The
Arizona Strip (page 3 of 3)
Life on the Arizona Strip Today
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Pipe Springs with historic Mormon building in background, c. 1934. Photo NAU.PH.95.48.851 by Barbara or Edwin McKee, courtesy of Cline Library Special Collections, Northern Arizona University. |
Today, the human dimension of the Arizona Strip remains sparse, centering largely on the vicinity of the towns of Fredonia and Colorado City (formerly known as Short Creek), both located just south of the Utah border. The Mormon roots of human settlement are evident in both towns. Fredonia, a town of less than 1,500 residents, serves as a waystation for tourists visting the many parks and monuments in southern Utah and northern Arizona. The monument closest to Fredonia is Pipe Spring National Monument, 15 miles away. Pipe Spring, with four springs in the area and once surrounded by lush grasslands (now semi-desert due to years of intense cattle grazing), was declared a monument in 1923 in recognition of the significance of Pipe Spring in western pioneer life. The first ranchers, James Whitmore and Robert McIntyre, settled in 1863 but were killed by Navajo raiders, launching the Black Hawk Navajo Wars over Arizona Strip land rights from 1866-1869. After a peace treaty was been negotiated, the Mormon church built a protective fort, dubbed Winsor Castle, and established a large cattle ranch here which supplied meat and cheese to settlers on the Strip.
The visitor center, trailer park and campground at Pipe Springs National Monument are operated by the Kaibab-Paiute Tribe, whose reservation lies just west of Fredonia. The 120,000+ acre reservation is home to 240 Kaibab-Paiute tribal members, who are part of the larger Southern Paiute Nation. The reservation lies along Kanab Creek and is largely undeveloped, although it does support a number of ranches, farms, and a large fruit tree orchard. The government is the major employer of tribal members, while tourism, ranching, and a Fredonia-based sawmill also provide jobs.
The Arizona Game and Fish Commission operates Buffalo Ranch in southern House Rock Valley, maintaining a herd of about 200 buffalo. The ranch originated around the turn of the century, under the management of Charles Jesse Jones, or "Buffalo" Jones, who experimented with cattalo, the hybrid offspring of cattle and buffalo. The experiment was unsuccessful, but ultimately produced a viable herd of buffalo, the descendants of which now live at Buffalo Ranch, free ranging in the grassy valley.
Follow these links for more detailed discussion
of the land-use and land cover history of these places on the Arizona
Strip:
Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument
The Kaibab Plateau
--Researched and written by Shannon Kelly
Belshaw, M. 1978. High, dry, and lonesome: The Arizona Strip and its people. The Journal of Arizona History 19: 359-378.
Brinkley-Rogers. 1991. 'Outlaw saints' seek redemption: Mormon Fundamentalists making comeback as they fight for courts to sanction lifestyle. The Arizona Republic, December 29, 1991.
Grand Canyon Wildlands Council. 2000. An ecological assessment of the Shivwits Plateau Region. Grand Canyon Wildlands Council, Flagstaff, AZ, 29 pp.
Kilbride, P.L. 1994. Plural marriage for our times: A reinvented option? Bergin & Garvey, Westport, CT, 139 pp.
Rider, R.W. (as told to D.M. Paulsen). 1985. The roll away saloon: Cowboy tales of the Arizona Strip. Utah State University Press, Logan, 114 pp.
U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Managment, Arizona Strip District. 1992. Arizona Strip District Rangeland Program summary update. USDI/BLM, St. George, UT
U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management. 1992. Shivwits Resource Area implementation plan for the Arizona Strip District approved resource management plan. Report BLM-AZ-PT-92-027-1600. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Other Resources:
Altschul, J. H. and Fairley, H. C. 1989. Man, models and management: An overview of the archaeology of the Arizona Strip and the management of it cultural resources. Contract Number 53-8371-6-0054. USDA Forest Service and USDI Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 410 pp.
Beus, S. S. and M.Morales, editors. 1990. Grand Canyon geology. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
Billingsley, G. H., Spamer, E. E. and Menkes, D. 1997. Quest for the pillar of gold: The mines and miners of the Grand Canyon. Grand Canyon Association, Grand Canyon, AZ.
Callison, J., Jr. and Brotherson, J. D. 1985. Habitat relationships of the blackbrush community (Coleogyne ramosissima) of southwestern Utah. Great Basin Naturalist 45: 321-326.
Cox, N. J. and Russell, H. B. 1972. Footprints on the Arizona Strip (with accent on "Bundyville"). Horizon Publishers, Bountiful, UT.
Harper, K. T. and Reveal, J. L. 1976. Intermountain biogeography: a symposium. Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs 2: 1-268.
Hoffmeister, D. F. and Durham, F. E. 1971. Mammals of the Arizona Strip including Grand Canyon National Monument. Northern Arizona Society of Science and Art, Inc., Flagstaff, AZ.
House, D. A. 1986. Under Vermillion Cliffs: Man on the Arizona Strip. Pp. 22-31 In: The Arizona Strip: Splendid isolation. Plateau Magazine, Special Edition. Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, AZ.
Hughes, L. E. 1990. Twenty years of rest-rotation grazing on the Arizona strip--an observation. Rangelands 12: 173-176.
Lavender, D. 1984. Pipe Springs and the Arizona Strip. Zion Natural History Association, Springdale, UT.
Maldonado, F. and Nealey, L. D., editors. 1997. Geologic studies in the Basin and Range-Colorado Plateau transition in southeastern Nevada, southwestern Utah, and northwestern Arizona. Bulletin 2153. U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, D.C.
Manners, R. A. 1974. Paiute Indians Volume 1, Southern Paiute and Chemehuevi: An ethnohistorical report. Garland Publishing, Inc., New York.
McCulloch, C. Y. and Smith, R. H. 1991. Relationship of weather and other environmental variables to the condition of the Kaibab deer herd. Technical Report 11. AGFD Research Branch, Phoenix, AZ.
Meyer, S. E. 1978. Some factors governing plant distributions in the Mohave-Intermountain transition zone. Great Basin Naturalist Memoirs 2: 197-207.
Minckley, W. C. 1991. Native fishes of the Grand Canyon region: An obituary? In: Marzolf, G. R., editor. Colorado River ecology and dam management. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.
Moffitt, K. and Chang, C. 1978. The Mount Trumbull archaeology survey. The Western Anasazi Reports 1: 185-250.
Moffitt, K., Rayl, S. and Metcalf, M. 1978. Archaeological investigations along the Navajo-McCullogh Transmission Line, southern Utah and Northern Arizona. Research Report No. 10. Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, AZ.
Rasmussen, D. I. 1941. Biotic communities of Kaibab Plateau, Arizona. Ecological Monographs 11: 229-275.
Stevens, L. E. and Ayers, T. J. In press. Biogeographic patterns among the nonnative flora and vertebrate fauna of Grand Canyon. In: Tillman, B., editor. Nonative species in the Sonoran Desert. University of Arizona.
U.S. Bureau of Land Management. 1990. Arizona Strip District Resource Management Plan and Final Environmental Impact Statement. Report BLM-AZ-PT-91-002-1600. BLM Arizona Strip District, St. George, UT.
U.S. Bureau of Land Management and Arizona Game & Fish Dept. 1997. Arizona Strip desert bighorn sheep management plan. BLM Arizona Strip Office, St. George, UT.
Waltz, A. 1998. Mt. Trumbull Ecosystem Restoration Project: Annual report for the year October 1, 1997 to September 30, 1998. BLM Arizona Strip District, St. George, UT.