Secrets of the Estrellas

“There they are,” says John Arthur Deal as we come to the top of the I-10 exit ramp and swing right onto SR-347 on a Saturday morning in February.

Directly ahead of us, the mysterious Sierra Estrella Mountains stretch for 25 miles from north to south, jutting 4,500 feet up into the blue desert sky. As always, the sight of them puts helium in my heart, a sense of lightness and freedom.

John and I have just met for the first time at a restaurant in Chandler, where he filled me in on his history with the mountains. The grandson of Arthur Deal, a Maricopa pioneer who stepped off the train in the little frontier town in 1899 and later owned a hotel there, the man beside me in the pickup has been hiking up into the black, rugged peaks for 60 years.

“The earliest picture I have of myself in the mountains is from 1950 or 1951, when I would have been about six years old,” he says. “My Dad used to take us camping there all the time. He started going up there with his father, my grandfather, when he was a child.”

The Estrellas are still relatively new to me. I saw them the first time eight months earlier, in August, when driving to Maricopa to apply for an editing job. Since starting at InMaricopa.com in September, I have seen them five or six days a week on the ride to and from work, and they never fail to give me at least a glimmer of happiness and peace.

A vast wall of ancient stone rising steeply from the flat desert floor, the Estrellas put daily life in perspective in a way that is for me psychologically healing and spiritually uplifting. The route SR-347 follows contributes to the transformative sensation.

The highway lies due west for a short distance after crossing I-10, heading straight for the mountains, and then curves almost 90 degrees to the south, running parallel to the peaks. Because of that curve, when you look west from the highpoint at the top of the I-10 exit ramp, traffic on 347 appears as toy vehicles streaming along the base of the mountains.

Something about that perspective — seeing the smooth, silent progression of tiny tractor trailers and particle-like cars against the looming backdrop of the Estrellas — has made my life in Arizona much better than it would have been without the mountains, taking me out of mundane time and a little way into eternity each morning.

NEARLY AS OLD AS TIME
As soon as I saw the mountains, I knew I wanted to write about them and began to research their natural history. From Internet sources and interviews with geologists, I discovered that the Sierra Estrellas — Spanish for the Star Mountains — are a solid block of 1.6 billion-year-old stone that was formed deep in the earth when molten rock erupted upward into a layer of sediment. Later, the earth’s crust cracked and shifted, thrusting the mountains up into the sunlight.

If the timeframe of the Estrellas was a year, our species would have come into existence late in the evening on Dec. 31. The entire history of civilization, dating from the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago, would have taken place in the final three minutes of that day. Assyria, Babylonia, ancient Egypt and the Greek and Roman Empires would have risen and fallen in the last two minutes. America’s brief history to date would have taken place in the final four seconds of the year.

The events of daily life seem large and all-consuming when one is lost in them, but if one steps back and looks at a demanding task or difficult meeting in the sweep of the mountain’s history, those little hassles lose their power to mask the inherent joy and adventure of life. If everything from Moses coming down Mount Sinai with the 10 Commandments to the financial crisis of 2007 has come and gone in a blink of the mountain’s eye, one’s own problems and challenges are revealed as infinitesimal.

I got in touch with John through my Internet research when I came across a website where he has stockpiled a treasure trove of information about the human and natural history of the Estrellas. From his site and others I learned that, although these mysterious mountains look barren, they are actually rich in exotic plant and animal life. According to the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the 14,400-acre Sierra Estrella Wilderness, “the extreme elevation differences have caused diverse plant and animal communities. Plants in the lower areas include saguaro and cholla, ocotillo, palo verde and elephant bush. Small protected areas on top the mountains have shrub-like oak and juniper. A herd of desert bighorn sheep roam the mountains and Gila monster, desert tortoise, mountain lion, mule deer, coyote, javelina, giant spotted whiptail lizard, golden eagle, prairie falcon and cooper’s hawk” all inhabit the slopes.

The mountains have attracted people as long as people have been around and contain one of the most concentrated displays of petroglyphs in the West. Native Americans were drawn to the mountains in part because summer temperatures are typically eight to 12 degrees cooler at the highest elevations than on the desert floor.

White hunters and miners trekked up into the mountains when they arrived, and there is supposed to be a fabulous hoard of Spanish gold hidden somewhere among the rocky peaks — though John is skeptical about that.

“Up until the 1940s and 1950s, treasure hunting was one of the main pastimes in Arizona,” he says. “People believed there was gold buried everywhere. My dad worked in the mines in Superior in the 1960s and he used to bring home ore samples that were really rich in copper and gold, but the ore in the Estrellas isn’t that rich. I know from research I’ve done that people have mined for gold up there since Spanish Colonial times, but I doubt they would have gotten together the quantity of gold that the legend claims.”

Nevertheless there is gold in the Estrellas, and the lure of gold is strong. According to a mineral survey done by Department of Geology at Arizona State University, more than 75 placer claims have been filed on the western slope since 1980, and our destination for the day is a site John calls “the old Spanish mine.”

