Chiricahua, The Silver Spur Trail

Because I wimped out on re-thought my hike at Fort Bowie due to weather issues, (Hey! I couldn't keep my hat on in the wind and my dangly-bits were threatening to ice over!) once I had firmly established The Van in its campsite here in the Chiricahuas, there was still plenty of day left over for hiking.

By walking down to the far end of the second loop in the Bonita Canyon Campground I was able to pick up a trail that goes back to the visitor center and also intersects the Silver Spur Meadow Trail which runs down the valley and joins up with the Bonita Creek Trail at the Faraway day-use area.

Note: The young seasonal ranger that was checking campsite tags, with her butt firmly planted in the official monument pickup's seat, had no idea where in the campground that trail could be found so I was on my own. Most rangers I've come across are pretty enthusiastic about their little bit of the world and know the trails well. Friendly as she was, I'm not sure how this young woman's park-service career is going to work out.




The definition of a desert, a place receiving 10 or less inches of rain per year, seems pretty straight forward, and, at 5 to 6 inches of rain per year at Wilcox, 32 crow-fly miles away, here at the lower elevations of Chiricauhua I am firmly inside that definition, (The upper elevations of the Chiricahuas wring more moisture out of the sky than that, which can be an issue at the campground during the monsoons because it has a wash running right through the middle and Bonita Creek along one side!) yet apparently the boundaries of specific deserts are more nebulous than you might expect.

One map shows the Chihuahua Desert, which includes Guadalupe Mountains National Park where I just was, firmly bleeding over into far southeast Arizona, where I'm at now, yet at the same time has the Great Basin Desert barely encompassing the western half of Utah,

while another map includes most all of Utah and a bit of Colorado in the Great Basin Desert, but places the Chihuahuan Desert's boundary well back into New Mexico. This sort of leaves me in a kind of nameless limbo somewhere between the Chihuahuan and the Sonoran deserts, so in that sense I'm not exactly sure where I am.

Regardless, unlike Guadalupe Mountains where the lower elevations are firmly in the desert and you climb up into the forests, here in Chiricahua this lower-elevation trail, the Silver Spur Meadow Trail,



starts out firmly in the woods and stays there,



except when it is passing through one of the several meadows along the way - hence, I'm assuming, the Meadow in the trail's name.



Though flanked closely by the canyon walls on either side, which do a great job of blocking the remainder of the wind that tore through me at Apache Pass a few hours ago, this is pretty much a flat trail and is suitable hiking for most everybody.




If hiked all the way down to the Erickson Cemetery near the entrance to the National Monument (That final 3 tenths of a mile is not official trail but enough people have walked it that you won't be breaking new ground. If all else fails take to the road for that last little bit.) and back to the campground or visitor center again it is only about 5 miles of gentle hiking all-told.



The trail is never far from Bonita Creek so I imagine that even if this were summer, it would still be a pleasant hike.

Yes, I did say summer and I am talking about the desert southwest, but it should be noted that the high here in the desert environs of Chiricauha reaches an average of 93 in June with average lows reaching down to 69 for a mean temp of 81 with humidities running about 20%. In Central Texas where I hunker-down and sweat out the summer the average high is 97 with lows of 75 for a mean temp of 86 with humidities running about 80%. Wana guess which one is more comfortable??

Anyway, the namesake of that first trail segment, Silver Spur Meadow, is an actual place. In 1934 this was a CCC camp for company 828.

There's no real trace left here of all those young men that lived in this camp, working hard for a dollar a day, most of which he never sees since $25 per month is sent directly back home to his family, but the results of their work, officially named project NM-2, here in the Ciricauhaus are still here in the trails and facilities of the National Monument.



By the late 40's any trace of the CCC camp was obliterated by a lodge and facilities for the Silver Spur Guest Ranch and the two massive chimneys located almost right in the trail are from that era.

Of course in those days there was a lodge wrapped around those chimneys and they weren't just standing there naked in the meadow. You can still see where the roof and walls met the chimney.



I also suspect that this remnant of an old clay waste-water pipe is from the lodge days, since I don't imagine those CCC boys had anything more in the way of bathroom amenities than out-house privies and a tarped-off shower area, probably off to the south side of the meadow, well away from the creek along the north side.



A little further down the trail, nestled alongside the remnants of an orchard painstakingly planted and cared for by hand



is the Stafford Cabin.



The original part of the cabin, a single room about 14x14, was built in a hurry as winter approached by Ja Hu and his child-wife Pauline (12 years old which sounds downright distasteful nowadays, but then the times were different back then)



with unpeeled logs, a dirt floor and split-shake roof.



They expanded the cabin several times, (Had to with 6 children!) first with a second log room tacked onto the first and spliced in with some vertical timbers, and then a series of lean-to's. The family ended up living here for some 20 years.

(I find that doing research on things like this before I go enhances the experience once I get there. There is some information on the info-boards along the trail, but the Chiricahua National Monument web site has more in depth information and I think it's worth-while spending some time going through all that while I still had internet access before leaving on this trip.)



Next stop down the trail is the far more elaborate Erickson Homestead



which Lillian Erickson (Riggs) named



Faraway Ranch "because it's so darn far away from anything."

Lillian, standing on the right with her brother, sister and seated parents, was born at the Fort Bowie hospital and was plagued with failing eyesight and hearing from a young age, yet she still managed to complete college and taught school around southeastern Arizona for some years. She did try moving to California for a bit (her sister lived there with her husband) but that didn't work out and she lived much of her life at Faraway. With husband Ed, they ran it first as a ranch/orchard then a boarding house and finally a guest-ranch.




For a guest-ranch the horse-barn seemed a bit small.

It's said that Lillian, though mostly deaf and completely blind by that point, ("I tried to learn braille but my work-hardened fingers were not sensitive enough.") would stand at the squeeze-chute and reach through the slats to feel the cow's ribs and determine if it was ready for market yet or not.

Starting in 1988, after ten years of cataloging the contents, guided tours of the Faraway Ranch house  are given by park rangers, (Otherwise it's off limits) but mostly on Saturdays and Sundays, and this wasn't either of those, which was too bad since I wouldn't have minded getting a closer look at this remarkable family. (Check the web site calendar for dates and times of the tours)

So I had to content myself with wandering on down to the cemetery, admiring the valley step by step and imagining living here instead.

Eventually I ran out of trail, if not daydreams, and headed back towards the campground.

Even without the guided tour, this was a very pleasant and informative hike.

As I hiked through this bucolic canyon it was easy to see why men have been drawn to this place since at least the 1400's.

During my hike I ran into a couple young-people (Of course from my perspective young covers a pretty broad spectrum!) wandering through the meadows between Faraway and the Stafford Cabin using sticks to thresh the tall grasses into a bucket.

This seemed curious behavior so as I passed by them a second time on my way back towards the campground I set my social reticence aside and asked one of them what the heck they were up to.

Turns out the ranch had been well managed in terms of protecting the natural ecology, and they were collecting native seeds for a restoration project somewhere that wasn't so lucky. These are tiny seeds and it took a hell of a lot of threshing to get just a small hand-full into the bottom of the bucket!