Landmarks
“The only way the driver can keep to the road is by
using his headlights. So in the mystical life, reason has its function. The way of faith is necessarily obscure.
We drive by night. Nevertheless our reason penetrates the darkness enough to show us a little of the road ahead.
It is by the light of reason that we interpret the signposts and make out the landmarks along our way.” – Thomas Merton –
Both Mrs. Gerry and I grew up in Kentucky and perhaps the most telling of its landmarks are the Rivers that
define its boarders between Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and Virginia. Only the southern boarder
with Tennessee is just a surveyor’s line. Another notable landmark is the bluegrass area surrounding Lexington
with their famous horse farms. The region is home to about 450 working farms with 150 in Lexington/Fayette County
alone. Horse breeding has been an important Bluegrass industry since the area was first settled. Daniel Boone himself
introduced a bill for "improving the breed of horses" at Kentucky's first legislative assembly.
Lesser known but equally unique within the Bluegrass Region is home of over 131 brands of Kentucky Bourbon along
what has become known as the Bourbon Trail. Kentucky settlers made a living in the ways common on the frontier.
Many traded animal skins, worked as blacksmiths or felled trees to earn their way. But most of these early settlers
planted crops, including wheat, rye, corn, tobacco and sorghum and there were often surplus grains, which had to
be utilized before they rotted. Frequently, this grain was used to make whiskey, popular for its many uses. Around
the mid-1800's, for many, the business of grain production became secondary to the production of whiskey.
Among other well-known Kentucky landmarks would be the twin spirals of Churchill Downs the sight of the first
jewel in Thoroughbred Racings Triple Crown.
Another is Mammoth Cave, the most extensive cave system on Earth, with over 350 miles of passageways mapped
and surveyed, yet after 4,000 years of intermittent exploration, the full extent of this water-formed labyrinth
remains a mystery.
The Land Between the Lakes (LBL) is a 170,000-acre national recreational area in Western Kentucky. This mammoth
recreation area is a by-product of two huge dams built for flood control and navigation. The first, Kentucky
Dam, built on the Tennessee River by TVA and completed in 1944, impounded Kentucky Lake. Its sister lake
was formed when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built Barkley Dam on the Cumberland River in 1965. Combined,
the two lakes offer more than 220,000 service acres of water and 3,500 miles of shoreline.
Almost twenty years ago Mrs. Gerry and I chose Arizona to be our final home. During those years we have made
an effort to visit and enjoy the extraordinary landmarks that define this unique state of choice rather than birth.
Perhaps the most well known of Arizona’s landmarks is the Grand Canyon. Our canyon is one of the
Seven Natural Wonders of the World and shows an impressive display of erosion and mother earth's natural beauty.
Stretching for 277 miles, the Grand Canyon ranges in elevation from 2,400 feet to over 7,000 feet above sea level.
Located entirely in Northern Arizona. It is up to 1 mile deep, 4-18 miles wide. Plateaus to the north and
south rise 5,000 to 9,000 ft above sea level, partly as a result of regional uplift, which left the North Rim more
than 1,000 ft higher than the South Rim in places. It is said of this landmark: “The Grand Canyon is more than
a great chasm carved over millennia through the rocks of the Colorado Plateau. It is more than an awe-inspiring
view. It is more than a pleasuring ground for those that explore the roads, hike the trails, or float the currents
of the turbulent Colorado River. This canyon is a gift that transcends what we experience. Its beauty and size
humbles us. Its timelessness provokes a comparison to our short existence. In its vast spaces we may find solace
from our hectic lives.”
Few people outside of Arizona know that fully 30% of the Arizona land mass is taken up by the 21 Indian Tribes,
Nations & Communities within reservations in our state. The Navajo Reservation itself covers over 17.5 million
acres and while some of it is located in Western New Mexico & Southern Utah, well over 60% is located in North
Eastern Arizona. While the Grand Canyon is better known, Mrs. Gerry and my overwhelming favorite landmarks are
located within this Navajo Territory. These two are the lesser-known Canyon De Chelly and the often-photographed
Monument Valley.
Reflecting one of the longest continuously inhabited landscapes of North America, the cultural resources of
Canyon de Chelly--including distinctive architecture, artifacts, and rock imagery--exhibit remarkable preservational
integrity that provides outstanding opportunities for study and contemplation. Canyon de Chelly also sustains a
living community of Navajo people, who are connected to a landscape of great historical and spiritual significance--a
landscape composed of places infused with collective memory.
The Anasazi - "Ancient Ones" - lived in the canyon between 350 and 1300 AD and resided in communities
nestled below the towering cliffs or perched on high ledges. Their homes were engineered using timbers and adobe-style
bricks. The most impressive structures are large cliff dwellings, built between 1100 and 1300 in the Pueblo period.
The Anasazi left the area around 1300. The reason for their disappearance is debated with the most popular theory
being a prolonged drought that forced them out. The people of Canyon de Chelly and other nearby Pueblo centers
left their homes and moved to other parts of the Southwest. Some of the present-day Pueblo Indians of Arizona and
New Mexico are descendants of these pre-Columbian people.
Monument Valley provides perhaps the most enduring and definitive images of the American West.
