters is stenciled ‘High Chaparral.’

 

 

 

 

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