Arizona and The Old West Highway

I've been to Arizona about a half dozen times, typically when I've gone to visit my dad in New Mexico or to attend a Rede family reunion in Tucson. One of the more pleasant trips came when I combined work and play, first meeting with journalism students at Arizona State University in Tempe and later attending three spring training baseball games with my dad.

In all my visits, I've always traveled on Interstate 10, the route that takes you from Phoenix to Tucson and then eastward to New Mexico. Others may enjoy the desert landscape at 75 mph but mile after mile of cactus, brush, rock and distant brown mountains doesn't do much for me. Nor does the experience of pulling into a rest area, hoping to walk around a bit before getting back on the interstate, only to spot a sign saying: "Dangerous snakes and insects in area." Uh...no thanks.

So, after visiting with my dad and stepmom last week, I decided to change it up and drive back to Phoenix along U.S. 70, also known as The Old West Highway. It was a 285-mile trip that took about seven hours from Silver City, including a stop for lunch. Why so long? It's a two-lane highway that passes through several towns where you have to slow down quite a bit. Plus, I was in no hurry. I wanted to see another side of Arizona other than ribbons of interstate asphalt.

Any notions I had of a quaint drive were quickly dispelled when I crossed the N.M. border into Duncan, Arizona (population 713). Signs told me I was in Cattle Country. No surprise there, given the many ranches in the area. But I wasn't prepared for the abject poverty on the outskirts of town. Dilapidated trailers on both sides of the highway, a used tire shop and a boarded-up souvenir shop told me I was light years away from the prosperous suburbs surrounding Phoenix.

It was more of the same as I passed through mining towns like Superior and Miami, where ramshackle houses, unpaved side streets and broken-down vehicles spoke volumes about poverty among rural whites.

But the worst, most dispiriting scenes, were those on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation. Talk about a bleak, dreary landscape. I saw car tires laid on top of plastic tarp covering the roof of a mobile home; clothes hung out to dry on wire mesh fences abutting the highway; a dog lounging a few feet from the highway as cars whizzed by; and only two viable businesses -- a small market and a laundromat next door.

Many San Carlos families have no running water or other services. But efforts to help the tribe's poorest often get derailed by political wrangling, administrative ineptitude and corruption.

Little did I know that San Carlos Reservation is one of the poorest Native American communities in the United States. Wikipedia says the median annual household income is about $14,000, roughly 60 percent of the people live below the poverty line and one-fourth of the active labor force is unemployed. The reservation was established in 1871 and is home to a conglomeration of tribes forcibly removed from traditional Apache homelands in Arizona and New Mexico.

There's a casino on the reservation, miles away from the sad scenes I observed in the community of San Carlos. Somehow, I don't think that's a panacea. Sad to say, according to the alternative weekly Phoenix New Times, "The San Carlos tribal government is known nationally as one of the most inept and corrupt in America's Indian Country." The details are laid out in a devastating piece titled "Tribal Belt."

I couldn't bear the thought of stopping to take a photo or two as I pulled to the side of the road. It felt too intrusive. Still, I've posted a photo (above) from New Times that gives you an idea of the despair, bordering on hopelessness, that I felt.

Next time I'm in Arizona, I think I'll stick to Interstate 10.

Photograph by Paolo Vescia