The isolated red mesas and buttes surrounded by empty, sandy desert have been filmed and photographed countless
times over the years for movies, adverts and holiday brochures. Because of this, the area may seem quite familiar,
even on a first visit, but it is soon evident that the natural colours really are as bright and deep as those in
all the pictures. The valley is not a valley in the conventional sense, but rather a wide flat, sometimes desolate
landscape, interrupted by the crumbling formations rising hundreds of feet into the air, the last remnants of the
sandstone layers that once covered the entire region. The scale of this country is best experienced in person,
as evidenced by the travelers from around the world who seek out this distant corner of Arizona. In recent years,
Mrs. Gerry and I were able to not only spend time in this unique landmark with our extended family; we had the
great privilege of being allowed by the Navajo Nation to fly the area in a hot-air balloon. We lifted off from
Artist Point at dawn and enjoyed a perspective of the area that has been seen by less than 100 individuals.
Almost at the other end of Arizona on the road between Tucson and the Mexico boarder you can find San Xavier
del Bac. Early European interest in the valley, now known as Tucson, found a focal point in the great Jesuit explorer
and priest Father Kino. Kino who visited the area in the early 1690s wrote to king Phillip V of Spain about he
area and named it San Xavier after the Patron Saint known as the "Apostle of the Indes."
The building of the first San Xavier del Bac ushered in a half century of relative tranquility and from 1692
through 1782 various priests took charge of the church and either visited regularly or were commissioned there.
Marauding Apaches destroyed the original mission and Construction of a new church was finally initiated in 1782.
Continued flooding in the Santa Cruz lowlands led the Franciscans to choose a site on a hill about two miles south
of the original church.
The Hohokums lived for over a thousand years in southern Arizona, long before Cortez destroyed the Aztecs in
Mexico or Pizarro toppled the Incas in South America. Even before the Pilgrims landed in North America, the Hohokums
lived in harmony with the harsh desert near what is now Phoenix. They built ball courts and pyramid-like mounds
reminiscent of those found in Mexico, as well as a hundreds of miles of deep, wide irrigation canals that are still
in use today.
By 1866, the little cow town of Phoenix, Arizona had been officially established. One of the town’s pioneer
promoters was a man named Jack Swilling. Swilling began a campaign to clear out and reopen the ancient ditches
and canals of the Salt River Valley abandoned by the Hohokum Indian hundreds of years before. Many didn’t believe
Swilling could pull off such a scheme, but he proved them wrong and the renewed waterways became the lifeblood
of the community. These canals first created by the Hohokum Indian and reopened by the early pioneers are among
the same waterways still feeding the metropolis today.
Pueblo Grande is a prehistoric Hohokam village located in the heart of Phoenix and preserved by the City as
a cultural park and interpreted through a museum and outdoor trail. It has been designated as a National Historic
Landmark. The cultural part contains the central, 100-acre portion of the original prehistoric village. By the
late Classic period (ca. A.D. 1350), Pueblo Grande is believed to have covered an area one mile wide from east
to west, and one mile or more long from south to north. Visitors explore the ruin of an 800 year-old platform mound
possibly used by the Hohokam for ceremonies or as an administrative center. An excavated ball court, and to full-scale
reproductions of prehistoric Hohokam homes can be viewed along the ruin trail. The site also includes some of the
last remaining intact Hohokam irrigation canals.
Little question exist that one landmark totally dominates in our hometown. I once described the Valley of the
Sun as a large bowl of cereal with a giant strawberry floating in the very center of the bowl. That strawberry
represented Camelback Mountain.
This view is looking northwest from Papago Buttes and from this viewpoint it is hard to tell you are
in the midst of about 3.5 million people. Summit elevation is 2704 feet -- the peak rises about 1600 ft above the
elevation of downtown Phoenix. Camelback Mountain is one of the most prominent peaks in the Phoenix Mountains,
and hosts a number of the valley's most famous resorts around its base, including Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain,
the Camelback Inn, the Royal Palms, The Phoenician and my own Scottsdale Camelback
Resort.
Arizona Landmarks are as varied as its elevations which begin some 70ft above sea level at the Colorado River
near Yuma and rises to just over 12,600 ft atop Humphrey’s Peak near Flagstaff. The variety continues with our
Sonoran Desert (the worlds greenest) and its regal Saguaro cactus then up and over the Mogollon Rim and the country’s
largest Ponderosa Pine forest. Then consider contrasting landmarks such as the 16,850 square foot mansion built
in 1932 by chewing gum king William Wrigley Jr. atop a 100-foot hill in the heart of Phoenix with sweeping views
of the Valley with the traditional 64 square foot – eight-sided Navajo Hogan close by Chinle Wash in Canyon de
Chelly.
FINAL THOUGHT
So far I have covered landmarks that were/are a prominent identifying feature of a landscape and landmarks
that were/are buildings or sites with historical significance. What I have not mentioned were any events marking
an important stage of development or a turning point in history. Such landmarks would be WW-2, the Kennedy assassination,
and/or 9/11, all of which both Mrs. Gerry and I have lived through.
I would close with a few recent such landmarks in our lives. Last year Miss Ivy Alice Faith-Long was born and
thus became our first great-grandchild. We both were invited to attend our 50th high school reunions back in Lone
Oak and Reidland, Kentucky respectively (Mrs. Gerry is going to attend hers) and we will celebrate our 40th year
of marital bliss on September 5th.
I am sure that you have unique landmarks within the region where you live and in your lives. Both Mrs. Gerry
and I would encourage you to check them all out between workdays or even vacations and to cherish those in your
lives, for they will always add to the fabric of your life.
PS: For those of you that would like to visit the Bluegrass Region of Kentucky, take a look at Taylorsville
Lake Resort, #1147 in the RCI directory and for those of you coming to Arizona any of our 50+ timeshare/vacation
ownership resorts will place you within easy driving distance from most of our fantastic landmarks. If you do come
and have the opportunity to visit Navajo Land you will be greeted often with yá át ééh,
that’s Navajo (Diné) for welcome.
JS 8/05