One can always hope.

INTO THE MOUNTAINS
Arriving in Maricopa, where John grew up on his father’s ranch, we meet the other two members of our mini-expedition in Bashas’ parking lot. Chris and Pam Varner are veteran four-wheelers who have been exploring remote areas of Arizona in their 1977 Jeep Wrangler for years. The jeep has a winch on it which may come in handy on the washed-out sandy roads we will drive on.

“We heard about an old mine up in the Estrellas after we moved to Maricopa four years ago,” says Chris, who is an Arizona native and professional artist. “It has been on our list of places we want to visit for a while now.”

“We love exploring new areas and experiencing the landscape,” says Pam, who has lived in Arizona since 1967. “There is always something new to see around the next bend or wash.”

There is a sense of adventure in the air as we head out SR-238, slowing down a couple of times as John, who is serving as our guide, looks for the turnoff that leads back into the mountains.

“It has been 10 years since I’ve been out here,” he says, “and the road is easy to miss.”

Despite his doubts, John spots the road and we begin our bouncy curvy trek across the desert, winding around the south end of Seven Mile Mountain and creeping north through the narrow valley between Seven Mile and the Estrellas.

The road, not much more than a trail, is overhung with spiked palo verde trees and a bush John calls greasewood that scrapes against the sides of the truck and jeep and occasionally thrusts a limb in through our open windows.

“I can’t believe how clean and pristine it is out here,” Pam says when we stop at a fork in the road. “Lots of places we go in the desert, there is trash and junk all over the place, but this looks like it must have looked 1,000 years ago.”

Even though they are plainly visible from Phoenix, the seventh-largest city in the country, the Sierra Estrellas remain one of the most remote and least-visited wilderness areas in Arizona. The Gila River Indian Reservation lies between the city and the mountains, cutting off approach from the northeast and according to the Bureau of Land Management, “four-wheel drive vehicles are required to approach the wilderness boundary from the south and west. Primitive dirt roads are extremely sandy or silty, and wash crossings are rugged and deep.”

That kind of language and terrain tend to discourage casual visitors, and, as we continue along the winding desert track, we feel ourselves going further and further away from civilization and back in time.

NATIVE AMERICAN MEMORIES
Gila River Indian Tribe Cultural Guardian Robert Johnson says the Native Americans who lived along the Gila and Salt Rivers used the Estrellas as an agricultural calendar.

“Looking from the east, they timed the planting and harvest of crops according to which peak the sun set behind at different times of year,” he says. “There were also sacred wind shrines in the mountains where holy men went to do ceremonies to keep the wind under control.”

According to Johnson, war parties of rival tribes gathered on adjacent peaks to taunt each other and hurl insults prior to joining battle, and the Gila Indians still hunt wild pigs and gather cactus fruit on the eastern slopes of the mountains.

After an hour or so and a few detours to get around obstructions, we arrive at the bottom of a cleft in the mountain where John instructs us to park.

“That is Montezuma Peak up there,” he says, pointing to a sharp pinnacle of rock two-thirds of a mile above us. “That is how you can spot the mine and the old stone house. They are right there, in that valley below the peak.”

Climbing upward on the rocky trail in warm winter sunshine we talk for a while, then fall silent, enjoying the majesty and beauty of the vista opening behind us as we ascend.

The route is strewn with massive boulders broken off from the heights above as the mountains have weathered over the 12 million year since they emerged from underground.

There are also expanses of white quartz, a mineral deposit often rich in gemstones.

THE OLD SPANISH MINE
It is late morning by the time we arrive at the stone house and old Spanish mine and sit down to rest in the shade.

“I don’t know exactly how old the ruins are,” John says. “I don’t think the mine was dug by Americans, but it is hard to date it with certainty.”

The house is a small, dry-laid stone structure that had a wooden roof when John first saw it that has since fallen in. The mine is a pit, similar to a well, dug or blasted straight down into the rock. There are old, half-rotted timbers strewn around it, as well as metal anchors set into the stone.

The thought of a hidden treasure in the area is exciting, and we peer and pry and try to see down into the mine, but we aren’t equipped for a descent, and no gold gleams.

We are not too disappointed though.
It has been a fascinating excursion into an area few people have ever seen. The views from this height are breathtaking, encompassing all of the Rainbow Valley, stretching 20 miles north toward Avondale.

In all that vast area nothing stirs but the wind and an occasional bird. No cars or trucks or people. We are alone in a world not much changed since the time of the Spanish missionaries who were the first Europeans to see these mountains back in the 1600s.

Mountains have always represented eternity, because of their height toward the heavens, their ancientness and incredible size, and there is an urge to stay here, high above the world in the pure light of creation, but we all have those little mundane things to do back in the world of time. So, after exploring some more and sitting and talking and taking lots of pictures, we begin the trek back down.

We aren’t loaded down with the lost gold promised by legend; we carry another kind of treasure, the images of an awesome wilderness and memories of a beautiful day.